The reflexive DSyRM candidate

From my first assignment... be gentle with me as I expose quite a lot of who I am and what brought me to this point...

Introduction

This is my story in which I reflect on my journey to embark on a professional doctorate. In the first part I briefly discuss reflection and reflective practice and associated models together with an explanation on why I chose the specific methods. Thereafter I share my very personal journey to this point as well as my expectations for my own knowledge, skills and experience growth during my doctoral studies.

Reflection, reflective practice theories, models and me Professionals continuously learn on the job when they realise that existing routines and plans are not solving a new problem. An integral part of that learning is reflection which constitutes the deliberate looking and thinking about what we do, why and innovate new frameworks, mental models and improved practice. Reflexivity is on the other side of the reflection-reflexivity continuum and “involves a more immediate, dynamic and continuing self-awareness. (Finlay & Gough, 2003) For me, this assignment helped me to understand and practise reflection, and setting me on the path of practising reflexivity by looking critically towards myself while doing research for my thesis.

Several scholars contributed to the discourse on reflection and reflectivity. Dewey (1964) was instrumental in starting the discourse about reflection and reflexivity in practice when he stated that it is the aim of education “since it enables us to know what we are about when we act. It converts action that is merely appetitive, blind, and impulsive into intelligent action” (p. 211) Later Schön (1983) stated that reflection, both in-action and on-action, supports professionals in dealing with the uncertainties and dilemmas of the workplace. Reflection-in-action occurs when existing knowledge-in-action is not sufficient to deal with ambiguous and complex situations. One would then critically examine one’s actions, reformulate new strategies and test them through further action. Kolb’s model (1984) of learning reaffirmed that reflection is a transformative process that enables the learner to review experience and its significance in order to integrate new learning into existing patterns of thinking. Reflexivity for Etherington (2004) goes further to become what I would label a “philosophy of the self” which implies a difference in how we view the self: as a real entity to be discovered and actualised or as a constantly changing sense of our selves within the context of our changing world. (p 31). The message from all these scholars and their critics is that knowing the “self”, how it is made up, how it interacts with the outside world, how it invents, reinvents, learn, unlearn, relearn, succeeds and fails, are also essential to research, but especially on a doctorate level.

Fenge (2009) states that it is important to adopt a critically reflective and reflexive stance throughout professional doctorate studies to ensure that practitioners move beyond what is already known and comfortable, into unknown ‘risky’ territory. This assignment is for me such an unknown and risky territory: like Hobbs (2007), I feel a bit anxious that a professor, whom I had never met, would be “reading my thoughts on extremely personal matters”. How do I practice genuine self-examination knowing that someone from a different culture, country and professional background sees this and assess whether I provide sufficient evidence of my knowledge of reflexivity? So should the part of the reflexivity models be longer and more detailed than my own story? Also, I have to use another language than my mother tongue, which makes it difficult for me to be spontaneous and free-flowing. Using English and working on a laptop feels too much like my daily work where I have to be critical of every word I use as it can misinterpreted, put people in danger or create a national or international incident!

How would I deal with this? By using the methods of retrospective reflection or Finlay’s introspection (2003) and metaphors (Etherington, 2004) which will hopefully put me in a flowing space where I’m free to be focus on myself, my experiences and emotions without being too concerned about what the reader thinks. Van Manen describes introspection as recollective reflection which “helps us to make sense of past experiences and thus gain insights into the meaning of the experiences” (p. 101) I love using metaphors and images for conveying complex concepts as the richness allows me to add new insights as I discover new truths. From the start, I want to apologise for being political incorrect in the UK context, but that was my experience as a White woman here in the southern part of Africa.

My journey – a retrospective reflection

My political identity

My earliest memories of my passion for politics and news include me and my dad waiting by the radio late in the evening for the announcement of the election results…there I was, maybe 10 years old, together with Pappa, waiting for the “toot, toot, toot” that signalled incoming results, writing down the tally for the different parties in the old apartheid elections. Pappa telling everyone proudly that I share the same birthday as our Prime Minister Ben Vorster…

I remember how excited I was each semester to see how Ms Jordaan, my history teacher for 3 years, updated the visual timeline of the 2 World Wars and the interlinking South African history on the ceiling in her class. How she made history come alive for us…and how I pretended to be a film director in my own Sophie’s Choice, bringing the emotions of loss and hope to life.

I remember the giggles when we had to dive under the school desks when we had a bomb attack exercise in school. When I realised that there are no rubbish bins in the cities’ streets because the ANC put the limpet mines in them that killed scores of innocent people. How we were taught to report any suspicious parcel. Plastic 3D replicas of terrorist weapons on the walls of each classroom…Living in constant fear…

Coming of age at university…loving the debate about terrorism, African politics, democracy in all its forms, the Cold War, federalism, international organisations, Morgenthau and Marx…starting to think about how we should solve our political quagmire…

I remember my recruitment into the National Intelligence Service (NIS): the excitement of doing something worthwhile with my life, changing the world, the polygraph test, psychological tests…and being put in a small office without windows, given files of rules, regulations and documents on the Horn and East Africa, my first analytical desk.

Starting to question my own beliefs and mental maps as the inevitable changes in our country steamrolled ahead, my elation when the Berlin Wall fell and the domino effect it had in Eastern Europe, my hope and then despair as African countries dappled and failed in democracy, my naivety crashed and looking evil in the eye when having to go through the daily reports of thousands of innocents being butchered because they were from another tribe.

Most recently my growing cynicism for the future of our country and feeling disdain for politicians and criminals who are eroding our young democracy with their greed and self-interest. Being white, I struggled to get a job after I resigned and ran my own company. “Too qualified and too white” I was told when some of the 120 job applications I put in made the effort to come back to me. Thank God I have found a home within the * who saw how my entrepreneurial spirit, analytical expertise and networking could benefit them.

Prismatic learning…a diamond mindset of my own.

In my early forties, I looked for a new challenge. As I’m really bad doing anything with my hands, except cooking, becoming a bit more domesticated and focusing on my family did not really fill me or my family with joy… My work situation at that stage was also a bit stunted and I decided to embark on my Masters. Then my employer did not want to pay for foreign studies, did not allow me to fulfil a scholarship I received from a US university and was just plain nasty, telling me “I can go”. But I couldn’t – I’m the breadwinner (my husband is a science tutor with a shaky income).

So I decided on the best challenging degree – Information and Knowledge Management. I remember the first few months’ absolute cognitive dissonance, but like Kolb stated, I integrated the new information with my existing mind sets, and created new mind sets. Later on I became addicted to discovering new truths in the interesting reading material and looking at how I can use this and that to improve myself and the world around me. I especially loved complexity theory and how individuals and organisations adapt and learn in uncertainty.

One of these new mindsets was Robert Flood’s Prismatic Learning (Flood, 1999) which I turned into thinking of the learning and knowing process as the metaphor of diamond learning. As I trained intelligence analysts by that time in my own company, I used this metaphor to explain how there cannot be just one problem or one solution. The prismatic characteristics of a diamond reminds us that each intelligence problem has various facets and perceptions that needs to reflect the complexity and uncertainty of a situation. Your understanding of the problem is enriched when you deliberately and mindfully apply various other perspectives. This mindset also keeps one quite humble as you never know all the different permutations and perspective of a problem. My typical intellectual arrogance quickly died on the battlefield of ideas, and I reinvented myself as someone who need to engage and ask real in-depth questions to try and get to understand and embrace other viewpoints.

Blue ocean strategy

Just after starting my own business in 2007, I read Kim and Mauborgne’s Blue Ocean Strategy. This metaphor again changed how I look at myself and the world around me. I realised that, although my company was at that stage the only training and consulting company in intelligence analysis, investigations and management on the continent, I need to be so far ahead of any competitors that they would never be able to catch up and draw me back to the shark infested bloodied red waters. That continuous striving for excellence, uniqueness and wow-ness was quite exhausting…reinventing myself and the curriculum continuously, embarking on new adventures when I started a ground-breaking e-magazine for intelligence analysts that was read throughout the world – apparent even by the Chief of the Ministry of Defence in the UK and MI5 and MI6 leaders!

But, as with many other things, I had to be reflective and decide what is best for me and my family. I had to find a balance between doing what I love and stressing about my income every month. Luckily, I’m now again in a position where I can do what I love, with added responsibilities and don’t have to worry about my salary!

Myself in three years… an anticipatory reflection

First, a look at my existing skills and knowledge: I have work experience of 30 years both in the public and private sectors on national and international level. My career spans the fields of intelligence analysis, security, training and development and strategic management. After working as an African political analyst and training specialist in the intelligence agencies for 19 years, I set up my own training and consulting company in 2007 that provided the only private training in intelligence analysis and related disciplines to nearly 2000 students from 8 African countries. I have developed and managed numerous courses on NQF levels 4-7, am an international certified intelligence analysis trainer, worked with universities to develop short learning programmes in the intelligence and security field and am recognised internationally as an expert in learning and development in the intelligence/law enforcement sectors. I have built a solid network of academics, professionals and executives throughout the world who valued my ground-breaking work in strategic intelligence research and education in Africa. I have been elected as representative for Africa, Asia and Australia for an international professional association (IALEIA) and served on the Board for 5 years, during which I also developed a module in strategic intelligence analysis for a professional course offered all over the world.

I chose the DSyRM over a traditional PhD because it enables me to immerse myself in an area of research that is situated in my own world of practice. Also, the reality that there is no university in South Africa to provide a similar degree with experts in intelligence or then at least the security risk version of it who could serve as my supervisor, forced me to look at international universities.

I chose Portsmouth University because I liked the structured approach to the programme. Alison was the only professor who was really interested in what I want to say and listened to my ideas without inserting her own opinion. I hope that we will connect even better and that the relationship we foster, will restore my faith in the higher education system. The greater degree of structure will hopefully give me more guidance and self-confidence as I progress.

After this assignment, my to-do list is quite heavy: 1) really focus on become a reflexive practitioner; 2) getting a better hands-on experience of the newer research methodologies that I can use in my thesis 3) explore using social learning opportunities to my benefit. On a personal level, I have already learnt that my competing identities, being researcher, student, mother, grandmother, wife, manager, mentor, colleague, breadwinner, friend, and mother-in-law are not necessarily a burden. For me, it has become a reflective tool to understand the complexity of the world and the interdependencies of knowledge and experiences I engage with my practice and education every day. It is challenging, but I tend not to feel so anxious about balancing all of these roles.

In all I hope that this professional doctorate would make my research more meaningful, not only for me, but for the broader profession of intelligence practitioners and scholars. The ultimate would be if the broader intelligence education community realise the benefits of professional degrees and actively investigate the possibility of instituting such qualifications for intelligence practitioners.

References

Dewey, J. (1964). John Dewey Selected Writing. New York: The Modern Library.

Etherington, K. (2004). Becoming a reflexive researcher: Using our selves in research. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

Fenge, L. (2009). Professional Doctorates—a better route for researching professionals? Social Work Education, 28(2), 165–176. http://doi.org/10.1080/02615470701865733

Finlay, L., & Gough, B. (Eds.). (2003). Reflexivity: a practical guide for researchers in health and social sciences. Oxford: Blackwell Science Ltd.

Flood, R. L. (1999). Rethinking the fifth discipline: learning within the unknowable. London: Routledge.

Hobbs, V. (2007). Faking it or hating it: can reflective practice be forced? Reflective Practice, 8(3), 405–417. http://doi.org/10.1080/14623940701425063

Kolb, D. (1984). Experiential Learning. New Jersey: Prentice Hall.

Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. http://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004