Learning Diary of a Young Person - Essay Example

Learning Diary of a Young Person 1. Outline a specific incident that has happened in your field work practice in the past week (e.g. a conversation with a young person, attendance at a meeting, participation in an activity) During one of the sessions on the mobile youth, venue one of the young females told her male peer that, from her experience, it was impossible to be an honest person. He agreed and asserted that to be honest is to be stupid. He added that it would never be acceptable for him to speak frankly, because, this would always put him in an inferior position and may be in a danger sometimes. I sat next to them witnessing whole conversation because they allowed me to be there. This made me to intervene in the conversation. Therefore, when I asked them, if i was stupid or dishonest according to their judgments, they started the argument again agreeing that other people could be honest, but for them personally it had never worked. Therefore, I asked them to share with me the stories from which they “learnt” that to be an honest person is not right or not possible. Surprisingly, both of them welcomed me into the conversation and we shared stories. Mainly, they quoted cases, when, for example, they were punished at school because they admitted to something that they had done or when they said to others plainly what they thought about them and how this caused conflicts, sometimes even physical. When sharing the stories, it became evident that both of them had prejudices about the concept of honesty. Therefore, we had to go through other detailed stories from others’ lives including mine where the honesty played completely different role. It can be said with full confidence that eventually their beliefs about being honesty were challenged with positive outcome so that at the end of the conversation they acknowledged that it is possible to live as an honest person. However, one needs to be conscious as well about the cases where he or she might be trapped to fail to be honest but despite the consequences, one should always prefer to be honest. Word count: 323 2. Reflection and analysis of the specific incident (what are your feelings and thoughts about the incident) My initial reaction was filled with personal and professional emotions. This is because during the first and second week of my work placement on the mobile youth venue, I struggled to develop purposeful relationships with young people who were attending the sessions. At the end of the second week, I was not only able to develop professional relationship, but also to appropriately intervene and challenge A and B. Word count: 68 3. Generalised analysis and learning - moving away from the specific example, what did this raise about how practice and theory relate to each other more generally. (e.g. did the conversation with a young person raise any issues about information and advice or professional boundaries or did the meeting or activity raise issues about group work theory.) Practice and theory relate to each other in the sense that theories provide general rules but do not tell the manner in which things should be done. Thus, practical judgement provides a way through which theory can be put into practise for judgments to be made. There is a gap between theory and practice, which is evidence or judgment. This means that in order to prove whether theory is true or false the general rules must be put into practice. Theories, on the other hand, speculate how things can be done meaning that we need theories to explain practice. One can build purposeful relationships with young people by first understanding the way they think, act and behave and the problems that they face. This will inform one how he or she can approach the youth and help them tackle their problems. Word count: 141 4. Specific professional development and what you learnt (you should refer to your learning contract and the specific learning outcomes that you have set yourself and ask have you met any of these and how). My learning goal for this module was to learn how to build purposeful relationships with young people and apply interventions, toward which I made good progress during the incident outlined above. Word count: 31 5. Further action this section should outline the further action that you need to take a. relating to the specific example of practice (e.g. do you need to follow up the conversation or meeting) To maintain professional relationship with A and B and challenge or encourage them improve when/if appropriate. b. relating generally to your learning and development (what do you need to do to be more effective in the future) To continuously seek feedbacks from co-workers and especially the lead worker regarding my progress in building professional relationships with young people and using intervention techniques appropriately. The most important would be to critically reflect on those feedbacks and accordingly keep reading relevant theories and concepts. Word count: 45 Total highlighted word count for proofread: 505 Read More