Final Reflection

As I embark on the long road towards becoming an academic I get a lot of questions from friends, family, peers within my profession….why? Are you mad? Busy fool! These questions do bare some food for thought. It wasn’t at a whim without any consideration that I gave up a well-paid, 9-5 job, to become a student again, double the hours for a third of the income. Or was it? I would be lying if I said sometimes I don’t have doubts, sometimes I think I’ve lost it altogether. Then I look back on where I’ve come from and I’m more certain than ever that I haven’t lost it because I didn’t stay put.

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” (Lao Tzu)

I come from a long line of teachers. Assuming it was some form of hereditary monarchy, I should have been a teacher. But I abdicated my duties and chose a different path, to become an optometrist, the first to do so. If one was spiritually inclined one might say it is fate…destiny… that I would return, albeit taking the long route, and stand among my foremothers (as all the teachers were women) as an educator. The cynic might just say it’s ironic.

On qualifying from DIT with my degree in 2011 I took my 23 year old self across the Irish Sea to Bristol where I spent 2 years working full-time as an Optometrist with Specsavers. After about six months the ‘glamour’ of being a professional and the … quickly wore off. I hated every minute of every day I spent in that practice and it got worse with time. After two years I was on the verge of giving up on optometry completely, I was seriously contemplating returning as an undergraduate and doing a maths course with the view to becoming a meteorologist…random I know. I had even applied to the CAO. I decided not to make too rash a decision and just try a different path within optometry. Maybe that would work for me. I left my job and started working as a locum. The freedom of being self-employed, being my own boss was great. And there was no shortage of work. In fact there weren’t enough days in the week to cope with the demand. It was exhilarating. I still worked days for Specsavers but working in different stores and different environments was good, the variety kept me interested. I also started working for a refractive surgery clinic. This I thoroughly enjoyed; working with patients’ pre and post-surgery, sitting in on surgery on quiet days. It showed me a different side to Optometry and I liked it. Had I not already committed to returning to Dublin to begin my post-grad studies I truly believe that I would have stayed working like this for several years. I still think I would have always returned to do a post-graduate though. Being here now I am sure of that.

I am now 1 year and 4 months into my part-time post-graduate studies. In September I enrolled on a pedagogy module as part of developing my employability skills. I was drawn to this module because lecturing is where I see myself in the future. Teaching and research is where I want to be. Maybe it’s in my blood. I was interested in the module because I have never taught a class before and be it in my blood or not I don’t know the first thing from Adam about standing up in front of students and trying to get them to co-operate and listen and engage and learn. I wanted to learn how to teach. Like the Chinese proverb says;

“Give a man a fish; you feed him for a day. Teach a man how to fish, you feed him for life”

I found the module interesting. Classes were initially quiet, maybe being outside of our usual environments everyone was a little more cautious and reserved. I know I certainly was. As the weeks progressed the atmosphere lightened and the classes became more energetic and engaging. Some of the tasks we had to do were uncomfortable; reading each-others reviews and giving feedback there and then. I understand it’s important and necessary and I do think it’s a good idea but I think it is a skill that takes time and practice – both to be able to give good constructive criticism and receive it. As a facilitator to a student it may be less intimidating as you are the one critiquing, but we also learned that for us to grow and improve as facilitators we must be critiqued by our students so that we can change things that don’t work and cultivate and advance the parts that do. I liked the two stars and a wish strategy which is based on Black and Wiliam’s (Black et al., 1998) concept that students’ feedback to each other can raise their performance. This is something I will bring with me moving forward. I can ask the students at the end of the month or every couple of classes to use this model to critique my teaching. What components do they like, what elements do they find difficult, is there anything they would like me to change.

We worked a lot on reflections, the importance of how reflecting on the classes we teach or situations we encounter can help us to grow; as academics, educators, facilitators, people in general. Reflection is an increasingly important part of learning now. It is being recognised by professions as part of their CPD, and students as well as lecturers must learn how to reflect on certain moments/incidents. It’s ironic really that we have to look back in order to move forward. I guess hindsight really is 20/20. No pun intended.

We looked at different ways to reflect; Gibbs’ reflective cycle (Gibbs, 1988), Borton’s framework for guiding reflective activities (Jasper, 2003), John’s model for structured reflection (Johns, 2009). I did try reflecting in the different styles, to see if there was any one in particular that I felt I could respond best with. I did like Gibbs. I like the structure and writing cues it provided. I feel that initially reflective writing can be very difficult, especially for scientific writers; we never write in the first person, we never write so informally, so it all feels abnormal and wrong to a certain degree. Gibbs’ model keeps a structure and flow to the reflection and with practice allows the writer to become more informal, more personal and reflective with the writing. I also feel that it is a good method for students learning how to think and write reflectively as it does give little tips and hints as to what to write about in each section. I would recommend a model like Gibbs to my students as something to give them ideas when beginning on their reflections. I feel John’s also gives good structure but is geared more towards clinical reflection as opposed to a lab or a class for example.

Reflecting on my previous reflections – an inception of sorts – my first action plan was to; become more involved in class, try to overcome a discomfort with public speaking, speak with my supervisors about organising some tutorial sessions and create a blog that could be transferred to on-going PhD research at the end of the module. I feel that I did engage better during the subsequent interactive tasks in class, I have since given two tutorials (one on literature reviews and another on experimental plans to the final year optometry students as they begin their final year projects). The blog is probably not as far along as I would like it to be. I suppose there have been many other more pertinent tasks in my calendar that have prevented me from giving it a lot of attention so this is something I still wish to improve. I think my biggest issue is that while Wix is a very easy site to use and navigate, (and it may just be my computer) but it is extremely slow. I find that when I am trying to work on it at home there is a delay after every action which becomes highly irritating. I don’t notice it as much in college but I would like to be able to work productively on it at home. This could be part of the reason I haven’t worked much on it.

In my second reflection I spoke about presenting a lecture on Dry Eye at the Association of Optometrist’s AGM. This took place on November 8th in Johnston House Hotel in Meath. The lecture was met by great reception. Feedback was very positive. People seemed interested and felt the material provided was very appropriate and applicable to the everyday optometrist. One man did advise me that I spoke too quickly. This could be accountable to nerves, and also I was aware that we were tight for time. But it is certainly something to remember for future reference as a lecturer; if I’m speaking too quickly students are going to have difficulty hearing and understanding me.

My third and fourth reflections were based around the tutorial opportunities I was given with the final year students. Because I had to do these activities I had to develop a lesson plan; what were my learning objectives and how was I going to meet them. We had discussed some styles of teaching in class which I tried to incorporate into my tutorial. Remembering Gagne’s 9 events of instruction (Gagné and Briggs, 1974) I took a modified approach – a reduced 5 step process to gamification in education (Hall, 2014). I set out their learning objectives, I structured it with tips to help them write their experimental plan, I used Bloom’s levels of questioning to try to stimulate active learning and show the students how to reach a level of evaluation in their experimental plan’s and literature reviews. Finally I gave them some online resources they could go to for more tips and advice. By getting a chance to do the tutorial it gave me an insight into the amount of background work that is involved in preparing a lecture. It also gave me a chance to try and utilise some of the teaching skills we discussed over the weeks in class.

To conclude I have found the module interesting, helpful and insightful. Although I don’t currently lecture or demonstrate I was still able to engage and apply the skills we were learning in class to my own situation. I feel that taking the pedagogy module made me more pro-active in looking for teaching hours. I was lucky to get a few tutorial hours and I have since been asked to cover clinics at short notice. These opportunities may not have arisen if I hadn’t been enrolled on the module. I haven’t been put off a career in academia. As the module is titled “An Introduction” I know there is much more to learn with regards to pedagogy. Moving forward if a career in academia is on the horizon I would certainly be interested in developing on the foundation in pedagogy that I have received.

BLACK, P. J., WILIAM, D. A. R. & KING'S COLLEGE LONDON. SCHOOL OF EDUCATION 1998. Inside the black box : raising standards through classroom assessment, London, King's College London nferNelson Publishing Co.

GAGNÉ, R. M. & BRIGGS, L. J. 1974. Principles of instructional design, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

GIBBS, G. 1988. Learning by doing : a guide to teaching and learning methods, London, FEU.

HALL, M. 2014. What is Gamification and Why Use It in Teaching? The Innovative Instructor Blog [Online]. Available from: http://ii.library.jhu.edu/2014/05/13/what-is-gamification-and-why-use-it-in-teaching/ [Accessed 30/09/2015 2015].

JASPER, M. 2003. Beginning reflective practice, Cheltenham, Nelson Thornes.

JOHNS, C. 2009. Becoming a Reflective Practitioner, Wiley-Blackwell.