I notice that the question of whether a tutor can also be an equal participant learner, sharing their reflective journal, is now being discussed in the Journals Forum. Whether or not you decide to do this depends on your purpose for doing it. It's been suggested in the Journals forum that we need an audience for our reflective processes and by sharing our reflective writing with our students we are getting that audience. Although this is of course true (or is it? - can we assume that students are interested in a tutor's writing and would bother to read it?), it would not be the purpose - at least, it would not be the purpose for me.
For me there are a couple of reasons for sharing reflective writing with students. The obvious one is to model good practice (once again assuming that the tutor is able to model good practice) - but more importantly the act of sharing reflective writing is a result of a given educational philosophical stance and may be (but not necessarily so) this would also be evident to students.
So for me, I do not wish to be seen as the 'font of all learning' (even if I could be) and would rather be seen as an equal partner in the learning process. This is because I know how much I learn from the learners I work with and also I believe that it is not in a learner's best interests to become dependent on a tutor.
Having said this, I recently signed up for an online Workshop on communities of practice solely because it was being run by Etienne Wenger. It was the fact that he is regarded as a world authority on social learning theory that attracted me to the course. So there is a role for an expert in the teaching position, but I do not think that the expert always has to be the tutor. I think this is also Etienne Wenger's view, which was evident in his self-effacing humility.
I need to do a lot more thinking about this.
Source of image: http://school.discoveryeducation.com/clipart/images/teacher2.gif
No comments:
Post a Comment