An action research exploring how to promote supervisor-trainees’ reflective competence in Guangdong, China

Abstract

To promote student’s reflective competence benefits all learning, practice and research. The researcher who is also the supervisor has initiated action research on her own practice in a social work supervisor training programme in Guangzhou, China studying how to improve supervision in promoting supervisor trainee’s reflective ability for reflective practice. Reflection is an empowering process liberating from dogmatic thinking and generating solution from within an individual rather than from external experts or authorities. Yet supervisor trainee feared of being trapped in reflection deadlock and running “alien” in a collective culture was identified as a hindrance to reflection promotion. This article reveals how supervisor trainees perceive and perform reflection in Mainland Chinese context. Supervisor trainees’ reflective performance and evaluation of different supervision strategies (also regarded as reflection channels) will be discussed. Implications and suggestions on how to better promote reflection will be drawn.

反思能力对学生学习、 实务与研究都有帮助。本次行动研究由研究者在广州督导培训课程所参与的督导工作中开展。研究者同时也是实习督导, 希望在督导过程中探索如何加强培养实习督导人员的反思能力。反思能帮助学生从教条式思维中解放, 不盲目依赖外在权威, 从自己内在产生解决方法, 这是一个赋权过程。但是, 本研究也发现学生在反思过程中会产生恐惧, 恐惧被陷入思考中, 也恐惧产生的想法跟大众不一样, 造成障碍。本文揭示在中国内地脉络中实习督导怎样感知与呈现反思行为, 也分析评估各种督导策略 (也被看作是反思通道) 如何影响培养效果, 并对如何更好促进学生反思能力提出建议。