Activity Three: Response to Findlay's (2008) article.

Activity Three: 

Response to Findlay's (2008) article.

"In order to cope, professionals have to be able to do more than follow set procedures. They draw on both practical experience and theory as they think on their feet and improvise. They act both intuitively and creatively." (Schon as cited in Finlay, 2008).


I definitely learn through practical and creative means. Reflecting on how I learn has led me to understand that reading pages and pages of black on white text, I find stressful and heavy. And although I enjoy reading I associate it more with 'enjoyment' (a relaxing pass time or destress activity), than professional learning. Staying focussed when reading professional texts is difficult, especially if I need to continually decode meaning in the vocabulary that is used. For me research would be watching, talking, experimenting, creating, sharing, evaluating and reflecting. Reading large volumes of text and bouncing between them to then discuss and evaluate is agitating and nerve-wracking. This insight has solidified itself during this course. It has directed me to looking at the practises I have in the classroom and what I am expecting of students. What differentiations do I cater for?

Findlay's article (2008) talks about Schon's (1983) two types of reflection; reflection in action and reflection on action. I am definitely an 'in-action' reflector and learner. I am an ideas person and I like those ideas to relate to what is happening at the time so that learning is meaningful and gratifying. I know my ideas come when I am 'on the job' 'on my feet' and often 'on the run'. Not when I am reading theoretical texts or sitting down afterwards writing out reflections which rarely happens because of the intense work load I already have. Having said that, actually, much discussion and reflective practise occurs when I am in my weekly planning meeting with my Syndicate. We are a very cohesive team and plan the coming week on a Friday afternoon. During these sessions how the multitude of lessons, tasks, activities, inspirations or learnings that filled the past week went, are discussed and picked apart and shared in a very informal but effective reflective process. This is the style in which I most learn to honestly look at what I have done and where I need to change; through reflective conversations and mutual collaboration. The change needed could be direction, style of teaching, content knowledge or personal beliefs, that with reminiscing, have been challenged. More often than not these thoughts and reflections are not written down, but rather considered verbally with my colleagues or internalised while considering the next steps to be taken in the classroom or school. The comments I do write onto plans are usually specific to happenings and student needs. As well as these meetings all staff are involved in a reflection session at the end of each term on the long term plans just completed, as a way of informing the coming terms plans.

While I don't regularly use a reflective model, I see the process I talked about above being reflected in Kolb’s (1984) Experiential Learning Model 

Image Source: http://www.regional.org.au/au/apen/2006/refereed/2/2839_brumbys.htm 

Experience has always been an important part of learning for me and immersing myself leads to greater understanding, and a greater ability to review and analyse it afterwards. From here I know I often step out and look at the wider perspective or bigger picture or relationships that are affected by the event. This in turn leads to new ideas, new perspectives and initiating changes.
This is a simple but effective model that resonates with me.

While I find Johns most recent presentation (the 15th) list of questions, daunting to go through and prefer to work from a model that includes symbols and images I do find his statement below resonates with how I feel I reflect on my own practise.  Johns (2006) says reflection is about being “mindful of self” – whether during or after experience. It is a “developmental process of paying attention to and learning through everyday experiences, with the goal of realizing a vision of practice as a lived reality.”  I believe being self aware and critically evaluating during a process or lesson, so that learning is organic and can shift and change on the spot if the analysis at the time means it needs to shift or change, is important. Practise then becomes a relevant entity, just as a treaty reflected on becomes a living document that a person can go back to and align themselves with.

So I disagree with Ekebergh (2006) who draws on phenomenological philosophy to argue that it is not possible to distance oneself from the lived situation to reflect in the moment. To achieve real self-reflection, she asserts, one needs to step out of the situation and reflect retrospectively (van Manen, 1990 as cited in Findlay 2008). What is real self-reflection? Is my reflecting on the spot, that leads to immediate or retrospective change, not real?

References.
Finlay, L. (2009) Reflecting on reflective practice. PBPL. Retrieved from http://www.open.ac.uk/opencetl/files/opencetl/file/ecms/web-content/Finlay-%282008%29-Reflecting-on-reflective-practice-PBPL-paper-52.pdf