8 | COMMENTARIES DOI: 10.1111/medu.14414 Emancipatory knowledge and epistemic reflexivity: The knowledge and practice for change? Stella L. Ng 1 | Paula Rowland 2 | Elizabeth Anne Kinsella 3,4 1 Centre for Faculty Development, St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada 2 Wilson Centre, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada 3 Health Sciences, University of Western Ontario, London, ON, Canada 4 Institute of Health Sciences Education, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada Correspondence: Stella L. Ng, Centre for Faculty Development, St. Michael's Hospital, 30 Bond St., London, ON M5B 1W8, Canada. Email: stella.ng@utoronto.ca This State of the Science issue invites us to ponder ‘solution-ism’, echoing scholars throughout history who have questioned the tech- nical rationalities that tend to accompany its logic. 1 Diverse think- ers have expressed concern for understanding the complexity of our social worlds 2-4 while also expressing a healthy caution against the potential unintended effects of even the most well-intended ‘solutions’. In this sense, the papers in this special issue help to add complexity to our collective thinking within the field of health pro- fessional education, providing nuance in how we might approach some of our most cherished intentions for positive change. The papers by Nerland and Hasu REF and Gordon and Cleland REF do so while sharing a particular focus, each drawing connections between change at the level of individual professionals and broader change at the level of entire professions, organisations or systems. Nerland and Hasu connect individual practitioners with systems of knowl- edge production through the concept of epistemic reflexivity. Gordon and Cleland draw from three different social theories to connect micro (individual) and macro (organisational) change. In this commentary, we seek to complement these two papers by adding another concept in this space between and around individual and systems change. The concept we add is the notion of emancipa- tory knowledge, based on theorisations from the critical and social sciences. We suggest that this additional conceptual layer shares Nerland and Hasu and Gordon and Cleland's healthy scepticism of an excessive reliance on technical rationalities. However, the the- ories associated with emancipatory knowledge tend to explicitly focus on ethical, cultural, social and political forces. To demonstrate the generative value of this additional framing, we turn first to criti- cal social science studies of harms that have accompanied interven- tions not attuned to these kinds of questions. We then provide a brief orientation to theories underpinning concepts of emancipatory knowledge. We conclude with an invitation for further dialogue about complementary conceptual frameworks that will help us bring our best collective thinking to our most pressing problems in health professions education. The theories associated with emancipatory knowledge tend to explicitly focus on ethical, cultural, social and political forces. To elaborate their argument, Nerland and Hasu draw upon their em- pirical study of guideline implementation. We elaborate on this useful example by noting several other studies of solutions across the health sciences that espouse to solve problems, but actually (re)produce harms. From sociology, Dr Ruha Benjamin has illustrated how biotechnological innovation embodies and enacts racism in health and social systems.5 Critical disability scholars like Dr Tanya Titchkosky have shown how overly straightforward attempts to apply inclusive principles in education (eg, implementing people-first language such as ‘person with a disability’) can instead further exclude and disable.6 Finally, in our own field of med- ical education, Dr Kinnon MacKinnon recently demonstrated how inter - national standards for gender-affirming care can actually pathologise and stigmatise trans people.7 These examples of critical social inquiry share an attunement towards questions of social and systemic forces and the assumptions embedded in everyday thought processes and power rela- tionships, as they explore how interventions actually play out in practice. 8 We have previously written about the need to acknowledge and account for knowledge generated in and through practice, as epis- temology of practice. 8 We continue to see an appreciation for prac- tice-based knowledge as an antidote to the challenges of solution-ism and add that—to avoid perpetuating problems for particular people— we also need to seek emancipatory knowledge. This concept derives from Habermas’ consideration of three types of knowledge serving particular interests (although it is noteworthy that, in medical educa- tion, Dr Arno Kumagai has extended Habermas’ work): instrumental knowledge for technical interests; practical knowledge for practical