Teaching critical reflection in healthcare professional education

Despite widespread and long-standing commitment to the notion of critical reflection across the healthcare professions, it is unusual for the theory and practice of critical reflection to be taught as a subject in Higher Education. There is good evidence to show that reflective techniques such as critical portfolios and reflective diaries can help students to consolidate and assess their learning of a discipline and its associated practices. Yet, there are also known drawbacks of such techniques, including students becoming overly self-critical and the infinite regress of reflection on action. This paper offers a theoretically informed model of critical reflection which encompasses different purposes (thinking, learning and assessment of self and social systems), together with different forms and domains of reflection (personal, interpersonal, contextual and critical). Explicitly teaching this model helps students to find ways to understand complex professional issues for themselves. At the same time teaching critical reflection creates new challenges for curricula design, assessment and teacher professional development.