Reflections on reflection

If you happened upon my previous post about my personal thoughts on levels of competence, as discussed by Sheila Webber in her blog post on cpd23, then you will see where I am coming from with this post!!

Although I realise I lack confidence in my ability to do just about anything, this is really the only self-awareness that I have gained over the years! Rather pathetic really, because, if I was more self-aware then I’d be able to work on those areas where I’m not so good and become a better person.

Over the years, however, there have been illuminating moments where I have realised a bit more about myself. The first of these was when I did the Belbin team-working questionnaire and realised that I really had no preferred role and so was really a bit of a Jack-of-all-trades (I thought I'd blogged about this but can't seem to find it now, so perhaps I didn't!).

More recently, I have done another short questionnaire that has helped me to become a little bit more self-aware. Now, please don’t ask me why, given my lack of confidence, but I decided I’d like to investigate what it meant to be a mentor within the profession, and to that end I enrolled on the CILIP PTEG mentoring course. This was a day-long event that concentrated on the skills needed in order to mentor a CILIP chartership, or ACLIP candidate, and along the way we did a short questionnaire on learning styles.

I’ve done learning styles questionnaires before, but those were to do with whether you were an aural or a visual or a kinesthetic learner; the one we did on the mentoring course was along the lines of the Honey and Mumford one. Now, this was illuminating! Although, if I think about it hard enough, it shouldn’t have been illuminating, I should already have known what my preferred style was!

Anyway, in short, it turned out I was 4 parts reflective, 3 parts theorist, and 0 parts activist or pragmatist. I’m sure I’m not breaking any confidences if I say that the room was full of about half and half – that is half reflective/theorists and half activists/pragmatists, with one or two folk having a sole predominant style – and, knowing this, it was interesting to be more aware of how we all interacted.

As I said above, this was one of those light bulb moments for me! It helped to explain how and why I find it difficult to work with people who make snap decisions; I can feel wrong-footed, steam-rollered over, lacking in intelligence and unworthy. However, I now recognise that really I ought to work towards being less reflective/theoretical as sometimes it’s important to make decisions and take action rather more quickly than I do.

That led me onto thinking about change, and my attitude towards it. I’ve always said I don’t much like change, but actually, it’s probably more to do with being given enough time to think about the specific change and the implications/ramifications/consequences/impact the change might have on me, on my work, on my workplace, on my colleagues and on the users! If I feel I haven’t had enough time to reflect on it then I can feel threatened by it and overwhelmed. Trouble is, there isn’t always time to think too long and hard; some changes have to be made quickly, either in response to something or to pre-empt things. 

As with most things, I guess it’s all about balance, self-awareness, and not letting styles get in the way of working, and not letting styles become levels of unconscious competence that drift into levels of unconscious incompetence – meaning yes, it’s good to think and reflect, and yes, I’m quite good at it, but if I think too long I’ll miss the action and miss the chance to get things done!

Of course, I can always find something that vindicates the way I am! Clutterbuck (2004) said:

“people … have less and less time to stop and think deeply … Deep, reflective thinking is as essential to the effectiveness of our conscious brain as REM sleep is to our unconscious. In both cases we become dysfunctional if our minds do not carry out the essential task of analysing, structuring, organising and storing.”

Julian Baggini, in an interview on Radio 4’s Start the Week, is also an advocator of procrastination as a way to achieve things. Contrast this to Malcolm Gladwell and his Blink theories, and maybe somewhere in between is the perfect solution!

References:

Clutterbuck, David. (2004). Everyone needs a mentor: fostering talent in your organisation. 4th ed. London: Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

Reflections on competence

Between Thing 9 and 10!

During her between Things post on cpd23, Sheila Webber talked about cpd in your later career, a topic that really grabbed my interest, not least because I’ve been in the profession a long time (31 years, if you must know!), and there have been many life events recently that have caused me not only to reminisce, but also to look forward!

Way back in the ‘70s when I started at university, for many of us this was the first opportunity to experience working with a computer. Actually, as I remember it, we were all terrified in our first couple of weeks when we had to do a test actually using the terminal (remember them? dumb terminals connected to a mainframe!) I’m not sure, but I got the feeling we were going to blow it up if we got the answers wrong!

Anyway, from those early days, the developments in IT have just kept on coming and coming and coming, as  - by a mixture of luck, judgement and training - have our capabilities to use it. However, I have always felt that there was something (well, actually, lots of things) that I didn’t know about but felt I should, but trying to identify what I didn’t know and get the training I needed to get to grips with these things has always been difficult. I’ve blogged in an earlier post about our team new technologies day, which went some way to providing some IT knowledge for team members, and I've blogged about why I took part in the original cdp23 programme, and it’s really for this reason, to keep up with IT developments, that I am keeping an eye on cpd23 2012.

Reading Sheila’s post, I was quite interested in the four levels of competence.

1. unconscious incompetence - while I was sure I’d passed the first level (no realisation that I was not good at something),
2. conscious incompetence - I thought I might have passed the second level (realisation that I was not good at something),
3. conscious competence - and really hoped I’d got to the next level, which was stopping being not good at something if I really put my mind to it!
4. unconscious competence - I quaked a bit when I read about “unconscious competence”; this suggests that one is brilliant at doing something without realising it, or having to think about it. Given my levels of confidence (i.e. complete lack of self-confidence) I thought it unlikely that I had reached this level of competence, but of course, I couldn’t help contemplating that maybe others thought that with the length of time I’ve been in the profession I really ought to have reached that level and therefore I needed to beware that I wasn’t slipping into competence level 1 in the eyes of others!

Taking Sheila’s advice, I should force myself out of any comfortable habits by self-evaluating, joining a peer-review scheme, or talking with critical friends, as well as setting up mechanisms to keep myself updated.

Sheila also wrote about the work of one of her PhD students, Eva Hornung, on how one’s view of cpd changes over time, and I am quite sure that I am in the stage that views cpd as lifelong learning! As far as I am concerned, life is one long life-long learning event, as my colleagues at mashdmu will confirm! Never a day goes by when I don’t learn something, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I am constantly reviewing what I’ve learned and putting it into action. If this were the case, I would spend so much time reflecting that actually, I’d never get anything done!!

Hmmm, now that’s made me think ... ! Reflections on reflection ...

 

cpd23 2012!

cpd23 is running again! How I wish I had time to do it all over again - technology is constantly changing and it would be so good to be able to keep up and be well-informed (and so able to make better decisions about its use).

If you didn't manage to do it last time round, or if you only got so far through it, do give it another go as it's a very rewarding way of learning!

If you've missed the link, here it is!

Good luck!

cpd23 - now that's the course for me!

Things have been a bit quiet since I completed the cpd23 programme, but I have been thinking about it, and have written the article below for our staff bulletin, in the hope of encouraging staff who may have an interest in cpd to have a go!

Web 2.0 – what does it mean to you??

Way back in June 2009 we ran a session for Bib Services staff on new things that were happening on the internet; we thought it might be useful for staff to at least know of the existence of things like facebook, yammer, twitter, blogs, and wikis etc., and then they could have a look and evaluate these services in relation to their work.

But, a lot has changed since the summer of 2009 and while some services have taken off beyond belief, some have fallen by the wayside and new ones have emerged. Keeping oneself up-to-date can be almost impossible! And that's where cpd23 comes in!

You may already have heard of it - you may already be doing it! But, if you haven't/aren't it's based on the 23 things programme of 2006, devised by staff in Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County which aimed to encourage staff to explore new technologies http://plcmcl2-things.blogspot.com/ . This was followed in the UK by a 23 things programme devoted to public library staff, (review here: http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue64/leech/ ), which, in turn, inspired the 23 things Cambridge in 2010 ( http://23thingscambridge.blogspot.com/ ), which was repeated in 2011 ( http://cam23things.blogspot.com/ ), and has now prompted a cpd23 programme for all library staff - http://cpd23.blogspot.com/ This is a brief history; I may not have got it exactly right and I may not have cited all the instances of the 23 things programme, but, you get the idea that it’s a tried and trusted training method!

Initially, when I enrolled on cpd23 in June 2011, there were about 200 people registered, but by the end of programme there were nearly 800 participants! I joined the programme partly because I wanted to be more up-to-date with what was available, and there was an advantage in being pointed in the right direction for potentially useful resources, in being able to follow the programme at my own pace, in being encouraged to blog and in being encouraged to learn by reflection about things.

Apart from learning about weird and wonderful whizzy webby things – jing, online calendars, file-sharing options, online networking, etc. - there were also things that covered topics like advocacy, conferences, qualifying as a librarian, and mentoring, as well as several opportunities to sit back and reflect – well, actually to write up my reflection in my blog.

Along the way, the cpd23 things were supplemented by cpd23 tweets, a cpd23 LinkedIn discussion board, several physical meet-ups for various geographical regions and a live twitter chat, #uklibchat. An added bonus, that I hadn’t anticipated before, was the benefit of contact with other folk who were following the programme; finding like-minded souls was quite an eye-opener for me (no, really, I didn’t respond to thing 2 by looking for blog titles that looked as though they might have been created by cataloguers!)

All-in-all, I found the cpd23 programme extremely helpful as it almost forced me to look at things that I’d heard of but never found the time to investigate, whilst at the same time showed me things I’d not heard of. I would encourage anyone who wants to try and keep up to give it a go!


cpd23 – now that’s the course for me!!

Thing 14 - Zotero, Mendeley and citeulike

For this "challenge" I thought I'd have a look around something that doesn't require me to download anything or use an internet browser other than Explorer: That narrows it down a bit! citeulike it is then!


I work in a university library where we use Endnote, and, although I admit to having heard of these other services, I've never felt particularly inclined to investigate - and no-one has ever asked me while I've been on the enquiry desk how to use them! One of my colleagues has been recommending citeulike for quite a number of years, so I thought it was about time I sussed it out.


I was pleased to find that no downloading was required and once I'd registered I was straight into the site. A little bit of investigative work, and I was able to do a search for RDA (once a cataloguer, always a cataloguer!) and to exclude articles that were about the "recommended daily allowance"! This search yielded over 200 references, many of which looked as though they would be essential reading! However, I had a tendency to forget that citeulike is a way of automatically referencing material, and not a database of full-text articles! So, I really came away feeling like a child in a sweet shop without any money; lots of tasty morsels to devour, but no way of getting at them!

Still, this was a useful discovery session and has given me the push that I needed to go out and find some useful stuff in my areas of interest; whether or not I'll actually follow through and access them though remains to be seen. If I want to finish cpd23, I may well have to wait a while and come back later when I have more time.

Onto thing15 ...