As I've been looking deeper into “Reflective Practice” I have realised how key it is to the development of our profession. Without even realising you are constantly reflecting on yourself. I am going to look deeper into the successfulness of reflecting and how we use it in our practice.
Firstly I would like to start with a look at how I reflect myself. The best ways I've come across to best explain the ways we reflect are:
“Reflection – in – action”
“Reflection – on -action” Donald Schon
Donald Schon's (1987) thoughts and ideas on reflection really started to develop my thinking. As a dancer I find that I constantly reflect while dancing. It is almost impossible not too as you are constantly switching your weight and balance. It's almost something we do sub consciously after years in practice. If you are falling off balance or something isn't quite working properly we think immediately what were doing wrong and how we can fix it, whether it's an arm movement, tensing our muscle's harder or pulling up on our leg. Anything that corrects or enhances our dancing. Being aware of this constant reflecting is something that can really enhance our practice. Being able to recognise our mistake's and correct then instantly are invaluable to a dancer.
However to become a truly great dancer it is suggested by people such as “Donald Schon” that you are also able to “reflect – on – action”. This will then make you aware of any problem's you didn't notice when in practice, sometimes things feel right but might not look right from an audience prospective. Recording your dancing or having someone else taking notes on you can let you look back and reflect on your skill. This helps to improve yourself and anything you might not have realised at the time. If you reflect back on yourself then you can change your mistake's for next time. We should always be aware of reflecting on action as this is a way to be constantly improving yourself.
When I looked at the way Kolb had created a learning cycle, I discovered the way the thought's of working were processed, although I couldn't quite decide where exactly I fit in. I felt I entered the cycle at, “Concrete Experience” as I definitely learn best from DOING. However I also know that as a dancer, not a choreographer I am being taught something, therefore that also put's me under “Active Experimentation”. After this I felt a little confused, wondering could you even fit into two categories? I decided I needed a better understand of the learning cycle and got advised to look at fellow practitioner's research to help me. A few people made me aware of a more in detail look at the cycle which broke it done more and in fact made me realise that indeed you could be a mixture of two different ones not necessarily one particular. He shows us that everyone has a different way of learning and we all have our all learning style's which become obvious when we look as an individual at where we fit into the cycle.
Sometimes I learn a complete routine from someone and go away to do it by myself and realise I don't even take anything away from that experience and actually I don't completely know what I'm doing. I've found that the only way I know I've truly got the steps is by doing the step physically.
When other people are around its so easy to subconsciously watch the person next to you and even end up following them. This is no help to you when your trying to learn the steps or combination but is helpful once you have finished the initial learning process and are onto the next reflective section of correcting the overall look and the whole cast looking the same and working as one together. Kolb (1984:41) “knowledge results from the combination of grasping experience and transforming it”. I think how I took this is to grasp the experience and transform it into how you can figure it out and make it work best for you, we done all work the same.
I think a journal is a great way to reflect. If you write down your feelings then relate them to how you think you performed, you can learn a lot from yourself. Not only can you become aware to the physical changes you want to make but you can consider the emotional side to your performance. Are you looking tired or sluggish? Does your performance look laboured? Or, on the opposite scale, do you have lots of energy? Is your performing skills bigger and better than usual and what factor's do you think have lead to this? Lot's of reasons can relate to this. Maybe you hadn't got enough sleep, or not eaten properly. Maybe you are having a personal issue, like an argument or bad news. Writing down all your emotional feelings can give you a great insight to what other factor's may come into play to create your overall performance. I have used journals before for a couple of years to aid my profession and to continue learning about myself and my skills. Although I didn't know to the full extent how to write a professional journal, I just wrote facts on my technique. Now reflecting on my previous journals I can see that looking into a more emotional aspects will also benefit me.
After reading previous writings on journals such as by “Reid and Moon” I have really become more aware to how detailed and intense journal writing can be to really get the most out of self reflecting. I also discovered another slightly deeper look into what Reid and Moon were suggesting by another thinker called, Gibbs. He uses the same basis but puts it into a diagram of thinking. He set's it all out on the table and joins the lines between what your thinking to why you are thinking that.
However I do feel that too much reflective practice can also have a negative effect on certain situation's. When auditioning we can reflect on the process intensely and really run ourselves down. We can judge people's reaction's wrong or take people's word's critically and end up thinking we did a really bad job. Taking other people's reaction's the wrong way and letting it affect us mentality can sometimes cloud our judgement of our performance. We may have done everything perfect and to
the best of our ability but we are just not what they are looking for on this casting. I had a conversation with a fellow dancer about his recent experience of working on the other side on the audition panel.
“Jenny was fantastic, one of the most gifted dancer's I've seen in a long time. Unforunately we need a brunette dancer that's 5'9” to fit in with the people we already have cast.” Billy
There is nothing that the dancer could of done to get this job, so reflecting on there performance would have been pointless and unhelpful. Therefore we can reflect wrongly. This is the time when another person can be helpful and more insightful into our performance.
I have also become aware to the world of Web 2.0 I created a blog and have found it very useful with reflecting not only on my own practice but also on other's too. It has been a great tool to practice reflecting. Being able to communicate with other people and look at there ways of doing similar tasks within the same profession. It's a great way to learn and take experiences from them and apply it to your own work to help improve yourself. Creating a collection of professional photo's and having helpful suggestions on your work sparks thought's you might not have thought of previous but would improve your work.
As this essay suggests, reflection plays a big part in our profession and the ways in which we improve ourselves. I feel that I have gained more knowledge and become more aware of the effectiveness of this skill.
References:
SCHÖN, D. A. 1987. Educating the reflective practitioner : toward a new design for teaching and learning in the professions, San Francisco, Jossey‐Bass.
KOLB, D. A. 1984. Experiential learning, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Moon, J. 1999. Learning journals: A Handbook for academics, students and professional development (London: Kogan Page)
No comments:
Post a Comment