New ways to the problem of living

As those who follow me on twitter will know I have been at the 16 International Reflective Practice Conference this week exploring with other practitioners in nursing and education the notion of 'Reflection in Action.' I felt that it would be useful, and possibly mildly interesting, to try and tie the ideas I have encountered together in one place. This is not a rehearsed or re-written reflection/blog and therefore it will be emotive and unpolished. However, my twitter feed has served as a value place to start to consider my personal outcomes from the conference. I will relate my thoughts the tweets I have made about my experiences to date and the wonderful keynotes delivered by Ben Okri and Jenny Moon.

Reflection is part of my role as a teacher and the TDA standards for teachers has reflection embedded within it so I do feel that this a relevant discussion to have on this blog. I realise that this might not be everyone 'cup of tea' but I also felt that it was too good an opportunity to pass up.

So what has reflection meant to me this week? Ben Okri's keynote explored 'new ways to the problem of living' (as my title suggests) and, in my interpretation sought to examine the current problems he envisioned with the life lived as a human being. However, in respect to Ben's opening thoughts i.e. brevity is the missing quality of our age, I will try to keep my ideas short.

Jenny challenged the delegates to think of reflection as a different 'thing' depending on the medium through which is presented i.e. thinking, speech, writing, drawing, poetry, performance, acting, dancing etc and that it means different things in these different mediums. However, I am uncomfortable with the notions of drawing, poetry, performance, indeed anything but writing (or typing) as a vehicle for my own reflections. I guess, naively I suppose, that this relates to Ben's profound concern about what it means to be human and to live as a human inasmuch as I have become disassociated with these other forms of expression to such a degree that I am uncomfortable with the level of ineptitude I might show in using them. Ben suggested that there has been a fundamental disconnect between the arts and philosophy, and living as a human being. These things are no longer interconnected but instead we have become concerned with being artist rather than living as an artist. In other words, art is a means to an end rather than a lifestyle choice.

Being aware of my promise of brevity I will conclude in this paragraph with three fundamental concerns that Ben expressed: Failure, actuality and listening. Failure has become an end point. When we fail we stop. However, for those who strive and aspire to something 'else' failure is not an end point but just a landmark on the road to success. Drawing on the musings around Leonardo de Vinci Ben suggested that de Vinci knew what he would achieve before he started in. Therefore, failure should not be seen as a obstacle but should instead be seen as something to learn from and use as a springboard for future, and inevitable, success. Actuality, Ben suggested, was what we see i.e. I see hundred white swans and therefore all swans are white, and subsequently remains unchallenged. Actuality is Plato's shadows on the cave wall. In contrast reality is 'how things actual are' i.e. not All swans are white. Yet it is the disconnect between actuality and reality that hampers our ability to live. Finally, Ben suggested that listening with an empty mind was more important than hearing. He felt that we could hear things but not listen to them. I guess that that relates to our own reflection. We can write (or perform) but listen to our own voices. Yet it is in really listening that we find the reasons and ability to live life like a human being.

I am not sure that I have done justice to these ideas and on re-reading these words I am sure to want to explore them again in my own private spaces but they serve as a record in time of my ideas. I will leave you with a twitter poem written by Ben a line a day on twitter in January 2010 and which he open his keynote.

As clouds pass above our heads

So time passes through our lives.

Where does it go,

And when it passes,

What do we have to show?

We can plant deeds in time

As gardeners plant roses.

We can plant thoughts, or good words too

Especially if they are noble and true.

Time is an act of consciousness:

One of the greatest forces

Of the material world.

We ought to use time

Like emperors of the mind:

Do magic things that the future,

Surprised, will find.

We could change our life today

And seek out a higher way.

The Buddha sat beneath a tree

And from all illusion became free.

And as we travel on this life that is a sea

We can glimpse eternity.

We can join that growing fight

To stop our world being plunged into night.

We can wake to the power of our voice

Change the world with the power of our choice.

But there is nothing we can do

If we don't begin to think anew.

We are not much more than what we think;

In our minds we swim or sink.

If there is one secret I'd like to share

It's that we are what we dream

Or what we fear.

So dream a good dream today

And keep it going in every way.

Let each moment of our life

Somehow help the good fight

Or help spread some light.

The wise say life is a dream;

And soon the dream is done.

But what you did in the dream

Is all that counts beneath the sun.

The dream is real, and the real is a dream

Each one of us is a powerful being.

Wake up to what you are,

You are a sun, you are a star.

Wake up to what you can be.

Search, search for a new destiny

The hardest part...

And the hardest part

Was letting go, not taking part

Was the hardest part

And the strangest thing

Was waiting for that bell to ring

It was the strangest start

I could feel it go down

Bittersweet, I could taste in my mouth

Silver lining the cloud

Oh and I

I wish that I could work it out

Coldplay released this song (the hardest part) on the X&Y album and the lyrics always struck me as poignant. I felt that they reflected of my desire to change my position within the classroom and the difficulties that I experienced in shifting from the spotlight and into the wings. If, as William Shakespeare wrote, all the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players, then in my teaching I didn't fully understand when to enter and when to exit or that there were many roles for me to play. I had always believed that I wanted to teach and teaching for me was standing in the at the centre of learning and directing it like a conductor controls an orchestra. However, the more I read and the more I did, the more my lessons look like a jazz ensemble (i.e. an apparent jumble of sounds that looks effortless , sounds great and yet takes years of practice and a huge amount of practice).

The legendary golfer Gary Player once said, "The more I practice, the luckier I get" and this was certainly the case for me. However it was hard. Letting go of centre stage and allowing the pupils to control the pace of their learning was hard. I did feel that I was waiting for the school bell to ring as I watched them work. Yet my work, although done on the periphery, was now even more important. I was the script writer planning for the actors to get involved. I designed the stage and arrange for the props. I adapted when something went wrong and I prompted when the students forgot their lines. I managed the learning environment but I didn't coach the learner. I planned meticulously and I timed by interventions and developed the ability to question not answer. Finally, as Gary Player said I practiced and my lessons (somehow) got better and the learning got deeper and the pupils got more involved.

Change takes time and yes it can be like a rest. But in the long term it is hard and it takes practice and it is hard...however, it is worth it.

The Appliance of Science

I received my iPad a couple of days ago and I keep trying to find reasons to use it. It is wonderful as a toy but I am yet to really make it work for its money. I have an idea that it will work wonderfully and make the technologically enhanced (and maybe dependant) parts of my day even more enjoyable. However, it took me an hour (and a conversation with a very helpful lady at apple care support) this morning to get it to talk to iTunes this morning and on Tuesday it took me an hour or so to get the micro SIM I needed to make it work. I have shown as many people as I can make look how wonderful it is but I have yet to make an initial decision. Don't get me wrong...I love it...but what does it do? Over the last week or so, with the mad rush to get exams and assignments marked and cross-marked before the deadline on Monday I have had other technological hurdles to overcome that have slowed my progress and frustrated me.

 

Perhaps it is the efficiency of technology that when it goes wrong it is unexpected and therefore it is frustrating. Perhaps the fact that booting up a computer doesn't take the same amount of time as making an espresso (but rather it takes less time than it takes to drink one) that exacerbates our annoyance with any hiccups we encounter. Perhaps we are so caught up in technology that we want it to better than 'old fashioned' approaches that we make it do things that it is not yet capable of undertaking.

 

In physical education we are beginning to explore technology and my involvement as a blogger and a tweeter encourage me to get the iPad to see how far I could take it all. But when I mentioned flipcams to an experienced member of a local school he wondered what their use was outside of performance analysis. I said that we were using them for Vidpods and in game-making but that got me thinking. Where do we take them? A colleague described the use of camera's in Australia a decade and more ago to film a sport 'walk through.' The concept is that the camera goes through a game with students and they use them to voice the decisions that they are making in the game at the time they are making them. Almost like 'thinking out loud.'

 

It made me wonder where the other opportunities were for technology. How do we apply the science in teaching?

 

What can I do with the iPad in my work as a lecturer and teacher educator that I couldn't do with anything else? Imagine the resource I have in my hand in a practical where I show the students a exemplar and then send it to their mobile devices to use in their work. By syncing our technology we create and use opportunities that never existed before...now that is the appliance of science.

 

Is it time for an anti-ablest pedagogy?

We traditionally have an ablest approach to teaching. We definitely have an ablest approach to teaching physical education. Those who can are encouraged to do and those who don't or won't well there just not trying despite our best efforts. But it is these 'best' efforts that encourage those who can and discourage those who can't.

Let me explain my reasoning. 'The best' and 'the best of the best' are celebrated in physical education and we teach in such a way that it allows them to massage their egos. Take track and field athletics. We teach the athlete and laud the fastest, furthest and highest while those placed other than first are left trailing in the ego of the winner. The same in cross-country i.e. everyone starts together and the first placed runner gets to watch everyone else run in behind him or her. Are we encouraging the ablest to do well and discouraging the less able? Is it time we forgot about the best and helped everyone else? Is it time to forget about the egos of those who already love physical education and who would take part in anything regardless of the activity and concentrate on those whose egos we have constantly hammered throughout school physical education? Is it time to adopt an anti-ablest pedagogy?

A bit radical maybe but would we be better encouraging the least and less able to enjoy physical education and hope that we can inspire them to lead a healthy and active life-style? Should we focus on developing their mastery of an activity that they might enjoy and follow through as a lifelong activity? Is the established player less in need of our support? Should we be massaging a different ego? These are strange idea to a teacher who came into the subject with a coaches role in mind but I just wonder now if we have our priorities wrong. Are the ablest simply better disposed to lifelong physical activity? Research suggests that physical education has concentrated on sports technique for so long that a 'one-size fits-all' approach to teaching has become the norm. This hasn't discourage the ablest but has alienated the majority of less-able students. Should we throw the pedagogy out and prioritise those who 'just CAN'T do it?'

Let me know your thoughts?