The GP case study provided an exemplar of how to utilise personal feelings of discomfort to develop discourse and explore uncertainty. Students can be taught to provide
feedback in ways that are most likely to be taken up by their peers, teachers or ultimately patients and colleagues. Skills for giving and receiving emotionally-informed feedback may be a valuable component of a spiral curriculum.
Explicit understandings of the effort and positive intentions of tutors or peers in providing formative assessment may encourage learners to make active use of and openly explore the impact of feedback on their learning.
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PPLICATION AND DISSEMINATION OF IDEASReflective exemplars
In this section I aim to provide examples, of how I have integrated these findings into my own pedagogic practice, in the hope that this will provide insights for others seeking to enhance the capacity for formative pedagogy, their own and others.
My current role, as course coordinators on an MA in Medical Education includes teaching modules on “leading learning”. I have increasingly incorporated not only concepts of
emotional intelligence but activities designed to elicit emotional responses and then debrief to develop self-awareness in response to the learning event.
One challenge when developing the necessary emotional intelligence and capacity for formative pedagogy is how to design and facilitate such emotion eliciting events and then debrief in ways that enable learners to reflect on what they have learned. I share some of the models and definitions, developed in this thesis, to convey the aims of the session to; help learners understand the relevance of the activity to our learning contract; contribute towards the creation of a safe-skin and encourage buy-in from the participants. They are made aware of, for instance of Chernis and Goldman’s (2001) argument that group work has the potential to elicit, identify and articulate individual emotional responses, including trust, attitude, sense of identity and appropriate professional action. We also discuss the importance of praxis, and how we might intervene to re-configured workplace spaces for peer support as strategies for
Some of the power-point slides I use in setting up the classroom discussion exercises and de-brief are outlined in the personal reflection which follows.
A series of power-points presented ahead of the exercise outlined below.
Exemplar 1: Developing Effective Leadership Unit
I invite students to relax into a self-directed Silent GROW model (based on Whitmore’s 1994 coaching questions see appendix 10.2) My previous experience confirms combining this almost meditative process with a simple relaxation exercise has the potential to generate a self –directed learning experience and stillness in learners. I then combine an
event with the aim of demonstrating the potential for powerful cultural shifts towards emotional relativism by promoting sustainable predispositions, such as self-awareness. My facilitation of this group space enables “storying and re-storying” of pleasant or painful emotional experiences by adapting the re-presented model below:
Model for group intensives (Beatty and Brew 2004:333)
What follows is a personal reflection, using Boud and Walker’s 1985 model, on a two hour “lesson” which took place on day four of a five day programme. I believe I had generated the characteristics of reciprocal caring between myself, as teacher and the learners and this reflective account exemplifies the principles of formative pedagogy in practice.
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ETURN TO THE EXPERIENCEHaving established trusting relationships within the group I briefly introduced the concept of emotional intelligence as important for effective leadership (see power-points above) and encouraged discussion based on student understanding of the pre-session set
reading - Emotional intelligence and nursing: An integrative literature review (Smith et al 2009). I shared with the group my intension of linking together four distinct but inter-
related experiences designed to generate a platform for us to debrief, discuss and explore the principles of :-
Non-directed coaching
Mindfulness
Emotional intelligence and following the event Emotional labour.
Following the silent GROW model meditation I quietly invited participants to “stay
present”, simply pointed to the principles of mindfulness slide and invited them to take a 15 minute mindfulness walk alone in the grounds. I expressed confidence that they would return on time and without effort, would be drawn to an object which they would bring back to the room. They were encouraged not to talk to each other.
Upon return they discussed their experience in pairs for five minutes then, with no negotiation or explanation I asked them to give away their object to the person two places to their left (random).
Returning to the larger group we discussed their experiences and how it felt to give away their chosen object (see appendix 10.3, flipchart of comments made by some of the participants). Two people had not brought back objects. I noticed others had carried and placed their object as if quite precious and these were admired by their colleagues (e.g.an aesthetic piece of moss covered bark).
I then re-introduced the slides on emotional labour and display rules in the workplace and we continued the discussion mapping their experiences today with these models and emotional dimensions of leadership issues encountered in their workplace with the explicit aim of utilising self-awareness for professional development.
Attend to feelings
I felt excitement at trialling this string of inter-related exercises and some trepidation of whether the whole process would work, though confident that I could share my feelings if the experiential learning process did not go as planned as a means of salvaging learning for the group. I felt delighted and exhilarated with the tone of the discussion and the level of emotion expressed.