empowering our practice: personal critical reflection and...

Empowering our practice: Personal critical reflection and early years

education

Anthony Semann Director Semann & Slattery Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood) Master of Arts with Merit (Sociology) PhD Candidate (Macquarie University)

To be critical…

‘a critical attitude towards those things that are given to our present experience as if they were timeliness, neutral, unquestionable: to stand against the current of received wisdom. It is a matter of introducing a kind of awkwardness into the fabric of one’s experience, of interrupting the fluency of the narrative that encode that experience and making them stutter’ Nikolas Rose

Reflect…

Do you define your workplace as a thinking organisation?

So imagine this, if we were to see employees as a knowledge library, how many books are in your organisational library, which topic areas of your library have a large number of books and which topic areas would you like to have more books in?

Reflect and discuss?

So what is critical thinking?

n What is it?

n What is its purpose in your team?

n How might we activate it?

Here’s a Dilemma

You are a pilot.

You are flying a Boeing 747-400 with 400 passengers onboard

The alarm goes off – there is a problem on the plane and it has been taken over

Recent laws passed means you cannot go out to investigate

What is your response?

Your spouse is on board


Your children are also on board


They know that you are the partner flying the plane and are making demands using your family


Our Response

“what ought one do?”

Discuss

n How did you come to decide on the actions you proposed?

n What variability's did you need to take when making your decisions?

Critical Thinking

In order to display critical thinking one must develop the skills:

n  Interpreting: understanding the significance of data and to clarify its meaning

n Analysing: breaking information down and recombining it in different ways

n Reasoning: creating an argument through logical steps

n Evaluating: judging the worth, credibility or strength of accounts

Critical thinking is a multi-step process. It can be defined as an active, intellectual process where the individual will observe, analyse and reflect on new knowledge and integrate it into their current understandings.

It is the art of analysing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it.

It’s thinking about our thinking?

Reflect

Contextualize

Question

Evaluate

Analyse

Observe

Critical thinking stage

Description

Observe •  Determine what information is available •  Gather information from a variety of sources •  Ascertain what information currently exists •  Explore the different perspectives •  Identify similarities or contradictions

Analyse •  Break down the information in the main themes or arguments

Evaluate •  Discriminate the value of the information Question •  Consider possible alternatives

•  Develop new hypotheses Contextualize •  Contextualise information in relation to:

•  Ethical consideration •  Political consideration •  Cultural consideration •  Specific circumstances

Reflect •  Question and test conclusions •  Reflect on possible outcomes

Creating a thinking organisation

n Promote provocation – provocative thinking stimulates conversation and invites people to justify current practices whilst allowing new ways of thinking e.g. asking the question ‘what are the challenges of retaining our current approach and what might be a new way of thinking about our work’?

n Implement divergent thinking in the workplace – invite people to think outside the box and refrain from responding with ‘we’ve tried that before’ or ‘I don’t think that will work’. You’ll never know the success of a new way of working unless you give it a try and keep trying.

n Make space for innovation – allow people time to step away from their day to day work and make allowances for them to think about innovation beyond their own roles e.g. to make suggestions to other on how they might improve their practices.

n Ask the hard questions – hard questions invite hard answers so embrace the idea that thinking deeply about our work is what it takes to make a breakthrough in the workplace. Don’t shy away from a challenge!

n Create spaces for debate – debates need not reduce people to an argument. Present an idea during a meeting and invite people to debate the idea until all sides of the debate have been exhausted.

n Embrace ambiguity – we don’t always have an answer however sitting with ambiguity creates a space for people to think and play with ideas. Embrace the idea that we don’t always have to know the answer to every problem, but we do have to always be open to finding the answer.

n Remain curious – the death of curiosity is the death of intelligence. Always be curious about what is taking place in the workplace. This approach keeps your brain hard wired for more information.

n Allow new staff to share their insights – new staff have a new perspective. Don’t shut down new ideas by spending a lot of time advising new staff about ‘how we do our work here’ All this does is crush new thinking, New staff have not being indoctrinated into our way of working so embrace their freshness and insights.

The cure for boredom is curiosity There is no cure for curiosity – Ellen Parr

Remember this regarding your role

There are:

Those who make things happen


There are:


Those who watch things happen


There are:



Those who ask ‘what happened’?


There are:



Those who ask ‘what happened’?

What will your legacy be?

Conceptual Model

1  Stop: An ability to identify the need for change or a re-consideration

2  Think: Consider the complexities surrounding the event and why it might have troubled or pleased you.

3  Change: identify something in your work that could be improved or changed and explore various opportunities and alternatives

Reflective Practice

We do not ‘store’ experience as data, like a computer: we ‘story’ it.

(Winter 1988, p.235)

Definitions of reflective practice

The literature around reflection defines it in slightly different ways.

Reflective practice can be defined as ‘thinking about how you teach and refining your thinking according to those thoughts’.

Elements common across definitions include the exploration of experience, analysis of feelings to inform learning, elements of critical theory, and changed action or perspective (Bulman 2004; Raban et. Al. 2007).

Definitions of reflective practice

Effective reflective practice meets the paradoxical need to both tell and retell our stories in order for us to feel secure enough, and yet critically examine our actions, and those of others, in order to dynamically increase our understanding of ourselves and our practice (Johns and Freshwater, 1998).

Reflection helps learners to:

n Understand what they already know (individual)

n  Identify what they need to know in order to advance understanding of the subject (contextual)

n Make sense of new information and feedback in the context of their own experience (relational)

n Guide choices for further learning (developmental)

How can reflective practice occur

Through struggles (what is working and not working)

From a dilemma – clash between our values and the

approach being used

From a positive experience that has left us excited

about the experience

When we reflect on the uncertainty and reach a new

conclusion (breakthrough) - Hadley 2006

Reflection in the role of an educator

What does reflective practice look like for you in your role as a teacher of children?

What are your questions around your practice that might be supported through some reflective thinking?

Questions

What are the accepted ‘taken for granted’ around this part of your practice?

Possibilities

Children learn though play Observations help us get to know children Children’s interests are the basis of our curriculum Intentional teaching can be viewed

A willingness to be disturbed

We live in a complex world, we often don’t know what’s going on, and we won’t be able to understand its complexity unless we spend more time in not knowing.

Curiosity is what we need to survive

“Knowing all to easy encourages us to fall asleep…a part of us to rush ahead to our destination the moment we see it’. (Remen 2000)

We can’t be creative if we refuse to be confused. Change always starts with confusion; cherished interpretations must dissolve to make way for the new Of course it’s scary to give up what we know, but the abyss is where newness lives Great ideas and inventions miraculously appear in the space of not knowing If we can move through the fear and enter the abyss, we are rewarded greatly We rediscover we’re creative

An unwavering commitment to your conviction Finding temporary settlements along the way which allow you to take stock Surrounding yourself with the right ‘tribe’

Some Final Thoughts

As the world grows more strange and puzzling and difficult, I don’t believe most of us want to keep struggling through it alone We need to learn the skillful art of sitting down together and talking about all the frightening and hopeful things we both observe and experience We all need new ideas and solutions for the problems we care about

Some Final Thoughts

We must all learn to value each others perspectives We must be prepared to be disturbed by what we hear from each other We don’t have to agree with each other in order to think well together

There is no need for us to be joined at the head. We are

joined by our human hearts.

empowering our practice: personal critical reflection and...

Documents