Organizing Reflection

Dr Mary Hartog

National Teaching Fellow

Middlesex University Business School

A Critical Pedagogy

• Situated in an organisation context – learning as a social process

• More than the learning of individuals

• One way of organising learning for change

Vince (2002)

The Organizing of Reflection is informed by three characteristics:

1.Questioning assumptions & making visible power relations

2.Facilitating a ‘container’ for managing anxieties

3.Contributing to democracy

Challenges for this kind of Adult Learning

• The organisation milieu itself- management rhetoric

• Management is not a neutral activity, it affects people’s lives

• Political and emotional sphere of organisation life• Holding a space in which different perspectives

can be seen & heard• Neutrality- aligned to everyone & know one at the

same time• The personal process of the educator

The Case Scenario

• A work based learning programme in leadership development

• 60 middle - senior managers• Client: local authority, children & families

service, public sector cuts, service change & redundancies

• Consulting partner who provides workshops• University provides action learning sets & a

post grad WBL qualification

The learning Relationship

• Facilitation: holding a space for learning

• Content & process, experience, real live issues

• Confidentiality: trust

• Peer learning, questioning assumptions, support & challenge

• Really listening: Connected knowing & connected teaching (Belenky et al 1986)

• Returning the knower to the known (ibid)

The Assessment Challenge

• Thee assignment: RAL, Plan, Project• Experiential learning: self reflection at the center

of the work, the problem of subjectivity• Journey to voice• The role of visual representation & metaphor in

learning• Evidence• Kim’s (1999) hierarchy : the narrative, the

literature & the critique

Why Now?

• Adult education has been part of our work in Business Schools & universities for some time

• History of professional education• Difference is in the pedagogy• Complex: self directed learning, being as well as doing • Rise of work based learning in HE• Learning in work & professional practice has a greater focus on

practice improvement - development• Rise in working with organisations, cohort, learning as a social

process, political & emotional, navigating complexity• EI more explicitly on the agenda of management learning• Current context of changes facing organisations & public sector,

looking for skills, even the CBI telling managers to ‘skill up’ & get an MBA

What Next

• Need to place tutor facilitation, education & development on the HE learning agenda

• Understanding the context & challenges presented in adult & management learning

• Specifically how to hold a space for learning & work effectively with the political & emotional components of experiential learning

• Tutor development, self reflection, reflexivity, a discipline of self reflective practice, & coaching of reflecting teams