Progress

I am feeling the need to share the small, but perhaps significant lightbulb situations that have occured in my head in the last couple of days in relation to my dissertation. Something is happening in my head, there has been a link made between the theory of the impressive looking but complex text books I am being forced to study and real life. Some understanding of it all is happened, and I cannot tell you what a relief that is to me. Who would have believed that someone who spelt the word psychology wrong in her first essay as a nursing student (well it was hand written and lets face it, it is a difficult word to spell) can now not only spell the words philosophy and phenomenology but is at last being able to grasp (in simple terms of course) some kind of meaning. What is more this is being linked to my topic – action learning.

Action learning, for those of you who who haven’t experienced it, is a process where a group of real people spend time looking at and discussing each others real problems. Rather than advise each other on what to do, based on their own prior experiences, they use a questioning process to begin to unpick the root of the problem. Done well, with the right people it is a really good way of learning for your practice, and whats more it helps you to see that problems and situations at work often occur time and again.

My reading about action learning gave me the idea that I needed to explore it from a phenomenological position, that is to cut something complex to the bear bones, from the point of view of no preconceptions, from the point of the view of those doing it and recognising that it is unique to that person. Trouble is, in these kinds of things you can’t write 10 words, you need to write many thousands and to do that you have to go into the kind of detail you would rather not. But hey isn’t that half the fun I hear you cry? Well no not really, but it has to be done and doing it I am, Iove even created a new category. Normal service will be resumed soon!