Live
Reflective Writing Index:
|
Subject |
Title
|
Date |
|
Personal
Development Plan |
In Person
|
10/01/08 |
|
Inclusion and
disability |
I am not a number
|
08/12/07 |
|
Time
management |
Sensitive to Numbers – Not
waving but…
|
27/11/07 |
|
Minimum Core |
Dumb Numbers
|
11/11/07 |
|
Personal Development Plan |
My PDP an Me
|
01/11/07 |
|
Mental Health |
Fear and Loathing in Buckfastleigh
|
14/10/07 |
|
Every Child Matters |
A Valuable Lesson in Political Practice
|
08/10/07 |
|
Aesthetic
Practice |
30/09/07 |
|
|
Motivation |
30/09/07 |
|
|
Mentor-tutor
meeting |
27/09/07 |
|
|
ITC
and Bureaucracy |
25/09/07 |
|
|
Induction |
21/09/07 |
|
|
How
Learning Happens |
20/09/07 |
|
|
Inclusion
and Race |
20/09/07 |
|
|
Mentor
Meeting |
06/07/07 |
PGCE REFLECTIVE WRITING
Reflections on the Personal
Development Plan
10th
January 2008
In
Personal
For
reasons I have explored in a previous piece, my attitude to the Personal
Development Plan (PDP), has been somewhat negative, to say the least. I likened
the process of exacting a reductive taxonomy from my confused mix of feelings,
needs and desires concerning my course, my reasons for enrolling and teaching
generally, to the process of Operations Research developed by the armed forces
after the First World War. Though my attitude has not really changed in terms
of my substantial opinion, I have to be more pragmatic. I have to embrace the
idea of the PDP and turn the writing of the new version for the Spring Term
into a positive experience. To that end, I offer some further thoughts.
As
part of an exercise in class, we, the cohort of student teachers to which I
belong, were asked to produce a time line charting our interest in teaching. I
found this to be an emotional experience. I have written extensively about my
school days in a piece called Blood in the River (it can be read at http://www.nagara.co.uk/Blood.htm)
so the rush of feeling concerning the subject was not new. But what was new was
the realisation that the extent to which my participation on the course is
partly therapeutic, has changed.
When
I enrolled, I realised that I needed to concentrate on the processes of the
course and not be too concerned about the end result. But I considered, then,
that the therapeutic value of the endeavour – in terms of improving my shaky
mental health – represented around 40% of my motivation for enrolling. I now
see that the proportion is probably closer to 60% or more and practical
considerations – such as graduating and getting a job – are merely adjuncts to
the main event.
I’m
a highly visual person and I think it was the physical drawing up of the time
line that changed my mind. In one way or another, I have been dealing with
mental health problems all my life, yet I considered them to be episodic; as if
the, generally longer, states between were labelled healthy – in capital
letters with double exclamations. The
graphic illustration – a few notes written on a long landscape strip – told a
different story. I had included my last two periods of work, one of 3 years and
another of two years as a period of illness that started about 6 years
ago. Though I had not been ill
throughout that period, I had certainly not been well either.
The
details of my illness are not important here. What is important is the way in
which I structure my PDP. Though I
could easily fool any reader that my real concerns are about the teaching
itself (skills I need to learn, issues I need to address and aspects I need to
improve and so-on) there are other developmental issues that are much more
crucial; vital, one might say. For if I am to teach well, I must be well - not
simply well enough to teach but well enough to teach with integrity.
Though
I may have a hundred and one areas open to improvement, I have discovered that
the teaching itself is something I can do; something I could become good
at. Yet I worry constantly, panic often
and become easily over-tired through lack of sleep. I have to take steps. After
all, even the best teachers become poor teachers when they are in constant
turmoil.
It is not as if I am not sleeping because I am working
too many hours. Some days I can’t work at all. Some weeks I sleep as few as 20
hours and one week, last term, I only clocked up only 11. Like many aspects of depression, my lack of
sleep has not only become habitual, it is almost an addiction. Yet, mostly, I
do not feel depressed, merely exhausted. Nevertheless, there is a self-destructive
tendency that still haunts me, gets in the way of things, keeps me awake and
helps me ensure that, eventually, I will fail as a teacher – however good a
teacher I become. And that is at the heart of it.
So
my PDP will include a number of practical items – a few targets for including
this and improving that and it will be written in a positive tone. But it will
also include some highly pragmatic, if introspective, targets too. For if they
are not addressed, all the rest will be for nothing. So now I find myself
somewhat in favour of the Personal Development Plan. How much more personal can a development plan get? Don’t say I
didn’t warn you.
Nick Nakorn,
Buckfastleigh, 10th January 2008
Reflections on Wiki task number
8
8th
December 2007
I am not a number I am…
Wiki Task 8 (as written)
Aims:
This activity will encourage students to reflect on their own practice through
the generation of resources that will support students with learning
difficulties or disabilities.
Supporting Students with Learning Difficulties
Activity: Think about the context in which you are practising
as a teacher. Identify a current or past student with learning difficulties or
a disability whom you have had contact with.
“Without
identifying your chosen student, describe their problems in a few sentences and
write a little about how their disability affected their learning outcomes during
a particular lesson. Next, decide how you might be able to support your student
through the creation of a specialised learning resource. This can be one that
is adapted from an existing resource, or it can be something you will create
from scratch. It can be electronic (e.g. a website, audio or online tool), or
something else (e.g. a game, a set of worksheets, activities or handouts). It
is your choice. Use the resource this coming week with your chosen student (in
consultation with your mentor) and evaluate its effectiveness. Next week you
will need to produce a brief evaluation. You will find the Access for All documents
referred to in the resources sections on pages 3 and 4 of your Minimum Core
Student Handbook useful.”
1. General Comments.
My first reaction to the above task was one of extreme discomfort. It
seems to me that the writer and deviser of the task has not studied some of the
basic principles of inclusion, acceptance and equality. My reaction and criticism may, naturally, be
incorrect or unfair (I do not wish to upset the writer and fully admit to
writing and devising some equally wrong headed schemes myself over the years,
also I am not an expert on this subject myself, though I am someone who has a
couple of disabilities) so I will try and explain why I have reacted as I have.
2. The concept.
While the aims of the activity are clearly well meant, the concept is
somewhat muddled from the start. The
passage
“… will
support students with learning difficulties or disabilities.”
immediately throws up several conceptual difficulties.
Firstly, people
who self-define as being disabled in some way may not have learning
difficulties and people who self-define as having learning difficulties may not
consider themselves as being disabled.
Secondly, the
strategies that are adopted by the individuals concerned may or may not require
or welcome support.
Thirdly, the
assumptions (by teachers and institutions) that support may or may not be
required is crucial in the actual and semantic differences that are perceived
to define notions of disability,
impairment and difficulty.
And, finally,
in this section, the Social Model of inclusion in respect of the needs of all
learners (that in my view should be explicitly supported by Plymouth University
and by Bicton College, where I teach) specifically rejects the Medical Model as
outmoded. The task as written looks to
the Social Model in terms of it’s scope but is asking the Trainee Teacher to
undertake a task that is almost wholly versed in the language and assumptions
of the Medical Model.
3.
Deconstructing the Task as Written.
To fully explain my views above, I will deconstruct the task in more
detail. I am not undertaking this deconstruction for semantic reasons alone –
in my view the way in which such ideas are either helpful or not is
fundamentally linked to the language used.
3.1 The Aims:
“This activity will encourage students to reflect on their own practice through the generation of resources that will support students with learning difficulties or disabilities.”
Generating resources may or may
not support any one individual, whether or not they define themselves or are defined by others as ‘disabled’ or
having ‘learning difficulties’. Clearly
the aims are making the wrong assumptions from the start as the aims imply:
·
that types of
support that, if offered, will have a positive outcome statistically will apply
to individuals within identified categories
·
that the
processes and systems and technologies provided by institutions and individuals
to improve inclusion are interchangeable for people with disabilities and for
those with learning difficulties.
·
that the
support assumed to be required is in the gift of the teacher.
3.2
The Activity
At this stage it important to explain my understanding of the terms
used. I have already mentioned the concept of self-definition. The Activity is defined thus:
“Activity: Think about the context in which you are practising
as a teacher. Identify a current or past student with learning difficulties or
a disability whom you have had contact with.”
In my view, it is not up to me or
anyone else to identify a student as having a learning difficulty or a
disability or to decide into which category a learner might fall. That is
entirely up to them. I might have my own views and I might privately make such
identifying decisions (that is called prejudice) but it is not acceptable in my
view to use those views in an activity the aim of which is to help me
(as part of my education). However, there are, exceptions to this within the
Social Model. Institutions and
individuals are encouraged to make such prejudicial value judgements in some
circumstances such as (not an exhaustive list).
·
When an
individual’s functional impairment presents a significant danger, risk or
disadvantage to the individual or others: a simple example; one might open a
heavily sprung door for anyone struggling hard or unable to open it. (though the social answer is to modify the
door)
·
When a functional
impairment prevents an individual from making appropriate decisions: a simple
example; one might assist a lost individual to their destination if one
observes distress or danger resulting otherwise. (though the social answer is
to normalise transport assistance for everyone who might need it)
·
When a
functional impairment is so severe that an individual is unaware of their own
predicament: a simple example; a severely brain damaged individual with limited
sentience might require 24 hour care as an imposed regime.
Such prejudicial value judgements are naturally the subject of much
debate as well as social, legal and medical argument. It is in the nature of
prejudice that we all will make mistakes and the Social Model rightly attempts to
minimise the need for well-intentioned and aggressive prejudice. This point brings me to the definitions of
‘disability’ and ‘learning difficulty’. Rightly or wrongly (in terms of
individuals) the latter is perhaps more medicalised than the former in terms of
the provisions that society considers to be legally binding. Thus those with
‘learning difficulties’ are more likely to be the ‘subjects’ of decision making
rather than the originators.
3.3
The Details of the Activity.
The language used is disturbing. There is much use of the possessive
pronoun ‘your’. It is accepted that we
(teachers) use the possessive to describe ‘our’ learners in many contexts
without causing offence. But in terms of the task as written it is, I feel
wholly unacceptable. We should be able to learn from feminist and black
research into how such phrases warp the values in question. To say “..in my cohort there are two
learners who identify as disabled..” is very different from saying “..my
disabled students are in the cohort..”.
“..decide how
you might be able to support your student..”
“..It
is your choice. Use the resource this coming week with your chosen student..”
and there is the quite horrible:
“Use
the resource this coming week with your chosen student (in consultation with
your mentor) and evaluate its effectiveness.”
Here we
have, in the above three quotes, the possessive used inappropriately, the
assumption that it is the teacher who chooses who is ‘disabled’, that it is the
teacher’s choice of resources that count, rather than the choice of the
individual learner, and that it is the teacher’s evaluation of the
effectiveness of the resource that counts.
Returning
to the highly medicalised language, I am reminded of the Victorian origins of
the concept. It is as if the empire-building power-relations existing towards
those who were considered ‘other’ than white as ‘subjects’ has been transferred
to the ‘otherness’ of those perceived to be disabled. At best this is a
re-interpretation of the ‘noble savage’ concept and at worst a simple denial of
the strides made in recent years with the Social Model.
4. Conclusions
In conclusion, I believe the task to be
unacceptable as it stands. Any work around this subject has to be transparent
and ordinarily respectful. While the
anonymity of the ‘chosen’ learner is respectful of the learner’s privacy, it is
used to enable the teacher to carry out an experiment behind the learner’s
back. The idea that assessing resources is in the gift of the teacher
completely negates any open discussion with the learner unless the teacher
adopts either; the positions the tasks imply or a position in opposition to the
task (in which case the task can not be carried out as written anyway). An essential part of the ‘inclusion’ and
‘acceptance’ agenda to me is my own transparency of action and opinion. I therefore refuse to take part in the
activity.
It has
to be said that I have made all the mistakes I have identified above myself.
This is not therefore a critique bound by any assumptions on my part that I am
any better at enacting personal or institutional inclusivity than anyone else.
But had I been asked to devise an assignment around this issue, I would have, I
hope, chosen a more thoughtful concept. The sensitivity to the issues that the
assignment hopes to convey to the student teacher are not apparent in the
activity presented.
Those
of you who know me know that I identify as disabled due to my mental health
problems and because of my lung disorder. I’m not interested in proclaiming my
position from the rooftops and nor do I wish to hide my assessment of my own
situation. But I shudder to think that decisions and assumptions might be made
about my needs, behind my back, as suggested by Wiki Activity number 8. Hence my decision to post this piece and via
the Wiki invite an open and free discussion.
Highly
critical comments welcome!
Nick
Nakorn
8th December
2007
Reflections
on panic
27th
November 2007
Sensitive to Numbers –
Not waving but…
I freely admit to being over-sensitive in some situations but are other PGCE students becoming obsessed with ‘How To Fit The Hours In’? I need to get this off my chest, as it were, before I can settle down to my next piece of work.
I’m not sleeping much due to my concern and that
situation is making me ill. While I’m pleased now to be in a teaching placement
that doesn’t require every teaching session to have several days research preceding
it, I am still very worried that I won’t be able to manage the 150 hours
contact time required. This is how it seems to me.
As
trainee teachers, it takes a fair amount of time to prepare a class. While I
know I’m getting better at it, I’m still taking about 8 hours (a working day)
to prepare a 1-hour session. That means I need to find, in total, 1,200 hours
of preparation time over the 9 months of the course, an average of 133 hours
per month or 30 hours per week. The contact time, observation time and lecture
time add up as follows:
(Bracketed
figures statistical only)
|
item |
term-time hours (assume 36 weeks) |
term-time hours/week (assume 36 weeks) |
average hours/ week over whole period (40 weeks) |
total hours over 9 months |
|
Lectures |
576 |
16 |
(14.4) |
576 |
|
Reading |
288 |
8 |
8 |
320 |
|
Tasks, assignments and admin |
288 |
8 |
8 |
320 |
|
Observation time |
50 |
1.3 |
(1.25) |
50 |
|
Contact time |
150 |
4.2 (4.16) |
(3.75) |
150 |
|
Research and preparation time |
1080 |
30 |
30 |
1,200 |
|
travel |
288 |
8 |
(7.2) |
288 |
|
Totals |
2720 |
75.5 |
46 (72.6) |
2904 |
Note: lectures, observation time, contact time, and travel only take place in term time while reading, research & preparation and tasks & assignments can, theoretically take place throughout if all is known about in advance.
Now, while I’m aware that I have in the past had paid jobs that require as many hours, I have not, in general, had to face such a gruelling schedule whilst learning. Naturally, one is aware that doctors, for example, often work these hours while training but one is also aware that such hours are detrimental to health and well being. Of course, there are plenty of teachers who work these hours regularly and I’m not saying that the schedule is necessarily impossible.
Now, because I tend to worry about these things, I waste time due to lack of sleep, tiredness and general anxiety. Perhaps, therefore, I am unsuited to teaching?
The above weekly figures, note, are for the whole week. 75 hours per week in term time and 46 hours per week in the breaks. While one can pick at these figures, they are approximate, they do not take account of the time needed for the rest of one’s life or, come to that, for rest.
The term-time schedule is nearly 11 hours per day, 7 days a week. One day off means the figure goes up to 12.5 hours per day and if one needed free weekends (if one was a single parent, that would be necessary), the figure goes up to over 15 hours per day, leaving less than 9 hours to eat, sleep, and do everything else. I am no longer a single parent so I’m lucky in that regard.
Key to all of this is the preparation time. If one is teaching a subject divided into discreet hourly sessions, then one needs to prepare each hour as a complete entity. If, however, one is teaching longer sessions then the preparation time is considerably less. Some students are teaching sessions that last 2, three or even 4 hours.
Clearly, the workload is very much dependent upon the type of course one teaches. A mostly facilitative post that is divided into 4 hourly sessions, for example, would cut preparation times from 1080 hours to around 270 hours. A difference of 810 hours – my point being that preparing a long session, like writing a long essay, tends to be easier than preparing a short session and thus it is the number of sessions that dictate the number of hours needed to prepare.
810 hours over 40 weeks averages out at 20 hours per week – two days at 10 hours a day.
I hope I’ve got all of this wrong so that I can relax a bit. Today, I didn’t make it into lectures (again) through lack of sleep – not that I’m not tired, I am - I just can’t sleep thinking about all I have to do and the prospect of the above being the pattern of my life over the next few years. Any time I take to relax is invaded by guilt; guilt that I’m not working.
Am I alone in this or is the course designed to weed out all but the super-fit, non-anxious and workaholics amongst us?
My suggestion for future PGCE courses is that the 150 hours of contact time are cut to, say, 60 sessions of at least one hour duration and no longer than 4 hours to a maximum of 120 hours. That way we would all get sufficient experience and time to think, reflect, learn and rest. In my view, we would become much better teachers as a result.
Reflections on Numeracy in Education
11th
November 2007
Dumb Numbers
How
disappointed I was not to score full marks for a GCSE level maths test! I have
a first-class science degree, for goodness sakes. It just goes to show that
there is more to learning than accumulating knowledge. My excuse to myself for
achieving a miserable 11/15 was that I had not used such simple techniques for
years. Naturally I re-took the test and saw where I had gone wrong (questions
7,8,10 and 13, if you must know). A few minutes later I sat smugly in front of
the computer looking at my 15/15 score. But why had I made so
many simple mistakes the first time around?
In middle age one tends to forget that, over the years, one learns to compensate for one’s inadequacies. I have developed informal, subconscious strategies for getting around problems. One such strategy relates to a weak area that has been with me as long as can remember; reading.
It
may surprise you to know that I was a very late reader. In primary school I
would memorise whole sections of books in case I was asked to read something
out in class. Accompanying pictures, the general layout of the text on the page
and a few key words that I could actually read were used as triggers, or aide
memoirs, and I found I could recite the required passage and pretend to read.
Occasionally I would recite the wrong passage and the teacher would point out I
was on the wrong page. I would then pretend to turn to the correct page and
hope I could get it right. If not, the teacher and the rest of the class would
assume I was too stupid to find the right page – they did not guess that I
could not read.
By
the time I was eight or nine, though, it all came together. I remember picking
up a novel that my mother had left open on a table. I was about to put it down
again, feeling sorry for myself, when I found that I could read it perfectly.
It was an odd experience. It was as if my brain had been waiting for some small
but essential piece of information and, having received it, had decided to
‘kick’ reading into operation.
Maths
has, in some ways, occupied a similar position in my life. I can remember
sitting through maths classes and loving each minute. I had no trouble
assimilating the ideas and concepts. But what I could not get to grips with was
the linking of those concepts to the marks on the blackboard. Algebra was a
tremendous struggle and still, to this day, I cannot read music. Written
musical scores, like algebra, are notations representing formalised
relationships. Strangely, I can compose music and write it down (albeit very
slowly) but cannot sit at the piano and play what I have written.
I
am old enough and lucky enough to have the facility to realise that I am not
defined solely by my inadequacies – I am, perhaps, borderline dyslexic in the
same way I am border-line Asperger’s according to some tests I took a few years
ago – I have the tendency to dislike categories that have grey areas and don’t
always link visual symbols to the ideas they are supposed to convey. By way of
compensation, I put much effort into both problems.
But
what fate awaits those unable to compensate? Those unlucky enough not to have
had a sufficiently broad education, at home and elsewhere, to enable them to
find alternative routes through the maze that is numeracy, literacy and ITC?
The
Minimum Core requirement for the PGCE is a good and timely idea. Though the
poorly written and confusing (how I hate blurred taxonomies!), I can see that
it is essential that we, as teachers, know how to facilitate minimum standards of literacy, numeracy and
ICT. The question is, do we, as a society, understand enough about the blocks
that many of us have in these areas to make a real difference?
Reflective
Writing on Personal Development Plans
1st November 2007
My
PDP and me
My
old friend Charlie Lambe, trekking guide and explorer, is staying for a few
days. With him he has brought his small Krups Coffee making machine. It makes
Cappuccino, Latte, Espresso and other things. It is a useful piece of kit. It
has also helped me understand why I have reacted badly to the PDP concept.
My
first encounter with a Personal Development Plan was in the early 1990s. I was
working at Watford Council as an environmentalist. Our Environment Unit was a
new idea in those days and the strategists in the Chief Executive’s Department,
though remote from our small operation, were keen on all things they perceived
to be new and innovative.
I
remember there was much discussion amongst the authority’s 1,200 employees and
all sorts of meetings were convened to see how and why the PDPs would work. The
end result was inconclusive and the PDPs were never reintroduced after the
first trial (as far as I remember, I left in 1997) because at the end of the
day it was realised that we were all employed to do a job and most people’s
personal development objectives were nothing to do with work. The only people
who were super-keen on the PDPs were those for whom ‘getting on’ professionally
was more important than their lives outside work. Another group who liked them
were managers who had a thing about controlling the thoughts and actions of
their staff. I was delighted the PDP plan was dropped.
My
second encounter was a few years later in 2001. I was working as an
Environmental Business Consultant for the Groundwork Trust. The PDP system was
already in place and it was introduced to me as something that was entirely for
my own benefit and should include work-related and non-work-related personal
objectives.
Now,
faced with the simple task of producing PDPs for my PGCE course, I find myself
in an infantilised mood. I have, rather late in the term, recently filled in my
first PDP and, reading it after a 24-hour gap, have noticed my unhelpful tone,
sarcastic comments and highly critical (not in a good way) approach. What is it
about these PDPs that gets me so worked up and annoyed? My negative and
unhelpful attitude was the same at Watford and for Groundwork. I lay awake last
night for several hours, unable to get to the bottom of my antagonism. This
morning, however, I think I can see what the problems are. The following is how
I perceive the structural place of the PDP within organisations.
It
seems to me that any organisational tool produced by an organisation for the
benefit of individuals working in (or for) the organisation should be there as
a non-prescriptive resource unless issues of Health and Safety, Legal
Compliance or the public good are paramount.
Otherwise one is simply attempting to coerce individuals to conform to a
particular mode of thinking and self-organisation.
If
an organisational tool is produced for the benefit of the organisation itself,
the organisation must be clear about it. It is fair to make such tools
mandatory as long as the individuals charged with using the tool understand
that it is for the benefit of the organisation (or the greater good). In
employment terms, one would be employed to conform. The conformity is bought,
it is a transaction and thus one has a choice, be paid to conform or not
conform and not be paid. The clarity of the position is reasonably easy to
understand.
The
PGCE PDP falls somewhere between the positions outlined above. It is Mandatory
(if we wish to pass the course and become teachers we have to comply) yet it is
supposedly for our own benefit. It is there to prove to our Assessors that we
are able to write a coherent plan for ourselves, carry it out and improve
ourselves. The PDP is thus thought to help both the individuals and the
organisation. As a multi-disciplinary, touchy-feely person, I should like this
surely?
But
the whole notion of having objectives, deciding on a time-table and a schema to
carry them out and then deciding when they have been achieved and signing them
off is a very, very limiting way of going about one’s life. And it is derived from
the military.
Operations
Research (OR) was devised and formalised in the UK between the two World Wars.
The idea is that the process of setting clear objectives compartmentalises
large problems into a series of narrower ones. The expression of means and
timetables allows the chain of command to keep control of every item at every
stage and thus ensures that strategists know what is going on, how mush
progress is being made and when to intervene with revised plans. After the
Second World War, theorists had a problem – why was it that the Allies were
often more effective militarily than the Nazis even though the Nazi’s OR was
much more highly developed, better organised and much more detailed? The
conclusion was that the Nazi OR included too much detail; the ways in which
individuals should behave, the attitudes they should adopt and so-on and
so-forth, were all brought into the OR system. The allies, by contrast, only
included details that related directly to the mechanics of the operation being
undertaken. The Allies realised that the varied behaviour of those doing the
tasks was a superb resource that, when added to the OR, would produce
flexibility and innovation in real time as the tasks were being undertaken. In
other words, individuals are valuable to OR situations by virtue of their
non-conformity and incompatibility.
This brings me back to Charlie’s coffee machine. After the Second World War, the German economy was in ruins. Aid and a high degree of political control from the Allies, helped re-build the economy into what became known as the powerhouse of Europe. Many ex-Nazi businesses are now world leaders in their field. Krups, the domestic appliance people, was not a Nazi oriented business (Krupp the munitions people were) but you can see where my argument is going. The Nazi version of OR is hugely effective as a mechanism for succeeding in old-style, top-down, command and control Capitalism. The freer Allies version, that does not attempt to control individual endeavour, is also well suited to the enterprise. But, as the ever-changing world economy searches for ways in which social justice and process becomes as important as end results, the whole notion of OR is slowly being consigned to history except in cases where the mechanics of a complex set of actions have to be well planned ahead of time. Silicon Valley understands all this very well and the growth of the Internet has helped too. Wikipedia, MySpace, Facebook and the rise of shareware all show how the collective can benefit from the democratising influences of non-conformity. By all means use OR to plan what needs to be done in the extrovert world but it is folly to allow OR to become an influe