Reflective Practitioner 3. I have developed efficient ways to organize my time, research materials, computer access, bibliographies....

Last update: November 13, 2006

1. RefWorks was a wonderful skill to add to my repertoire. I appreciate how putting research material into binders has helped me. I use RefWorks to print out a bibliography which I use as an index for the binders. The annotated bibliography helps me remember what was good about a resource and helps me manage the research.
2. My research takes me into many side paths, some of which I will want to go back to in the future. I need to incorporate taking notes on books and resources that I look at and don’t use at the moment. I need to make notes about which ones I may want to revisit in the future and which were worthless and why.

Need to build time into schedule to reorganize. This activity I tend to avoid.

Reflective Practitioner 4: I have experimented with new tools and experiences, even if not every one became part of my toolkit as a learner, teacher/facilitator of others, and reflective practitioner.

Last update: November 13, 2006

3. I wanted to do a qualitative research project which was part of the motivation to do the dream research. This led me to learn about questionnaires and will lead to other growth opportunities. This will lead me on a path where I will have to ask others for help which is an area that I could use development in. I didn’t know much about dream research before I began but now have a good idea of who the major players are and what I would need to do to go further into it.
This will be a test to see if I can write a paper that would fit the criteria to be in a journal. To master this new skill, I will have to negotiate with professors to have their students take my questionnaire. I will have to get people to help me with my statistics – I have four candidates in mind.

Reflective Practitioner 5: I have paid attention to the emotional dimensions of undertaking my own project but have found ways to clear away distractions from other sources (present & past) and not get blocked, turning apparent obstacles into opportunities to move into unfamiliar or uncomfortable territory.

Last update: November 13, 2006

5. From my old topic of Unconscious and Writing, which I am still reading about, I have found excellent resources that talk about this. William Stafford’s book, Writing the Australian Crawl, addresses this issue as does Understanding Writing Blocks by Keith Hjortshoj. Since doing so much writing about the unconscious, I know that feelings are better evaluator when it comes to massive amounts of data versus the conscious mind. I search my feelings now to see if the direction that I am headed in is correct, taking into account that some feelings could be caused by the unknown.
I know ways to circumvent blocks but there are still some areas where I need to put them into practice. Reminds me of critical thinking where there were three dimensions to problem solving: recognizing there is a problem, motivation to put effort into solving it, and ability to implement the solution. It probably shouldn’t be surprising that getting the motivation to solve a motivation problem is yet another problem.

Phase F. I have gained direct information, models, and experience not readily available from other sources.

Last update: November 13, 2006

7. I took great care to try and get quantifiable answers and be as specific as possible in my language. I learned how hard it is to measure something. I am very interested in what people will have to say.
8. The questionnaire should be revised some more. I want to get input from a writing teacher to see if my ways of measuring someone’s writing skill seem adequate. I think the number of books read may be on the light side. There might be another way to measure this as well.

I need to work to get a test case in place. I am thinking about asking a psychology professor if an Intro to Psychology class can take this. I can the students go to a webpage before this one and enter their names first and send the teacher an email with the student’s name when s/he fills submits the questionnaire.

I am worried that the dream questions are written in a way that will lead to false positives. A range of answers may lead people to think they should at least chose one of the low range answers. True/false may be a better option to minimize this problem.