Where am 'I' in this... (writing in First person)

We ask you to writing in First person because you are the filter through which you are experiencing life and making meaning. This is seeing a constructed world in which you are the builder. We need to know who is doing the building – you need to present. This raises questions about what is truth – is it more ‘true if I writing the building was the best thing every built’ or if I write ‘I felt the building was the best construction I had walked into.’ Is the building better because you are out of the sentence? 

We have to ask where we stand on truth, learning, facts – objective truth. Here is montage of videos and questions that together an assemblage for addressing the ethics of where ‘I’ am in what I write…  

Lying is a corporative act so is truth... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_6vDLq64gE&t=197s

Truth – learn from history for the better of the world – there is objective truth...

https://www.ted.com/talks/deborah_lipstadt_behind_the_lies_of_holocaust_denial/up-next?language=en#t-24829

https://www.ted.com/talks/deborah_lipstadt_behind_the_lies_of_holocaust_denial/up-next?language=en#t-24829

and so for me kindness is key 

But what about being kind has the danger of being gullible... (swearing below!!)

  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9U4Ha9HQvMo

....truth... 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4Uc-cztsJo&t=115s

(digital) literacy becomes important...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dceyy0cX6J4

‘…gave us access to everything but it also gave everything to us… discriminate between the things that genuinely matter and the' rhetoric 'of life…’ 

Where you are in all this determines what it means... so you need to be present in it when you write about it. That is why we ask you write in first person. 

What do you think?...

Experience and truth and critical thinking

Friday we had an impromptu skype chat. We continued on our discussion about aspects of practice but took steps ‘out’ to critically look at our own assumptions and discourses as we discussed. The Skype discussion groups are most useful for this as they allow you to practice the critical reflection and thinking-feeling that the course is asking you to develop (to MA level standards). We confirmed how the AOLs are critical reflections on your past experiences through looking at how past experiences have shaped your ideas and also how these ideas link to existing literature.

How do you ‘know’ some thing is true (for you). The AOLs ask you to look at your past career to see where you learnt your foundation of practice – where you learnt from experiences. Keep remembering this across the whole course.

For instance: Chelsie ‘knows’ that having a cultural context to her teaching of Dance Hall is an important part of her teaching practice – students need to understand the cultural background of the movement not just do the movement. There is literature that discusses this idea she can draw on. But how does she ‘know’ this? Thinking back this idea started to be something she learnt from when she was performing in China and realised her understanding of the movement she was performing was not at a level where she could really understand the movement itself: she noticed her own lack of cultural context made the movement she was doing incomplete. So, this learning was the seed of informing her practice/curriculum development of her classes today. The literature she finds around this helps her also give further context to learning as she sees what other practitioners have approached this idea and where her own innate understanding and values sit in the larger field of this topic.

Of course, across all the Modules you are doing this triangulation of experience-data, personal reflection, and literature.

So to set the cat amongst the pigeons what do you think of truth. The framework of this course sees ‘truth’ as constructed but does this mean anything goes? This Ted Talk is really interesting in terms of exploring this.