I’m doing fine… I work online…

Out in the sunshine away from Zoom calls….

I haven’t blogged for a couple of weeks. First because I was head down writing my end of module assignment for my MA, and then recovering from writing it. And COVID19 began to have increasingly more impact on daily life, and for a while I wasn’t coping very well.

Those of you who know me, or have read this blog post will know that I suffer from performance anxiety, and I have battled with depression and anxiety for most of my adult life. The last few years I have felt well, both mentally and physically, but a couple of weeks ago I began suffer anxiety at a crippling level again. I couldn’t think. I wanted to crawl under a duvet and sleep for a month which was ironic as I couldn’t actually sleep. I cried, a lot.

It was a reaction to and a reflection of the massive levels of anxiety in the world. Lots of people I know felt it too. Are still feeling it now. Berne Browne talks about ‘collective vulnerability’ and the self protection and fear that accompanies it (see quote below). For some people that’s buying all the toilet paper and pasta in Tesco and Asda, for some people it’s curling up in a ball for a while.

This pandemic experience is a massive experiment in collective vulnerability. We can be our worst selves when we’re afraid, or our very best, bravest selves. In the context of fear and vulnerability, there is often very little in between because when we are uncertain and afraid our default is self-protection.
Berne Browne, Collective Vulnerability, the FFTs of online learning and the sacredness of bored kids. 25th March 2020

Then last Monday, and it feels like a lifetime ago rather than 11 days, following that days announcements all my face to face work with parents and students stopped. It was a weird thing, one minute I was getting ready to go out and teach, the next I was unpacking the car. NCT have been amazing in their support for practitioners and parents. Within hours of face to face teaching stopping we were conducting antenatal and breastfeeding sessions online using Zoom, to create an interactive course and experience for parents as close to a regular antenatal class as we could manage. I facilitated my first sessions last week, and although there were some rabbit in the headlights moments, it was okay, I was okay.

And I was. The anxiety had subsided as I had something I could do. I couldn’t change the empty supermarket shelves or stop people meeting in groups, but I could support parents. I’ve moved my Pregnancy yoga and Mum and Baby yoga classes online too. Many of these women are extremely anxious in these increasingly challenging times, I cannot begin to imagine how it must feel to be pregnant or have a young baby right now. Relaxation, breathing and some normality has been, they tell me, very helpful. It’s been helpful to me as well!

My MA in Online and Distance Education studies have been put into practice in ways I hadn’t imagined they would be! Nothing like a bit of real world pressure to make you up your game!

My fellow practitioners have been amazing, we’ve been working as a real community of practice sharing resources and ideas, online of course. We’ve been celebrating successes, working through new challenges and sharing laughter. The title of this blog comes from the amazing Pauline Erye, a fellow antenatal practitioner who is a stand up comic in real life, who has kept us all laughing with regular parody songs (see below for an example).

I still have anxious moments but I have coping mechanisms back in place. It would be strange not to feel anxious in this mixed up world. But really, I’m doing fine…. I work online.

P.S. I’m still singing. The amazing Ashley Mellor has organised a variety of online choirs, where he gets the energy from I have no idea! This also helps!

Feeling the Fear but doing it anyway

Otherwise known as “The Unexpected Cat Ambush”, for reasons that will become clear.

Last week I presented at the H818 – The Networked Practitioner Online Conference. Those of you who have read earlier blog post will know that I suffer from performance anxiety especially when presenting or singing (see Feeling the Fear). I was very nervous, but I’d followed my own advice and prepared as much as I could. I’d followed my tutors’ advice and reduced distractions. I had a script to follow, I knew my stuff, it would be fine. At least that’s what I told myself.

I was about an hour in, so I listened to the others as my nerves started to kick in. I feel I should apologise to Jo Jones who was presenting before me, I have no idea what she said. I was lost in my head!

Once my time came I was actually okay. The nerves went and it flowed well. There was however something I hadn’t prepared for. In the advice given by the tutors they hadn’t mentioned anything about cats. How I should have made sure before I started that the door to the office should be shut. And midway through the presentation I found myself with a large white cat on my lap partially obscuring my notes (see above picture). It at least sorted the last of my nerves! There is evidence that cats increase oxytocin levels in humans and can reduce anxiety.

If you are interested you can listen to the presentation here.

During the presentation attendees could ask questions in the chat window. Some of them were answered on the day, but I’ll give some fuller answers to the questions and comments below.

– Love the brains! Yes so do I! They are however a temporary image. They are part of an organ donation campaign by Ahmad Nady. A friend who is a graphic designer will create a more permanent, but still in the same spirit, image.

– good strategy – being an example of good PLN practice is likely to be more convincing to help them consider adopting similar approaches.
– Modelling good practice is so effective. This taps into the theories of modelling and social learning, like those of Bandura, familiar to NCT educators. My aim is to build the self-efficay of colleagues through example. I would invite them to have a go, and see what happens, much as I have done.

– By risk – do you means threats to confidentiality for your clients? No, as I explained during my presentation, this was about risk to NCT Tutors ‘putting themselves out there’. I mentioned that some of this was a fear of online abuse, but in reflection (and after being gently reminded by a colleague) it’s also about moving out of our safe NCT space. NCT works hard at being a safe space for parents and practitioners. We use Roger’s Core conditions and Mortiboys Emotional Intelligence as the foundations for our practice. Intrinsically we know that within NCT we can trust each other, our shared philosophy of practice and common values (Kelly, 2020), enable this trust. Increasing our digital presence feels more scary and unsafe as a result. One of the themes in my project (and beyond) is mitigating this feeling of risk.

– an open publishing space is this within the blog or a different tool? This is on the same website. Some of the site is this blog, but there will also be a website for articles on education. I wanted everything in the same place for ease of access. It’s still very much a work in progress.

– is there a difference in online multimedia workshops in gaining trust, in comparison to face to face workshops (which may not be practical for distance reasons? This is something that has been debated at length. The notion that trust and support are better in face to face settings. In my MA studies all of the learning is online. I haven’t met any of the other students I am studying with but there is still interaction and support between peers and tutors.

– pre-workshops and quick zoom calls really help build confidence/trust! If this were a new group that I was working with I would use pre-workshop activities and some video calls, to break the ice and gain confidence. With the multi-media workshop I am proposing for my colleagues, as we all know each other and it’s a small organisation so I have the luxury of somewhat of a pre-formed group!

– you could use webinars for online workshops and forums to build a community? Building a strong community of profession and practice is very important to me. I’d like to be the pioneer in a growing community of NCT Academics that regularly publishes and discusses our practice openly. By integrating a webinar into the workshop format (Phase 3), I’ll be able explore more potential challenges and continue to build confidence.

– what about the using VR in workshop? I had not even considered this as I know very little about VR and how it would work with the kind of multi-media workshop I am developing or what the cost complications could be. I will do some research. Thank-you.

– You’re a good example and leader, Helen! Thank-you!

If you have any other questions about my presentation or project, please ask them in the comments box below.

References

Kelly, K. (2020) Knowing our values in perinatal education. International journal of birth and parenting education. Vol 7, issue 2.

Reflecting with S.A.R.A.

As an educator, and student, there are many times when I offer or receive feedback. Over the last few weeks I’ve been reflecting on how I receive feedback in the hope that I can offer feedback in a way that is constructive and kind, and useful to the recipient.

I am looking for feedback constantly. Not to flatter my ego but so that I can improve and develop. In my work as an Antenatal Teacher with NCT, reflective practice and evaluation play an important role, they stimulate and support each other (Neil, 2015). I need informal and formal feedback from the parents I teach so I know if I am meeting my Aims and Learning Outcomes. So I know if I am meeting their learning needs.

With my university students it’s a two way street. I offer them feedback informally on facilitation practice throughout the year and formally when I grade their assignments. They offer me feedback on whether I am meeting their learning needs so they can do their best work. If not, I adjust what I am doing and we reevaluate how we are doing.

It is easy to take feedback personally, as an attack on our selves rather than on a behaviour or a task, especially when we are not expecting it. Even the kindest given feedback can hurt. That’s where S.A.R.A. comes in. Being aware of our reactions to constructive feedback can help us deal with them. I offer an example of my reaction to some feedback I received a couple of years ago and how I worked through the S.A.R.A. curve. It doesn’t matter what the feedback was, my reaction was the interesting thing.

Shock: My initial reaction was disbelief. I couldn’t believe that they meant me. I didn’t understand how they could feel this way about me. I cried.

Anger: The shock quickly moved to anger. How dare they? I didn’t say that, or if I did I didn’t mean it like that, they’ve just misunderstood me! It was easy to move the focus of the feedback to the person who had fed back rather than me. After all, if they were ‘wrong’ I must be right.

It could have been very easy to get stuck in this part of the curve. Anger can last for days or even weeks in some cases. I stomped around and slammed some doors. I may have yelled at the cat. Luckily, according to Rogel (2010), the more extreme our shock and anger response to feedback, the more committed we are likely to be to change.

Resistance: Also known as denial or rejection. In my case I decided that I knew what I was doing so I could keep on doing it the same way. Personally this stage doesn’t usually last long, once i get over the anger and start to think logically, I move on to the acceptance stage.

Acceptance: This is the point where I began to ask what I needed to change. How could I adapt my behaviour to improve? How could I be and work better? I spoke to colleagues and mentors. I did my research and hopefully became a better educator. I used the gift of that feedback in a positive way.

Some feedback models also include an H for Honest Effort to accept the fact that even with a genuine willingness to change lapses might occur. It takes time to change habits and behaviours. We are, after all only human.

In my MA module, H818 – The Networked Practitioner, we are constantly offering and receiving feedback by working in the open. It feels very exposed, especially if you are struggling to catch up on work (everyone knows how behind you are) or need clarity on a concept. It’s also liberating in that everyone is in the same boat, as exposed as each other. It provides an honesty and clarity to feedback offered and received, and is always kindly given and genuinely welcomed.

So the next time you receive feedback, or offer it to another, be mindful of SARA(H).

References

Neil, H. (2015) The evaluation cycle: how students, practitioners and tutors can develop their understanding, preparation and practice, to enhance and enrich their work. Available from: https://babble.nct.org.uk/sites/default/files/resources/The%20Evaluation%20Cycle_0.pdf

Rogel, C. (2010) Using the SARA Model to Learn from 360-Degree Feedback. Available from: https://www.decision-wise.com/using-the-sara-model-to-learn-from-360-degree-feedback

H818 Online Conference

On 13th February I will be presenting at this conference, below is the abstract and the online poster.

An accessible version of poster is available here.

Conference Abstract

Title

Unlocking Digital Scholarship for NCT Tutors

Introduction:

NCT (formerly The National Childbirth Trust) is the UK’s largest parenting charity working since 1956 to educate and support parents on their early parenting journey. NCT Practitioners (NCTP) are experts in adult education theory through experience and trained to foundation degree level through the only university-accredited qualification in parenting education (NCT, 2020). Their subject is birth and parenting but their skills and knowledge are rooted firmly in adult and higher education. NCT tutors are experienced NCTPs who have taken higher qualifications in order to train NCTPs in partnership with University of Worcester (UW).

This project focuses on encouraging NCT tutors to share their expertise outside of NCT and University of Worcester circles by increasing their digital and networked scholarship.

Digital Scholarship builds on the tenets of Boyer’s (2016) scholarly activities (Stewart, 2015), using technology to demonstrate specialism in a field (Weller, 2011). Social networks play a key role in encouraging this Networked Participatory Scholarship (NPS) (Veletsianos and Kimmons, 2012; Donelan, 2016) so supporting the creation of these networks will promote Open and Digital Scholarship.

NCTPs and NCT tutors work in an OP way internally, sharing resources and skills between themselves but have few resources to enable them to work in a more globally networked manner. Open Access Publishing (OAP) facilitates the dissemination of knowledge openly by enabling access to articles and papers freely and across networks and is increasing year on year (Piwowar et al., 2018). OAP offers opportunities for NCT tutors to share their wealth of knowledge further, and for little or no monetary cost. However, NCT tutors identified that they lacked the knowledge or the space online to openly publish articles (Kelly, 2019).

Methodology:

Donelan (2016) suggests that practical training, including the modelling of best practice can increase participation in digital scholarly activities (p13) so a two-pronged approach was taken in this project.

A short multi-media workshop identifying some simple steps NCT tutors can take to be more networked and open will be produced.

Alongside this, and to model the encouraged behaviour, a blog publicised through social media platforms was written regularly. A basic web repository was created, on the same site as the blog, for articles to be uploaded and published openly following OAP principles (Costello, 2019).

Conclusions:

At the end of my workshop NCT tutors will be able to engage with networked or digital scholarship more confidently.

The presentation at the Online conference, will look at progress and success to date, identify obstacles encountered and highlight any future adaptations planned for the project.

It is hoped that the project will prove inspirational for NCT tutors and lead to further open and networked projects.

References

Boyer, E. L. et al. (2016) Scholarship reconsidered : priorities of the professoriate. 2nd ed. [E-book]

Costello, E. (2019) Bronze, free, or fourrée: an open access commentary. Science Editing, 6 (1). pp. 69-72. ISSN 2288-8063 [Online] Available from: http://doras.dcu.ie/23048/1/bronze%20access%20open%20access%20free_ocr.pdf (Accessed on 3rd November 2019)

Donelan, H. (2016) Social media for professional development and networking opportunities in academia, Journal of Further and Higher Education. Routledge, 40(5), pp. 706–729. Available from: https://www-tandfonline-com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1080/0309877X.2015.1014321 (Accessed on 30^th December 2019)

Kelly, K. (2019) Conversation with Helen Darlaston. 30^th November 2019.

NCT (2020) NCT Training. Available from https://www.nct.org.uk/get-involved/nct-training (Accessed on 2^nd January 2020) Stewart, B. E. (2015) In Abundance: Networked Participatory Practices as Scholarship, International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning. Athabasca University Press (AU Press), 16(3), pp. 318–340. Available from: http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/article/view/2158 (Accessed on 30^th December 2019)

Veletsianos, G. and Kimmons, R. (2012) ‘Networked Participatory Scholarship: Emergent techno-cultural pressures toward open and digital scholarship in online networks’, Computers & Education. Elsevier Ltd, 58(2), pp. 766–774. Available from: https://www-sciencedirect-com.libezproxy.open.ac.uk/science/article/pii/S0360131511002454 (Accessed on 2^nd January 2020)

Weller, M. (2011) The Digital Scholar: how technology is transforming scholarly practice. London, Bloomsbury Academic [E-book]

Living in the future

“Connected” *by marcoderksen is licensed under* CC BY-NC 2.0

It’s the time of year when everyone is connecting. In person as old friends and family visit, or, as I connected with my brother who lives in Canada on Christmas day, by the wonders of the net.

I was born in 1970 in a world without computers or the internet, As I grew, so did technology and by the time I left university in the early 1990’s the web had been born. Shortly after that I got my first mobile phone. Now my phone is my mobile office, classroom and my connection to the wider world. I love technology and the connectivity it brings but I sometimes feel like I am living in a sci-fi movie or the future.

I attribute this to having a 1970’s analogue brain, one that was born in a world of book pages rather than electrons. I feel it goes deeper than that, even so-called digital natives have primitive analogue brains evolved over millennia that have to adapt to a digital world that has existed for just 30 years. Clever technology design takes advantage of this and rewards the connections we make.

I’ve been thinking about connections from a learning context a lot recently due to my current MA module. In H818, The Networked Practitioner, we work openly and socially to create our assessed work. We are encouraged to create and increase connections and networks. It’s scary and liberating in equal measure. This blog is another way I am trying to connect with the wider world.

I could argue that all learning is about making connections. Between facts and between theories. Technology facilitates these connections by making it quicker and easier to ‘join the dots’. Education is moving from being taught in a classroom to a set syllabus (pedagogy), to self-directed (andragogy) and self-determined (heutagogy) learning. Self-determined learning can be all about following the connections you make, and can result in amazing discoveries or those ‘rabbit hole’ moments.

It’s not all positive. The connectiveness of the modern world creates paradoxes. Putting yourself out there can be tricky. More connections means more exposure and greater risk. How we navigate this risk is a nuanced constantly changing negotiation with ourselves, and the wider world. Deciding what to share becomes the real question.

Having decided that I want to be more open with the world, more connected, how much risk am I willing to take? Quite a lot it turns out.

So, despite having an analogue brain, I plan to take full advantage of this digital connected future I find myself living in and hope you’ll join me on my journey.

What I do…

I’m often asked what I do. And my answer is often vague. I’ll mention that I work with parents to explore birth and early parenting, then I might say I also teach yoga for pregnant women, and also for postnatal women with their babies. I will mention I work for NCT, and then have to explain that it used to be called National Childbirth Trust. It is the UK’s largest parenting charity, and makes a difference to thousands of parents every year. It’s campaigned over the years on issues such as Dads’ being allowed in labour rooms to support their partners , women being able to feed their babies in public and, most recently, perinatal mental health with the Hidden Half campaign.

Hold on! I hear you say. I thought you worked for a university, how does that fit in with Birth and Parenting education?

Ah yes, I’m an Associate Lecturer with University of Worcester. I work with an amazing group of women to train NCT Practitioners to work with parents before and after they have their babies. It’s a foundation degree course and taught across the UK. In order to become a NCT tutor I had to study adult education in some depth over several years, as well as being an experienced NCT practitioner in my own right. It led to a second degree (see graduation photo above) and a Postgraduate Degree in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education.

I’m not surprised if you haven’t heard about how NCT trains it’s practitioners. We are, as an educational organisation, not great at telling the world what we do. Perhaps NCT Education suffers a little from impostorism at an organisational level. NCT tutors are educators and academics. We have decades of experience in adult learning, group theory and facilitation theory. We are reflective practitioners at every level, grounded in evidence led educational practice. But we don’t share this with the world. A few of my colleagues have published articles and papers about our work, but they are the exception. When we look for evidence about adult learning we look outside our own organisation. Yet we know how adults learn. We see it in our own practice all the time. We underrate our experiences and knowledge.

This weekend I was at our annual Education and Practice Weekend and I had the opportunity to speak to my colleagues about my current studies. I had been inspired by thinking around open pedagogy and digital scholarship. I mapped Bronwen Hegarty’s attributes of Open Pedagogy (2015) against NCT educational practice and showed my colleagues the many parallels to how we work. I then asked them to consider how they could work more openly? What might be the benefits and risks? How they could share their knowledge and experience with a wider academic audience? To my surprise they were enthusiastic and open to the ideas I proposed and I look forward to reading and sharing their contributions to adult learning and education theory.

In future, I hope that when I’m asked what I do, no one is surprised by NCT’s academic side. That we become known, not just by our contributions to birth and parenting but for our depth and breadth of knowledge about how adults learn.