In writing this blog, I had hoped to explore the relationship between facilitator and participant and whether it's possible for a facilitator to be perceived as an equal participant in the learning process. I don't have much time on which to base my current thinking. I was 'absent ' for the middle two weeks of the course and we are still only in the middle of the last (fourth) week, so I'm not sure that my thinking is valid.
I have absolutely no idea how I am perceived - not only by the course participants, but also by the other tutors who I have also not met. Is it possible to ever really know this in a teaching situation? Is it important to know this? Well - yes - if I want to improve my practice.
The reflective writing exercise that I was engaged with last year and that participants are engaged with this year suggests that it's possible to improve our practice through this reflective writing process. By doing this we can explore alternative perceptions, question our own assumptions and identify possible different courses of action for the future. But all this assumes a willingness and ability to really confront ourselves. Is this really possible without the help of others? Don't we need dialogue with others to do this? And what's more, don't we need dialogue based on mutual trust and respect, which takes longer to establish than we have time for in this course.
There seems to me to be a real tension between the need for audience and dialogue in developing our reflective writing processes and the privacy needed in order to feel safe.
I realise now that whilst this blog might be a record of my thoughts about the course, it is certainly not a model of reflective writing and in fact includes little reflection - more it's just a process of highlighting ideas and questions as they arise - which is a normal way of working for me. I would not want to include reflective writing of the type that has been included in the Week 3 exercise for a number of reasons:
- Atkins and Murphy (1993) identify 3 key stages in the reflection process 1) inner discomfort and the experience of surprise 2) critical analysis of feelings and knowledge 3) emergence of a new perspective of the situation. In the last 4 weeks I have experienced these three stages in my life, but not in relation to anything happening on this course - so there has been no need for me to engage with deeply reflective writing in this blog
- I don't yet feel 'safe' enough in the course community to share my reflective thinking on a deep level. I think this would take a longer time than we have had. I have been so impressed by how open and honest people have been in their accounts. They have been braver than me.
- If I were to do any deeply reflective writing, I'm not sure that this is the place to do it.
So I'm not sure that this blog has served it's purpose. I don't feel that in any sense it has served to share my practice with other course participants - the actual discussion forums work better for that. There has been no dialogue here (no comments or response) so I have been writing for myself - which is fine, but wasn't the purpose. This blog feels too detached and separated from where everything is going on (do all journals feel like that?). The one time I posted an extract from it into the journals forum, I didn't get a response. So I am still no further in my understanding of whether or not a tutor can be perceived as an equal participant in the learning process, but I suspect not. Shame!
Since writing this I have started to blog publicly in the 'blogosphere' and I can now see that an audience makes a huge difference to writing, but also that the more open I am, the more feedback I get and the more confident I become in my own ability to communicate. However, it did take me quite a while to feel comfortable in my public blog, so I think my expectations that this could happen in a four week course were unrealistic. I have realised that for me there's a limit to how much I can write just for me without sharing my writing with others. I do have a few private blogs, but I don't write in them anywhere near as much as to the public blogs.
Source of image: http://www.stuffintheair.com/images/fog.jpg
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