Insightful....

Following our campus session on the 22.03.2012, whereby 'Professional Networks' were the topic of discussion, I was lucky enough to have a very insightful conversation with Alan Durrant himself. Throughout the corse of this program so far, I have found it an increasing challenge to fully identify my practice. I was beginning to find this an issue, as I felt my work was sounding vague and without focus, and therefore suffering as a result. Alan, however, reassured me that this was not the case. He opened up the obstacle of 'understanding'. However broad my profession my be, the key that knowledge and comprehension, regarding yourself, can provide, was fundamental in really being able to 'get my teeth' into each aspect that this course was able to offer. Withe regards to my 'Professional Networks' he showed me how I could separate each aspect of 'me' to really reap the benefits this technique has to offer. I now feel more confident in the direction that I am heading and what I am able to achieve, as long as I remain sure of myself. In light of this below I have also posted my spotlight link to provide a further insight into myself:

http://www.spotlight.com/interactive/cv/6575-7863-4570

3rd Campus Session - 22.03.2012

Today we discussed the final section of module 1, whereby we further opened up 'Professional Networks', their function and importance to us as professionals. Led by Alan Durrant, we explored a multitude of ways possible to illustrate our own 'Professional Networks'. We had to take into consideration an array of possibilities that influenced the nature of our network, for example;
1. The adaptability within networks - the ability in ourselves to change or alter a direction with use of our connections.
2. Support network - people at a closer frequency to us that we are able to share and retrieve more personal information.
3. Network diversity - similar to the adaptability that our networks possess, only that it provides a sense of security both professionally and personally within the people it encompasses.
4. Creative exposure - the idea that the more 'good' you give, the more you will get back in forms of contacts to enhance your profession.
To depict this means in greater detail, we split off into smaller groups to allow our ideas to further develop before actually putting pen to paper to allow us to present our different view points on this one concept. Within my group we each came from a dance background, and though our means of networks had grown from different points, we decided to use this as a base in which we could work from. Our network included the relation we had with our peers, agency staff, company staff and freelance work as most important, and then from there we discovered the contacts were endlessly intertwining.
We presented how we felt best to interpret our own 'Professional Network' to the entirety of the group. Here we were able to learn and further explore different and creative presentation techniques for this particular model. It definately determined to me the importance of understanding the concept of our own 'Professional Networks', and how it is yet another tool we can call upon to enhance us as professionals.

Reflective Theory Task

I touched on this task briefly in my previous post Reflective Writing Task , however as I delved further I discovered the great detail and complexity it really entails. I still now feel like I have only just scraped the surface of this novel theory I have only just begun to discover. As I am realising, it is a never ending process and journey....

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BpXy2ASZEWwXYW3xAYg3AxAAsAPV0P5klOLj7IMZVkA/edit

Inquiry...

When I begin to think about this title I don't just think of it as a task, but I have found it motivation to really question my psyche. What do I need to inquire about? What am I unsure of? How can this further me? At this point I realised we are constantly inquiring, life itself is a query, a huge question mark in itself. So what was came next was to apply this natural technique to my practice and here are the results:

What is my practice?
The largest question of them all, something still anonymous to me. Earlier in my blog I posted Thoughts, Feelings and Reflection.... Without even realising I had already started reflecting, re-reading this really helped my with this inquiry. My career and passion began as a ballet dancer. The training, the discipline all so attractive to me, but as we all know we grow up and reality really sets in. I am now a graduate of a professional musical theatre college, with the aim of working in what we call 'the profession'. After careful consideration I am truly beginning to believe that my practice (for this moment in time at the least) is as a performer. I am not yet ready to hang up my dancing shoes, though I am still curious and enticed by what the dramatic world has to offer. I begun, unknowingly, on this new and exciting journey of really, becoming established. The journey whereby I find my feet and secure myself as a professional, not just a graduate. My training has set me in such good sted for the ever changing world we operate in. Upon reflection I am thankful that I have been taught to be able to 'turn my hand' to each option I am faced with. Despite that, this inquiry will never be answered nor set in stone, it's something we will constantly ponder, almost an insecurity, a form of acceptance that I am enjoying discovering.

How is this course confirming my practice/furthering my career?
I have always favored myself as a fairly academic student, so the writing and learning side I am finding all very thrilling. The part that is stumping me the most is this 'reflective' nature. To really think, understand and reflect on yourself as a performer, a professional and a person is a skill in itself. The theories and studies behind all that we are learning are so beneficial to the technique that this skill can be acquired. It provides an element of confidence and a boost in the right direction. I am also finding the laid back nature in which we can overlook and research how others attending the same course as us are portraying their findings of great interest. The fact that you can really see the improvement from one blog to another gives confidence and satisfaction in the fact that yours is moving in the same direction. So yet again this is an ongoing inquiry, but I really am enjoying that fact that nothing seems to be a closed case.

When do we know we are ready to move on?
I did not just relate this to the tasks within each module, but to the tasks we face in our everyday life. I find myself fairly dependent on the 'say so' of others that you can become 'stuck in a rut', confined by what is going on around you. This is one question I really am beginning to understand and answer; I'm finding it purely based on confidence, with the ability to to defeat fear. Many of us are so afraid to 'fail' as it were, we look to others to almost share the blame of mistakes made. We must be secure in ourselves to move at our own pace, in our own time, in our own space. Sharing knowledge is a fantastic tool, but the real skill comes within us as we process, reconfigure and reproduce it to benefit ourselves. I'm not yet ready to put all this into practice, but truly reflecting on this concept I have found to be a great start.

As you can imagine, with our never ending and ever expanding inquiring minds, every day holds a different question with a different answer. As I follow this course further I am sure I will become more confident and more willing to share these with you. For now it would be great to hear your inquiries, and answers to mine.

KONY 2012 - apt in the society of today...

Scrolling down both Facebook and Twitter, two of the most powerful social media websites we see today, I found this video clogging up my feed. This compelling piece is completely relevant in what we are discovering ourselves throughout the duration of this course, and I found it very apt in the majority of our research and our posts so far. It is well worth a watch, and could inspire you in ways you didn't deem possible....

Reflective Writing Task

Before I even began tackling  Reader 2 - The Reflective Practitioner, I isolated the word reflection in a bid to establish what this really meant to me. I took its definition into a physical sense:

'The change in direction of a wave, such as a light or sound wave, away from a boundary the wave encounters. Reflected waves remain in their original medium rather than entering the medium they encounter.  According to the law of reflection, the angle of reflection of a reflected wave is equal to its angle of incidence.'

The American Heritage® Science Dictionary Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

Though a very wordy explanation, I then explored the imagery it created and stumbled across an array of visual definitions, and have decided shared these:

I feel that the contrast and comparison in the way reflection is shown between the images, imitates how we use it cognizably and as feedback in our own personal lives. In many ways we can become so wrapped up in the 'critical' part that we forget the real beauty 'reflection' can entail.

Feeling I had a more in depth grasp on how I felt about reflection in use as a reflective practitioner, I began to explore the theories behind it as part of Reader 2 - The Reflective Practitioner. The idea that reflection begins as an experience is one which never occurred to me, even more so in the form of education. John Dewey believed that this played a key role in developmental reflection, stating:

'Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. Education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living.'

I further went on to discover Donald Schon's theory, who in essence was a development on John Dewey. His book, The Reflective Practitioner (published in 1983) challenged practitioners to reconsider the role of technical knowledge versus "artistry" in developing professional excellence. I researched this title and found these short articles, analyzing and delving into this matter further:

'Schön's book remains interesting today as a pioneering attempt to explore the boundary of 'hard' and 'soft' thinking, the role of observation and reflection in professional practice, and the limits of academic thinking (based on Aristotle's primacy of the intellect over other forms of knowing). His examples are simply and clearly described, and his arguments based on them are stimulating and informative. That he didn't come up with a theory of everything isn't something we should hold against him. This is a book that professionals in all disciplines should find worthwhile. It has already undoubtedly triggered many useful lines of thought in both research and practice.'

(c) Ian Alexander, 2001, 2009

'A practitioners reflection can serve as s corrective to over-learning. Through reflection, he can surface and criticize the tacit understandings that have grown up around the repetitive experiences of a specialized practice, and can make new sense of the situations of uncertainty or uniqueness which he may allow himself to practice.'

'When a practitioner reflects in and on his practice, the possible objects of his reflection are as varied as the kinds of phenomena before him and the systems of knowing-in-practice which he brings to them. He may reflect on the tacit norms and appreciations which underlies a judgement, or on the strategies and theories implicit a pattern of behaviour. He may reflect on the feeling for a situation which has led him to adopt a particular course of action, on the way in which he has framed the problem he is trying to solve, or on the role he has constructed for himself within a larger institutional context.'

Af: Birgitte Michelsen

As I read on I learnt, moreover, the theory of Jennifer Moon, where by she articulated 'journal writing' as a key tool in recording our reflections. While researching her I also came across Gibbs (1998) model which I felt thoroughly simplified the action of 'critical reflection':

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Steph_Gib_Model.jpg

Once familiarizing myself with the format in which I now believe possible to 'critically reflect', below I have posted an extract from my journal applying these techniques:

Wednesday 22nd February 2012

Today I begin on a new journey within my career. I have realised that in order to be a successful performer you need to be able to turn your hand to everything and anything to ensure a constant flow of work. I am teaching a free jazz class to a group of 16 and 17 year old girls, of which I am finding the prospect very daunting. I have prepared a playlist, and have a rough idea of all the exercises and order of which I wish my class to run, but also completely remember how 'unorganized' it can become dependent on who walks into your class.

Upon reflection of my teaching I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. Though I did not complete everything I had scheduled for the class, I was able to improvise and incorporate other exercises I felt would be of more benefit for the girls at the time, for example; they were unable to turn effectively to execute a convincing pirouette. This being the case I identified the problems being:

* The spot

* The arm positioning

* The impotence and effort into the turn 

And slowed up the tempo of the music until each dancer had grasped the technique. The feeling watching each student improve was so enthralling and uplifting. I feel I completely surprise myself in how much control I gained over the class, and how confident I was in correction. Though to improve upon for next time, as I am adapting more so to the style and personality of the girls in my class, I will be able to taylor the lesson to suite them better from the word go!

Reflective Journal...

After exploring a variety of ways in which best to portray my 'critical reflection', I have stuck with the most traditional version - placing pen to paper and writing. Whilst toying with the different ways in which I could log my day to day experiences I started to discover more about myself and my preferences in the way I function accordingly in my day to day life. My findings were as follows:

Videography 
I found this the most uncomfortable of formats. Though it was fairly therapeutic simply being able to off load my thoughts in speech, I found it then difficult to re-watch myself and later use this as evidence. This really prompted my thinking;

'Even being a performer, why do I find it too over exposing to record and watch my thoughts?'


I came to the conclusion that as performer we are constantly criticizing or improving ourselves, so watching something as raw and unrehearsed as me 'playing' myself, was an art that we rarely experience. Our own experiences and feelings as people are very different to that as when we are 'playing' a role, something I have discovered I need to become more familiar and comfortable with.

Statistical
Though I do enjoy diagrams and figures, this form was far too impersonal and formal. I wasn't fully able to record any details, or 'real' experiences I would incur in any given day. Yes it was factual, but how can you gain 'accurate thoughts?'

How did I feel?

Where did I spend the majority of my day?

Writing

This is my chosen method, I have always throughly enjoyed writing, even before commencing this course I would often keep a journal intermittently to log my thoughts, feelings and experiences on any given day. I also often include any imagery that I have found compelling, or for memorabilia purposes on that specific day. I find it much easier to write, as I feel when you place pen to paper you are allowing yourself to record exactly what you choose to, still enabling you to critically reflect, without delving too deep into a downward spiral within your subconscious. I previously posted a short entry onto my blog entitled Journal post..., detailing my experience at Sky Studios.

  

Campus session 28.02.2012

For me, this session hugely summarized the opening part of the module and delved deeper into what we should expect as we journey through the remainder of the course. I felt secure and confident in the work I had completed as part of the first part of this Module 1, but soon realised that these were simply just the basic skills and knowledge we each had to gain, in order to apply ourselves fully to the 'real' tasks at hand on this course.

We discussed the theme of 'Structured Improvisation' in great detail, which began merely as a thought and idea spanning from the topic of 'Critical Reflection'. We related it in specifics to teaching, be it in secondary schools or local activity groups we found many similarities in the form that this 'feedback' was issued, both politically and cognizably. We played with the idea that when improvising as a teacher you need the use of both:

                                  COGNITIVE                &                      INTUITION

                                   (based on past experiences/memory bank)

I found all these new ideas that were being catapulted around the room of great stimulation to me as I had newly begun teaching the previous week. It was of great benefit to listen and discuss with others who had far more experience to see how they had applied 'Improvisation' in there versatility and adaptability. To conclude the session we each wrote a question which we felt could relate to or describe our theme of 'Structured Improvisation', and recorded each of them to enable those of us who couldn't attend a chance to make sense of our discussion. My question was as follows:

'How can our aesthetics influence the method or myth of structured improvisation?'

I found this session provided real 'food for thought', spurring me on in the anticipation of the second part of the module. I feel there is a lot more that can be learnt about ourselves and feedback than meets the eye.....