2a Reflective Journal

Task 2a asks us to keep a reflective journal that we will be using throughout this course. I have kept a couple of journals growing up documenting day to day events and how I felt about them. One I wrote for learning purposes was for Elmhurst School for Dance. We were asked as students to keep a learning journal of our daily corrections we were given. This was very helpful in our development as young dancers to grow and learn from what teachers were telling us. It helped us to remember what different dance teachers had said and to look back and correct ourselves. It was a way for us to see our weaknesses and strengths on paper, reflect on why we do something one way and think about how might improve it.This journal from Elmhurst definitely had benefits to developing our learning. As well as a way of recording what happens in our day it encouraged us to reflect on our thinking.

I must say I was slightly apprehensive about this task. Journals I have written in the past never really lasted very long. I would write in them every night, forget to do it for about a week then eventually stop altogether! I seemed to fall into the trap of listing the days events rather than going into much depth about how I was feeling at the time. I am hoping this journal will not just report what happens but channel my emotions, deepen self understanding, allow me to reflect of why I do things and why things happened  in that way.

"The journal offers a way to sort out the multitude of demands and interactions and to highlight the most important ones" Mary Louise Holly (1989:9)

So where do I start? Well I started to look into what a journal actually is. As Adesola points out in the Reflective Practice Reader, we may think we know something but do we really? "Understanding you don't know something is important because it is the first stage of learning" Adesola Akinleye (2010:5) Now of course I have my own ideas of what a journal is- means in which to record the days events, thoughts, feelings, jot down tasks etc, but I felt I would do a bit of research to define a journal. I commented on Natalie Less' blog that I felt we both use abstract conceptualisation, by reading more into journal writing rather than jumping straight in.

Google defines a journal as:

diary: a daily written record of (usually personal) experiences and observations

a periodical dedicated to a particular subject; "he reads the medical journals"

daybook: a ledger in which transactions have been recorded as they occurred

a record book as a physical object

Wikipedia defines a journal as:

• a daily record of events or business; a private journal is usually referred to as a diary.
• a newspaper or other periodical, in the literal sense of one published each day.
• many publications issued at stated intervals, such as magazines, or scholarly pacific journals, academic journals, or the record of the transactions of a society, are often called journals. Although journal is sometimes used, erroneously^{[citation needed]}, as a synonym for "magazine", in academic use, a journal refers to a serious, scholarly publication, most often peer-reviewed. A non-scholarly magazine written for an educated audience about an industry or an area of professional activity is usually^{[citation needed]} called a professional magazine.

So with journal defined I moved onto how to start writing a journal. Ehow.com explains how to write and learn from a journal:

"A journal is kind of like a mirror that reflects and image of our inside instead of outside" E-how

It really makes us look at ourselves in a different way putting our thoughts and feelings in black and white. Being a dancer, so much of what we do is Donald Schon's idea of 'reflection-in-action'. We adapt and change whilst dancing, 'thinking on our feet' and rarely ever reflect on why we did acted that way unless something went wrong. Keeping a journal will be a way to reflect-on-action by thinking about why something happened that way and learn from it.

So, with my notebook at the ready I will begin this important learning process. I am going to take time out each night to jot some things down from my day. In relation to my professional practice I am due to leave on 11th December for a dance contract, so I feel I will have some interesting entries around that time. I am excited about starting my journal as I think it will be a key part of the course to help me develop and learn from. It will be a "tool for self discovery" Ron Klug (2002:1). It will be an ongoing process throughout the course, "an accumulation of material that is mainly based on the writer's processes of reflection"