Post 10 Taking the Next Step

            Now having finally submitted all of my coursework for my MEd degree and finishing my formal university education for at least the foreseeable future…it’s probably time to do some celebrating. Despite being a bit overwhelmed and not fully grasping the prospect of not having to complete any more assignments I am excited looking ahead to the future and beginning my career as a counselling therapist. I know there are still applications to professional bodies for certification, many applications for jobs as well as some sprucing up of my resume, but I like to think a big first step to getting the satisfying career that I’ve looked forward to has been completed and I am proud of that accomplishment and the work I have done to achieve it!

Post 9 Reflecting on EDU 5199

Although initially I did not have very high expectations for this course and only enrolling because of the compulsory course requirement, now at the end of it I feel as though I was able to make it into a useful experience for myself. I enjoyed being able to use the blog posts in a reflective manner to examine some of the things I had learned throughout the semester in regards to the development of my professional skills as a counsellor. I am glad I did not follow through on my initial plan of responding to or analyzing articles that I may have been less interested in or less relevant to my interests and my own professional development. I felt that researching the paper and forming and discussing it in class was a nice counter balance to the primarily reflective nature of my blog posts while still providing plenty of opportunity to be analytic. I appreciated that I was able to make my final paper my own independent project in an area that I was curious about and that I was interested in exploring, while also still being relevant to my professional goals. My initial worry of being placed into a class that would be focused largely outside my field of study was eased when I realized the level of control I had over the content of my final assignment. Instead I actually appreciated hearing about the research done by my colleagues in the program who were experts in a field that was different from my own and it was interesting to hear what they had worked on especially because it was so unique from my own education.

Post 8 Learning Learning Strategies

A lot of the work I did at my internship at Carleton’s Paul Menton Centre for students with disabilities was focused around learning strategies. When I started I had very limited knowledge about what learning strategies looked like, but I did have my prior experience as a student as a starting point. Some of what I worked on with students included time management, study strategies, procrastination, getting the most out of a textbook, and motivation. The interesting part about teaching a lot of these skills to students is that I still am a student myself and I can relate to a lot of the struggles the students I am working with are having. One of the nice benefits of having to learn all of these learning strategies for the students I work with is that I also was able to pick up on techniques to help myself in my own studies. Being able to apply some of these strategies for myself also helped me understand how I could adapt them to students if they are having trouble implementing them. I appreciate being able to put what I have learned to practical use and use the knowledge that I gain from my own experience to become more effective in my work.

Memorization

            Nowadays memorizing lessons is discouraged as it is an improper approach to learning lessons. Memorization is viewed as oppression imposed upon learners. Despite this, many education institutions in the East maintain the method of memorizing lessons. Lots of students of science group are found to memorize lessons. They memorize lessons for their own sake. For example, they memorize the key formulas in Algebra like (a + b)2 = a2 + 2ab + b2; a2 + b2 = (a + b)2 − 2ab; (a − b)2 = a2 − 2ab + b2; a2 + b2 = (a − b)2 + 2ab etc. Likewise, students learn some laws of science by heart. They are found to memorize Newton’s laws of motion: (1) Every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it; (2) The vector sum of the forces F on an object is equal to the mass m of that object multiplied by the acceleration vector a of the object: F = ma. (3) For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.

            I am not sure whether or not learners of the West in their initial stage of education memorize some essential lessons. However, students in Asian countries memorize. Mode of memorization still exists in many developing countries. Memorization has some positive aspects, and as such, it still exists. However, it has negatives, and so, it is now cold to many learners.

Tongxin-Post 10. Special Thanks to…Music!

I am a HUGE music fan in “size”---I mean, music takes a large space in my heart:P

I want to thank music for staying with me during those bittersweet days. Music reminds me of the good things in life, the idealistic and romantic side of my personality and the pure curiosity in me.

Counselling has its flexible and artistic side, and it is music that keeps my mind open and helps me enter my clients’ unique world with non-judgmental positive regard, because music travels across people, time and space, and is willing to comfort everyone. In Chinese philosophy, the wisdom of water is similar to how I see music. It flows with the environment but hardly changes its nature----music does the similar.   

My final 5199 post dedicates to my heart’s family member: music! 

Implications of Power and Power Relation in Research

Mrs. Moore comes from England to see real Indians. The method she wants to apply to know the Indians is an ethnographic one: she wants to know the real Indians from where they live, how they live, what they do, and how they do. However, the way she likes to apply does not satisfy her son Ronny who is an English magistrate in British India. As a mother of a magistrate, Moore cannot mix with the Indians. The rulers cannot mix with the ruled in this way. So, Ronny decides to throw a party designed to facilitate his mother to see the real Indians. However, the party turns to be fiasco. The invited Indian women do not feel free to talk with open heart in the party. They are segregated in a corner of the party. But why is this segregation?

This is because of power and power relation which Foster (1924) highlights in his novel “A Passage to India”. Ronny and Moore belong to the ruling class but the Indian ladies invited to the party are the ruled. The ruled and the rulers cannot get together. The ruled cannot feel free beside the rulers. The positional differences existing between them wedge them not to feel free. 

Many developing countries, if not all, have an experience of a colonial rule. A structural provision of power is unequally distributed among the people of those countries where people’s mind still remains colonized even though their land is decolonized. A researcher intending to conduct research in such countries must take some ethical considerations into account to avoid the risk of life. (Czymoniewcz-Klippel, Brijnath, &Crockett, 2010).

Those countries in most cases cannot ensure equal distribution of power between men and women. Men are more powerful than women in those countries. Social structure accounts for it. The social structure makes some people men and some people women. An apt remark in this regard can be put here:  no one is born woman; she gradually grows woman (Azad, 1992).

The patriarchal society seizes power from women to empower men. As a result, the former become more powerful and the latter less powerful — a social construct that wrecks the balance of power. To address this unequal power relation, Freeman (2002) advocates the feminization of men and virilisation of women. A researcher in such a society is to reflect on the issue of power to succeed in fieldwork.

A researcher has also to reflect on a colonial construct of Self and Other. According to this notion, the colonizers stand for Self and the colonized for Other; the Europeans are masculine and the non-Europeans are feminine (Pennycook, 1998). Colonizers are insiders and others are outsiders. A researcher in the notional realm of dichotomy must show that s/he is one of the participants, and not a threat to them (Dufty, 2010).

The success of a social researcher consists in the elimination of the identity of Self and Other. Buber (2002) argues that the researcher (teacher) and the researched (students) need to merge together to understand each other in order to get an outcome. He gives a formula to eliminate power relation not by eradicating Self and Other but by expanding them to reach each other. A researcher has to take this method into consideration.

     Power relation has not only negative vices but also productive virtues needed to maintain discipline and control (Foucault, 1977), and that is why, it survives with sway in varied institutions: schools, hospitals, and prisons. There is no exception in workplaces or even in families in developing countries, and as such, when a researcher conducts research in such countries, s/he is to think over a lot of issues including gender issues. To exemplify, in some communities in developing countries male foreigners are not allowed to interview women (Binns, 2006) who often refuse to talk to them out of shyness (Momsen, 2006).  

When a researcher conducts research on children of developing countries, s/he has also to reflect on power relation and socio-economic condition of those countries. S/he is to keep in mind that there might be street children abused by adults who hold position in society. The disclosure of the abuse may further endanger the life of the victim, and in such a situation, the researcher has to involve children to devise an alternative channel to avoid risk (Blerk, 2006).

 Unequal power and power relation may engender obstacles to reveal fact, prompt people to tell lies, and endanger life. King Lear of William Shakespeare (1623) is its luminous example. Lear wants to know how much his three daughters love him. His first two daughters flatter him that they love him more than their lives. This is a lie. They do not love him more than their lives. The third daughter, however, does not cajole him. She says she loves him as a daughter loves her father. Lear gets offended at this remark, and banishes her. Here lies power and power relation between King Lear and his daughters. It is like power relation between the ruler and the ruled where the latter often decline to tell the truth. A social researcher must keep in mind this kind of power relation while conducting research in such a society.

Now let me cite an example from my life. It is a narrative of my father who told lies. A terrible fight took place once in 1971 in our locality between some members of the Pakistan Army (PA) and the freedom fighters of Bangladesh. The members of the (PA) captured our village. The villagers were frightened. I was scared. I heard my father telling the PA members that he had voted for the Muslim League—a political party for which the PA was fighting. But my father actually did not vote for the Muslim League; he voted for the Awami League. However, he told lies to save his life.

 The power between my father and the PA was unequal, which prompted my father to tell lies. The PA had absolute power and my father was powerless. My powerless father gave them information which was false. A researcher, therefore, has to reflect on the issue of power and power relation while carrying out research.

References

Azad, H. (1992). Naree. Dhaka: Agamee Prokashani.

Buber, M. (2002). In Between Man and Man. New York: Routledge.

Czymoniewcz-Klippel, M.T., Brijnath, B.,&Crockett, B. (2010). Ethics and promotion of 

inclusiveness within qualitative research: Case examples from Asia and the Pacific.

Qualitative Inquiry, 16(5), 332-341.

Dufty, R. (2010). Reflecting on power relationships in the ‘doing’ of rural cultural research.

Cultural Studies Review, 16 (1), 131-142.

Desai, V. & Potter, R. (eds) (2006), “Chapter 5: Women, Men and Fieldwork: Gender

Relations and Power Structures”, Doing Development Research, Sage Publications, London, pp.44-51.

Desai, V. & Potter, R. (eds) (2006), “Chapter 6: Working with Children in Development”,

Doing Development Research, Sage Publications, London, pp.52-60.

Desai, V. & Potter, R. (eds) (2006), “Chapter 2: Doing Fieldwork in Developing Countries:

Planning and Logistics”, Doing Development Research, Sage Publications, London, pp.13-24. 

Forster, E. (1924). A passage to India. London: Edward Arnold.

Foucault, M. (1977). Discipline & punish: The birth of the prison. New York: Random   

House.

Freeman, J. (2002). Feminism. Open University Press: Buckingham.

Shakespeare, W. (1623). King Lear. London. John Heminge and Henry Condell.

Tongxin-Post 9. Micro: Shy…Every Two Weeks

I had my Micro- Course last winter. I am so “shyness-ridden” in this class, because it required us to video-record our performances and analyse what we said in sessions word by word. Watching my own in the video was scary enough, not to mention watching them over and over again and analysing them!!!

Every two weeks we had a mock session with our assigned peer-client. Thus every two weeks, I had to analyse myself in the video. THAT WAS EMBARRASSING!!!  

I reminded myself that it was a learning process and the more embarrassing I felt, the more I am aware of my performance, so that I can do a better job the next time.

Right now, I am less afraid of being video-recorded…. But I still prefer audio-recorded. See, I am trying to conquer my shyness.