Skype chat Sunday 6
November 2016 (11 am)
Working on my AOLs, I am asking myself how to approach the
writing process of my essays. I have not found a satisfying solution yet,
however, there are some ‘aha moments’ that help me through the process that I
want to share with you and I would love to hear about your approaches.
There are two things that made me panic starting with the
writing: I only write personal stories with no interesting content – my stories
are mundane … and, I am judging either myself or others – I’m not
objective enough for an academic essay. So how do I find the balance between
personal narrative or judgemental reflections and reflective practice in
writing the AOL essay?
I guess that, because the AOLs are all about my personal
learning, there will be narrative parts in my essay. Those sections are there
to explain and describe my experiences. The reason why those stories seem to be
trivial to me is because so far, I have only talked about the ‘what’. There are
multiple layers that need to be discovered in order to bring out something with
more significance. This is the moment when I have to ask myself questions
starting with ‘how’. Having done that, going through some literature (about
learning theories but also more specifically about my topic) really helps me to
figure out what I want to claim for and to make my stories more meaningful.
This is a very exciting part of this module because, you know that you have
learnt things over time but to see that there are people who develop theories
around similar experiences makes you feel that your experiences are in fact
relevant and valuable. Moreover, The Work-based Learning Student Handbook (chapter 5)
from Ruth Helyer helped me a lot to structure my narrative stories.
I’m not sure yet how to approach the issue of being
judgemental. What role does critique play in my reflection? During the Skype
chat we talked about the importance of keeping in mind that we are constructing
an academic essay to say that our prior learning is valuable and not to look at
what we have done wrong. One way to do so is to look at each AOL title as if it
was a module.
So even though there is a lot of
introspection that can be emotionally challenging, at some point, we need to
move away from too narrative and personal approaches. This isn’t always very
easy, but there are different tools that can help you. I'm sure that some of
you have some more thoughts on this?
