A Critical Reflection on the Networked Professional

After reading the course reader on The Networked Professional I browsed through a few of my BAPP colleague's blogs to become familiar with the ideas. I found that the blogs I read shared my outlook or had very similar opinions on the topic. My next step to help with this task was to do further research on cooperation, affiliation, social constructionism, connectivism and communities of practice so I could obtain a deeper understanding with which to reflect.

A Critical Reflection on the Networked Professional

Cooperation at a glance is when people interact and work together in harmony to achieve a great result.
Probing further we see that it is not as innocent as it may first appear. Cooperation derives from human instinct, the subconscious workings of our brain and is closely associated with Game Theory. This theory suggests that we work together not exclusively for the good of others but for our own selfish needs.
For example, tribes, cities and nations form and work together not necessarily to protect one another but to protect themselves and what's theirs.
Why? We are physically and intellectually stronger together than alone. Also, ultimately most of us have the same ambitions and goals in life. We commonly strive, for example, for good health, security and a sense of belonging.

Joseph Broderick wrote on his blog:

The idea that people want your association purely for what they may gain from the connection, I find a little cold.
The added fact that the connection may be severed at a time the associate deems your value to the network, obsolete, I find even colder.
But if I think about it, is this not what I do?

Cooperation for ones own self gain does seem very cold and I often judge others when I sense that this is their motive. But who am I to judge as I completely agree with Joe's point that this act of cooperation is what I also do. It's a part of human nature.

A lot of the time I can be unaware of my motives but I would be lying if I said there weren't times that I did keep hold of an association purely for my own benefit and I was completely aware of this.

In her writing on affiliation, Hannah Shepherd described how people maintain certain contacts "just in case" they should ever be useful in the future. It is not just me who functions like this, but it is how everyone functions, consciously or unconsciously.
It's not that we dislike these contacts. Indeed, there may be friendships or mutual interests but somewhere there will be a more selfish reason for keeping these connections. While this is happening, we in turn are being used by these very same contacts for exactly the same reason. We may be beneficial to them at some point. This is a form of mutual cooperation.

I do have different modes and tactics for certain situations.

For example, when auditioning for performing jobs I am against hundreds of girls, so automatically I switch on my competitive mode. Cooperation would not benefit me in this situation. I have to be strong minded and competitive to prove that I am as good as or better than everyone else.

When I have the job this is when I turn from being competitive to cooperative to enable me to collaberate and work well with my fellow colleagues as part of a team.

The "Prisoners Dilemma" enlightened my understanding of this.

While playing, I found that if I cooperated then my opponent would do the same and if I competed, the opponent would retaliate. This backed up Robert Axelrod's ideas on "Tit for Tat" and also brought forward a thought that relates to every day circumstances in life.
While working together (cooperating) I felt that we (I) were making progress in the game but as soon as I retaliated then the game became much more static, competitive and less enjoyable.

Looking deeply into cooperation and human nature brings forth the selfishness of people to obtain and fulfill their own needs and desires. Ironically, on a grander scale, this selfishness encourages people to work together to develop a society which we can all be happy in.

Affiliation is the network of associations.
Affiliation is beneficial for all of us:

"The tendency to affiliate is something people have from early on in their lives. Larson, Csikszentmihalyi and Grief (l982) found that adolescents spent about 75 per cent of their waking time with other people. Such sociability appears to yield benefits. Teenagers were happier, more alert, and more excited when in the company of others than when alone. In contrast, a lack of affiliation may have a lasting negative impact...." (Crisp and Turner, 2007: 266-268)

In recent blogs I have talked about the importance of networking to benefit our career. This affiliation is not just desired for our profession but also in our day to day lives. Whether we are introvert or extrovert we all need to affiliate at certain levels to maintain our happiness, it is part of being a healthy human being.
I value my personal, private time a great deal but I do benefit from the contact of others who I can bounce ideas off, collaborate and generally socialise with.

Kym Walton identified well with the importance of affiliation between the teacher and pupil but also the need for a balance of privacy. I feel this affiliation between student and teacher is extremely necessary but it is equally important to draw the line for privacy so that the level of respect is not lost. I also feel that it needs to be understood that there are different levels of affiliation which alter for different age groups and standards. For example, when I am teaching ballet to a class of six to eight years, I will remain the teacher at all times, "the one in charge". In contrast, when I am teaching a group of sixteen years who have little experience in dance then I will lay down the rules and expectations at the beginning of the lesson but overall I will be more informal and talkative, my aim is to try and relax the students so they don't feel under pressure and hopefully through being at ease they will gain more from the lesson.

I also feel affiliation is necessary for people as it is a way for them to judge their level of success. By interacting with people and comparing, they can decide if a task has been completed optimally.

Social Constructivism is a sociological theory about how humans mentally construct the world through their own experiences.

Looking into this theory triggered off the popular phrase:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

There are a lot of different angles to a person. We are all aware of our own personality traits but some of these angles a lot of people don't get to see. For example, when I am teaching dance, all the parents and students see me as a professional, determined person, whereas these characteristics might be less obvious when I am with friends. Even within my friends there would be differing opinions about who I am as a person. Some might say I was really quiet and sensible whereas others might say I was loud, stubborn and daft! These friends have different outlooks with different characteristics which bring out certain personality traits in me, therefore, nobody is wrong, in fact all of the angles they see make up me as a person.
I see these angles of our personality put together like a rubix cube. The rubix cube twists and turns to suit the environment, occasion or person with certain colours showing and then the cube turns again in a new situation to show a few of the same colours or maybe a whole array of new colours.
When we are at work, out with friends or relaxing at home this rubix cube is constantly being turned and it's not just by us but it's by the people who see us in different ways.

The matter is based on personal opinions and has no intrinsic meaning, therefore the way we see the world is totally subjective.

What constructionism claims is that meanings are constructed by human beings as they engage with the world they are interpreting. Before there were consciousnesses on earth capable of interpreting the world, the world held no meaning at all. (Crotty, 2005: 42-44)

This theory is strange to contemplate but I feel is accurate. To look at it in another way consider when people say someone is colour blind. For example, some people see green in a certain way which is different to how another person may see green.  To me, neither one of these people are colour blind as the classification of green is subjective.

Connectivism is the theory that information is not just transferred from teacher to student but it can be sought in a collaberative place online where it's kept connected to allow change and modification.This new way of learning means that people today are constantly being fed new information to ensure that they're kept up to date and combatting the half'life of knowledge.
The world's intake of knowledge is speeding up so therefore our way of learning needs to match the pace.

A positive way of thinking about it is that it is quick and easy to find a sophisticated discussion on a subject with knowledgeable people bouncing ideas off each other from which you can draw you own conclusion.

A negative of Connectivism is that it discourages independent thought, finding the discussion online as mentioned before is so easy that you don't need to put the effort into considering the topic fully and hence forming your own unique opinions. I think Connectivism could even encourage Groupthink, where an idea becomes established because it was proposed early on and others simply adopted it.

Communities of Practice is learning through social interaction instead of by individual knowledge.
The benefits with this type of learning is that a mixture of people who share the same interest can group together as equals with equal ideas and opinions. Thoughts can be thrown around which promotes new thinking and development of ideas. With a clear purpose in mind a lot can be achieved through this type of learning.

I can relate to this through most of my training at The Hammond, in particular when the whole class worked together as a team to choreograph a dance piece. We all had the same purpose; to make the piece as creative and professional as possible so that people would be impressed with the depth, quality and technique of our skills. Each of us had our own individual ideas and input but through hearing other peoples thoughts, new ideas were triggered and developed which otherwise would not have been thought of. One person could have good technique and technical ideas, whereas another could be good at creating new movements which are less technical but with more depth. Both technique and freedom of movement are fundamental along with other characteristics and so help in making the end result of the piece more rounded.


References

Crisp, J & Turner, R. (2007) Essential social psychology. London: Sage
Crotty. M. (2005) The foundations of social research: meaning and perspectives in the research process, London: Sage