Further thoughts.
I found the reflective journal illuminating after a period of confusion. My learning curve is profoundly steep. I was writing down anything and everything and at times was going off track and had to pull myself back in line. I have discussed reflection with some of the teaching staff at the school to gain insight as to how they would write plus reading fellow learners blogs from previous year and examples of reflective writing from the web. I realised that I have been stuck in a 'culturally conditioned' climate and I require re-calibration. I am a practical person and find theory difficult to absorb but have found analogies very helpful. I require more research and reading of theories before I can discover new theories of my own. I never thought of critically analysing myself or my work. I am experiencing an 'Evolutionary Awakening' in more ways than one because I closed the door to my dance teaching profession years ago.
I found that Gibbs model of Reflective Cycle a useful and preferred guide. It's a structured template and gives clear cues.
The Reflective Cycle
The Reflective Cycle
The Reflective Cycle
Moon mentions reflection as a ‘melting pot’ of ideas, feelings, information, etc., this is exactly as I see it. Easy to put in and off load, but challenging to analyse, evaluate and conclude. Moon also mentions ‘cognative housekeeping’. I understand this as I attended an NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programme) introductory course on becoming a practitioner. NLP is about re-programming your current cognitive (brain) behaviour. This is similar to muscle programming for dance or physical moves. This tool enables you to take new steps to better any bad habit/pattern or behaviour. A useful tool for teaching Dance as a Therapy.
I too think these adult learning theories very interesting - re-calibration - it is full of risks as well which is why it is good to do within a supportive environment. These are devices to analyse what happens as you do it as well as after you do it - very powerful and hopefully focussing thought so that it will not take forever and a day for the practical and the busy. I saw Moon speak once, very good for reflective practice.
ReplyDeleteThank you for posting up "Gibbs model for reflection" Corinda. It makes reflective practice appear so obvious when infact I have been initially struggling for a while. I think we both had a breakthrough recently, thank you for helping me struggle through. I thought about your previous post, and I have to write introspectively in order to learn anything from my writing. Have you found this with your journal?
ReplyDeleteI realised that writing a journal for me was off loading everything I have in my head. There was so much going on that I didn't know where or how to start writting.I had a conversation with Paula Nottingham today and she mentioned my thoughts were in a 'spinning top' and the only way to sort these thougths out are to write them down. She assured me that the'spinning top' will calm down as we start to note certain patterns in our thoughts. You may like or dislike a feeling about having to do something new, take note of this as it's something you've learnt. But definatley keep writing and take a look at some of the other learners on different modules. Don't be afraid to speak to our advisers, it's what they are there for. They are giving good advice. My 'spinning top' seems to have started to slow down...
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