Reflexivity - An Alternative Form of Introspection

I have found so far when reading articles within the readers that I feel a lot like a man, stood in a river, looking for gold. The article is the river bed, and the words are the pebbles that make up that river bed. I repeatedly scoop up a paragraph of pebbles in my sieve and search through them, and every now and again I find a little bit of gold. I keep going until eventually, I have enough flecks of gold to melt down into a nugget, or even a bar!

Well, I have just read "Action Evaluation and Action Theory: An assessment of the process and its connection to conflict resolution" Ian Darling, March 2008 from the list at the end of reader 2, and here is my nugget...


Ian Darlings piece is all about comparing Donald Schons idea of Reflection, more specifically In-Action Reflection, with Jay Rothmans concept of Reflexivity (an alarmingly similar sounding term!!).
"Reflexivity involves delaying the instinctive and unexamined reactions to external stimulus, and analysing them before responding" (Rothman, 1997, 36). In other words, slowing down your reactions enough to analyse said reactions before acting.
Initially, I immediately jumped to the conclusion that is exactly the same as Reflection In-Action, but upon reflection, of course it isn't! The idea of Reflection In-Action is that you reflect and alter your practice as you are doing it, but this still requires the sequence of Action, Evaluation, Modification. Reflexivitys equivalent sequence would be Thought, Analysis, Modification, Action. Reflecting before you've acted!


What a mind boggling concept! Surely if you were involved in an argument (which incidentally is what Rothmans field of study is all about: Conflict Resolution) and everyone was pausing to think about their reaction before they even contributed, it would take days! Or would it? Would the argument even get off the ground? It could be said that arguments, more often than not, escalate as a result of the exact opposite of Rothmans Reflexive Practice. Due to emotions running high, each participator blurts out the first antagonising or offensive thing that reaches their lips without thinking. The other participants react to this by doing the same, and it escalates. What if each of the participants practised Reflexivity? Would there even be an argument? If there was, it would certainly be a lot more controlled and resolved more quickly.

All this led me to ask the following question:
How can I apply this theory to my own Professional Practice?

Task 2a/2b: Reflective Practice and Reflective Writing

Having finished reading reader number 2 I have so many thoughts I don't know where to begin!

I am feeling so overwhelmed with all the reflective theory, not because I don't understand it, but because there seems to be so many different ways of looking at it and approaching it that I simply don't know where to begin! There are so many ideas, methods and concepts under the term Reflective Practice!

I was fascinated by the idea of Tacit Knowledge. This is a term I had never come across before, which is ironic because as a dancer and dance teacher I have now come to learn that most of my knowledge is tacit! This an example of something I have been experiencing for years without having realised. Now that I have realised that knowing how to stay on balance when turning, or knowing how to adjust may stance in order for a certain lift to work, is tacit knowledge, I now have knowledge of "tacit knowledge".

The Module Gangs: Bridging the Gap

After reading Alans Post - Developing your support Network I realised he was making a very good point and vowed to explore the other groups of student bloggs on BAPP...and didn't get round to it.


However, today I noticed a pioneer had written a comment on my blogg!! Stephanie Thomas has bridged the gap between Modules and I think we should all follow suit!

I'm starting by urging anyone who hasn't yet tackled the video task (1c) to watch Stephanies video, as I think it is a fantastic example and should inspire those who are unsure.

Lets get following the students in other module groups, it's a resource we're not utilising!

Task 1d: 2D Images

After spending a long time doing a seemingly simple task I have come to the conclusion that I am not a fan of Flickr! I may be jumping the gun there, as I haven't really been working with the site for very long, but it seems overly complicated to me! I get the impression that the site has tried to include too many features and it's become swamped.
However, I have managed to create a link to my slideshow:

Images by Liam Conman


I have included photos from a mixture of origins, but unfortunately I don't yet possess any photos of my teaching work. It's something I'm working on.

co.mments.com - An extremely useful tool for BAPP!!

A few of us have been getting frustrated trying to keep track of "comment conversations". Once you've commented on numerous posts, how on earth do you remember which posts you've commented on and keep up with the replies!?

I HAVE THE ANSWER!

co.mments.com

Here, simply sign up with an email address and password to create an account. Then, every time you comment on a blog, quickly copy and paste the URL of the post you've commented on into the "Track" box on co.mment, and voilà!! All new comments appear instantly on our co.mment account. Bookmark this bad boy, and you're good to go!

As you can tell, I'm quite excited about this tool, as it's going to save me BUCKETLOADS of time!

Hope you all enjoy the benefits!