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Reflection and reflective practice discourses in coaching: a critical analysis

journal contribution
posted on 2016-03-18, 13:33 authored by Christopher CushionChristopher Cushion
Reflection and reflective practice is seen as an established part of coaching and coach education practice. It has become a ‘taken-for-granted’ part of coaching that is accepted enthusiastically and unquestioningly, and is assumed to be ‘good’ for coaching and coaches. Drawing on sociological concepts, a primarily Foucauldian lens, the purpose of this paper is to provide a critical analysis of reflection and to unpack some of the assumptions underlying it and problematize the seemingly unproblematic. This paper challenges the current dominant cognitive assumptions about reflection (and coaching) as an individual, asocial, ahistorical process and explores through concepts such as power/knowledge, discourse and the self, the extent that reflection is discursive and constructs coaches’ subjectivities. The analysis considers unintended consequences of reflection as a form of surveillance that normalizes coaches’ practices through the act of confession. The paper thus challenges the prevailing descriptions that stress the epistemological, and claim ‘neutral’, discursive-blind and non-political perspectives.

History

School

  • Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences

Published in

Sport, Education and Society

Volume

23

Issue

1

Pages

82 - 94

Citation

CUSHION, C.J., 2018. Reflection and reflective practice discourses in coaching: a critical analysis. Sport, Education and Society, 23 (1), pp.82-94

Publisher

© Taylor & Francis

Version

  • VoR (Version of Record)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Acceptance date

2016-01-13

Publication date

2016-02-12

Notes

Closed access

ISSN

1357-3322

eISSN

1470-1243

Language

  • en

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