ABSTRACT
The late Peter Cook, the British comedian, was asked in a sketch about his failed restaurant, The Frog and Peach, the menu of which contained only two dishes, ‘peche à la frog’ and ‘frog à la peche’, whether as a restaurateur he had learned from his mistakes? He replied forthrightly that, ‘I have definitely learned from my mistakes … and I could repeat all of them exactly again.’ At the risk of being flippant, this could be said to encapsulate the problem which has been addressed in recent years by a significant body of writing about the need in social work to develop forms of professional learning that helped practice to move beyond mere routine towards creative and critical problem-solving. Much of this writing and research has fallen within the rubric of ‘reflective learning’, broadly drawing on the seminal work of Donald Schön (1983; 1987) but often also informed by wider areas of critical theory. In 1996 Imogen Taylor and I edited Reflective Learning for Social Work (Gould and Taylor, 1996), the first volume in the social work literature to draw together contributions on the application of Schön’s ideas in social work, and it has become widely cited. In the introductory chapter to that volume I commented that, ‘There is always a danger that a concept such as reflective learning will become little more than a slogan’ (Gould and Taylor, 1996: 2). Some may argue that it has, but there can be no denial that within social work, as in many other professional domains, reflection has become an established element in the professional discourse, and is found everywhere from the competence requirements for professional qualification to mainstream textbooks for students and practitioners.
