The Fifth Discipline, revised edition (2006) - peter Senge.pdf

Haven't been blogging for a while but have now got 'head space' to really think about what I've been researching and what that might relate to...

Strangely enough, my thoughts have been taken into a realm of Eraut and Senge in relation to how practitioners or professionals make decisions about their intervention tools or methodology. Not sure how this might relate at the moment to digital literacy or how individuals become pre-disposed to explore the 'new' in relation to practice or not...

Eraut (2001: 2009) looks at how knowledge contributes to professional performance and has examined the processes for acquiring and interpreting information which by his analysis, means that we have a tendency to see what we want and expect to see.. I'm not sure in relation to the usage of social media in informal education contexts: as with the nature of social media itself , I see a lot of practitioners 'playing' with tools, sometimes with young people, sometimes not. The 'playing' is about experimentation: the basis of what informal educators term, experiential learning - the bedrock of youth work. Eraut's description of meta-processes or meta-cognition does fit here: the continuous evaluation of what works, what is possible, and the tweaking and adapting of ideas and tools to meet need.

One of the questions that pops up here in relation to the usage of social media is about how youth workers work with this meta-processing to enable them to think differently and to question assumptions?

Peter Senge (2006) in the Fifth Disciple however, talks about 'personal mastery': living life creativily rather than reactively. He states that we need creative tension to learn and develop as it is this that enables us to be curious and to question what we think we already know. A constant reappraisal of one's personal vision is one of the features of 'personal mastery': does this relate to those who are constantly seeking to improve or be engaging, 'playing' with new tools in order to work with young people on their level rather than their own?

Decision-making and the processes involved is an interesting area: maybe a focus for the next research assignment ....?