Redescribing reflective practice and evidence-based practice discourses

This paper provides an analysis on the discourses of reflective practice and evidence-based practice. It commences by examining the role of discourse in describing and defining our beliefs and attitudes. Consequently, it argues that each discourse is based on a certain epistemology, which in effect are language constructs that create realities and like all language constructs, the epistemology of each discourse is open to the possibility of being restructured. Sequentially, any discourse can (re)describe a different type of reality by providing a set of different words, values and beliefs. Eventually, by exposing the language play and the engineered binary of the reflective practice and the evidence-based practice discourses it is concluded that these discourses are not mutually exclusive as they have been portrayed by most of the literature, but complementary ones. Finally, reflective practice and evidence-based practice are re-described as supplementary discourses and practitioners can simultaneously utilize both through the process of critical reflexivity.