I was just packing up tonight to head home on my bike, reflecting on my last supervision session with an occupational therapist, when Karen popped up on my gmail chat. I stopped to have a quick chat as I’ve hardly had any contact with Karen this year (since I’ve been so quiet online). She was talking about how she was assisting a friend with skills in what I would call skim reading (hopefully I’ve got this right Karen?). After finding out a bit about what they were doing, I suggested that Karen and her friend checked out the VARK website. It seemed to me that perhaps in part her friend may be struggling as she is perhaps more visual, kinesthetic or aural as opposed to a read/writer.
Karen went to the online questionnaire and completed this while we were ‘chatting’. Not surprisingly (well to me anyway).. Karen came out as a reader/writer – perhaps explaining her comfortableness with blogging as a mechanism for developing active reflection. We chatted a bit about the value of completing the questionnaire (and yes I know these have inherent weaknesses!).. but they are a great tool to stimulate the discussions between a student and fieldwork supervisor, or between students in group – while some students must read every word on a worksheet (reader/writers) and others just want to get on with the tasks (kinesthetic). So I find it to be a great tool for facilitating the discussions that can strengthen or clarify expectations between two or more people who need to work well together. Karen has promised a posting on this in the next few days so I’ll look forward to reading her reflections and hearing whether she has managed to get her peer group to complete it as well!!!
And if you are wondering about me.. I’m actually kinesthetic, followed by visual which may explain while every now and then I need a blogging holiday!!!!
Hi Merrolee – would it be a surprise that I’m ‘multimodal’, but with a very slight preference for visual over auditory?
I think any self awareness tool can aid discussion provided it is used well, even if the results are not as expected, or if the assessment tool is not particularly psychometrically sound. (HOWEVER I’m cautious about generalising or drawing conclusions from non-validated/psychometrically sound tools).
An activity I do with the people who are attending a pain management programme is called ‘radioactive rice’ (not sure if I’ve published it on my blog) – well the actual activity isn’t particularly important, what IS, is that ‘how you go about doing anything is how you go about doing EVERYTHING in life’. So it’s useful to use anything that occurs both in and out of therapy/supervision/life in general to reflect on ‘how did I go about doing this?’, ‘what did I learn?’, ‘what did I do well?’, ‘what would I do differently?’… reflective living really!!
By: adiemusfree on 5 March, 2008
at 3:00 am
Hi Adiemus – am I surprised – no not really! Your activity sounds very interesting – can you describe more or point me in the direction of your blog? I’m curious as you are right – the task is not so much the focus, but the discussions that grow out of it – does this fit with me or not – what does it help me to understand about myself in relation to others – what could I trial from this, and does this work better for me or ???? And.. sounds to be you are talking about reflection on action (Schon!!)
By: Merrolee on 5 March, 2008
at 6:35 am