Getting my head around reader 2.... My initial thoughts!

When first looking over reader 2 I was speechless, I thought to myself I will never understand this! But I persevered, took some notes, read and re read certain areas and slowly I think some of it is starting to digest! (I hope) I have started to understand and appreciate that we can use reflection as a tool in our daily lives to help us learn and develop and become a better practitioner. By having an experience and reflecting upon it we can develop new ideas. I have also come to realise that I have already been using reflection unconsciously  and quite frequently in my professional practise every day!

Here are my initial thoughts and feelings on several different practitioners views of reflection:

Dewey - John Dewey believed there were different levels of experience from which we can learn. Dewey talks of ''reflective thought" being engaged and aware of our experiences so we can reflect upon them and find meaning from them for ourselves. Dewey has made me realise that I have to take more time out to reflect and review on my daily experiences if I want to learn more and develop in my professional practise. I have a habit of cramming too much in to my days leaving me no time for myself never mind to reflect! By starting my journal it has given me that time out to write and think and get more out of my days. Especially days i may see as being a waste of time or boring or i think nothing happened, by writing down the events and my thoughts and feelings I have managed to pull positive learning points from each if them.

Kolb - David Kolb looks at experience and learning through the idea of a learning cycle. I really liked the idea of a cycle as I felt it was an easy and straight forward way to understand experience. His cycle has four entry points concrete experience (doing/having an experience) Reflective Observation (reviewing/reflecting on the experience Abstract Conceptualisation(concluding/learning from the experience) and Active Experimentation 
(planning/trying out what  you have learned) He understands that we are all different and learn in different ways so the point in which we enter the cycle will be individual and we will all have our own personal learning style.I think from reviewing Kolbs learning cycle and understanding at which point you personally enter the cycle is a great tool for reflecting and understanding how to approach your experiences.

In the reader we are asked "At which point in Kolbs cycle do you feel you enter?" By reflecting on how we learned to start our blogs.  I feel I used a couple of points in Kolbs learning cycle but believe I entered the cycle at Abstract Conceptualisation - I used the reader to help me set up my blog initially and also looked upon videos on YouTube for first setting up my gmail account.  I then progressed on to Active Experimentation - using trial and error and going back to change areas several times until I was completely satisfied with my set up.

From reviewing Kolbs learning style I believe that with every different experience we have our point in which we enter the learning cycle (our learning style) will change as we do not always approach  everything in our lives the same way!

Gardner - Howard Gardner discusses the idea of multiple intelligences. I like Gardners idea as he highlights the point we are not all the same. We are all individuals and we all engage with understanding and learning in a different ways. I believe personally As a dancer i am a VKA learner ( Visual,Auditory and Kinaesthetic. I mainly learn from visual movement, listening to lyrics or counts to learn choreography and by trial and error with my body. I will throw myself in to moves while learning a dance to see if I can do them or my body is capable of them, I guess that can also be linked again with Kolbs active experimentation point in the cycle.

Schon - I found Donald Schons idea if reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action very interesting. His theory of reflection-in-action I can very much relate to as I do this a lot in my professional practise. As a dancer we all know things can go wrong while on stage and we are very disciplined that the 'show must go on'. we do not have time to stop and think and we cannot let the audience know something has gone wrong. For example if you are about to go into a dance break and you notice one of the dancers has just ran off due to a costume malfunction you automatically re space and re adjust the number on the spot to fill the empty space. Another example would be when you are left on stage without a partner or made to cover someone who is injured on the spot, as a trained dancer you do not run off to think about what you are going to do to fill the counts, you must think on the spot - this to me is reflection-in-action! Reflection-on-action is an idea most used by academics who have the time to go home and conceptualise and look back at what they have done or need to do. This all links in nicely with Dewys theory that time has a big impact on how we reflect on experience, wither we engage in the 'present' or the 'future'. As a dancer I engage in the 'present'. Polanyi - I love the quote from Michael Polanyi when he wrote "I shall reconsider human knowledge by starting from the fact that we can know more than we can tell". There are so many occasions in life where we know what we mean but just can't explain it! I can't explain how my body knows and remembers how to run, skip or leapt just does. I believe knowledge cannot always be spoken or written. Knowledge to me can also be a feeling, a sense, something your body remembers and knows - muscle memory as a dancer is a great example of that. Ok so that was my breakdown of reader 2 so far, next I will tackle Kottcamps views and slowly start to piece all I have learned from this reader together in the next task to write my critical reflection!! Wish me luck! Please as always feel free to comment!! :)