Before professionals' theories or ideas about practice can be changed, they must be identified. In other words, professionals are not able to describe what they do to accomplish an activity. The values, assumptions, and strategies supporting theories and ideas about practice need to be examined. If this clarification does not occur, professionals may find themselves in the position of espousing one theory but using another in practice, that is, their actions are not consistent with their intent. In reflective practice, professionals can expose their actions to critical assessment to discover the values and assumptions underlying their practice.
Reflective practice has both advantages and disadvantages.
Engaging in reflective practice requires both knowledge of practice and awareness of professional and personal philosophy. In adult education, as in most other professions, there are many prescriptions for effective practice, and professionals are perceived as having specialized expertise that they apply to problems in well-defined practice situations. In reality, however, adult education programs take place in settings that are characterized by a great deal of ambiguity, complexity, variety, and conflicting values that make unique demands on the adult educator's skills and knowledge. Adult educators must be able to change ill-defined practice situations into those in which they are more certain about the most appropriate course of action to pursue. For example, the andragogical model and its four underlying assumptions has been widely adopted by adult educators with one result being the assumption that teaching adults should differ from teaching children and adolescents.