We started off with discussing some quotes of the Vilhauer text in smaller groups. I thought to myself “Oh, I am ready for this and I have quite a few things I see critically here” – if you read my last blog post you know what I mean. However the quotes that were chosen actually didn’t touch on any of the points I didn’t agree with. Actually, the quotes on the hand-out were making perfect sense to me. That was interesting to see. I started to wonder if I had seen the whole chapter I had read far more critical due to jarring with some aspects of it. I reviewed and noticed that I became more open to Gadamer’s Ethics of Play. Maybe sometimes we form judgements too quickly. A good lesson.
There were very comprehensive summary notes being handed out at the end of the session, so I will not go into everything that went on yesterday. So here just a few notes to remind myself of what was particularly interesting to me:
- Lindsay
mentioned the “raw hamburger” technique, whereby you repeat an
aspect of what your interviewee said in a very neutral way, in order
to get them talking more about it. This was very interesting, as I
am a psychotherapist as well as a lecturer and I use similar
techniques in my practice with clients, however I had never heard of
the term “raw hamburger” technique, which I just found funny and
interesting. Given that I learned about this term during the PgCert
session it gave me the idea to explore and try out if this and other
techniques I use with clients might be helpful to use in tutorials
with students as well. Thinking about it – there are actually more
cross-overs between therapy and tutorials than I have previously
considered
- I very much liked the metaphor of Gadamer that trying to communicate is a bit like fusing the participants horizons. So true! And easy to remember.
- I found the string technique during the quotation discussions really useful. An excellent idea. I quite often encounter that one student heavily dominates a discussion within a small tutorial group of 4 to 8 students. So far I have struggled addressing this elegantly. Often I said after some time that I would like to hear some other voices, or similar, but it never felt that positive or constructive. And sometimes I felt my interference came a bit late and by that point the others had shut down already, leaving the field to the one dominant student. I’ll try it to see if the string technique could be a good technique, a self-regulating tool, to address this.
- We
spent a good part of the session addressing Learning Outcomes. There
were many interesting aspects during that part of the seminar, but
for myself it was particularly interesting to hear which LO’s are
required to be met for our own learning during the PgCert:
Knowledge, Communication and Realisation. Will keep that in mind….
- It was interesting to hear about https://dashboards.arts.ac.uk/ and look at the TEF stats for our college – I had no idea this insight was available to me!
Your blog is really well done – great reflectiveness and a good record of your evolution as the unit progresses. Can’t wait to read more!