I am not sure that I have always been 'aware' of reflective practice within my profession. I have always believed that the greatest tool to learn by within my work is experience. Working for different schools and with different children over the past 6 years has taught me so much - all through experience. However i feel we are constantly having new experiences whether it be at work or something in our personal lives - like buying a house or getting married. A mix of experiences, learning all the time. This can be linked to Deweys ideas of different 'levels' of experience and his theory that having a 'full' experience lead to eventually becoming a better part of society. I can certainly relate this to my practice - the more experience i have the more confident i am and hopefully the better i become at my job and progress. Equally one must experience life - this 'full' experience Dewey talks of. He saw education as an experience and that the quality of the education effected the persons engagement with the experience they are having. During a dance class you engage in new and different ways to that of learning within a school. You are moving around, physically interacting with others, learning new skills in a very different environment to that of a classroom. You must fully engage to get the most out of the experience and i feel this can therefore improve your engagement with your other experiences as Dewey believes: 'interaction with the arts led to a unique and invaluable experience' (reader 2)
His view that reflective thought is a way for us to be aware that we are having an experience is something that i found happened during my ROL module. It made me really think about what i had learnt and reflect upon my experiences and how they led to others. It;s something i had not realized i had been doing until i thought about it and wrote it all down. An unconscious form of reflecting. Therefore reflective practice is something i have been doing without being aware of!
Kolbs reflective cycle
This reflective cycle can definitely be useful to my reflective practice. Something happens at work (concrete experience) and then i come home and think about it, discuss it with my colleagues if it's been a significant experience and reflect upon it. Now, learning about reflective practice i have written about the experience. This has allowed me a new and different way to move on to the next stage of Kolbs cycle; concluding and learning from the experience, by reading back on what i have written and writing the experience in different ways. His cycle is a way of breaking things down and working through them to gain the most you can out of your experience, For the children i teach they too can follow this cycle. They watch me demonstrate a movement, prepare to see if they can execute the movement, keep trying if they can't or continue to perfect and develop the movement.
Kolbs theory and the 4 distinct learning styles created from this by Mumford and Honey allows us to understand an individuals learning style (that of a child i teach, or a collegue) as well as a form of learning that applies to all of us. His view that learning about how others work is definitely key to myself; teaching over 100 children and adults a week the same technique most certainly does not apply to all. different methods and techniques work for some and not for others therefore i must understand the individual and how they will learn and how can i make that happen.
At what point do i feel i enter Kolbs learning cycle?
In my practice i had always assumed that i learnt best through active experimentation. When choreographing, i have a listen to the music and begin visualizing and trying out ideas to see what might work. When teaching children i try various different methods and techniques to see what is most effective. I had therefore assumed that i was best at learning through reflection in action and entering the cycle at active experimentation. However when considering Kolbs learning cycle when starting up my blog i found i entered it at a different point. I had no idea how to start up a blog; they were a part of social media i had never explored before and i literally had no clue where to start - so i turned to social media that i was familiar with! A YouTube video. I watched a couple of YouTube videos initially therefore entering the cycle at abstract conceptualization. I then used my concrete experience; my previous knowledge of building facebook pages and twitter accounts to begin, before moving on to trial and error. Once i had my blog up and running i visited others to compare and learn what else you could do with blogs in terms of layout and design - reflective observation.
Other theories
As previously said i have been using reflective practice without even realizing it! The many different theories that I have read about and considered during this task have allowed me to explore the way that i learn and understand how i reflect upon my work, as well as developing new ways to reflect.
I found Schons idea of reflection in action' and 'reflection on action' interesting and agreed fully with these ideas, as i saw myself as always learning from 'reflection in action' when initially reading it. However as i previously cited, when thinking about Kolbs learning cycle and how learn in things other than my practice this is not always this case. And in fact even within my practice how i have dealt with situations in the past, for example a troubled child, i have looked back on it and realized there may have been a better way to deal with the situation, therefore looking back and reflecting. Having understood this i now find that i am continually doing this, looking back on my experience and learning from it. partially now i am keeping my reflective journal i am looking back on my day and finding that as i am writing things done my initial point is developed further, leading me to other thoughts and ideas. I have never seen myself as an 'academic' someone who learns by conceptualizing and looking back, however i am doing this every day reflecting on my experience and understanding what i have learnt. 'Experience as the source of learning and development'
Another theory that i feel i can relate to is the VARK learning style
This theory was used to try and assign students to a particular style, and therefore mean teachers were able to more effectively teach their students in a way they would understand. I feel all these styles can be used and implicated to help us learn although we can assign ourselves to one of these learning styles by taking the VARK questionnaire. After considering all these theories i decided to take the questionnaire to see what my learning style came out as:
- Visual: 4
- Aural: 5
- Read/Write: 2
- Kinesthetic: 8
This certainly supports my earlier theory that i prefer a hands on approach to learning, but that i also learn greatly from listening and talking about my experiences. I have also found reading/writing difficult and prefer to write initially in note form when learning and then discussing it in full. I often find when reading information i can't take everything in, and have to read it several times.
'A core concept is that individuals differ in ow they learn'
Conclusion
My feeling from experience is that individuals learn in different ways. This is supported by most researchers and i would agree having taught so many different children and trying to meany different methods and techniques. I have found this task fascinating as whilst what i had always considered my learning style is not always necessarily the best way to learn and that my style varies. I would agree that the best way to learn is through a combination of styles and that by continuing to consider these theories when learning i will be able to develop a further and better understanding of my practice.
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