An insight into understanding personal thinking and reflection

Within my professional practice, my thinking has gone from divergent to rigid dependant on my experiences. What I have learnt is, preferred learning styles have a significant impact on how you approach a scenario/idea and also how you reflect on these ideas, which can often be conflicting. This made me want to gain an insight into my learning identity and how that has impacted the knowledge and understanding at present. 

As a child, I always remember responding well to divergent thinking. Corraza (2014) discusses the idea of divergent thinking as a mechanism to take the mind out of the box, to explore things that are often referred to as 'not relevant'. This is an awakening thought for myself, as a child I could never stick to the conventions of work/tasks, the 'must include' success criteria to achievement. I was always thinking about how I could create responses/ideas to make the reader think. In fact looking at a success criteria didn't resonate with my cognition. It was too regimented and gave no opportunity to think BIG! I think this is why I turned to dance, as there was no initial right or wrong answer, just thoughts that spiralled into beautiful learning experiences, opening doors for new ideas. With that comes comfort-ability and the acceptance that the mind cannot be restricted for success.

When I think about restrictions within thinking, sometimes this can have an adverse affect. For myself I struggle with identifying a specific learning identity, as my preferred learning styles fall under the 'Activist' and the 'Reflector'. Someone who likes to be in the present using ideas but also needs time to reflect to make accurate decisions. However, the issue is the word 'accurate' because divergent thinking allows the mind to think outside the box, rather than looking for the right answer. 

Fluidity is such an important idea within my practice, as it is when I am most likely to express creative responses and be inspired my own free thinking. Dewey (1998) talks about reflection as a series of phases that stream or flow into a chain, which is the most exciting prospect of travelling from a starting point. Often as dancers this process of thinking is already instilled within us, and is what constantly shifts our practice. Whereas when teaching in the classroom, the issue often becomes knowing the basics which often come with a need to know or set of instructions, which can sometimes force ourselves to stay within the box. If we are unable to step outside of our comfort, how can we expect students to become apart of divergent thinking.

I am excited to see how starting the process of research regarding the AOL's will help me to consolidate how I think, why I think and the impact this has, to think about how I pass on and inspire this knowledge when teaching and sharing practice.

TEDx Talks. (2014). Creative thinking - how to get out of the box and generate ideas: Giovanni Corazza at TEDxRoma. [Online Video]. 11 March 2014. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=309&v=bEusrD8g-dM. [Accessed: 26 September 2019].

Dewey, J (1998). How we think. UK: Dover Publications. 17.