Monday, March 30, 2009

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.

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