Judging the Quality of Development

Boxer, Philip. “Judging the Quality of Development.” Reflection: Turning Experience into Learning. eds. David Boud, Rosemary Keogh, and David Walker. London: Kogan Page, 1985. 117-127.

Boxer is a scholar and teacher in the field of Business Management from England who has worked on helping managers develop the quality of judgment. He mentions an interesting evolution in his work. Originally, he was after helping managers become strategic in their choices within situations. He shifted, though, to define strategic in relation to the manager's self—meaning, as he explains, “judging the quality of development is something for the manager to do and not me” (117). I can't say I fully understand this “inversion” as he describes it, but part of it is empowering the manager to achieve a new framework or sense of self from which to make decisions and judgments.

Boxer describes “reflective analysis” as falling within a number of teaching paradigms. In particular, it is part of the conjectural paradigm.
--instructional paradigm: traditional classroom situations
--revelatory paradigm: presents a picture about which certain things are known but encourages the manager to make sense of the picture themselves
--emancipatory paradigm: provides the manager with a particular tool to be applied to a range of problems
--conjectural paradigm: differs from the other paradigms in that it seeks to leave the manager free both to choose how he makes sense of things and also what he makes sense of

He goes on to define what reflective analysis broadly as a “process for enabling personal revelation” ... and as a “technique through which the manager can examine the way in which he frames his experience” (119). The technique appears to have two main approaches. The first is “past reflection” which engages the manager in reviewing past situations similar to the present one. The second part of the technique is “option analysis” which involves reflecting on the present choices available to the manager. He sums up the technique: “[it] enables the manager to examine the ways in which he frames his own experience... [and] presents the manager with a new issue: on what basis is he to choose how to frame his experience?” (121). The article goes on to detail some of the difficulties managers have in engaging with this process, as well as some of his evolution in applying it instructionally.

Assessment
I don't think the author did the best job doing justice to the work he has done with managers. This article represents an example of how reflection is used in different disciplines to promote the “reflective practitioner.” However, his technique seems almost like psychoanalysis. The other interesting thing is that it contains two of the three moves that Yancey says reflection contains: looking back, looking at, looking forward. Boxer's technique misses the “looking at” part, but his “past reflection” and “option analysis” are definitely the Janus-like backward and forward nature of reflection. Interestingly, also, his reflective analysis doesn't have the element of tapping in to emotions in the process.