Learning Styles Journal: Reflective Learning - Essay Example

Running Head: REFLECTIVE LEARNING Learning Styles Journal: Reflective Learning of the of the Learning Styles Journal: Reflective Learning I enjoyed dealing with the painting. It's the sort of thing that's really fun for me. I've seen pictures and slides of Picasso's Guernica before so I basically remembered a little bit about it. But truly you were right. The longer you spent just simply looking, taking it all in, the more you get out of it. I found the preparation was a lot of fun. The actual writing was tedious. There [were] so many observations to put together that it was overwhelming at first to figure out the way to write them so someone else would understand. I actually decided to map out my plan, to organize my paper, so that at least gave me a beginning point, and at that point I was able to go. Before that I pretty much procrastinated with the writing.... I started out with a kind of a chronological thing, I mean where I described myself and things that make me unique. Then I went on to describe the actual work and then pull the elements out that contributed to my response. Moving from her own powerful experience of a painting, she was able to develop ways to respect her experience by communicating it to another. After initial class sessions on genre; plot, and character failed to engage him ("Was I the only one who felt trapped in a class which embarked on discussing genre at 8:10 A.M."), a nineteen-year old man suddenly found the situation changed: "We had a confrontation. The entire class time surrounded a dispute. I readily sat up in my seat to observe what my classmates were anxious about, so I could participate. They were butting heads about their interpretations of the story read for our class assignment." At first he did not feel he could "jump in," but "definitely felt caught in the middle of it," agreeing with each side to some degree. As interpretations continued to "clash . . ., uninformed opinions were corrected by educated ones, and faces blushed due to embarrassment and anger," he found himself anticipating and preparing for class in new ways. I was in awe that the instructor allowed it to continue. At the end of the class I nearly fell out of my desk as the instructor announced that we would continue the debate the next class meeting. I carried my excitement with me. I did not mind waking up for class.... I began to review the material read and my class notes. And anticipate the opinion I would promote in class. I had been quiet in class for the first few weeks, but I was coming out of my shell. My opinions were refused as well as accepted by my classmates, and I realized my face felt a bit flushed a few times as I walked out of the classroom door. I began to wonder why I was so anxious and moved by the discussions. Why everything was so heated and sensitive. What came to me most, while I was doing the painting aesthetic response, was how much I now want to become involved with music and do that same thing with musical pieces. [Originally,] I couldn't really make any sense out of [jazz]. I always had the feeling it relaxed me and took me away from the things I thought about during the day, but beyond that it was really hard for me to identify my response and what was going on that caused it. And so now I have a challenge ahead of me, and these last couple of times we have been to [the jazz club] it's been kind of like a little lab for J. Also I'm interested in hearing what some of the music faculty say about jazz because . . . in lots of ways, it's not too conventional . . . , and I'd like to see what they think. A twenty-two-year-old senior was able to make connections between readings and work done in our course and other courses in religious studies. "[This course] has paralleled research I have been doing for other courses, which has been very exciting and useful. I have read Abraham from a feminist perspective in Dr. L.'s course, and discussed Kirkegaard's radical transcending of ethics with Abraham as the model (aaak, gag, barf). The essay "Where's Sarah" helped me think about and challenge that idea in class." The readings and assignments we have done have helped me to articulate and support what I had felt vaguely before--that the Bible holds no real answers or meaning for women as women. It does have meaning for women as human beings, but that is not the same, and it is not enough. I just finished a paper for Dr. D. on the rise of patriarchy, the effect it has had on human relationships with other humans and with the earth. Gerda Lerner, in The Creation of Patriarchy, talks about the snake as a symbol of the fertility goddesses, and the enmity that was placed between woman and the snake in Genesis 2. . . Actually it wasn't just this class.... I have been moving toward that point anyway for a while and had started doing some things just for my own personal enrichment. . ., things that I really didn't need to do or weren't of any significant value to my life other than the fact that they made me feel better about myself. She uses a metaphor in concluding her tape: "I have gone from being a back-seat driver to behind the wheel, at least with my 'temps' [temporary permit]." This new awareness of her development from being a "back-seat driver," that is, one having information and knowledge but not the power to do anything with it, leads her to identify what she now knows and believes she needs. "I learned a lot more about myself, about what I want to do, the learning process and how much a part of it I have to be . . ., how much more observant and analytical I have to be, not just in school but in other areas of my life." For some students the experience of the academic discipline of religious studies can be problematic as they seek to integrate it with their own confessional stance. One nineteen-year-old student told his story as a learner in terms of this encounter between faith commitments and the academic study of religion. In coming to this class I have been exposed to a new way of thinking.... I knew this was not going to be a spiritually oriented Bible study, and I hoped it wouldn't be an opportunity for radical, off-the-wall people to do some Bible-bashing. What I found are a nice bunch of highly motivated (for the most part) people who present a good mixture. I have enjoyed it. I have been influenced by others, and I would imagine that I have played at least a small part in others' thinking. I have become "a reader" of the Bible, or at least realized what type of reader I already was. In class I tend not to "check my bias at the door," but to bring it right on in. Many times I have wanted to stand up and shout (aren't you glad I didn't) at somebody about how they've missed the real point. Usually I just whisper it to G. [his roommate] and get his reaction. That's acceptable because we are both coming from similar "interpretative communities," unlike the class as a whole. When I do venture these ideas in discussion I try to conform to the "objective, academic view" that we hold as a class and then argue as best I can for my point. However, I know that I don't always leave my personal feelings out of it. [In reviewing my papers] I find both a detached writer who brings few prejudices to the story and also a traditional Christian writer with his mind made up. Interestingly, the detached writer is present only in texts I have not personally come to grips with yet, such as the creation story. I find that I have adopted some of the beliefs that the class holds (for the most part), such as a particular way of being conscious of what way I read something. I think that knowledge was worth taking the class for: to be myself in reading a text, but to know where I'm coming from and what I might be reading into it. REFERENCES Alter, R. 1989. The pleasures of reading in an ideological age. New York: Touchstone/ Simon and Schuster. Alverno College Faculty. 1989. Liberal learning at Alverno College. Milwaukee: Alverno Publications. Booth, W. 1988. The company we keep. Berkeley: University of California Press. Bruner, I. 1986. Actual minds, possible worlds. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Carr, D. 1986. Time, narrative, and history. Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press. Coles, R. 1989. The call of stories. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Deutsch, B., M. K. Kramp, and J. L. Roth. 1990. Alverno College. In Portfolio development and adult learning: Purposes and strategies. Chicago: CAEL Publications. Heilbrun, C. 1988. Writing a woman's life New York: W. W. Norton. Martin, W. 1990. We are the stories we tell: The best short stories by North American women since 1945. New York: Pantheon Books. Watson, D. (1996). Miscue analysis for teachers. In S. Wilde (Ed.), Making a difference: Selected writings of Dorothy Watson (pp. 34-55). Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Read More