week 8 20th November 2013 – Analytical and Critical thinking.

Lecture

Moral dilemma

In this week’s lecture we were given a moral dilemma. In which, we needed to discuss in groups.

We had to:

• Read the dilemma
• Draw the dilemma and
• Resolve the dilemma

This was the dilemma of my group:

The Deliberate Infection

Ken is a doctor. One of his patients, whom he has diagnosed as HIV positive, is about to receive a blood transfusion prior to being released from the hospital. He has told Ken, in the confidence of their doctor-patient relationship, that after he gets his transfusion, and his medicine from Ken, he intends to infect as many people as possible with HIV starting that evening.

Because Ken is bound by doctor-patient confidentiality, there is no legal way to stop this man from carrying out his plan. Even if Ken warned the police, they would not be able to arrest him, since his medical information is protected.

It occurs to Ken that he could contaminate his medication by putting an untraceable poison in it that will kill him before he gets a chance to infect others.

Should Ken poison this man in order to prevent him from spreading HIV?

This dilemma was a very confusing one.

We came up with solutions such as:

• The doctor should breach patient- doctor confidentially because; in the situation of ken’s patient harming other members of the public it will seem the best thing to do.
• Ken should try and persuade his patient to not carry on with his intended act
• Just leave the matter where it is because; as a doctor and citizen ken has no legal obligation to try and stop his patient from carrying out his intended act.
• Lastly, that he should give his patient poison as it is better for one person to die rather than many people are infected with HIV.

Honestly speaking, to come up with a resolution was harder than we thought. This is where the idea of moral dilemma comes in. Such as, if ken decides not to stop his patient, there may be guilt that he could have stopped a person being infected if he wanted to. As well as, even though ken has no legal obligation to try and stop this from occurring. The idea of being a Good Samaritan comes into this. Furthermore, his profession being a doctor is to try and help others from not falling ill so by not stopping his patient is he going against the code and conducts of being a doctor?. Moreover, if he did give his patient poison even though it’s untraceable whatever the matter no one has the right to kill another person.

It was interesting to hear other people’s opinions on their dilemmas. There were clashes of views. Like the idea of killing someone to save another, many people agreed with it whilst others did not. So the purpose of the activity showed how everyone has different moral dilemmas in which one moral might seem right for one but wrong for another. It was interesting to see how people justified their views.

Here is the link for the other dilemmas:

http://psychopixi.com/misc/25-moral-dilemmas/

Seminar

In the seminar we were given tips on writing essays:

• The introduction, body, conclusion
• Paragraphs
• Double line space
• Presentation of an argument
• Indent quotes
• Research vehicle – research to find information
• For a good reference use a mixture of journals and books.

We were then given a question to answer on moral dilemma

To what extent is the response to the moral dilemma a question of values to what extent does it rely on analytical and critical thinking?

This was my response…

Values can come from many different aspects such as religious values, cultural values and social values. To a great extent moral dilemma is a question of values because values are the base for morals. Though, every individual has different values thus as a result, leads to different morals. I n relation to analytical and critical thinking, it may appear that in some situation morally to a person an action may be acceptable but in relation to the law it may be unlawful. So to a moderate extent it could be said that morals do rely on analytical and critical thinking.

week 7 13th November- The Conference.

In this week’s lecture we first started of with an activity of drawing out our concept of research. it was interesting to see the way other people portrayed their concept of research.

Universities – what do they do?

Furthermore, we looked at the different roles of universities:

• research
• knowledge- construction
• social constructivist models
• dialogue(Freire, Bakhtin)
• staff and students
• dissemination: teaching, papers, conferences.

We were then shown ways of how students can get more active within the university. For example the HEA BID, this is where students are partners in the curriculum. where students can bring forward ideas to bring about change and improvement to the university. The HEA BID seemed quite interesting in a way that it encourages students to take up an opportunity to try and bring about a transformation. 

Seminar

This week it was the time to show our poster presentation we had prepared. i would say i was very nervous and glad it was over. However, the thing that i saw is the way how everyone who presented their work had different viewpoints on certain informal and formal learning spaces. Such as, some people put down the classroom as a formal learning space whilst others put it down as an informal learning space but both sides with valid reasons. moreover, i got to see what others had found in there research and areas that they had explored.

Get Ahead 2014 

This was the last topic of the day. Get Ahead is a conference which is put on by students for students. we have been asked to come up with ideas for a conferences. Where everything will have to be done properly (promotion, planning and delivering) which requires lot of concentration, time and hard work. (look out on my blog for further updates on this).

 

 

week 6 6th November 2013- writing workforce

First we started off with a brainstorm of hopes and fears of university writing which launched us into the next task.

Free writing

 In this week’s lecture we were given 10 minutes for a free writing task. If we stopped writing we had to write down on a separate piece of paper why we stopped writing, this was the question given:

Winnicott (1971) argued that play is necessary to counteract the implicit threat that occurs when we are in transitional spaces – between worlds, between classes, in alien educational settings.  Discuss in relation either to becoming a successful student or becoming a successful teacher

This was my answer to the question:

As a student, moving up in educational achievement means getting use to the new set up and structure of learning. However, as a student u have to be able to adapt to new scenarios in order to become a successful student. Winnicott argues that by play you can get rid of the threat that occurs by adapting to the new education system that you encounter. In the path of becoming successful, it is essential to become aware of the new space.  

 

Then we looked at reason of why we stopped writing:

 

• Loss of ideas
• Took time to understand the question
• Did not know where to start the answer from

Seminar

We looked at different ways of setting our presentation and how to do a presentation. It was interesting to see the various websites we could use.

4p’s

• Plan
• Prepare
• Practice
• Present

I had already planned to do it in the form of a poster presentation (picture on last week’s log)

Peer mentors

With the peer mentors I went over with them my ideas, which had given me a bit more confidence in regards to presenting the presentation next week.

(Fingers crossed it goes well!!)

wednesday 30th october 2013- study week

This week was study week. We were given a task last week in which, we had to carry out a research study of the learning spaces in the university, to be presented in the seminar in week 7. I decided to do it by myself. The method approach I chose was covert observation. This is where the people being observed had no idea that they were being observed. There were things I had to consider such as which areas of learning I would explore for my research e.g. formal and informal learning spaces, which sort of resources will I use (books, website).

My main aim was to concentrate on the idea of gender domination within the learning spaces whether it was formal or informal.

The formal spaces I had concentrated on were classrooms and the library. Though, within the library there were different sections which could be formal and informal such as the quiet zone, which I put down as formal and group zone as informal.

           

The informal spaces I had concentrated on were the canteen and the group zone in the library. I highlighted that group work could occur anywhere such as in the classroom.

From my observation I had identified that:

• Mixed gendered groups
• A balance of single gendered groups
• Groups with mixed ethnic backgrounds

The issues I saw when I observed were that friends and technology were seen as distractions. Especially within group work, where some groups and individuals did not realise and would wonder of from their work and start talking with friends about unrelated topics or start using their devices.

Overall, technology was seen to be the most common thing in all areas. In most places of the university there were computers. In every group at least one person had a laptop and everyone had a mobile phone. Even an individual learner had their phone on the table or at least looked at it once.

Doing this research has given me a different viewpoint of looking at the university. It has made me focus on factors which have not always been easy to recognised and sometimes tend to be ignored.

This is my final piece that i came up with, in the form of a poster:

to be presented in the seminar!!.

Wow! There was a lot of interesting information to take in this week. In the lecture today we focused on ‘The Role of Fear’. Sometimes we don’t realise it but we always have a certain type of fear on our minds. Such as, Fear of speaking, but what is this fear? And why is it sometimes so great that it can take control of a person’s mind? These are the questions that came to my mind when we were going through this.  Well, personally I am not that confident in speaking out. I would say I have the fear of embarrassment and failing. The aim of the lecture was to prevent these fears from overtaking us and to have confidence in whatever we do.

Following this, we also looked at self efficacy.The belief that we can. as well as, the fact that it is not always a bad thing to fail because for some, failing gives them the drive to do much better and eventually succeed above their limits.

furthermore, we looked at models of educational success where certain things that we are good at or is a part of us is not valued as much as say academics or are sacrificed purely for the ‘academic curriculum’.

moreover, we watched a video ‘South Oxhey’ where Gareth Malone went to help a ‘invisible town’ to be heard again he used the ideas of singing and dancing together to make the people feel togetherness amongst each other.

Moving on to the seminar, there were a few voluntary students who showed off their collages. it was very fascinating to see other peoples ideas and how they portrayed it on paper as well as, their view on becoming an educationalist which broadened a few ideas of mine. In the last hour of the seminar, we had the peer mentor session. with them we had to write a 50 word paragraph on either successful reading or writing. well i chose reading and this was my paragraph that i came up with:

when it comes to successful reading, there are many factors such as being in the right environment. which is very important as well as, having the essential equipment i.e. dictionary. it is also valuable to understand the reading and use reliable sources. furthermore, to read and take down notes and summarise into your own words for a better understanding. 

(9 words over my bad!)

This was actually useful in knowing what i understood about successful reading personally.

  

week 3 wednesday 16th october

I must say I am definitely getting use to the lectures and seminars for becoming an educationalist. In this lecture we carried out another activity which was, that the apocalypse was over and as a group we had to come up with a system and strategies to help us survive.  There were 3 categories:

• year 0-5
• year 5-10
• year 10-15

Each person in the group had a specific role, the roles were as followed:

• A survivor who was super rich – and who still hopes to find their buried treasure.
• A survivor who was an entrepreneur.
• A survivor who was a Trades Unionist.
• A survivor who was a Teacher’s Assistant.
• A survivor who read a lot of Freire.’

Furthermore, the groups had to take in certain considerations:

• What is the purpose of an Education System for a society?
• What is the purpose of an Education System for an individual?
• Whose interests do you think an Education System has to serve?
• What education system or strategy would you put in place – and why?
• If you had to sum up the ethos or values embraced by your perfect education strategy – what would they be?

As a group we had to discuss these points in a 20 minutes period, my group was given the years 0-5. There was also a judging panel in which each group had to give a little presentation to the panel about their ideas. The panel stated what they liked of our ideas and what we could have thought about.

In my groups the discussion was to try and prevent our system to be like a capitalist one, we thought we could use everyone’s individual skills to help build a system. We also discussed to have a meeting once a week to help keep unity and to learn about progress. Furthermore, my group suggested having classes such as cooking classes and so on. So everyone can grasp new skills as well as, pass their individual skills on.

In the seminar, this week we went through visual learning through the art of collage making.

What is a collage?

a collage is a collection of various objects such as parts of newspapers, pictures, handmade things text and so on which are all assembled together to make an art piece. The task was to make our very own collages to represent our views on becoming an educationalist.

We looked at examples such as dada:

This is my attempt on a collage:

Peer mentoring

In the last hour of the seminar, we were introduced to the peer mentors, we had a few activities and also I got to hear their view on the reason why they picked the course. However, our session got interrupted by the fire alarm (oh no!). Personally I thought having peer mentors is a great idea as they have also gone through what I am experiencing now and I can not wait for the next session.

week 2 wednesday 9th october

This week the lecture was quite interesting, we carried out a bunker exercise in which world war III had broken out and there were 10 people left in a bunker who had individual roles as well as, being the last remaining humans of the earth, the roles were:

–          Gay scientist

–         Buddhist priest

–         Married couple who are ‘green’ but childless

–         Single pregnant woman with a five year old girl

–         Army officer who has mental instability of some sort but is useful nonetheless

–         Elderly woman

–         Disabled man

–         Bisexual lawyer

–         Person who has been long term unemployed

–         Atheist doctor

There were also resources:

–         sewage system

–         water

–         seeds

–         some clothes

–         a few books

–         some medical facilities but no operating material

–         A greenhouse.

 

However, the resources were very limited and will run out eventually

There were two options:

–         to keep everyone alive for maximum of 2 years or

–         Eliminate 7 people and keep 3 people to carry on the human race.

As a group we had to decide which option to go with. Everyone was randomly given a role; I was given the role of the elderly women. My group decided to go with the option of keeping alive 3 people the scientist who could use his ideas and also may have medical experience, the couple who are green they could use the necessary resources to grow crops and the doctor who with the scientist can invent new things.

In addition to the lecture, in the seminar the bunker exercise was looked into more depth from the discussion it highlighted how groups and individuals had different views on survival. Some groups had the view that it was not up to them to decide to who should be eliminated and other groups kept 3 people however, the groups who did decide which 3 people should survive their decision was based purely on the fact of the individuals profession and no other factors such as gender, religion or sexuality were held important. Furthermore, into the seminars the decision why the scientist should get saved rather than a person who has been long termed unemployed were discussed. The unemployed person may have useful skills and experience which could be vital in order to survive.

Moreover, the groups that chose 3 people, why couldn’t everyone survive? It could be that the resources could get used up and no progress was made.

The activity helped me identify other ways of thinking, listening to other people opinions and their explanation on why they think that way. An insight to to other alternatives that i may not have thought of before.

      

This week’s article was based on Paulo Freire dialogue, praxis and education. It highlighted his views and theories on educational practices and in this he talks about informal and popular culture. His work was mainly based on oppression and those being oppressed. The article focuses on the idea of culture, society and education as well as, 5 main factors which are highlighted in the article. He talks about dialogue and underlines how people should use it to help operate with one another rather than to undermine each other. The article states how Freire emphasises the importance of dialogue to help keep society running. His ideas of helping the oppressed have been given great significance. Nevertheless, Freire has been criticised. Many have been put off do to his language and appeal on certain concerns.  Additionally, he has been criticised on the fact that his argues are always for or against which taken too seriously can lead to political analysis.

Overall, the activities and reading have helped me grasp certain concepts, expand my knowledge, take hold of different views and helped me understand more of becoming an educationalist in a way of thinking outside the box and more critically.

week 1 Wednesday 2nd October

Walking into a lecture room is something to get use to, my first official becoming an educationalist lesson after the introductory week. The lecture was packed with information on the assignments, what is needed of me to be successful on this module and tips on understanding the reading materials. Then there was another activity in which i had to discuss certain barriers which may prevent me from achieving my goals or certain thing i may have to sacrifice in turn to succeed.

Following the lecture came the seminar where i was given the choice of selecting an Image that I thought represented a student’s life through education. We had to give our interpretation on how we thought the picture reflects a student’s Journey through education. My picture which i had chosen was a picture of the ocean with a very huge wave at first it was quite difficult to relate my picture to a student’s educational life but as i got thinking, to me the wave somewhat represented a problem or hurdle a student faces in their educational experience. Though, eventually the wave calms down likewise, the student in time solves their problem and ultimately reaches their desired goal.