Feeding back on reflective writing

We had accounts from nearly everyone on the course last week, which was wonderful. It's quite a time consuming task, in selection, reflection and writing. The idea was that this would be a follow on task to the identification of shifts through four levels of writing that we did in Week 2. Through writing our own tasks we would learn what it means to make the shifts and how difficult this might be.

I know from when I wrote my own accounts, when I was on the course, that it's very difficult to stand back and see whether one account is more reflective than another and to know whether you can write reflectively or not. I remember on that course that I was disappointed that I did not get more feedback. But now I understand why and I have seen that some participants on this course have been reluctant to provide feedback on each other's accounts. How do you provide feedback on something so personal? From being a tutor on this course, I know that it's no easier as a tutor than it is as a course participant.

Jenny Moon has pointed out in one of the forums today, that the accounts seem to work better if they are based on something that is very significant and personal for the author - a critical incident - but this requires quite a lot of self exposure.

So as tutors, how are we to assess our students' working, when they will be writing about highly personal critical incidents to which there may be a lot of attached and possibly highly charged emotion. Perhaps we'll be able to get to grips with this week.

Source of image: http://i338.photobucket.com/albums/n405/SeemzTv/feedback.jpg

Reflective writing to order

This week the course task is to write two accounts (two pieces of reflective writing) which show progression in the depth of reflection from the first account to the second account, ideally demonstrating some of the shifts identified in the Week 2 task and summarised by Jenny Moon as being

• from description to reflective account
• from no questions to questions to responding to questions
• emotional influence is recognised, and then handled increasingly effectively
• there is a 'standing back from the event'
• self questioning, challenge to own ideas
• recognition of relevance of prior experience
• the taking into account of others' views
• metacognition - review of own reflective proceses

The accounts have all been very different and each in their own way, very moving. Peter called them 'beautiful'. I think what is 'beautiful' is that the course participants have been willing to share their reflections in this way.

What I have been wondering today is whether it is reasonable to ask people to 'reflect to order' this way - here is the task, get on with it, you have one week in which to do it. When I was asked to do this task when I did the course, there wasn't a burning issue that I wanted to reflect on and share. I had to hunt around and find something. Most things I rejected as being far too personal to share with a group I hardly knew and ultimately I selected to write the accounts from an alternative perspective to protect myself even further.

So if as tutors we have these difficulties, what can we expect of our students?

Source of image: http://normblog.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/tom-ford.jpg

Reflective writing

The accounts are starting to come in and it is such a privilege to be able to witness this. I always get a thrill out of reading the accounts and seeing how people take on board what has been learned in Weeks 1 and 2 of the course and maybe even before.

I think what I haven't quite sorted out in my own head, is the relationship between experience, reflective writing and reflective learning. When we read the two accounts is the second account more reflective because the person can now reflect on their learning more effectively, or is it because the person knows more about how to write reflectively, or is it because there is a time lapse between the first and second account and therefore the person has learned from experience? Or is it all three? And more?

I think the time lapse is important for developing reflective writing and the reflective process. The need to revisit reflective writing and accounts has already been discussed on the course and the evidence to support this is already being seen in the accounts that are being written this week. But how long should the time lapse be and how much relevant experience is needed in the intervening time to make a difference to a subsequent account or learning?

I can't help thinking that there's a lot more to supporting students in their development as reflective learners than helping them to write more reflectively.


Source of image: http://www.alaska-in-pictures.com/data/media/22/mt-rainier-sunset-reflections_8723.jpg

Barriers to reflection

There has not been as much wider discussion this week. Most people have had enough to do contributing to the group work. But there has been some interesting discussion in the Journals forum.

On reading this through this morning, it seems to me that much of this discussion has focussed on 'barriers' to reflection. So it has been suggested that people may not be able to reflect if the topic for reflection makes them feel too uncomfortable or will release emotions that are too strong to handle. Or they may not put time into reflection because it appears too self-indulgent.

There is also the issue of assessment and whether this makes students into 'strategic learners', i.e. they jump through the required hoops to pass the course and if reflection is one of those hoops, they will do as much as is required. But is this really what we mean by reflection and what we want from our students?

And then there is the whole question of 'audience'. Is this an enabler or disabler? It has also been suggested in the Journals forum that establishing communities of reflective practitioners who share their reflections might assist the reflective process, but how much would people be willing to share?

It has occurred to me, whilst writing this post, that thinking about enablers and disablers for the reflective process could be useful - but will these enablers and disablers be any different to those for the learning process as a whole?

Source of image: http://www.accelerated-personal-development.com/image-files/barriers-to-personal-growth.jpg

All quiet

It's very quiet on the course this week. We have divided into groups , so effectively the course is split in two. Sometimes participants find this change of pace disturbing. Silence and quiet online can be experienced like a loud 'clang'! On another course I have worked on, participants in their feedback have said that they miss the whole group when they move into small groups. I wonder what these participants are thinking. This course is definitely a lot slower and quieter than all the other courses I work on, but perhaps this suits the subject and perhaps participants are relieved to have a bit more space and time this week.

I have also been wondering how they are finding the collaborative groupwork experience. I'm conscious of this because of the research team that I am currently working with online. We have never met and are working together on a wiki. We have a personal reflections folder on our wiki, where we reflect on our research process. One of our research team has said that this meta-meta cognition is too much for him, but I find the process of observing our workings as a research team, just as fascinating as the research itself. In this research reflections folder, we have just (at the instigation of one of our team) scored ourselves against a set of team working questions. This was useful as it made me think once again about the difficult balance between forming a well-knit team who support each other, and challenging each other when we don't agree. Just how much compromise is healthy? And just how much should we say what we think?

I recently did a wonderful course with Stephen Downes and George Siemens - Connectivism and Connective Knowledge - all about how we make connections online and access and construct knowledge through these connections (oversimplified explanation!)

Stephen distinguishes between groups and networks as follows

1. groups emphasize sameness, networks emphasize diversity
2. groups emphasize order and control, networks emphasize autonomy
3. groups emphasize borders and membership, networks emphasize openness
4. groups emphasize additive, cumulative knowledge, networks emphasize emergent knowledge

There was also discussion on the course about how groups encourage us to cocoon ourselves in echo chambers, so that there is not too much challenge to our thinking. I can relate to this, as time and again I myself falling into the trap of not saying what I think for fear of offending.

It's a very delicate balance getting this right - so that the team/group is able to challenge each other and make progress, whilst at the same time maintaining relationships close enough to produce an outcome.

Source of image: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3342/3316555010_c91c644cb2.jpg

Big R and little r

The definitions forum has been really interesting. Lots of very thoughtful posts. The discussion about whether there are two types of reflection - big R for formal academic activity which is taught and assessed ( e.g. keeping learning logs etc.) and small r for something more integral to learning and practice has been thought provoking.

Jenny Moon suggests that there are as many types of reflection as you care to define - but whilst we may agree this, it's important for me to be clear about my own definition. For the last couple of years I have had the following definition:

'My own understanding (I hesitate to use the word ‘definition’) of reflection/reflective learning is that it is the process of thinking about my own thinking, actions or learning, with a view to gaining a deeper understanding of them and improving them, so that I can see the evidence in changed behaviour. This thinking will also involve examining my emotional response and how my feelings have influenced my thinking, actions and learning. To make this reflection significant, I need to mark it in some way, by talking about it or better still recording it in written form. Finally, I need to revisit the marked events at some later stage and note whether my learning has improved/moved on.'

I added the bit in bold, last year, when a course participant challenged me to consider how the role of emotion could be included in my definition.

What concerns me, a little, is that my definition has not changed in the last couple of years, which suggests that I haven't made any progress in my thinking. Interestingly I can note slight changes of emphasis and points of interest in both Peter and Jenny Moon's posts on this course, which is an indication of how their thinking has moved over the past year. But I'm not sure that my thinking has changed that much.

The big R, little r notion interested me because I know that I'm quite good on the big R. I do quite a bit of course evaluation and write reports and am able to identify strengths and weaknesses and make suggestions for change. This requires a lot of thinking behind the scenes (reflection on the courses), but I see this as big R. Whilst I learn from this, it is external to me.

Little r, I see as being internal to me and much harder to deal with. This is reflecting on my own learning, behaviour and practice and trying to change this. Whilst I can understand this and I think my definition reflects this understanding, I don't find it so easy to change 'me'.

Jenny Moon has written today:

'Editing is a kind of secondary reflection. I consider that the raw reflection that is first written in jouranls and reflective pieces is of relatively little value. The value is created when the person re-reads and reflects again on the initial reflections.'

I have read this in her books and she has said it on both the previous courses and it makes absolute sense to me. I have also tried to make a habit of revisiting and editing initial writing. However, there still seems to be a big shift to make from that secondary editing process to changed behaviour.

I sometimes feel that I am making exactly the same mistakes that I was making in my childhood :-)

Images and metaphors

The use of images as a catalyst for reflective learning has come up again. Why does this wonderful technique so often get forgotten?

I want to copy my forum post here before I forget about this topic - and add a bit to it.

'I too like using pictures. What is it they say? A single picture can speak a thousand words.

Last year (or maybe it was the year before - time passes so quickly!)

I went to a digital storytelling workshop. Jenny Moon had an input there too. Basically we were looking at using images and the affordances of technology to tell stories that would enable us to reflect on an event. This is a link to one that I particularly liked (Scissors) http://www.photobus.co.uk/index.php?id=2&movie=scissors.flv

Quite a few people at the workshop were asking their students to do this, particularly if they were on photography type courses, but it wasn't restricted to particular disciplines.'

Looking back I really enjoyed the workshop and everyone there was very enthusiastic, but I thought it was a very time consuming method for students. If I wanted my students to reflect using technology, I'd probably ask them to blog - but even having said that - I think students should be allowed to choose their own formats for reflection. This is one of the problems with lesson evaluations for trainee teachers. They very often have to be completed on a given proforma - to make life easy for the assessors. I remember one brilliant and creative trainee teacher not completing them and being in danger of not passing his final placement because of this. He said the form did not enable him to engage with the reflective process in a way that was beneficial to him. We dsigned a new form together to meet his needs and then he was fine! Students not only jump through hoops of their own volition, but sometimes we also make them jump through hoops.

The forum discussion also reminded me that we talked quite a bit about metaphors for reflection on the last course and that at the end of the course I pulled together all the metaphors they had suggested into one pictorial representation - the one above. I'd forgotten all about this!

The images come from these sites:

http://staff.howard.k12.md.us/~gtralka/images/macdonald_xspot_1_aux_img2.jpg
http://www.tonyrogers.com/weapons/images/high_speed_photos/webready/22_bullet_a.jpg
http://www.changezone.co.uk/Hero.jpg
frielp: http://www.flickr.com/photos/frielp/53033086/
gbenard: http://www.flickr.com/photos/gbentenza/1406552423/
cayusa:http://www.flickr.com/photos/cayusa/525825907/http://www.patrickjohnmills.com/snail34.jpg

Questions

There is already lots of interesting discussion on the course which has raised for me three separate questions to ponder on.

1. To what extent should reflective writing be confessional, if at all?

I suppose this very much depends on the purpose of it. In some circumstances it can be quite cathartic to 'pour it all out', but should this then be shared with others? We used to ask trainee teachers to 'reflect' on their lesson teaching and write up their evaluations and reflective journals, and then hand them in for assessment. I'm sure this practice still exists. But if I was hoping to qualify as a teacher, no way would I reveal all my failings and disastrous lessons to the very person who was going to assess me. I would definitely censor it. Ultimately I would be getting my qualification for my ability teach, not for my ability to write reflectively.

2. To what extent should we expect all students to be reflective practitioners?

In my experience every trainee teacher is introduced to one of the learning models which includes reflection - usually an adaptation of Kolb's learning cycle. But although it is presented as part of a cycle in the models, it is very often tagged on to the end of something in practice. This means that it may be the very last thing that students tick off on their 'To do' list, especially for those who are naturally more 'activists' than 'reflectors', if we are to believe Honey and Mumford's learning styles. By asking all students to reflect are we necessarily doing the best thing? Would there be some circumstances in which it wouldn't be in the student's best interests to be asked to 'reflect' and keep a learning journal? Just a thought.

3.Why are some students good at reflecting, reflective learning and reflective practice and others not? How much of it is habit and consistency of practice?

Does part of the answer to these questions lie in the pace of living? Is reflection necessarily a slow process that needs time and space? Do our students have this time and space, with their overloaded curricula?

These are all interesting questions which I hope we will explore more as we work through the course.

Source of image: http://farm1.static.flickr.com/45/272497119_44eef3aba5.jpg

Blogging for learning

I have just come across this blog - http://blog.mathemagenic.com/ - which is a wonderful 'thinking aloud' blog of a PhD student who has just about completed her dissertation on blogging.

This seems to me to be a wonderful example of how to use technology to share your thought processes, learn from others and make sense of a multitude (even jumble) of ideas. But it does bring up, once again, the question of audience. Does a reflective writer need an audience? How will the audience affect the writing?

Jenny Moon has an interesting section in her Learning Journals book, where she quotes what various writers have said about the relationship between reflective writing and an audience (p.99).

Holly (1991) has written that she can speak more clearly when writing for others. (Holly, M., 1991, Keeping a Personal-Professional Journal, Geelong, Victoria, Australia: Deakin University Press)

Is this why blogging is so popular? The very act of blogging and making a connection with others will help to clarify thinking? George Siemens has said that all learning starts with a connection, either conceptual, social or neuronal and that we need to externalise to make sense.

But Elbow and Clarke (1987 : 19) have written:

'An audience is a field of force. The closer we come, the more we think about these readers - the stronger the pull they exert over the contents of our minds.'

(Elbow, P. & Clarke, J., 1987, Desert island discourse: the benefits of ignoring audience. in T. Fulwiler (ed.) The Journal Book, Portsmouth, NH:Heinemann

Does this suggest that by making our reflections more open and writing for an audience, we risk losing our ability to be true to our individual thinking?

Jenny Moon suggests that the audience can be the self - and that then we would have to decide which self - the one now or the one in the future?

I have tried both private and public blogging and I find private blogging harder to sustain. For me private blogging is only useful for thoughts that I would not share with others, but somehow feel the need to 'mark' /record. My private blogs are more like diaries - a record of events and feelings. I find I need others for sense-making and learning, but that I also like to do this very much at my own pace. This is where public blogging can be helpful.

Source of image: http://rarelizzie.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/fp-jumble.jpg

Too many balls in the air?

The course has got off to a really good start with half the participants having logged in on the first day.

One participant is concerned that she might have too much going on to be able to give the course the time it needs. I can sympathise. Being self-employed I have quite a bit of flexibility as to how I organise my time, but I do seem to have quite a few plates spinning at the moment, or balls in the air. It's not the amount of work that is the problem so much as the number of different projects that makes life difficult - particularly if they involve research projects (I am involved in two at the moment). I've never been good at quickly switching from one thing to another, so I prefer it if I have a limited number of projects to focus on at any one time. This allows me to dig a bit deeper and reflect :-)

Blogging is useful because it forces you to stop and think/reflect. Since this isn't my only blog, I hope I'm going to be able to keep up with it.

Source of Image:http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2008/06/howto-juggle/

Back again

Just beginning to get into gear again for the next run of the Reflective Learning Course for Oxford Brookes. This is a favourite course for me.

We have 12 participants this time and I notice we have another Jenny, so that's going to be three Jennys which might end up very confusing. The first time I did this course, Jenny Moon agreed to be Jenianne (Anne is her middle name), to lesson confusion. I think I'd better become Jennymac this time.

So what has been significant for my learning since the last run of this course? I remember Jenny Moon telling us how important it is to keep revisiting your journal/blog to check whether your learning/understanding has changed. I have just done that. I can see now that being away in the middle of the last course wasn't very helpful. I think my earlier posts on that course were better than my later ones. I also also see how heavily influenced I was by the research paper I was writing at the time, which just goes to show how context dependent reflection is - no surprises there, but it's worth remembering when you look back through prior posts and think 'Why on earth did I write that?'

Since tutoring on the last course, a significant influence on my learning has been Stephen Downes' and George Siemens' 12 week online course on Connectivism and Connective Knowledge. This is what launched me into the blogosphere, which in turn has helped me to keep reflecting and writing, which in turn is helpful for other aspects of my work, such as research.

I have recently been discussing with fellow bloggers, whether we only blog for an audience. Many of us have agreed that although we welcome comments on our blogs, that is not our main purpose for blogging. A blogging colleague Mike Bogle explained it wonderfully well:

I blog because it helps me explore, self-assess, reflect and document my current intellectual state. This includes concepts I’m grappling with, ideas that I’m exploring, research I’m conducting, or support I’m attempting to lend to others. As wierd as it sounds, when time passes and I’m not able to do this I start to grow out of touch with my own intellectual state. Ideas start to fade, continuity becomes disrupted, concepts to explore rise and then disappear unresolved. The end result is I feel less on the ball, more reactionary, and more cognitively disquiet. Effectively I blog because it helps me think, work, and remember.

So here I am blogging again, but this time with no expectation that anyone will be reading, listening or responding. It will just help me to keep focussed and find a space for the course when there's so much else going on in my life at the moment.

Source of image: http://www.chromasia.com/images/there_and_back_again_b.jpg