Tony Birkin PLD

rephrase issues and problems as complexity

- social complexity (people based) - high or low?

- systems complexity - high or low?

sometimes we don't know what the problems are or how we can deal with them

ways of knowing - how to we make sense of the world around us? Discourses? inferencing is the key to changing a wicked mess into a simple puzzle

Levels of mental development/ability to cope with complexity. Once you are on one level you wont regress

Instructional - want answers from somewhere else 'google search' mentality, don't create solutions but look for help elsewhere, waiting to be told what to do

socialising

self-authoring

self-transforming

your ability to deal with problems and solve problems so your world doesn't become too complex

each filter influences:

what you communicate

how you communicate

how you receive information

what you do with the information

Ladder of inference - can we use this to teach inferencing?

REFLECTION

I found the different layers of knowing/mindset really interesting as it made me reflect on how I interact with colleagues at work. I have definitely worked with children who are working in the instructional stage as they are very black and white thinkers. This made me wonder about how these children cope in a modern learning environment when a lot is left up to child-choice or child-driven. I have several children in my class who would much prefer me to just tell them how to do it rather than present various options however I feel strongly that children need to develop decision making skills that choice enables.

Some elements of social way of knowing definitely rang true for me. When working with colleagues sometimes I have found myself reworking what I need to say to ensure everyone remains happy and relationships are in tact and think sometimes messages get lost in the fuzziness of the delivery. I can see Tony's point that to be professional you need to be open and honest and not worry about what other people may think, this is just quite a big personal barrier for me! I also thought some of the self-authoring thoughts were very much my personality. I particularly agreed with the idea of knowing you are doing your personal best in each situation, this is something I feel very strongly about in my teaching practice. I consistently ask myself is this best for the children I am working with? However I think there are definitely other aspects of self-authoring thought that I would like to work towards, hopefully now I am aware of my own though patterns I can change the way I address various ideas and actions (is that self-transforming?!).

Overall a very interesting and thought provoking session, I think this will be interesting to explore as a staff as we look at collaborative practice and mindsets for the future.