Through the Looking Glass - Starting a new job

I’m now just over a month into my new role. I’ve survived the early stage of learning the procedures, people’s names, where the toilets are and other pieces of vital information. From there I’ve moved on to starting to get the hang of my new responsibilities. Hopefully I’ve made a reasonably good first impression.

Regular readers will know that I have a slight tendency to go on about how important reflection is and how I find that writing helps me to think about things. Now that initial new job rush has passed this seems like a good moment to put that into practice.

Starting a new job is always an odd experience. It shakes us out of our routine and forces us to learn a lot of new things all at once. A new person has to take on board a huge range of new information: new ways of doing things, new procedures, who people are and what they do, where things are, the history of a place, a whole new culture.

Strangely I think that can be particularly disconcerting when you move to a workplace that is similar to your old workplace. I’ve moved from one FE college library service to another. In some ways I felt right at home straight away. (It helped that everyone was friendly and welcoming). That very familiarity can sometimes give a through the looking glass feel to your first week or two in a new role. It’s a world you know well but everything is slightly different.

Maybe that’s not very like Through the Looking Glass at all. The familiar is more fundamentally twisted in Wonderland. It’s more Sliders or some other story where parallel universes are very familiar but other enough to get the plot moving.

Some of the induction training covered systems and resources that I was already experienced with but of course there were enough small differences to make complacency potentially risky. (Not all that dangerous but definitely a source of potential hiccups when I was trying to make that good first impression. Thankfully I think I managed to stay on top of this.)

Beyond those small differences there are some more fundamental differences between my new role and my old one.

The college itself is bigger than my last place. As a result our service is spread across three different sites and we have four different centres. The main site has the main learning resources centre and a specialist higher education centre.

A higher proportion of HE students and thus the need to provide that kind of tailored facility is another key difference.

In terms of my personal role here the big change is that I am now line managing other members of staff. This is a new challenge for me and it’s one of the aspects of this job that I was looking forward to before I started. Professionally it’s a very important area for me to develop and I’ve always been interested in helping other people to develop. I know I’m bound to say this but having met everyone they are a great team.

Another important difference is that my last role was term time only and I am now full time. Again this is a very positive step in terms of professional development. It’s also a positive step for practical reasons. However there is another layer of culture shock involved in getting used to working in a college library outside of term time. That will get worse after Friday when my teacher wife will start her long summer holiday but never mind. She does completely deserve it and we are going away for a couple of weeks later in the summer.

Don't worry I am keeping busy during this relatively quiet period of the year. Jiscmail List users might have seen my request for help with researching a new code of conduct for example.

When the new term starts I will be responsible for timetabling everyone. As far as I can tell that’s a task that is reasonably easy as long as nothing comes up but something always does.

Inductions will also take up a lot of my time in that first half term. I will be explaining our service to new students who are going through their own through the looking glass moments. Perhaps the analogy works better here. A student who is used to a school might find this new place of learning familiar in some ways but radically different and strange in others. When working with brand new students I always try my best to remember what it’s like to adjust to a new environment and new people while trying to take on board a huge amount of information. It shouldn’t be too hard for me this year.

My overall area of responsibility is Customer Experience. I am responsible for making sure that we are meeting our students’ needs and providing high standards of customer service. It is part of my job to make sure that those new students find our LRCs friendly and welcoming. Given the warm welcome I’ve received in the last month or so I have no worries about that aspect of my new role.

Reflective Practice Workshop

On Thursday 17th November I attended two workshops run by CILIP in London. The morning workshop looked at reflective practice. I’ve been thinking about this topic quite a bit recently for various reasons. Primarily because I’m working towards Chartership and as you probably know writing reflectively about your experiences is an important part of that. It also came up in the 23 things for CPD scheme both as a thing in its own right and as one of the overarching themes.

I enjoy writing and I like to think that I’m a reflective person so this is something that I’m interested in anyway. With all that in mind I was looking forward to this workshop. I was curious to find out what advice and tips they would give us.

The Speakers

The two speakers were Rosemary McGuiness and Paula Nottingham. They both work at Middlesex University and their specialism is work based learning. This is an approach to learning which focuses on ‘real world’, workplace experience. Chartership and its sisters are examples of this. It’s also well established in fields like nursing and teaching. For example the teaching practice element of a PGCE or similar qualification is work based learning.

Reflective writing is an important part of this approach. Students are encouraged to reflect in depth on their experiences and write down their thoughts. This is put very much at the heart of the learning process.

Theory

The session started with a look at the theoretical underpinning of reflective writing as a tool for personal and professional development. The focus was on what Paula called the classic theories. The Kolb Cycle for example which shows reflective practice as a circular flow through four stages.

1. Concrete Experience (Doing / having an experience)
2. Reflective Observation (Reviewing / reflecting on the experience)
3. Abstract Conceptualisation (Concluding / learning from the experience)
4. Active Experimentation (Planning / trying out what you have learned)
And then back to stage one…

This is a classic model of reflective practice. I’m sure most of you have probably seen something similar at some point. It featured in the CPD 23 blog post on reflective practice to give a recent example. It is popular for a reason. This is a useful way to think about the process of reflection. Even the simple fact that it is a cycle is useful because it emphasises the fact that reflection should lead to action which should then be reflected on in turn.

We looked at Schon’s ideas about the distinction between ‘reflection in action’ and ‘reflection on action’. Essentially the divide between reflecting in the moment, thinking about what you’re doing now and reflecting on things that you have done, thinking about how you could have approached it differently. The first one is very important because we need it to work effectively but the second one is the key to developing and doing our job better in the future.

Honey and Mumford’s original version of the learning styles model also came up. Personally I think learning styles are an overused concept. It is a question of emphasis or preference but it is too often talked about as if your style is the only way you can learn. The useful lesson from the model is that teachers have to vary the way they teach in order to meet the needs of all their students because people learn in different ways. Anyway I’m digressing here. To be fair it’s not Honey and Mumford’s fault that it’s overused. Their original idea was a good one.

Discussing the pros and cons of individual theories isn’t really the point anyway. The aim was to show that reflective writing is a well-established educational tool with strong roots in research into how we think and learn.

Reflective Activities

The talks were interspersed with various reflective activities. We didn’t write any essays but we all participated in mini writing tasks and discussion activities.
The first task was to fill in a learning log table. We had to pick an example of something that we had done at work, a ‘focus or task’. We then had to evaluate what we learnt from the task, how we can be more effective in future and what we discovered about ourselves. The idea was that keeping a learning log like this would help us to improve our performance at work. I liked this activity. It was simple but potentially very effective. I am going to start using the pattern to record events which really stand out as potentially useful learning experiences. I assume that those will mostly be the disasters and the high points.

This learning log is similar to the log that I currently keep in order to help me to reflect on my teaching sessions. My library skills sessions and my VLE training sessions have definitely benefitted from the simple idea of keeping a teaching log. I just jot down a few thoughts about each session, including what went well and what I could have done to make it go better. Extending that log idea to other areas of my professional practice could be very useful.

We also did a quick brain storm of all the people who are part of our communities of practice. Defined by Wenger (some more theory for you) as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly”. It’s interesting to see how that web spreads out when you give yourself time to think about it.

Later we were given time to write a slightly longer piece about something that we had done at work. The advice was to include how we felt about it. The idea was that we normally suppress our emotional responses to things that happen at work. We assume that our feelings belong to our personal life outside of the workplace.
I’m not sure this is universally true. Some people do get very emotional about things that happen to them at work. That said I take the point that in order to be effective reflective writing needs to be honest enough to include how we feel about our experiences. Without that aspect it can be slightly hollow.

The session ended with a storytelling session. We were invited to share a story with a neighbour. It had to be a story about something that we had done at work which went very well or very badly. A few brave souls went on to share their stories with the group.

This kind of storytelling is perhaps the oldest form of organised reflective learning. It goes back to our oldest ancestors sharing hunting stories around the fire. Those stories would then make them all more effective on the next hunt.

Librarians’ stories of triumph and embarrassment are less bloody than those early tales but some of the same emotions were there and the principle was the same. Thinking about reflective practice in terms of storytelling is one of the key ideas that I will take away from this workshop.

Listening to each others’ stories helped us to think about what we would have done in the same situation. We also learnt from the explicit lessons that the storyteller drew from their own experiences and shared with the group. The moral of the story as it were.

On the other side of the task thinking about our practice, reflecting on it, and organising our thoughts into a story that someone else could follow and learn from brought greater depth and clarity to our own reflections.

Thank you

Using writing or discussion to clarify and deepen our reflections on our experiences was the essence of all the activities that we tried. The workshop gave us new tools and renewed motivation to seek greater depth and clarity in our reflective practice.

Thank you to our speakers and to the CILIP in London team.

The Reflective Practice Presentation including lots of useful references for further reading is available on Slideshare.

The afternoon workshop was all about copyright. I am writing a short piece about the copyright session for the CILIP in London Newsletter so I will point you towards that once it has been published.*

*My report was published in the November issue of the CILIP in London Newsletter. Members will have been emailed a copy. They also included a link to this blog entry. Thank you for that. Welcome to any CILIP in London newsletter readers.

CPD 23 - Thing 23 - Reflection & What's Next?

This is the final thing. The end of the CPD 23 scheme. It has been fun and I've learnt a lot. It has genuinely helped me to develop professionally.

I have gained some useful technical knowledge about tools like Jing and Audacity and Prezis. Using RSS feeds has given my professional reading new focus.

Perhaps even more important than knowing more about various tools I have adopted a mindset of evaluating new tools for their potential usefulness. Evaluating the uses that I could put them to in the Library and their potential uses as learning tools for our students. I think learning to look at technology with that kind of reflective attitude is going to be one of the most long lasting things that I take from this scheme.

I like to think of myself as a reflective person but I have gained a lot from the process of writing this blog. CPD 23 has helped me to firmly integrate blogging into my life and my professional practice. I said in a very early thing, it might even have been number one, that I am one of those people who write to think.

I admire the CPD 23 organisers decision to build a strong emphasis on reflection into the scheme. That emphasis combined with the structured blogging has really helped me to reflect on my own professional practice and the wider context that we are working in.

The reminder that reflection is the key to professional development has been welcome. I think for me personally however the usefulness of this blog as a venue and a tool for reflection has perhaps been the more life changing lesson.

The community element of the scheme has also been memorable. I've enjoyed reading other participants' blogs and sharing ideas. That sense that we were exploring things together and sharing our experiences was a powerful part of CPD 23.

I'd like to thank everyone who helped to set this up. It has been a great journey.

Where next?

In terms of my career development completing Chartership is my big project at the moment. Interestingly one of the first steps in that process is drawing up a personal professional development plan similar to the one that the CPD 23 post for thing 23 mentions. Identifying areas for development and deciding how to fill them is clearly a useful exercise.

My plan is slightly different because I need to fulfil the Chartership criteria but the essential idea is the same. Drawing up my PPDP for Chartership really helped me to think about what I wanted to do in order to progress as a librarian.

I should say that I put completing CPD 23 on my Chartership PPDP. It seems oddly circular that at the end of the scheme we've been advised to draw up a professional development plan.

In the long run the important thing for me is to hold onto the good habits that I've gained from CPD 23 and the Chartership process. Habits like reflecting on my own practice and development. Habits like using this blog as a tool for reflection and sharing ideas. I intend to hold onto and build on those habits.

That's thing 23 done!

CPD 23 - Thing 19 - Reflecting on things so far

Thoughts on reflection and the dangers of speed

Having fallen behind over the summer I now feel that I am doing quite a good job of catching up. I hope to have the remaining four things (including this one) completed by the end of the week. If I achieve that I will have finished CPD 23 a week behind the official schedule. I had set that timeframe as a personal goal (having given up on finishing on time) so I'm quietly pleased that I should be able to keep to it.

However before I start patting myself on the back for this I think I need to acknowledge the risks involved in taking the latter half of the scheme at a faster rate than the organisers intended. The scheme has an admirable focus on taking the time to reflect on our professional development.

Taking the things a week at a time has the advantage that you have the time to think about each thing in depth. Even if most of the time you are busy with other matters some corner of your mind can be contemplating this week's thing.

There was a danger that I was going to fall into a box ticking attitude towards the scheme. I think I have managed to avoid that. Obviously you can judge for yourselves by browsing my previous CPD 23 blog entries. In each case I have made a conscious effort to reflect on the implications of each thing for my own professional practice and development.

I hope that I have been successful at this. I have always been a reflective person. My previous career as a teacher encouraged me to develop a reflective attitude towards my work. More recently engaging in the Chartership process has focussed my mind on the importance of reflection as a tool for improving my own practice, engaging effectively with my profession and developing myself as an information professional. I hope that attitude can be seen in my CPD 23 posts.

Congratulations to everyone who did manage to finish CPD 23 on time. I salute you.

Thoughts on my favourite things

I won't rank my favourite things because I like them for different reasons so it wouldn't be a fair contest. Also I'm on a tight schedule here I want to do three more things before the weekend. So in purely chronological order here are my personal favourites. Some of them have already become an important part of my practice. Others are things that I intend to integrate into my working life or my personal professional development.

Things 1 - Blogging

This blog existed before the scheme and I did have plans to revitalize it as part of my attempts to be ready for Chartership. That said I am very grateful to CPD 23 for giving my blogging some structure and helping me to post reasonably regularly.

Don't worry though I am going to maintain momentum once I've finished the scheme. It has helped me to get into the habit of blogging about librarianship. That habit is now firmly integrated into my life.

Blogging regularly has helped me to increase my online professional presence. It looks very likely that this will be increasingly important in the future both in terms of my own career and in terms of trends within the profession.

Thing 2 - Reading Blogs

Reading and commenting on each others' blogs helped to create a real sense of community. I enjoyed the sense that CPD 23 was a community of people who wanted to develop new skills and share their experiences. I hope we manage to keep that going post-things.

Thing 4 - Current Awareness Tools - RSS Feeds

RSS feeds are one of those tools that make you wonder how you used to manage without them. My professional reading is so much more organised now I use Google Reader.

Thing 15 - Events

Events are great. Everyone should go to more training events and conferences if they get the chance. They are fantastic opportunities to learn new things, keep up to date with our fast moving profession and meet lots of friendly and interesting people. I knew that before thing 15 but I was happy to share this enthusiasm with the world.

That wasn't enough to gain 'events' a place as one of my favourite things though. The decisive factor was the prod in the direction of speaking at events or organising our own events. That really got me thinking. I have set speaking at an event as a personal goal and I am going to investigate organising events as well. So far I've just read some blogs about it but in November I hope to attend a training evening that promises 'top tips for event organisers'.

Thing 17 - Prezi

A controversial choice I know. Prezi doesn't get a place because I love it as a tool in its own right. It has good points but it also has flaws. I can see why some people hate it. This is a favourite because I am convinced that mastering it and using it is an opportunity to convince others that librarians know their stuff.

For educational librarians particularly this is a highly noticeable way of showing our colleagues outside the Library that we are trying new things. If we use this in research skills sessions or library inductions it will spread the message that librarians know all about the latest technology for teaching and learning.

Thing 18 - Screen Capture - Jing

The screen capture tool Jing is my newest favourite. I see it as an opportunity to make my sections of our VLE more informative and more interesting visually. Putting demonstrations on the VLE could help students to master a range of tasks from searching online journals to accessing e-books.

Final Thoughts

For someone who has admitted that he wants to cover several 'things' in the next few days I seem to have written quite a lot for thing 19. I think this is because it strikes me as an important one. Reflecting on how we can integrate the things into our lives is vital if we want to make sure that this process has a real and lasting impact on our professional development.

CPD 23 - Thing 5 - Reflective Practice

This is the key to CPD 23 and to professional development in general. We are all trying out new things and then reflecting on our experiences. That is the only way to progress in any field.

I don't think I've mentioned this on here but I had a previous career as a teacher before I moved into librarianship. I mention this now because the importance of being a reflective practitioner is something that the teaching profession emphasises heavily. Teachers at all levels are encouraged to reflect on each lesson. To think about what worked and what didn't and then use their conclusions to improve the next lesson. This is a good example of the do - review - plan - do circle.

I'm used to thinking of reflection as an important part of my working life. I have brought that across into my new career. I've tried to keep up good habits.

The Chartership process and being a part of CPD23 have both helped to underline the importance of reflection, and the advantages of putting my thoughts into writing.

Encouraging me to record my reflections and to share them with others is perhaps the most important thing that CPD23 has done for me. I really enjoy having this blog and I've found it very useful as a tool for reflecting on my professional development. It would exist without CPD23 but the scheme has given it a greater sense of structure.

Sharing ideas with others has been the heart of my CPD23 experience. I love the sense that we are building a community here. The scheme has been quite foccussed on that aspect of professional development. The next two things are the offical networking things but really almost everything we've done so far has had a networking element. We've set up blogs to share our thoughts, we've explored each other's blogs, we've thought about how we come across to others, and we've tried new tools for sharing information. Networking, community building, idea sharing seems to be the thread running through everything we're doing.

Readers who look beyond my CPD 23 posts will see that I write quite detailed reflective posts on training course that I attend. They are all tagged as 'training'. Reflecting on training experiences is the only way to gain anything lasting from them. Obviously if you never think about what you've learnt it's a waste of time! The process of reflecting in writing helps me to think about how I'm going to incorporate new ideas into my actual practice. It also makes it easier for me to get other members of staff on board when I want to suggest something new.

Reflection is the key to personal and professional development. The alternative after all is to rely on habit or to blindly react. We need to reflect on what we're doing if we want to get better at it.