Books, books and more books!

I've bought BOOKS!
I've never bought books for my teaching before, I go to the library and borrow theirs, or I read extracts from what I have been given as recommended readings, and up to now not really thought too much of it all. I tend to work instinctively and allow my referencing to fit around that, and move on to the next thing.
So what prompted this then?

I am a voracious reader and always have been. Part of my aim for this stage of my learning in the Graduate Diploma was not to create too much printing and paperwork - but the Research topic has caught me and I need to be ABLE to write all over stuff to get my thoughts around what I am learning. The word clouds are a fun way to visualise the mess in my head and from there I need to articulate my way into a cohesive body of writing. On Saturday I need to present where I am at for the Research Topic as well as for the Special Topic, and I want to present them both on different ways. They are both about my learning so far, not necessarily what my essay will be about. So I want to present what I have found in my bookish adventures and see where that will take me, for the following two subjects:

Research topic will be to describe how I would research the following question:
Why is reflective writing helpful in a practical course?

Special Topic is to summarise my learning journey so far on this topic:
How can students be encouraged to engage in deeper learning during a more compressed time frame?

What does that have to do with books?
I read Kathleen Gabriel's Teaching Unprepared Students in one sitting and realised that this book gave me so much insight into my own students and the issues we face, I can do a lot with that for the Special Topic, and that will lead to the Research in time as well.
Jonathan Bergman's Flip your Classroom I haven't read yet, but some Google Scholar articles helped me realise that more detail and examples will inform how I engage students more deeply. (Special Topic)
Ken Bain's What the Best College Teachers Do is somewhat familiar to me since I read a portion of his writing during the Tertiary Teaching Certificate in January this year for our Team Teaching exercise:
Looking at this photo of where we started I can see the beginnings of my current topics quite clearly. Reflection, action and an ending are all pointing to the directions I want to take in my Special Topic as well as relating to the Research.



Learning, Change, Engagement and happy students are the products I wish to achieve through this deeper engagement and reflective writing. The challenge to me is in how I can unpack this and how can I measure the depths of the outcomes?



This is exciting and motivating, and what I have to recognise is the bit in the middle:



Patience will bring its own rewards - but I only have 14 hours to save the earth (oh no that's Flash Gordon)  a limited amount of time to instil that into my studies and my students....so IMMEDIATE engagement has to be the key - how to get that - RELATIONSHIPS, empathy and being accessible. Building up an equity of trust will develop the engagement so necessary for the deeper learning, and the best way to encourage that is to be myself.
This is what I have learned from not only my own adult educators, but from my bosses, my peers and from my readings, including Jane Vella, Ken Bain, David Boud, Kathleen Gabriel, Nathalie Depraz et al, Carr and Kemmis, and Mcniff and Whitehead, among others in my reading adventures over the past 6 weeks.
My own students have helped to crystallise a lot of half thoughts that have been lurking in the basement of my thoughts, and by asking the class on a regular basis how they feel about the use of technology and what they would like to see improve, I gain better insight into how to keep them better engaged and what does and does not work, particularly where it comes to how they find out the information needed and how we can confirm that more clearly in class.

Goals for Friday so I can get 9 copies for the class and Linda:

1. Separate this out into a presentation each for Research and for Special Topic - take a clear stance I think.
1. Research needs to be about the reading
2. define the terms of engagement - what is the question and for whom is it asked? Where and how will the paradigms and methodology be? What are the kinds of research that I need to take into consideration and how will I choose what wold be the most appropriate form of research? How did I get there?
2. Special Topic about the learning journey
1. define that - what have I learned - where did that come from? What do I feel about that now, in comparison with 6 weeks ago - what have I done with that time? What do I need to do next?
2. Why do I still feel I am skating around the target? I just found a list of questions to help with reflective writing - better use that then!

And now it is Saturday and class was really good. This combination of a few weeks away to think, read and work, then come in to class for 3 hours and share and discuss, is very helpful. The act of summarising where we are at and then sharing that for feedback is a very powerful method of informing us how we have progressed and whether our direction in thinking is not too far from the criteria we are aiming to meet. I had a 'phenomenology moment' after lunch today (Sharon from class called it that when she noticed how I had an AHA!! moment at our last class in March. Today's moment was realising how an answer to my questioning why even as facilitators of learning, when we are students, we make the same errors as our own students. My thought is this: as a teacher, we are one step removed from the learning, and are looking from the outside in, to what the student is doing, and that distance allows us to see where things need improving. When we study, we are emotionally involved, because now we a re the ones striving to achieve the goal of passing the assessment and ultimately the course. This closer proximity clouds our judgment and means we don't always see what we need to do, to be our ultimate best, so we make the same kinds of mistakes and leave bits out, just like our own students do.

For our next class we do one last Patchwork Text, now I know to just keep to my own journey and not put too much about my class or about reference my writing, but stick with how the events affect me and how they help me to learn.