Reflective Paper

Individual Reflective Paper:

Impostorship and a Loss of Innocence

This paper is intended to be a reflection of my learning experiences so far, and there is no question that there has been considerable - what I can now refer to as Ð'- acquisition of information. However, perhaps because it was something new, perhaps because it makes you ask why, the experience and the introduction of Ð''reflection' and Ð''critical reflection' has stood out above everything else. This has not been an entirely positive experience, to the contrary the overall feeling I have, to use the words of Brookfield (1994) is one of increased uncertainty and a loss of innocence.

I was one of three new members to join an already established ALS group, who had been together for a year. Thompson (2004) believes, that as members of a group become familiar with each other and trusting relationships are built, new group members can present particular challenges of reliability and trust. Whilst I can relate this to my own work practices; I have worked for BT for around four years now and there is definitely the Ð''BT think', the BT way of doing things and when new employee's have joined it has taken effort, time and understanding from both sides as values and beliefs have inevitably been different. However, was there this underlying foundation of trust in the original group? For all intents and purposes the original group, on the surface appeared to have common goals and understanding and it was impressed on us (in my opinion) that they had been a very close group, even socialising outside of the ALS sessions and I guess I took for granted that this was the case. It was explained me and the other new members that their ALS group had been known as the Ð''lovey dovey' group by the larger learning organisation. For me this was a title that many in the group wanted to keep and hindered the formation of the Ð''new' group. The new members were reminded on several occasions how Ð''successful' the group had been the previous year, with many of them appearing closed to new ideas; conflict was avoided where possible as if to keep the pretence that everything could remain the same.

Myself and Pam were both direct entrants onto the second year of the DMS and therefore had not experienced the first year residential Ð'- Ð''the silent residential' and so, as if it were a right to passage, we were required to attend this stage in our Ð''induction' with the first year DMS group (the third new member of the ALS, Marc had completed the first year a few years ago but had decided to take a break before continuing with his study). A Ð''right to passage' was certainly how this residential was portrayed to be by my ALS group, at least from where I was sitting. It felt as though several members tried to play on any apprehensions I may have had in an attempt to build these up, but why? This was a power they had, the power of knowledge and experience. In actual fact my greatest concern was taking the right clothes Ð'- perhaps this says more about me. . . on a positive note, at least I discovered that I am not easily intimidated by school yard Chinese whispers, however it does perhaps highlight certain areas of insecurity of which I am fully aware but am reasonably comfortable with.

Reflection and critical reflection in particular with its questioning of contextual taken-for-granteds Ð'- the social, cultural and political - was not something I had experienced, or knowingly experienced before. In starting the course, although I must admit I did not really look into the course in depth and was far more interested on making sure that it would only take me two years to complete, I thought that it would be like any other university course that I had been through and that, on some level, it would give me the Ð''answer' to management and organisational life. I didn't consider myself as naive enough to think that everything in life was black and white, good and bad. Of course I was aware that there are inevitably shades of grey, so why did I think there has to be an Ð''answer' to every problem? What do I mean by lost innocence, as Brookfield (1994) suggests it is the loss in the belief in the promise that if I study hard enough and long enough I will stumble on universal certainty as a reward for my efforts. So the question really is why do I need an answer to every problem? Simplicity, maybe. . . a definite ending, perhaps. . . or is it simply that I have taken on too much at the moment and do not feel I have the time and want that quick solution. I do not know the answer yet . . . and there I go again, just not ready to give up on finding that answer!

So my learning experience at boot camp. This gave me my first real insight into reflection and what the course was really all about. Thought provoking. . . definitely, shocking. . . yes, but not the so called treatment by the facilitators, rather the reactions of individuals and groups of people, and the emotions that were demonstrated particularly when I consider that we were all so called managers. Why did this act of silence produce such emotive behaviour? Looking at theory many authors including Handy (1994) and my own personal experience suggests that lack of direction, confusion and ultimately loss of power will all have contributed. I was intrigued by others and my own reactions and completely entertained that the experience drove individuals to storm out or cry (some I am convinced was for attention). We transferred the fear of the unknown and loss of control onto the facilitators, and the lack of response from them was not something we experience in our day to day lives and only heightened peoples anxieties. Maybe it is not unreasonable to argue that there is no such thing as reality Ð'- only individuals perception or interpretation of reality.

Impostorship according to Brookfield (1994, p203) is the sense people feel that at some deeply embedded level they possess neither the talent nor the right to become critically reflective. I was very aware of this feeling early on and it remains with me to some degree (some days more than others) but oddly no one else appeared to share this feeling, quite the opposite Ð'- were they reluctant to speak openly about it? Maybe. Critical theory seems somewhat elitist (Reynolds, 1999; Prasad & Caproni, 1997). My experience of critical reflection in practice has also had undertones of elitism and perhaps snobbery Ð'- intentionally or not I was made to feel that I was somehow Ð''missing out' because I had not yet bought into the whole