Using reflections in postgraduate accounting education

Reflection on learning (both on content and process), and on the knowledge resulting from that learning, provides many benefits. The chief of these, in the context of thinking about, and within, accounting as practice and academic discipline, is that reflection can help us to turn experience into knowledge. A common complaint and regret of practising accountants is that they have so little time to reflect on their organizational actions. The accent on the learning organization has highlighted the complex inter-relationship between knowledge, learning, thinking, reflection and action. And in the new organizational atmosphere which encourages learning, knowledge and informed action, it can seem that thinking and reflection are sometimes only nodded to in passing. Using the experience of practising managers who are also part-time management students, and focusing on their accounting and finance module, the paper adopts an approach which combines theoretical insights, philosophical aspects and empirical materials to consider the part played by reflection in the cognitive processes which encompass thinking in organizations. The paper speculates on the double meaning of 'reflection'- to think about and a mirroring- and considers how each of these meanings impacts upon what goes on in the two organizational settings concerned- the reflecting manager's workplace and place of study.