6 8 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 2 2 Book Review Hunt, Cheryl. 2021. Critical Reflection, Spirituality and Professional Practice. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan. This book is rich in the wisdom of a career long commitment to the development the fields of spirituality and critical reflection in professional practice. Seeing spirituality connected to reflective practice fills a significant gap in the literature and this book makes a valuable contribution to this interdisciplinary field. Dr. Cheryl Hunt offers an innovative and creative understanding of the role of critical reflection in developing self-awareness with the intention of enhancing professional practice, particularly in her specialist field of education. This book is an excellent resource for academics in this field, practice teachers as well as practitioners themselves who want to continue as lifelong learners and continue to hone their critical reflection skills and their understanding of the significance of spirituality in practice. The book consists of four parts. The first introduces the quest of the book. The second part focuses on the concept of reflective practice. The third part delves into the author’s own approaches to reflective practice and understandings of spirituality. The final part explores how practitioners can reflect most meaningfully on their lived experience highlighting the importance of critical reflective practice in the current climate. Each chapter comes with detailed notes which expand the chapter and provide further references to explore. Part One consists of one chapter, Joining the Dots, which gives a brief history and context and situates the book within the realm of autoethnographic style writing. It highlights the importance of metaphor for the book and then introduces the remaining three parts of the book. It is a valuable example of reflexivity which addresses the who of the author, and in so doing offers spiritual insights which enrich the text and make it more than just another book about reflective practice. It emphasises the importance of our stories and the value of the spiritual nature of experience and reflection on it. Part Two includes three chapters which provides valuable insights on what reflective practice is, how one might facilitate it and the significant role metaphor plays, particularly in the formation of one’s worldview. There are a wide variety of sources of reflection including such things as Wordsworth’s poem about Daffodils and this highlights the rich vein of sources that one might use in developing critical reflection skills. A key element in this part of the book is the definition of reflection that is arrived at and then forms the basis of understanding (Hunt 2021, 45): An understanding of reflection as both: a ‘route’ towards one’s ‘internalised knowing’, and a ‘process’ of making meaning out of that knowing in order to understand one- self and one’s practice better. The worked examples in this part of the book are particularly useful in grounding the theoretical discussions. Pertinent for the study of spirituality is a focus on the importance of and individualized nature of engaging in meaning making which “may be idiosyncratic, needs to be respected – and provides the basis for dialogue, the development of shared understanding, and new perspectives” (Hunt 2021, 106) all worthy aspects of a spiritually oriented approach to reflective practice. Part Three again has three chapters and follows the pattern of exploring the concept, looking at it in practice and drawing out some of the implications of this way of working and thinking as well as significant autoethnographic content. What underpins this part of the book is the idea that “we each create, understand and tell the story of the world in which we live” (Hunt 2021, 151). I particularly appreciated the Gaian model of community education as an example of this conceptualised. It is an inventive and original application of spirituality to inform a different discipline and is indicative of the creativity inherent in the book. The final part, like the first part has only one chapter. It draws together the threads from other parts of the book and, aptly is called Seeking Integration. This chapter also looks at concepts re-
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