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Whose construction? Reflection, trust and narcissism

Whose construction? Reflection, trust and narcissism

Patterson, Jennifer ORCID: 0000-0002-8254-7602 (2010) Whose construction? Reflection, trust and narcissism. In: DPR 9: The Discourse, Power, Resistance Conference, 30 Mar - 1 Apr 2010, University of Greenwich, London, UK. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

This paper weaves a philosophical and conceptual discussion of the authority of self-authoring through a series of distorted mirrors, telling stories of reflection as a means of constructing and construing identity from strategically "objectivised" positioning.

Today, reflective processes are used to regulate professional standards, particularly in healthcare and education. The predominant discourses of the significant number of models developed describe or prompt processing through developmental cycles and stages. Reflection has also become increasingly used in constructivist approaches to Higher Education as a means of promoting deep learning through (guided) self mediated structures and has provided a different form of assessment, with a number of ethical pitfalls. Stepping through the surveillance strategies of this institutional Panopticon reveals it to be a hall of mirrors in which grotesque framings present a series of anorexic iterations of the starving and regurgitating self. In this world, the spiral model is used both to promote learning and to describe addiction, while the cycles can also be seen to be circular. The critically anorexic ego, now a narcissistic self, self reproduces, self senses and self learns.

The paper raises questions about concepts of power embedded in the authoring of the frameworks that promote reflective practices and reconstruct identities, about the related discourses that have been used by educationalists, philosophers and psychoanalists. Learning from life, it considers reclaiming spaces for subjective and différent positions through critical positioning, ownership, social networking and community communication. This paper raises political questions from a Feminist perspective about trust and about compliance that see the promotion of strategic thinking over thinking critically and discusses the use of mirrors, their cultural and personal refractions.

Item Type: Conference or Conference Paper (Paper)
Additional Information: [1] Paper presented at DPR 9: The Discourse, Power, Resistance conference, held 30 March – 1 April, 2010 at the University of Plymouth, UK.
Uncontrolled Keywords: reflection, trust, healthcare
Subjects: L Education > L Education (General)
Pre-2014 Departments: School of Education
School of Education > Department of Education & Community Studies
Related URLs:
Last Modified: 14 Oct 2016 09:14
URI: http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/5636

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