Critical reflection blends learning through experience with theoretical and technical learning to form new knowledge constructions and new behaviors or insights. Through the process of critical reflection, adults come to interpret and create new knowledge and actions from their experiences. It is generally agreed that critical reflection consists of a process that can be taught to adults. Brookfield identified the following processes as being central to learning how to be critically reflective: assumption analysis, contextual awareness, imaginative speculation, and reflective skepticism. Some educators consider critical reflection a learning strategy that can be taught with tools such as diaries, action learning groups, autobiographical stories, and sketching. However, other educators question the usefulness of classroom teaching in helping adults learn to engage in critical reflection. Wellington identified the following five orientations for differentiating levels of reflection: immediate, technical, deliberative, dialectic, and transpersonal. Although reflection should help learners make meaning out of content applied in a specific practice situation, critical reflection skills learned in the classroom may be different from the skills needed in the everyday world. However, critical reflection holds the promise of emancipatory learning that frees adults from the implicit assumptions constraining thought and action in the everyday world. (Contains 21 references.) (MN)