Not only could women learn to value and strengthen the
reflective process in their lives, but they could learn to encourage and
support the value of reflection in the lives of the people they instruct,
guide, or counsel. Reflective learning is the key element in learning from
experience (Boyd and Fales 1983). According to these authors:
The process of reflection is the core difference between whether
a person repeats the same experience several times, becoming highly proficient
at one behavior, or learns from experience in such a way that he or she is
cognitively or affectively changed. Such a change involves essentially changing
his or her meaning structures. (100)
At the present time, there appears to be a conscious search on
the part of women to take the concepts of equality, respect, love, and trust
out of the realm of abstract ideals and make them more a part of the daily
ordinary exchange with each other and those outside their immediate
environment. There seems to be a realization on their part that these forms of
nurture can serve as powerful, emotionally fulfilling connectors between women
whose lives are based on a shared vision. Women moving women is a powerful
reality.
Reprinted from WEdf, December 1984, Volume 3, No.2.
Marie Gillen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of
Adult Education at St. Francis Xavier University, in Antigonish, Nova
Scotia.
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Go forward not backward
Seize
time
Seize training opportunities
Teach yourselves
Set your own
horizons
Take care
Take hold firmly of tools and
technology
Take part fiercely in the future
Take stock of the changing times
Be all that you can
And all that
you want
A decade is over
Our day has begun
Excerpted from a poem written by Elizabeth Cox of
Papua New Guinea in celebration of the Tools and Technology Exhibit at the
Third United Nations World Conference on Women, NGO Forum, held in Nairobi in
1985. Reprinted from WEdf Summer 1988, Volume 6, No.2. |
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References
Boyd, E.
Reflection as a Mode of Knowing: Case Studies of Counsellors. Diss.
University of Toronto, 1980.
Boyd, E., and A. W. Fales. "Reflective Learning: Key to
Learning from Experience." Journal of Humanistic Psychology 23.2 (1983):
99-117.
Kolb, D. A., and R. Fry. "Toward an Applied Theory of
Experiential Learning." Theories of Group Processes. Ed. C. Cooper. London:
John Wiley, 1975.
Mezirow, J. "A Critical Theory of Adult Learning and Education."
Adult Education 32.1 (1981): 3-24. |