Reflexive Pedagogy: Discovering Self with the Other

Reflexive Pedagogy: Discovering Self with the Other

“We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.”

Rabbi Shemuel ben Nachmani, as quoted in the Talmudic tractate Berakhot (55b.)

 

Abstract

Reflexive Pedagogy is directed first at the SELF and gradually overflows and embraces the OTHER. It offers, teachers and particularly teacher educators a process to examine the often conflicting ethical, social, emotional, and intellectual messages that they offer to learners about what it means to be a TEACHER. While reflexivity remains an integral part of ensuring the transparency and quality of the research inquiry, its role in teacher education among teacher educators in India has merited scant attention. A Structured Learning Experience (SLE) drawing on Experiential Learning (EL) techniques is offered to Teacher Educators to ‘Discover Self through the Other’

Key Words: reflexive pedagogy, structured learning experience, experiential learning, self discovery,

 

A Structured Learning Experience to Discover SELF with the help of the OTHER. Is this even possible – see for yourself!

Through this interesting game YOU are invited to discover a bit, perhaps more of YOURSELF through the eyes of the OTHER.

The facilitator / Teacher / Teacher Educator, suggests to the participants – ‘I am inviting you to pick an object  ... which you believe ‘says’ something ... an important ‘aspect’ of yourself  ... any object that is around you ... (the lesser the instructions the better ...) you could add ‘... please avoid plucking flowers etc ... I am sure there are lots objects ... around you that does ‘depict’ an important part of yourself ...’ (best ... to avoid giving examples ... cos most folks tend to ‘follow examples’)

While you go about picking that object that you believe depicts an important aspect of you ... a  request – PERFECT SILENCE ... NOT TO TALK TO/WITH ANYBODY and  DO NOT SHOW THE OBJECT TO ANY OTHER PERSON ...

You could add ... not talking is going to be difficult  ... but believe me. ... you will soon understand WHY ? ....

By this time you have selected a suitable space .. where the participants can comfortably stand around in a circle ... and before the participants come in with their selected objects.... position yourself in the space you have chosen ... and silently indicate to the participant to ‘place’ their object right in the middle of the space you have chosen ... the golden rule... the lesser the instruction ... the better ...to queries such as ‘should I place it here ...?’ you could just nod or say ‘yes’

Once all the objects have been placed in the middle ... and with the participants standing around in a circle ... yes a large circle ... with all the chosen objects right in the middle of the newly formed circle ... there is bound to be a lot of chit chat and giggling  ...

After they are sufficiently curious as to what comes next ... you could get started by ... inviting at random any two persons (a name list of the participants, would be useful) to the centre ...it’s important you ‘choose the two’ and better  to choose those from different points of the circle ... not a pair standing together ...

With the two now in the middle, near the chosen objects, with the others watching  ... the activity starts... invite them to say their names... and whether they know each other ... if they know each other ... would they know the object ... chosen by the other ... ?Even if the answer is YES ... you could still proceed ...

Invite one person to ‘pick out’ the object that represents the other ... well he/she may say ... how is it possible ... etc? ‘It is not possible ...’ You could help by adding...TRY ... it is very interesting to note how persons respond to this request ... pick out the object that represents the other ...

Observe carefully the hesitation or confidence with which the person picks out the object... some may just ‘refuse’ ... but you could add ... just GUESS, and do pick an object ... it is important that you pick an object ... that you think represents ... the other person now standing with you ...

Once the object has been picked... ask the person who picked the object ... to name the ‘quality’ that she sees in the object ... that represents the other...

Most folks start describing the object ... intervene and say ... ‘what quality about the other do you see ... in the object that you are now holding ... what could that quality of hers/ his made him/ her choose this particular object ... with which you think she chose to describe herself....’ there is bound to be a lot of silence .. and kindly note the silence the gestures, the hesitation, the words giggles ...(in your analysis .. you could recall ...with your participants ...’do you remember how he/she hesitated to guess ...’)

In most cases when a person is asked to pick an object it is usually the wrong object.... and this is revealed only after the person has painstakingly tried to describe the other ...

At the end of the description ask the person who was being described ... is this the object you chose ... if the answer is yes... then you could ask him/him .. was the other person able to identify the quality that you saw of yourself in the object ... ?

If the other person has failed to choose the right object... ask the person being described to now pick out the object she/he chose ... and offer it to the other person ... now you could add ... now that you have the correct object he/she chose ... could you identify the quality that he/she sees of him/herself in the object that you are now holding in your hand?

Try this with a few more pairs, senior most and junior most, two best friends, different subject teachers, male and female ...

When a few pairs have tried to identify the other ... and when they have all gone back to the larger circle ... ASK THE PARTICIPANTS ... WHAT DO YOU THINK IS HAPPENING NOW ... HOW DO WE SEE THE OTHER? WOULD YOU LIKE TO ADD ... TO WHAT WE ARE DISCUSSING...? ALLOW THE PARTICIPANTS TO SPEAK ... THIS IS VERY INSIGHTFUL AND A GREAT OPPORTUNITY FOR PEER LEARNING...

An analysis of the objects: after having invited three or four sets of people ... draw the attention of the participants to the objects themselves ... ask them to come closer... and ask ... now what do you ‘see’ ... can you ‘really’ identify folks from their appearance ...? How accurate are we in our observations of the other?  

Invite them into their classrooms ...What about the children in your classrooms... how would they want you to ‘see’ them ... which is that quality or qualities that they so desperately wish for you to notice ... On a more personal note ... invite them to their homes... ‘do you even see your sons and daughters, spouse ...’ as they really are?

Look at these objects... what do you see... yes like these objects... we just see stones, leaves, flowers... and what have you ... but the truth is that these were chosen by persons to represent themselves ... now isn’t that striking... how easily we dismiss persons by their appearance? All similar yet so strikingly perceived by the self as unique ... Our tendency to generalize, conversations about the North East for example ... eight states crying out uniqueness and we reduce them all to convenient moniker.  

Let’s go a little deeper ... how many leaves do you see... are they all the same... even if they are the same... do you think that the people who chose them chose them for the same reasons ...

Take a closer look at the objects  ... Have you noticed some objects are large, colourful, bright ... yet there are others ... tiny ... hidden away and they are hardly noticed ... all this is happening as you describe the objects they have brought ...  ARE THERE PEOPLE, STUDENTS, FAMILY MEMBERS... tiny and hidden  away ... but do they really want to hide? What would you do to discover these people?

Who are the teachers, people in society, who are the most visible ...  and what about them is visible ...but from what you see would you be able to describe how they wish to be seen and known ...who are the INVISIBLE ONES ... HIDDEN AWAY FROM PUBLIC GLARE ... How does your classroom, your school make PERSONS ... VISIBLE and INVISIBLE?

By way of summing up ...You could add... you know some of you  ... must have certainly wondered ... at the beginning of this small game ... ‘what quality of mine would I want to project’, perhaps you’d never given it a thought ... representing my quality through and object ... or for others ... ‘chalo yaar ... its just a game’ ... and some of you must have gotten lost in your ‘gupshup’ ... and this is so true... most folks go through life ... not knowing who they are ... how they wish to be seen and  ...  lost in gupshup.... the most frightening truth is ... that these folks ... are to a large extent lost ... it is the folks who ... are curious to discover and know themselves ... who appear to lead  ... meaningful lives ... for themselves and for others...!

While we all agree this is a game  ... none of us would deny the fact that there is a lot of REALITY that can be seen through this STRUCTURED LEARNING EXPERIENCE.

Mindfulness: The Power of Words

To Heal or Hurt ... it's all in your hands... oops ... 'your words'

 

It’s been a few days now, since a colleague remarked ‘You, should mind the tone of your voice ...’ or words to that effect! Despite my rebuttal, ‘it could be mutual’ and a quick private word with her, immediately after the incident - we ‘assured’ each other ‘no offence meant and none taken’ ... but I must admit long after that, her ‘words’ still had me in knots!

It was not hard to imagine the multiple ways that such a situation could ‘degenerate’ into, I came up with the following: ‘Ok, you’ve had your say, I’ll get back with you...’, ‘Seethe with anger’, ‘Feel insulted/slighted’ ...

I also realized the reactions to such situations significantly differ according to contexts - when ‘played out before an audience’ and when ‘sans an audience’.

What, if any, is the learning from such ‘sensitive situations’, it is not as if such ‘situations’ will not arise in the future, and most particularly, keeping in mind the dangers of such situations ‘degenerating’, and the potential to set off a vicious ‘eye for an eye’ cycle.

 ‘You, should mind the tone of your voice...’ the implied ‘imperative’ and the ‘modal’ ... could connote tones and meanings quite unintended by the speaker, but acknowledging the ‘dangerous possibilities’ ... here’s an attempt to ‘rephrase’ the same ‘accusatory phrase’!

‘You know ... your tone comes across to me ... as....’ or ‘When I hear the tone of your voice ... I feel ...’, or ‘I am not quite sure, how I feel, hearing the tone of your voice ...’ And all of a sudden, such a proactive, ‘I’ squarely places and accepts the responsibility for what ‘I’ am hearing and ‘my attempts to describe my feelings’ and removes the ‘sting’ of the ‘accusatory’, ‘you’ and ‘should ...’ ‘The Power of Words’ to ‘hurt or heal’ … have immense implications! 

Not quite sure, whether it was Mohandas Gandhi? or Louis Fischer? or Henry Powell Spring? or Martin Luther King? who famously remarked, ‘An Eye for an Eye Will Make the Whole World Blind’ – I, for one certainly do not fancy a ‘blind world’ given the ‘tools’ at our disposal to ‘see better’!

Reflexivity: towards representation, legitimation, and praxis

Not only are things not what they seem, they aren’t even what they are called

– Francisco Quevedo

 

In many areas of education, ‘reflection is now expected to form part of every student’s analytical learning-to-learn armoury’ (Clegg 2004 in Ross 2011). Though reflection is often conflated with reflexivity, both have their distinct differences. Reflexivity is usually defined in terms of something ‘turning back’ upon itself in the form of a subject-object-subject gaze or action, distinguishing it from reflection, which involves a subject contemplating an object outside itself (Archer 2010, 2). It is this difference that reflexivity unlike reflection, lends itself to address the more complex and intractable problems in Education and Educational Research, such as:

 

·         How to comprehend and engage constructively with difference,

·         How to gain awareness of one’s own cultural situatedness, and, thereby, also

·         How to recognize and address issues of discrimination, inequity, and injustice.

 

Additionally, reflexivity, as Kögler (1996, 22) puts it: ‘alerts us to the possibility that the reasons behind what we think and do, including our attitudes, beliefs and responses to others may be “out of reach” of the subjects themselves, since they are imposed through disciplining socialization and normalizing education.’

 

A critical examination of the social construction of the legacy of psychological concepts, such as intelligence and development, challenges us to confront, Cartesian reductionism in education - the tendency to disconnect the production of knowledge from the social-political context in which it is situated. This also serves to caution us against the traps of both biological determinism and environmental or social determinism. Such caution is also indispensable because any form of determinism occludes human agency - the heart of reflexivity and reflexive pedagogy.

 

A reflexive awareness of the social world includes an understanding of how one’s own and other people’s life histories are situated in social, historical, cultural, political contexts. It is essential to examine the interplay between our cultural practices, our beliefs and values and our personal history: the processes by which we have been constituted and the way in which we operate our day-to-day lives: in order to make visible the taken-for-granted cultural practices that underpin our thinking and praxis (Shea, 1996; Giroux, 1995).

 

The aim of this note is to position critical reflexive thinking as having a key part to play in professional research in closing the loop between the approach taken to carry out the research, the research findings, the contribution to academic knowledge and how the research practically informs professional practice. We draw upon hermeneutics and critical discourse analysis highlighting the role of critical reflexivity to illustrate how these qualitative research methodologies can be used to bring professional knowledge, practice and engagement in the academic world.

 

A reflexive approach has much to recommend it to the researcher who is specifically seeking to develop professional understanding and make a contribution to knowledge, understanding and academic praxis. It is structured around a praxis inquiry protocol that encourages researchers to investigate their own professional practice through an integrated process of describing, explaining, theorising and attempting to change practice.

 

Denzin and Lincoln observed, qualitative researchers today continue to struggle with an ongoing crisis in qualitative methodology: a “triple crisis of representation, legitimation, and praxis” (2000:17). This proposed introduction to an exploration of researchers’ reflexivity seeks to demonstrate that the concept of reflexivity allows us to break this crisis down into three questions that are important to explore in any qualitative inquiry.

 

• First, in our representations of the social world, what are our underlying assumptions about the production of knowledge – how do we know, and who can claim to know?

 

• What is considered legitimate knowledge, and what role does power, identity and positionality play in this process? Finally,

 

• How does one put into practice the reflexive techniques and address methodological issues in a way that results in valid, good-quality social research?

 

These are the three main methodological dilemmas, which this discussion will explore. The intention here is not to offer a resolution to any of these issues, but rather to demonstrate that it is in reflexively thinking-through these dilemmas that the researcher may benefit the most. Thus, introductory presentation argues that the concept of reflexivity offers an important opportunity to explore crucial questions in the “thinking,” the “doing” and the “evaluation” of qualitative methodology.

 

Reflexivity and reflexive pedagogies fit easily into the epistemological frameworks of social science education. Reflexive approaches assert that all knowledge is situated and seek to expose the assumptions underpinning different academic practices and conventions rendering problematic those discourses that seek to purport scientific knowledge as factual, value-free and objective.

 

Reflexivity calls researchers to see the importance in noticing and criticising their own pre-understandings and to examine the impact of these, on how they engage with the social world of academics. This form of self-comprehension requires, as researchers to “challenge their epistemological pre-understandings” and to explore “alternative possible commitments”. This “reflexive turn” increasingly encourages researchers to be aware of, to evaluate and to be suspicious of the relationship between themselves as researchers and the object of their research.

 

Researchers who take up the reflexivity approach to education give up some degree of authority, as the final meaning of their work is always determined in negotiation and, as such, eschews finality.