Changing lives. Opening minds.
Name educator: Ginte Jasiene
Name partner organisation: Kitokie projektai
GENERAL INFORMATION
Description of the course:
Aim of testing project: The aim of the project is to prepare recommendations based on the reflections and observations gathered from artists/trainers how the process of socialization and education could be improved or transformed; also give some personal and professional support for artists/trainers during process of their work.
In order to do this group reflections were organized every week.
Participants were invited to come each week and were never punished if they didin’t come
PRACTICAL INFORMATION
Date(s) of the testing project: September-November 2016
Target group: artists which work with the youth, staff and teachers in the centers of socialization and the staff of Creative partnership
Number of participants: 26
Nationality of the participants: lithuanian
Sex of the participants: females 16 man 10
Age of the participants: 25 to 50
Amount of meetings with the learners: 7 meetings (approximately once in a week) for a half of the learning day
| A | Number of people reflecting: | Solo (1 person) | Small group
(< 20 people) + |
Large group
(> 20 people) + |
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| B | The way(s) of sharing: | Talking in big group. Talking in small groups | |||||
| Verbal: | + | + | |||||
| Non-verbal: | Pictures /
drawings + |
Text | Embodied | sculpture
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Other forms of expression
Filling scheme on the big whiteboard -“common mind”
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| Digital: | Padlet
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Social media
+ Facebook group |
Digital diary
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| C | Place of reflection (where) | Indoors
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Outdoors | On-line
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How did you organize your testing project (or to put it differently: as this is a testing project for experimenting, what will be different comparing to the same course you run the previous time)?
I never did such thing before. Aims of reflection in this project was:
| F | Connecting with principles: which principle(s) were you taking into consideration mostly when facilitating reflection with learners? Please add 2 sentences about how you were translating the principle into practice. For more information: see postings on principles. | |
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Raising awareness within learners to ‘own’ their learning in personally meaningful way | |
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Developing a relationship between educator and learners based on trust, openness, empathy, honesty, dialogue and feedback
In this project we succeeded really to built atmosphere of trust, open exploration, sharing. Ways: First meeting we spend a time introducing ourselves in a large group and talking in trios about our previous similar experience. Small talks about personal things in a big group (no more than one in a session) for worming up the atmosphere. Examples: interesting event from this week, how did I arrived here this morning, etc. Showing our moods in sculptures. Group sometimes was doing energizing group activities – usually it was proposed and facilitated by group members. Starting each sessions reflecting our mood, our state of mind, or something “simple” with different question about our life. Facilitator was always reflecting with the group. Each person in each session had space to share the important experiences of the week. Asking for feed back from group members – how others feel about situation. What do they think about it. People were invited to react to each others stories. If a person became observed by retelling external situations, he was invited to share what did he/experienced in the situation by himself, how he felt or what was behind the conclusion. Members were allowed and encouraged to share emotions and stories in a way and extend which were appropriate to them at the moment Judging comments were politely interrupted: “let’s not analyze each other”,
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Co-creating the reflective process
In the first session I shared what do I think process of socialization is and we discussed in small and big group, what do we think what is important for socialization of kids in a center (what kind of skills, values, attitudes, competencies) and why it is important? It created common ground for all the group for further reflecting how things are going in separate cases, like having a “map of …”. So at the start we made an effort to come to more or less common dictionary, directions, etc. Members of the group also were asking questions, underlying important issues that could be reflected. Different opinions and the ways people were working with were approached and encouraged with interest. The meaning and the goal of talking were clear for learners and facilitator – it was like common journey – together deciding what is important to reflect, mentioning what we already mentioned, what impressed us, what touched, what do we want to do further, what seems important to do other context or in long future. Sharing some interesting articles and thoughts in a closed facebook group – added feeling of creating common understanding of phenomena.
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Managing the steering paradox of intrinsic learning processes
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Creating the right reflective attention of learners
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| Slowing down and value moments of not-knowing, | ||
| Deepening your questions progressively | ||
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Recalling that reflection can never be imposed, only kindly invited.
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Always considering reflection as a broad and deepening process, that should be holistic. | |
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Being careful how to asses reflection (or not at all)
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