My Role as a Facilitator During Group Discussions - Essay Example

 My Role as a Facilitator During Group Discussions Over this semester that I have attended Occupational Therapy classes, I have essentially participated in many important learning discussions and opportunities that place me as a competitive and well informed individual as I take a leaping step into the vast and informative professional process of an occupational therapist. This paper traces my learning process as a freshman into Occupational Therapy and significantly highlights the learning opportunities and exposures that I have participated in during this semester with significant discussions pertaining to group discussions. This paper is essential in every aspect of my academic life as it unearths my role as a facilitator during our group discussions in this semester with my roles during such learning processes clearly highlighted. Individual group learning stems from the fact that as learning process becomes significant to the learning process, significant attempts shifts the learning process from the instructor’s perspective to a student learning characteristics with emphasis on an individual’s ability to organize and sustain a learning process for knowledge acquisition and learning management. [Dun06] My earlier pre-college life offered very little meaning as to what Occupational Therapy (OT) really entailed. In my wild thoughts, I had always thought of Occupational Therapists as individuals with no clear defined role often taking up counseling roles to justify their qualification in the field. Having enrolled for an OT has indeed changed these preconceptions. Ideally, I had never experienced group learning or group facilitation as a teenager and my earlier experiences worked very little for me to improve on that general perception and so I was somehow nervous on how to set the ball rolling in motion. The College of Occupational Therapists, (COT) views “people as occupational beings” and that the discipline empowers people to fulfill or enhance their role as occupational beings. [Sab98] Within this regard, Occupational therapists ‘promote, function, quality of life and the realization of people’s potential in experiencing occupational deprivation, imbalance or alienation” (COT, 2009) through collective efforts of persons. I had never have an experience towards group work, and influenced on what impact this would have had in my presumed social functions as an occupational therapist. My reflective interest towards group facilitation derived from a creative group conducted during my course placement. Reflection in essence is an old phenomenon; investigative studies by Boud, Keogh and Walker argued that reflection is essential as it enables people to focus on their learning and experiences thus creating a new informed conceptual framework of understanding. Subsequently, group leadership assists members to capitalize on the various skills, ideas and talents that exist among the group members for goal formulation and achievement. Putting together my leadership skills and learning process during the therapeutic classes, I facilitated a creative brainstorming session to reflect upon various issues in occupational therapy and group dynamics. My realization on importance of group therapy in my session as an occupational therapist were among other things informed by the benefits of group therapy as opposed to educational groups. Recognized as an experienced based process and its uniqueness in fostering personal development and individual growth, I facilitated a five member therapeutic group to reflect on the gains and milestones in occupational therapy I engaged my peers as part of OT role, significantly to enable them participate in OT demands, leisure, and engage in self care.[Bou85] Driven by the need to develop occupational therapy skills for my group members’ presentation skills and subsequent planning and presentation skills I engaged all the group members to elaborate how brainstorming activity could be used to get everyone’s ideas on how to plan. Moreover, prepare them for a presentation and enable them reflect on the stages in preparing and subsequently planning for a presentation. During this process, every member invited to submit their thoughts, ideas and perceptions on planning for a presentation in form of a wheel diagram that emphasizes the relative importance of each member’s ideas towards the process. This session ended by asking each member to write down what to do when preparing for a presentation and sharing out these ideas among members. These fruitful discussions then cemented by offering suggestive and binding guidelines essential during each group learning process where I provided cementing essentials to building professional presentation skills and how to plan for an effective presentation session. On another informative session, I led my group members in planning for presentation and subsequent confidence building during the process. During this process, I led the members in stating the objectives, and limitations likely encountered during presentation. At the end of this session, I emphasized having many points during presentation, itemizing the issues of importance and significance of brainstorming as critical elements in confidence building during presentation. At the end of this session, I emphasized participants’ role in learning during the process. While utilizing a reflective model as proposed by John, I have critically evaluated this creative group therapeutic session constantly contented that all the process was fruitful and informative. This process has also enabled to think of other means I could have also dealt with emerging circumstances during our discussion process. This reflective strategy has worked in assisting me learn from this experience and where I should improve in the future. [Joh00] In addition, the creative therapeutic group session has improved essential skills in me including communication skills, co-ordination, sequencing, pacing, co-operation and self-esteem while also testing my personal self-awareness, idea expression, and reconstruction of ideas from others. I have also experienced Kottler and Englar-Carlson insistence on group therapeutic factors in issues such as cohesiveness, awareness, task facilitation, vicarious modeling and learning, catharsis and group support and their relative importance in achieving occupational therapy roles within the larger societal context. [Gai12] In conclusion, I can confidently borrow Schon’s views of ‘reflection is action.’ [Sch95] I can again assert that my role as group facilitator has obviously worked for improving skills in me through skills acquisition relevant in occupational therapy practice as I actively participate through planning and preparation of presentation. My choice for placement in occupational therapy would augment to ‘promote, function, quality of life and the realization of people’s potential in experiencing occupational deprivation, imbalance or alienation” (COT,2009) through collective efforts of persons as I learn essential skills required as a therapist. Bibliography Dun06: , (Duncan, 2006), Sab98: , (Sabonis-Chaffe & Hussey, 1998), Bou85: , (Boud, Keogh, & Walker, 1985), Joh00: , (Johns, 2000), Gai12: , (Gail & Seymour, 2012), Sch95: , (Schon, 1995), Read More