 Hei Foref! Rydw i wedi bod ddefnyddio bod rydyn ni'n rhoi ei wneud yn cael ei gwybod fe fydd i'r maic. Mycklery, rydyn ni'n bwysig i mewn i'r tyfnol, ac rydyn ni'n ddweud wedi cyfaint fy f написio gweld. Rydyn ni'n ddim yn i',n ddim yn ei bwysig mewn i'r rhan i mewn i'r cymdeithas rydym yn gwneud. Wrth gwrs, dywedau eu mynd o'r ffordd o bwyfodig a'u am gyllidau ychydig i wefio'r rhannu o'r rhannu cyflwysgol yw'r personal. As Claes said, I'm Nicola Clarke, I'm actually one of our senior lecturers at Birmingham City University. I have spent probably nine-on-18 years researching and exploring this topic. I'm by no means an expert and I do think that's really important to know that. I'm probably just a little bit sad and have a very deep-seated interest in reflection. I think it's something wonderful, I think it's something amazing that we can engage with, not just for who we are, but our students as well. I also think it's an incredibly misunderstood term, so that is something that I would like to explore today, is to make sure that we're singing from the same hymn sheet and that we all understand reflection in the right way. I do want to explore how we can obviously apply it to the personal tutor relationship, and I am attempting to do today, if we get a chance, I'm going to try and demonstrate guided discovery or reflective dialogue, so if nobody else will be a willing volunteer, Claire has very kindly offered, well actually I told her she will be, she will be my volunteer so that I can actually show some of this, how not to do it and maybe how to do it. I'm assuming you guys have got some experiences already on reflection. I'm also a mental health nurse by background, sorry I forgot to tell you that, and I did my doctorate in teaching and learning concepts and I explored reflection and how it was taught. I'm also the author of the student nurses guide to successful reflection, 10 essential ingredients, it's a nice easy book, most people read it in a couple of nights, you'll hear my lovely dulcet tones coming through the book, and my claim to fame is probably the most stolen book out of our library at the minute, so you know it's there, it's useful. So I would say I am going to ask you to chat with me as we're going through, not just to sort of chat at the end, and if you've got any questions please feel free to chuck it in the chat bar, and hopefully I'll pick it up, I need to move my now, just move my mic apparently, right hopefully you can hear that now. So please feel free to put anything in the chat bar, any questions you've got in the chat bar, but you know if you've got a question you want to turn your mic on and ask me I am more than happy for you to do that as well because I am going to be asking you guys some questions as we're kind of going through. So before I go on to my first slide which will kind of give the game away, can I ask is anybody willing to tell me what their experiences of that term reflection are so far, have you guys got any experiences of reflection and really you've got any understanding of it, what's your positionality at the minute, what's your narrative, what's your understanding of reflection so far, does anybody fancy talking to me and telling me about your experiences. Andrew, hi. Hello there, can you hear me okay? I can, can you hear me because apparently my mic wasn't in quite the right place, I hope you can hear me. Yes, you sound great, I can hear you. Thank you, hi Andrew. So I work at the University of Glasgow as a student advisor and often what I'll find is because I'm a frontline service employee a great deal of my time will be reflection. Yes. What I noticed upon reflection from then off is I don't actually use any sort of model. My own reflection is not like embedded in any sort of theory and I guess something else is it's very centric to me so I'll often always start things with like I could have done this better so I guess it's also quite harsh rather than you know positive and constructive. Okay. One more thing I would say about reflection as well I'm bad for writing things down and never looking at it again so it's almost as though you know what kind of fruit am I getting from my reflection but yeah I just thought I would kind of share that. Oh do you know what, well first and foremost thank you for responding to me and talking to me and being the brave one who's going to go first but I really appreciate that because actually you've highlighted some really important points actually and there's some things coming up in the chat bar as well that it is it's very self-orientated reflection is it supposed to be about you you know you can't reflect about anybody else you can reflect about what you think other people think of you and how they respond to you and you can reflect on how you're responding to them but it is it is you know you can't speak for the people so it is very self-orientated. It shouldn't be too critical and that's something I wanted to explore today because in nursing we've got a terrible habit of only telling our students to reflect on bad stuff you know you must go and reflect on a critical incident and we completely negate to tell them actually do you know what you can learn from any experience you have it doesn't have to be a bad one so I'm hoping by the end of this you might stop being so hard on yourself stop being too critical because also you know it's very subjective as well so you know and sometimes in order for us to feel good about ourselves we tend to be quite critical about ourselves as well and so if we're engaging with reflection fully we're trying to bring the objective into the subjective process so hopefully you know when we explore a little bit more maybe you'll stop being so critical and you said something else which was really important yes models so we're probably not going we might not have time to go into that today but again I you know I spend my life probably teaching staff and students that models of reflection reflective models reflective cycles reflective frameworks they're all lovely jubilee but they all do the same thing they drive a car from A to B they drive you through the reflective process so if you understand the reflective process if we know what reflection is we don't always need to use one I don't always need a car to get from A to B I might choose to walk and that's my choice to do that and I think so reflective models they do have their purpose and especially for our students who some of them are quite novice reflectors and don't really understand how to move themselves through the process so utilisation of a model such as Gipsies you know Bortons or Driscoll's version of Bortons or Roth and Jasper's version of Driscoll's which is Driscoll's version of Bortons you know you know this is what we do in academia you know that they can be very useful but I do think for us as people trying to support students to reflect a student will not reflect properly just using a model because the model doesn't tell them what reflection is it doesn't help them to understand it it doesn't help them to know the underpinning theory of it to know what it is why it's important why we do it and then we use them on it it's a bit like you're trying to tell somebody to get into a car and just drive the car without teaching them about the car if that makes sense and expecting just getting it and driving so I notice with our students a lot of the times you know if we get them to right reflectively which some of you are saying that you've done in some of your you know your own previous training if we get them to right reflectively it's not uncommon or to present a reflective presentation it's not uncommon for them to actually not engage in reflection at all but still use the model because actually we haven't taught them what reflection is so in relation to reflecting to get our students to reflect they have to understand what it is first so I do think that's really important and I don't think the use of a model is necessarily a must and I say that quite controversially I've just come and quick look at the chat because I don't want to just make sure I've missed out on anything it's difficult oh yes so it's once it's difficult do you know and it's interesting as well because I remember in our first year of our one of our nursing programs years and years and years ago we managed to get it changed we used to ask the students to write a reflective essay so they would be coming into academia they didn't know what reflection was most of them haven't written at degree level or level four and we're expecting them to do the two hardest things which is write a degree level and well while you're at it reflect while you're writing so reflections really difficult the premise of it I think the conceptual understanding of it is quite simple but actually doing it and how to do it is not easy and then writing reflectively I think is actually incredibly difficult and especially writing reflectively for academic purpose because we expect all of the nuances of academic writing plus drawing upon the literature plus that reflection in there so I think we have a job and I suppose that's when we think about then as a personal tutor if we can practice the art of supporting reflective dialogue within our students the more we can kind of immerse our students I'm just going to move on to the next slide within the reflective process and help them to experience reflection by being on the receiving end of reflective discussion so as a personal tutor we support them to reflect on their experiences the greater level their understanding of reflection will be so that when they're having to reflect themselves either in an essay or for you know if we want them to become those effective reflective practitioners they'll be much better at it so I do think it has a really big role as a personal tutor the things I'm putting up on the screen by the way I'm not actually going to read that out to you this is just an extended description of reflection and this actually came out of my research done with that's why it's extending probably because I waffle but it came out of my research with my students and the academic staff and we really tried to explore what the meaning of reflection was and so what I wanted to do was just have a quick look at this chat and make sure I've not missed anything um we increased with students reflect on their learning yes um so Wendy says it's to uncover our oh it's to uncover our hidden selves unnoticed Wendy are you around to put your mic on sorry do you mind if I talk to you a second because I love it no that's fine I love that it's giving goosebumps I feel that it uncover our hidden selves unnoticed bias prejudice I absolutely love this can you sorry I'm getting so excited because it's not uncommon you may notice yourself it's not uncommon for people to have a very sort of um different understanding and potentially sometimes incorrect understanding of reflection and I absolutely love this so would you like to expand on that a bit well I just um so I first came across reflection when I did a degree as a mature student and um I really struggled with it and till my third year and then I just sort of suddenly started to learn things about myself once I got better at reflecting using a model because I I really didn't know where else to start and I just started to look at the theory of it and think do you know what this is what it's all about for me isn't it it's about why did I respond to that pupil like that why did that make me angry and I just suddenly thought maybe that's what reflective practice is all about I absolutely I I I so love what you're saying because I think you've encapsulated um what reflection actually is and I I can't tell I mean I teach I teach reflection across levels four five six seven and eight across nearly every program in our faculty and to post-grad students undergraduate students to staff and it always makes me a little sad when I hear when I ask people what do they think reflection is and I'll often say okay so it's looking back and looking at what I did well and what I didn't do so so well and then I must what I can do to improve and I'm like oh oh gosh um and it always makes me a little sad because I think oh it's so much more than that um and so much more purposeful than that and not that evaluation of our practice is not important um you know especially you know you know it will in any field you know um looking back and actually exploring the mechanics of what you did and whether you didn't do very well we definitely need to improve you know that is absolutely important but we need to stop calling it reflection because it's not um reflection is actually quite a little bit more complicated than that so actually you highlighting for me that it's about uncovering the why it's about uncovering who you are and it's about helping you to develop a much deeper level of understanding of what constitutes I and like say why you react in that way why you did that in that way I just it's really lovely to hear that Wendy I'm just going to use you as an example if that's okay um I just want to show the example that I often show to our students because I think it helps sometimes to understand actually what you've just said Wendy um and I'll often say to students so if you just imagined you're all sort of nursing students because I'm a nurse sorry so I'm not sure what all of your backgrounds are and imagine Wendy sorry I'm going to pick on you imagine Wendy is a nursing mentor and Wendy just for the second you're going to be a terrible terrible mentor and I'm assuming you're amazing whatever you do but just imagine right now that you're a bit rubbish and Wendy's not a very good nurse not a very good mentor and she's sitting in the nursing station and you know she's got her feet up and she's thinking you know what I'm going to chill I've got Nicola coming in today she's a student I'm doing nothing I'm going to make her do all the work um and so imagine just for a second and I know it's probably hard to believe but imagine just for a second that I'm about 18 and you know I've never stepped foot in a hospital I know nothing about anything I've really just first day first day ever stepping foot in a hospital and Wendy says oh you Nic get over here so I pops on over to Wendy and I introduce myself and she says right I want you to go over to Andrew and I want you to give imagine that's an injection I want you to give that injection into Andrew's arm okay and I tutel on over and I can see Keith here so I'm just going to use Keith so I'm tutel on over to Keith and I give the injection to Keith's leg so if we then just do what often students think they need to do it she's looked back at what went well and what didn't go so well you know anybody with a half brain can kind of work out that not an awful lot went very well there you know I've basically done a little bit of damage to two people in the space of half an hour on placement um so you know I've got gaps in my knowledge I put it in the wrong body part I put it in the wrong person um so you know I need to go away I need to fill the gaps in my knowledge I need to you know read some physiology I need to do my nurse training so one of the things I often then ask of my students is if I do that if I feel those gaps in my knowledge um if I really think okay what did I do well what I didn't do so well I'm going to improve my practice do you think in the future where I have similar thoughts and feelings do you think I would make a similar error again so so kind of what do you think our students would say to that so I think they'd say no they wouldn't make future mistakes absolutely that's the first thing said no no I'm fine now I know what I've done and I'm like okay right okay let's take it a step back do we know what the original error was first and the students were going no no no and I'll say so actually the original error was me saying yes to the person to you Wendy sorry my original error was actually feeling the need to say yes to you and if we just look back at what we did well and what we didn't do so well do I know why I said yes to Wendy and they start to realise actually no we don't know why so in the future if I come across another experience that actually has generate similar thinking in me and generates similar feelings within me at which point the reason I said yes to Wendy might be because I was eager to please I might have been anxious I might have been worried that she wouldn't sign me off at the end of placement I might have felt a power imbalance there could be numerous reasons as to why I felt the need at that point in time to say yes if I don't uncover that if I don't explore the why of that experience in the future where I should potentially say no I am potentially going to say yes again and so I think reflection is so it's so important for our students to understand that actually what we're trying to do I always say to our students imagine you're kind of on a lilo and you're floating around in the sea and that's your experience okay you're trying to dive off that lilo you're trying to sort of dive off in the scene uncover what is going on underneath here to have made that experience happen and I've noticed that Emily you just said you're coming across a lot of cases where students have been told they must reflect in the third person ooh this is not right at all is it you know in the third person how can you reflect if you're reflecting in the third person because reflection's about me it's about who I am it's about what I've experienced and what I've been through um so yes my tip for that is and um I try and do it really nicely is I will often email the person who's put the module descriptor together and the module assignment brief and say if you're asking somebody to reflect in the third person this is not a reflective essay this is either just a critical evaluation or it's an exploration of a case study but it's not reflective um and then we need to then start to explore people's understanding of reflection so you know trying to help our students recognise some of the things that are in this description here which is you know helping them to connect with reflection in a much more meaningful way helping them to understand that actually the use of I the absolute focus on why I thought something or what I thought and what I felt at that time is of paramount importance um so why why do you think I would say that why do you think I would say and for anybody who's done some counseling background you will you will hopefully agree with me um why you think focusing on the eye and the feelings and the thinking is absolutely what differentiates reflection away from just a critical evaluation or an evaluation of our practice starts to give you accountability on different things that you know I'm I'm feeling this I'm linking in with it and therefore I've then got a responsibility to do something about it rather than a step away perhaps with the third person yes absolutely so what it does is is at that point in time it allows us to take that accountability it allows us to start start to take some ownership of what we think and feel and actually then the implications of that for that experience so yes thank you um Andrew you've got your hand up sorry sorry I just wanted to add to what Nina was saying because that's a really good point but I think you could also see emotion as being a condition of being logical and rational and often what I'll find is people try to ignore or suppress the emotion and therefore never get to that it's like an anchor in bias there are my emotions not good I always kind of feel as though um something bad happens from this therefore I'm never going to explore it so it almost put a boundary up there like immediately yes and you have actually again you've highlighted something that's also really important and especially if we're going to actually facilitate reflection within our personal students um it's interesting now I'm so glad you've sort of said that in relation to what Nina said because um in in the book that I wrote one of the things that our students and staff came up with when we looked at what the 10 essential ingredients were actually some of those were related to your attitude towards reflection which has actually been quite brave it's not easy to reflect it's not easy to ask yourself what you've what you feel about something it's actually really quite difficult um it's not easy to be honest about what you think about something you know I'll say to students how you know how many times have you actually told yourself you mustn't think that way you know I've got three x and mother-in-laws now I can be really honest about what I think um sorry my humour's quite dark but um you know back then I would be kind of telling myself what I was supposed to think and feel about these people you know based upon society's expectations and you know the excellence expectations of what you should think and feel about your mother-in-law but anyway the point is is it's nerve-racking it's difficult especially if you're reflecting on a difficult experience or an experience where um there's a perceived level of any level of trauma or anxiety or upsetness about it engaging with what you think and feel is really hard but it's an absolute must because in order to alter behaviour you have to understand what you think and feel because your thoughts and your feelings drive your behaviour you know if you've got students who are bored in class it's because they're thinking and feeling bored so they'll behave bored um so if you've got students excited in class and engaging it's because they're thinking and feeling in that way so they'll behave in that way so for us it's for me it's getting our students to it's giving them permission to actually allow the student to connect with I um and we don't often do that and we certainly negate to do that in academia I think because I don't know about you guys but I know in our faculty they'll often say things oh use of use of I is less academic and it's like well why is it you know just because I'm using I and writing reflectively doesn't mean to say it has to be less academic doesn't mean to say I'm not positioning my experience within the literature doesn't mean to say I'm not exploring what's occurring it doesn't make it what makes it less academic is slang colloquialism bad grammar you know so um it's it's about giving students permission to use I and and also giving our staff you know permission to say you know what it's okay for us to allow our students to talk about themselves and and in saying what we what you've just said Andrew about you know the the anxiety sometimes around engaging with emotion um it's also very self caring um we we did a little piece for the nursing times not so long ago that actually looked at reflection as being very self caring because you know we often think of self care as you know well I do you know I'm in a glass of wine you know a glass of wine tonight or you know I lift weights so you're going to undo some weight lifting that self care to me or eating hell or whatever um but actually taking time out to allow yourself um the time to truly engage with what you think can feel is self care um it's important um and I was discussing with a colleague not so long ago that um when we ask people to write reflectively and I think something that we can take into our relationships with our personal children to that sort of engagement with them is is allowing our students to tell their story to tell their narrative to tell their provenance you know um we don't often allow them to do it you know I've been in external examiner for 19 years and I'll often see um sort of essays reflective essays where you know you've got a thousand words and you're giving them like you must you must follow Gibbs's model actually seeing Gibbs's model we try to be followed in 500 words which is I think is tantamount to impossible almost really because it's in the six stages but you know we're giving them a couple of hundred words to actually say what their story was or to actually lay down their experience but actually the art of the the analysis the criticality that needs to come into reflection in order to generate that learning um is very difficult to do if you don't know what your narrative is if you don't explore your experience so I think something that we can certainly do within that sort of personal tutor relationship is absolutely allow our students to tell us their narrative we can allow them to validate themselves and I do think that's really important um and I'm not saying that reflection always has to be incredibly meaningful you know you know we don't need to um get them to you know reflections not counting and I do think that's really it steals a lot of elements um and it utilizes at a different level lots of the sort of techniques and the skills um but it might highlight a need for somebody to go in and process this in a more structured way in a different way um but it is important that we allow our students to tell their narrative and it's important that we recognize that any experience can be reflected on you know I'm having an experience with you guys now doing my first webinar ever that's an experience for me that I could actually learn something about myself if I chose to reflect on it um and I think moving away for us from these sort of the use of sort of critical incident analysis or you must reflect on an event um for me helps the students to understand that you know do you know what you can actually reflect on absolutely any experience you've ever had in your entire life sorry Emma says would students have the chance to reflect on the experiences um that's what yes that's the world and that's really important and we can learn to read their maps of the world yeah you know it is really important to recognize that they're coming we're coming from different positions and you know um that empathic regard that trying to understand somebody from their own unique perspective it's not actually that easy to do because um to really understand somebody you've got to ask them questions about what they're experiencing you've got to allow them the time to elaborate um and yes you're right we want to learn to read our students maps and we want them to tell them our maps does that make sense um so you know sorry if I'm missing any questions please feel free to sort of put your microphone or put your hand up and ask me as we're going along so so the other thing I just wanted to draw our attention to is we know that reflection is about an exploration of experience we've got all these wonderful theories out there like Sharon who'll say it's on experience in experience we can also pre-reflect we can also explore what we think and feel about something before we even get into an experience to explore the potentiality of an experience um but for me I always said to our students it's really important that the process of reflection absolutely does not assume you've done something wrong it does not assume you need to improve and I do think that's important because um you know I think Andrea mentioned it earlier you know engaging with reflection is not easy and developing somebody's confidence in their ability to reflect needs to come from also I think advocating for the fact that like I said you don't have to keep choosing really bad things to reflect on um it doesn't assume you're not going to reflect it to look at you know how bad a person you are and how much you need to improve um it's really not about that reflection is it works my very neutral premise the only assumption it makes is that you wish to understand yourself to a greater level you wish to gain a heightened level of self-awareness you wish to learn more about yourself in the context of experience and in the context of how others experience you and how you effect and also react to those you know I mean I I just think it's such an important thing that we can sort of all get to grips with and certainly support our students in becoming you know sort of that effective reflective practitioner um and we've really talked we've talked a little bit about sort of the purpose of it and I love this sort of second to the last one where Boyd and Fells talked about critical reflection being the core difference between whether a person repeats the same experience many times getting really good at that one behaviour or whether we can learn from our experiences enough that I can potentially be cognitively and effectively and therefore transformationally changed you know I say I you know I'll often say you know knowledge is power I don't want power over anybody else by the way I've got no intention of trying to have power over anybody else but I want power over myself I want to be able to inform my future experiences I want to be I want to be the best version of me not the best version of me against anybody else I just want to know myself well enough that I can be the best version I can of me and I think engaging with that reflective process whereby we can really kind of you know immerse ourselves within experiences where we can kind of really start to analyse and explore those where we can draw conclusions from that that we can then use I think is a really good thing for us to be able to do. Has anybody got any questions so far anything they completely disagree with because obviously that's perfectly all right too um no and then like I said I apologise if I've missed anything in the chat bar I don't know any of you know about Barbara Basso because this is also something we can perhaps will use utilise with our students and show our students she created the metaphorical mirror and and I love I actually it's quite small sorry um I only wanted to show you a couple of these but I love I absolutely love these mirrors and I love the way she utilised the different types of mirrors to show the different angles from reflectings what it can highlight for us so for example this bathroom mirror when you kind of look at yourself and so you know before I did this webinar kind of looked in the bathroom mirror and and I thought yeah not looking so great need to shove something on because that's not what I want you lot to see so the bathroom mirror reflects immediately back at you the perception or the perception sorry the yeah the the image that the world has of you and I remember being when I was a student I was quite vocal as a student um and I remember um I was always one of those students who if you know if you have to do group work you know I'm always the one you'll open the gob you know I'm always the one who open my mouth and I always stand up and do something I just I can't help myself um and I remember um I was working with this group once there's a bunch of mental health nurses and mental health nurses is my day we sometimes were a bit we were a bit lazy we were always late to class we used to fall asleep in class we weren't the best students and I remember just trying to get this thing done and this student this so that my colleague immediately said to me well you're a bossy wench aren't you and I'm like is that is that how people see me bossy is that what I'm literally oozing out to the world and I thought oh my goodness and I hadn't seen that in myself at all I hadn't perceived myself as being bossy and I thought you know what I need to sort this out because I don't want to be bossy I don't want people to experience me as a really bossy person actually at times I can be quite anxious and I'm because I'm quite compassionate towards others if a lecturer in our class was trying to get us to do something if my colleagues were sitting there looking like they were sleeping I I would really feel for the lecturer I'd be thinking that must feel awful so I would always be the person to open mouth not because I wanted to show off but because I felt for them but actually in doing so the way that I was presenting myself to the world was actually it got thrown back at me in the bathroom mirror was I was bossy and I'm like oh you know I need to explore this and I need to it's not how I want I understand what I'm doing but I need to actually try and look at all the ways that I can actually express myself so the bathroom mirror I think is really helpful and then I love this the kind of rear view mirror you know we talk to students I talk to students about when we're reflecting on our practice and then an ocean calls it reflection on action and again I think action kind of is quite a reductionist view of what reflection can actually mean we can reflect on experience to me I much prefer the word experience and when we reflect on action or on our experiences you know our experiences can inform how we move forward so if you're driving down the road and you're driving in your car if you're on a motorway if you don't look in your rear view mirror to look at what's coming up behind you and you happen to be driving you know maybe a little Skoda Yeti and all of a sudden up behind you is coming a Range Rover you know nothing along the Skoda Yeti but it's not quite as fast as a Range Rover if you don't see that your future might not be what you want it to be because you're pulling out and you're moving forward without actually looking at what's occurred behind you in order to inform how you move forward so I'll often say to our students you know that rear view mirror looking back exploring those experiences is what's going to enable us to actually move forward with information and I think that's something that we can do quite a lot of in our personal tutor relationships is get them to explore the experiences that they've had so that they can move forward in their course in their profession whatever you guys whatever work you do with your students they can move forward with information about themselves which is quite powerful and they can also move forward in understanding how they affect people and I you know I think one of the things that I do say a lot to our students is yes is you know you absolutely you know you must understand part of reflection isn't just self-indulgent thinking we don't just think thinking sends you into my care thinking purposefully analytically and critically in exploring something and then doing something with the information is reflection but I'll you know I'll often say to our students it's not self-indulgent it's not just ruminating because that can be unhealthy we do want to understand how we affect others because actually that can actually enhance our relationships with others you know I often give them the I was a really terrible student and not because I was disinterested I just I thought I joined I actually thought I'd applied to do a psychology degree and I hadn't and I didn't want to leave home I wanted to go and work in Tesco to be perfectly honest forever and so I sort of went away from home at the you know that you must leave home and go and do your degree because that's what you do and so I just applied for anything thinking I'd done psychology so when I enrolled I was running on to a mental health person because I'm like oh dear better carry on now I'm down here we'll crack on so you know I wasn't the best mental health nurse to start off with I was a bit rubbish and when I then gave my first injection I was even more rubbish because I had an absolute inherent irrational fear of hurting somebody because people who hurt people aren't very nice are they and I didn't want to hurt anybody and when I gave my first injection it actually took me three goes three goes to get a blinking needle in this person because we were taught to give injections at oranges and for anybody who's non-nursing out there orange skin is nothing like people's skin so it bounces you know it goes in easily but it bounces off people's skin you've got to get a little more force so after it bounced off the second time of this poor gentleman and very man this gentleman was in his 80s and I'm trying to you know I'm like 19 shaking like leaf sweating looking just awful looking like I'm about to pass out you know it bounced off a second time and I could feel myself trying not to cry and if you've ever tried to swallow a cry and it hurts and I could just feel in this like single tear without dropping out my eyes I'm thinking you absolute plonker you're just you're making such a fool of yourself so the old gentleman the gentleman he actually sat up and he grabbed my hand and he said to me Nickley said I have been through a war he said and I've got shrapnel where shrapnel does not belong you're not going to hurt me just get it in there well so I put it in and I went away and I did diligently reflected on my experience you know I explored my thoughts my feelings I did my research on anxiety now it affected my thinking I did loads of stuff but I never actually stopped to ask myself how did the gentleman experience me because he did experience me he experienced me to such a degree that he made me feel better he felt the need to sit up and on his very poorly bed and make the nurse who's supposed to be making him feel better feel better and so you know I do I'm very mindful and I think this is something we can do within our personal tutor work to be very mindful of actually asking our students questions about perspective how other people see them how they think people responded to them because in any profession you know understanding ourselves in the context of others and how people respond to us is really important you know and it can actually enhance our interpersonal connections with people so for you guys as well you know it's important that we reflect that we embody what it is we want our students to be you know so if our students aren't responding to us when I think it goes back to what Wendy said earlier if our students aren't responding to us in the way that we want them to let's not look at what the students are doing let's look at what we're doing and maybe why explore that in our own reflective practice. So I do like Barbara Bassow's moves I think it's a nice way I've seen the different mirrors that can actually help us to reflect in different ways so if we apply some of this to personal tutoring you know we're looking at you'll all be doing different things I imagine within your sort of personal tutoring and relationships connections with your students but if we're then thinking about for me what I'm I suppose what I wanted to try and do today with you was to get us to think about actually getting our students to reflect so that we can support some guided reflection within them so that they can start to reflect on their experiences of being at university of being away from home of being part of their course or you know if it's a clinical course of connecting with their patients or it's an education course in any sense I perform getting them to explore that so when we think about the the conversation that we have we will range between all of these so being very non-directive with our students to listening to literally just listening to understand somebody just to be there and demonstrate I'm actually here and I'm here to listen to you right through to actually might need to give some instruction and actually tell a student what to do especially if they don't know what to do so there's a range of where we're at with our personal tutoring but for me the reflective dialogue the reflective element kind of sits more at the non-directive end so the top bit here listening to understand reflecting paraphrasing what the student's saying asking open questions clarifying assumptions helping them to summarise asking questions that raise awareness giving them some feedback this is kind of where we're going to be in that reflective conversation if we start to think about making suggestions giving guidance there's nothing wrong with that obviously because I think as a personal tutor you know we are there to give guidance I know on many occasions I've had to give my students guidance but I think the nurse in me sometimes has a habit of just wanting to fix something immediately because I just want somebody to feel better about something and you know that's not always the best way at times sometimes it's good to allow somebody to explore the thing for themselves that it can draw their own conclusions and come up with their own ideas but there is going to be times when we do need to offer guidance where we do need to fix something but that doesn't mean to say we can't facilitate reflection within the student first and then help them to kind of draw those conclusions so have you all have you all heard of kind of socratic dialogue is anybody know what this is I'm assuming there's probably quite a few that I do know what it is no Emma says no no andrew does yet yeah okay so some people know some people yeah so in really simple terms because I do like to put things quite simply this is based upon as a nurse I can think oh yeah what is just going to look like what Sam says a nurse I can relate to when to to fix you know you know I'm terrible just and actually pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone to not fix things is actually really important so socratic dialogue is a way of asking questions that it's quite probing and it can generate a greater level of of information about something that can then generate a deeper level of understanding there are human beings in this world oh yes Larissa remind me to do that then sorry there are human beings socratic sorry in this world that are amazing at socratic questioning and they don't even know the doing it can you guess who what human being in this world is amazing do you think it's a cratic questioning so open probing questions anybody got kids yeah yeah they're amazing at it they are utterly utterly and your cousin yeah they're utterly utterly amazing because kids ask the one question of why but why but why now when my daughter was five if I'm holding a conversation with her absolutely if I'm holding a conversation with her and she says mommy can I do this and I say no and she'll say why and I'll say because mommy says so then a descriptive answer with no kind of discussion will will suffice um however now that she's 16 that don't suffice anymore she'll question me but why what's that got to do with that well how does that correlate to that well what with the implications mom of me doing that against that she's actually in effect making me analyse and reflect on my decision to say no if I then can't come up with a half decent answer why am I saying no I need to reflect on why am I should say no to it so the why question the what question the however questions these are simple questions that actually are cluster socratic questions that open up um a dialogue to be had a conversation to be had why do you think that where do you think that came from why do you think that occurred in that way what made you feel that where do you think that feeling came from how would you think that feeling influenced the way you then acted in that sense so those why questions the what questions sort of however questions those questions are open probing questions that allow for a deeper level of exploration and in socratic dialogue there is like sort of six distinct types we've got questions for clarification don't make it good I love that question I love that so we've got questions for clarification we've got questions that will produce assumptions so are you telling me that what you mean by that is actually that clarifications have I understood that correctly is this what you mean do you mean that um questions which necessitate reasonable evidence so you know why do you think that where do you think that's come from um you know do you think that way because that's how somebody responded to you oh yes George was amazing and we saw them live by the way it was a bit weird um questions regarding perspectives so how do you think that other person felt when you said that to them um how do you think they experienced you so it gives people different perspectives questions which calculate consequence so what are the implications of that you think and questions on the question so these types of question are what go into supporting a student to reflect but it can be a little dodgy and I was so I was just wondering if if if anybody would the chance or perhaps be brave enough to let me demonstrate this on somebody cloud might have to be you if nobody's brave enough to let me show you oh Andrew well done go on Andrew she'll be my com right so Andrew's been really brave thank you so much Andrew hello I owe you beer later Andrew's been really brave so all I'm going to do on Andrew uh if it's okay I'm just would it be all right Andrew if I asked you about your experience of the pandemic yeah yes do you feel comfortable talking about that okay so I'm going to ask Andrew about his experience the pandemic so what I'm going to do to start off with and I just want you to listen and see what you think is I'm going to just try to employ just some socratic questioning um Andrew you might feel a certain way to this and that's okay um so Andrew it's lovely to meet you virtually thank you so much for offering to do this for me so what was your experience of this whole pandemic like my experience um was probably twofold um there was parts where I absolutely hated it um and a personal and a social level why I'd probably say because there was a lack of conversation face to face with people okay so why was there no face to face because there was a contagious disease so how did that impact on you it was probably impactful because I'm a very social person and need that stimulation why do you need stimulation do you want to time out no no this is no I've had this done to me before probably because I realized during the pandemic I'm actually an ambiver so I like time to myself and also time with other people okay so we will time out there a minute so I'm assuming you heard a lot of what a lot of why questions yes right so first and foremost before I ask everybody else how did that feel um so so the first time I had it done to me felt interrogative um that just now I was kind of more prepared so it was also quite difficult to continue delving deeper into the why yes so if you hadn't had that done before as people have quite noticed in the chat it's horrible or natural it's quite stressful it's like an inquisition it does not feel nice it probably didn't sound very nice to everybody else um and like you say you also get to a point where you think I'm struggling to know what to actually answer here so so if you just stand up yes intimidating absolutely so that so if we're going to try and engage yes our students our personal students in any level of reflective dialogue please do not not do that I have heard people do that it's not pleasant it doesn't feel nice and it's actually quite aggressive so for those of you who've done this kind of stuff before you know we've got to have some communication skills um and the reason I say this is because you know I don't say this I don't I'm not trying to teach people to suck eggs here I sat with a consultant psychiatrist once who told one of my patients while they were exploring their suicidal ideation he helped his phone went off he answered his phone and he did that to my patient um and I was really angry and I would I actually afterwards told him he would never ever see another one of my patients again so I will never ever oh by any minute I will never assume that everybody knows how to do this so yes so just asking the Socratic question just asking those questions is not the best way so I'm going to ask Andrew to do that again and and and what I'm going to try and attempt to do is make it a little bit more conversational um a little bit more organic so that Andrew feels like he wants to explore stuff um and so hopefully this this is a little bit more reflective in its approach so Andrew again thank you so much um what was your experience of the pandemic like my experience was that it was twofold um again on like personal and social level and it was quite difficult for me um in terms of work I actually found it much easier to work from home um and again had more time to reflect in that sense okay so you said it was twofold so I'm assuming the personal and the work is the twofold and the it sounds like the work was slightly more manageable than the personal side how did the personal side in enjoying that pandemic how did you feel about that I would say there was a mixture of feelings and that within itself was the problem I kept thinking I needed to use the time I've got to explore a new skill or that I just need to take best time because I'm never going to get it again in a weird sort of completed way um to progress um and I was feeling it that so it sounds it it actually sounds like you were putting yourself under some thinking pressure to actually do something because there was time to kind of do something is that right absolutely it's the story of my life I would say why do you think it's the story of your life then um it came to the point that when I was younger I used to think quite a lot to my own detriment and it was I always used to think I was different in a bit weird in that sense um I ended up studying philosophy to try and understand how to think um in when you're by yourself in a pandemic you have lots of time to do that but because I'm a quite naturally a negative thinker obviously I kind of went down the rabbit hole there right okay so that time the pandemic um allowed you to almost reconnect with understanding who you are prior to pandemic time re-recognising elements of yourself that actually then didn't were not working in the manner you wanted them to work for you within the pandemic and like you said could have sent you down a rabbit hole yeah in fact that's exactly what happened um it was that realisation that oh hold on a second um I've got so much time with myself that I never had before um who am I what am I doing here I was wanting to go into become a lecturer initially then it was going into professional services as a student advisor so once you actually have time to reflect in that sense I was quite overwhelmed and surprised by the amount of things that had been happening in the background that I had no idea of that's really interesting so Andrew before we can I'm going to stop there for a minute just because actually I could quite happy carry on and talk to you all day and I'm very very well I've got four minutes so I I am not um I'm trying not to be dismissive of you so I do apologise that so so how did that sound to other people did that sound slightly nicer somewhat of what we've got in the chat bar players used to Socrates investigating character dialogue yeah um vision reminds me of nonviolent communication reminds me of training for the Samaritans much nicer a lot nicer yes from the heart questions natural coaching yeah it's coaching yep much nicer got more input much more conversational some more feelings yeah so in in literally space of probably about two minutes I was trying to show nobody's perfect I was trying to show some of these you know the paraphrase and the clarifying bringing things together and Andrew did it feel better oh yeah much better so yeah so in effect that's what we're I suppose that's what we're trying to do and how how that conversation goes and how it moves forward is going to be very dependent upon obviously the experiences that our students are reflecting on so you know it doesn't it doesn't always need to go in a very deep way um but again you know that will depend on what they're reflecting on and what you and also as the person guiding the reflection on somebody how comfortable you feel but I suppose what's really important like I said this is it isn't therapy we're not actually giving therapy to somebody we're just allowing somebody to explore their experiences sometimes that will get the what so what now are yes yes Sam Samantha sorry I love the what so what now and actually you know Terry Bolton's version of that well the original version by Terry Bolton was created wasn't it for our um for education after lesson planning so I love the what so what now and I actually think it's a really good model to write where to reflectively write with for academic purpose because he actually mimics intro middle end of a normal piece of academic work so I think it's one of the easier ones to use but again I think if we don't understand reflection not everybody will understand the what the so what now on what needs to go in each of those areas and if anybody's interested you know I'm more than happy to check out my working email I um I did actually create a model of reflection from a reflection to support reflective writing for academic purposes which helps the student to reflect yeah just dropped me an email helps the student to reflect um and meet the requirements of academia you know so um because I'd moaned about it for about 18 years um I thought a better album so yes so um in fact what I don't I don't quite know how I'll do this but I'll somehow make sure that everybody knows where where it is and I'll try and send it out to people um so yes there's lots of models out there and in there to be fair I think I I mean I trained as a reality therapist and I've done coaching and I've done all kinds of stuff as part of my you know when I after I did my mental health nursing but I suppose the nice thing about reflection is is that you can flip between you know that kind of let's get into the experience let's explore it let's draw conclusions let's go back to the experience we don't have to stick to a set structure and I do think that's important for us to remember it's it can be very fluid and if if a student just sits for an hour and just wants to talk about what they went through do you know what that's all right because you know they might need that they might need that um and so I'm very aware of time so just in that little snippy I did just want to kind of just show you a little bit so I'm hoping I've kind of covered everything I'm hoping everybody kind of we're all you know we're all going to go and be at amazing reflective practitioners and we're going to employ it within our personal choices has anybody got any questions yes Jean hi there so I'm a senior tutor so one of my roles is to train the 50 or 60 personal tutors that I oversee yeah I I've already tried to incorporate some reflective practice in what we'll get try and get the students to fill in in terms of their their portfolios and things when they go to their tutors and I'd love to improve that and your goodness were good tips um my one concern is that obviously all my tutors aren't some of them are better better than others shall we say if I encourage the students to be more reflective and open themselves up more and my tutors aren't capable of handling that in the right way am I put making students more vulnerable I just have a concern in the back of my head I would say yes and no I think in any personal tutoring connection you're obviously always going to have a personal tutor who was really interested who was more engaged or who is better equipped and you're always going to have those that aren't or don't want to be personal tutors and they're doing it because they have to I suppose we're always going to have that and we're always going to have um the law always be I don't think we need to get people to reflect to potentially hear things that are difficult um I had a student where I was actually their dissertation supervisor wasn't their personal student and she rang me one day and actually managed to email me a picture of a bruised arm and rang me while the ex-boyfriend is banging down the door to get into a house and for some reason she phoned me not a personal tutor and you know and I had I was just her supervisor but she obviously felt some kind of connection to me that she she wanted help on the phone so um I think we may hear things anyway whether we're doing it just as a quick catch up with a personal student who's suddenly having a bad time they're going to fall apart on you um I think we've got to have some a little bit of confidence I suppose sometimes in our personal tutees that if the tutee doesn't feel connected to their tutor it's less like not unlikely it's less likely they'll start talking about things that they that are really sort of affecting them and I also think I suppose one thing I teach our staff is reflection shouldn't be we are not going to tell the student what they must reflect on some of our staff do they'll make them reflect on their clinical practice or they'll make them reflect on a critical incident if we do that um then obviously we're we're sort of pushing them into a position of where we're telling them what experiences they need to reflect on so I think as long what we need to do is is easy we can't we can't we can't turn people into amazingly compassionate empathetic individuals what we can do though yes sorry Larissa is give people the the skills and I think as long as somebody's got the skill it's their job then to employ that skill to make sure that student is safe it's our job to make sure the personal tutor has actually got the skill and then if something pops up that's difficult they know who to actually signpost the student to um I don't know whether that's answered your question very well um sorry Larissa you've asked a question um that I completely said I would answer later on and and I suppose Jean sorry I'll come back to you in a minute if you if there's anything else I do apologize reflective versus reflexive this is an interesting one because those people who don't always understand reflection very well or being reflective often will think being reflexive is quite different and I don't actually personally think it is um I'll often use the word reflexive in the nature in relationship to research um you know I supervise doctoral students and supervise them in there when I'm not a quant person I'm a qual person I wouldn't know how to add up if you paid me um so you know in qualitative research it's really very important as the person who's doing the research to understand how they are as a researcher influencing the research as it's occurring that's about being reflexive being reflexive really is reflection in action you are exploring who you are what you are and your influence on what's occurring at the time so if we're being reflexive it's the really kind of the same thing it's just a different way of saying I think personally being reflecting in the moment as a mental health nurse I have to reflect in the moment because I when I'm working with a patient or was working with patients um and especially my patients because I work in the field of addictions and they're very quick to judge um if you don't understand yourself in that moment how somebody is experiencing you how you are experiencing them and actually have fairly decent levels of emotional intelligence your patient walks out the door and doesn't come back so you're exploring yourself in the moment and you're adapting what you're doing how you're doing it to keep everything productive um being that is also classed as being reflexive so but they tend to use that term reflexive as it applies to you being immersed as the researcher in your research um so when I'm researching they'll look for that reflexivity within the research when you're writing your thesis which is really to explore how you as a researcher your positionality your ontology your epistemology how that's influencing yourself as a research how you potentially influence your research um but in a nutshell you're reflecting on your experience of research and looking at how you're influencing it I hope that's kind of answered your question sorry jean before I cut you off horribly there was there something else you wanted to add I do apologise no no that was useful it's just yeah it's one of those difficult ones isn't it of getting that balance between encouraging students and just having that slight nervousness that once we train the tutors the the not to engage ones are the ones that don't engage with the training either yeah and I suppose the other thing is is that um it's important I think somebody mentioned in the chat earlier it's about having boundaries as well it's about being very clear on what your boundaries are that you know if I'm employing if I'm supporting you to reflect on your experiences I'm not actually going to offer you counseling it's if something comes up that you feel you're going to need a much greater level of support and a much more structured way of exploring something then you know I know I'm you know I can signpost you to somebody I know who I can help you to connect with if you feel that you know actually just exploring this in a reflective process is actually not what you need so I suppose it's just making sure that as personal tutors we understand what reflection is we know what our boundaries are and that actually when you know reflection doesn't always need to be done formally as well you know you can employ reflective dialogue in a very informal organic conversational way where the student doesn't even feel like they're coming in to reflect on an experience it's just when when when I see my students I think because I do this all the time and because of mental healthness it's something that I should really be doing I do it anyway quite naturally and then if I need to be more directive I will often say to the student is it okay if I give you some advice so at most conversations that my students will have with me from a personal tutor experience will tend to be fairly reflective in nature anyway even if it's not an official reflective dial of where am I where I'm officially so it doesn't always need to be employed in a very sort of structured way it could just be that what we're doing is is giving our staff our tutors the skills to be able to have more open conversations where students are actually allowed to own a conversation a little bit and to explore what what they're experiencing are there any specific techniques we can employ to make students feel more comfortable in sharing issues specific techniques things like you know like Mr Catterish did do actually phone halfway through a conversation that's really not nice and things like just been I don't know we're just allowing who you are to come through call Rogers you know the guru of psychology I would have been he would have been my fourth husband if I'd have met him years ago but he's unfortunately very dead and you know his core conditions of sort of congruence empath empathic regard and unconditional positive regard embodying those and embodying what he is to be person centred which is you know I'm going to allow my authentic self to come through you know today who I am here in this webinar and you know Claire will probably attest to this because she's my boss actually is actually really not much different to who I am outside of here I am being my authentic self I may have slightly adapted my foul language at times because obviously we're in a very different professional environment but I'm trying to be my authentic self and you know people won't don't share stuff with people they're not comfortable with and people who aren't authentically who they are so if you are a gen if inherently you are a fairly nice person only you will know that if you are a fairly compassionate person and if you allow your authentic self to come through students will start to they'll feel quite naturally a connection to you if you act the role you you guys must know you must have seen it and if you haven't seen it you must have experienced it yourself as a student at some point when you've been a student some of you acts the role of lecturer I have seen people do it and it's like outside the door they're totally different and then they go into the lecture room it's like they turn into like this thing and I'm like it's a bit like gps I've you know I know gps outside of work and when I see them at work I'm like oh you're not like that outside of work so they act you know they take on the embodiment of what they think a gps or what they think you know I've seen it in mental health nursing people act the role of a nurse you can't connect with a cardboard cutout you can only connect with somebody who's been their own authentic self with respect for the situation that they're actually in so yes teaching staff or allowing staff or giving staff permission to allow who they are to come through and having confidence that you know what I'm actually an alright person I'm a good person so it's okay for me to let my personality come through um then then a student will connect with that so a student might feel more comfortable sharing having boundaries you know you're not there to be there mate you're there to be their person to support them to be the person to go to to be the person who creates the safe space you know I know my students feel safe with me I am very tight bound I I learn quickly in the field of addiction if you do not have boundaries you really are up the creek without a paddle um so my patients knew there were my boundaries you can bounce between me boundaries but you don't go over me boundaries so we have flexibility within the boundaries but the boundaries are there so my patients felt very safe with me there was no messing I talked but I you know I had their backs I was there for them I was very organic with them with boundaries and I'm like that with my students um so I think you know getting to know who you are the more you can get to know yourself as a person and the more confident you feel with who you are not arrogance but you know confidence about who you are as a person that you're a good person that you know what you're doing people pick up on that you know um we can't make students share but all I can do is just try and provide a space that is a safe space that they're safe with me that they know that I can manage anything that they want to talk to me about and if it's out of my scope of practice they also know I'll be very honest with them so um I wouldn't say this specific techniques but I do think there's lots of attitude and evolvement that we can get to a point where we then feel much more happy with that um and watch off that answers your question sorry um anything else anybody wants to ask I hope we've covered everything yes I just yeah I don't think you know unless you're authentic self it's written on a good person um then yes hide it but no you know allow yourself to come through so I'm glad you guys have found it interesting anyway um and um I will work out how to share that um article with you um and uh behind the scenes and I'm sure Claire and and uh we can share it with you at some point if you send us the article we can we can fold it on Nicola thanks Claire thank you Nicola that was a really interesting presentation with some engaging and reflective discussion which I'm sure will be informative to our members