Shortly after starting to write this, I decided to allow it to be a bit of a ‘stream of consciousness’ exercise and just write whatever came to me. I did have some ideas about what I wanted to reflect on but in the spirit of this course I decided to allow it to be more free-form and just see where my thoughts took me rather than follow any type of plan. I have not gone back and re-worded etc anything so apologies if it at times reads a little clunkily ?
Where to start? And what to do? I’m not sure. There really are so many ways in which one could reflect on aspects of this course but given my usual lack of organisation to have attempted anything more challenging (for me) I am opting for the medium that we will all most often use and encounter within university – the written word.
It occurs to me that there has been much conversation and discussion in the group about the use of readings, or lack thereof, in the course so far, so maybe that will be an interesting aspect of education and this course to reflect on here.
I have always enjoyed reading, although I’d struggle to call myself an avid reader, nonetheless reading has been a constant throughout my life. In my previous profession in social care, reading (and writing) was, essentially a secondary activity. Reading was done quickly: take in the pertinent information about the person/incident/situation and move on to the work at hand. Incident reports and formal notes were written with a dispassionate matter-of-factness, always mindful that said words could be viewed by service users or used as evidence in court or other legal proceedings. Brevity was valued. Record and/or communicate the required information as quick and efficiently as possible. Why? Because the real work was not in the reading or writing of reports, it was ‘out there’, working with service users, interacting with them face-to-face (at times a little too face-to-face in the more heated situations!), and communicating verbally with colleagues; seeking advice, support, sharing worries and fears about service users. In short, all the ‘good bits’, the parts of my profession that I did for over ten years that I was passionate about and deeply invested in was interactive, interpersonal and inherently verbal.
Given this, the move to studying at university under an education model that seems to be dominated by a ‘sit by yourself and read’ culture has been challenging. Reading, once either a relatively minimal work activity or a pleasurable past-time that I engaged in to de-stress, relax, and unwind, has now become the activity that I am, it seems, expected to do for the majority of my time. Now it’s not to say that I don’t always enjoy what I read – often the texts and the ideas they contain are fascinating, and already new areas of understanding have been opened to me by them – but I must confess that I do find it a rather isolating experience.
I can guess at the reasons this ‘read alone’ model exists: tradition, efficacy in transmitting specific information, economic imperatives to ‘deliver the product as cheaply as possible’. There will be many others I’m sure. But for my personal experience of education I find it increasingly limiting and a source of dissatisfaction with my decision to enter higher education.
I, like many others I’m sure, am a person who learns best when interacting with others in some manner. Be that listening to a lecture given by a passionate speaker, or a discussion around a challenging subject. Give me some articles to read, and I will absorb some of the information, but put me into a lively discussion/debate and my mind makes jumps of reasoning and understanding that at times even surprise me. Put simply, I don’t learn best on my own. And I don’t really enjoy it.
With this in mind, the interactive nature of this course is something that I hugely value. I love hearing different ideas and perspectives from such an interesting and impressive group of people, experiencing and observing how our communication and interaction has changed as we all become more familiar with each other, and – a first for my time at university – actually knowing the names of everyone in the room!
I appreciate the concern or worry about not having many (or any!) readings to do in this course – I experience them as well, and I am conscious that there is most likely fascinating knowledge out there that I could be learning by reading more around the subject. Perhaps reading more will be something we decide to do more of as a group next semester, and if we do then I will willingly participate. But perhaps we could consider ways of reading that are more social, more interactive? Reading texts together, perhaps, and discussing them immediately after? I’m sure there will be lots of ways that I haven’t considered that could be used to make reading more social!
But for now, as a reflection of semester one, I can honestly say that I have valued the break from solitary reading this course has afforded me, and if that continues into next semester, I will choose to enjoy the alternative ways of learning that that absence of reading affords me. I am realising that the processes of decision making and interaction etc that this course entails are the aspects that I value the most. By experiencing those processes, we will learn, and we will hopefully take that learning out with us to other areas of our education, changing (I hope) how we interact and engage with the individuals and institutions we encounter. In doing so, we can perhaps be part of bringing about the much-needed changes that are needed to modern university education.
Hi Sean,
I enjoyed reading your reflection on the use of readings in group discussion in semester one. The introduction of how in your previous profession the reading and writing of texts was understood as secondary and used to facilitate the primary task of caring for service users was insightful. The texts there, were read & written with purpose and had an immediate effect in your workplace. This contrasts with university where the texts are read by oneself and crafted into lengthy essays where the immediacy and purpose aren’t the same. I was glad to read that despite the isolation you feel when reading texts now you feel uplifted by the interactive nature of the course which is a feeling that I also share with you. I enjoyed your reflection however your stream of consciousness style could have a bit more structure to it.