(Re)writing reflective practice with Deleuze, Guattari and feminist poststructuralism

Abstract

Previously, we have challenged pervasive sedimented assumptions about reflectivity in continuing professional development provision for practising teachers. The introduction of a Masters level module, featuring the ‘creative analytical processes’ of Richardson and the ‘nomadic’ writing practices of Richardson and St. Pierre was presented as a response to calls for a plurality of styles of reflectivity. Here, we contextualise nomadic writing and the rhizomatic or nomadic subjectivity it implies, with reference to Deleuze and Guattari and process philosophy more generally. Deleuze’s Bergsonian treatment of subjectivity, memory and thinking is outlined and related to Schön’s account of the experienced practitioner and feminist poststructuralist concern with embodied reflectivity. Aesthetic intuitive understanding is considered with reference to philosophical concepts of intuition. We distinguish intuitive understanding and knowing and argue that the former permits thinking differently about practice and can foster ethical sensibility. Nomadic writing is non-teleological, exploratory, and legitimises reflective writing from lived bodily realities rather than sanctioned narratives.

Keywords:

• professional development
• reflective practice
• reflective learning
• writing
• poststructuralism