Staging your Research IV
On Thursday 9th July, the ‘Staging Your Research’ ensemble met for a final time before the end of the academic year, and was once again facilitated in our learning by David Shirley, the head of the Manchester School of Acting.
This evening the group worked on empathy, with David guiding us through a series of exercises that encouraged us to examine a relationship that we would like to improve, by looking at it from three different perspectives:
1. Self – Each of us 2. Other – The person with whom we had a damaged relationship 3. Observer – An independent observer
By considering what each of these people might see, hear, think, and feel when the looked at the other (or in the case of the observer when they looked at the scene as a whole), we were able to better empathise with the person with whom we wished to improve our relationship. It was a very personal experience, and none of the details of what we did were shared with the rest of the group, but I found it to be an incredibly useful and therapeutic exercise, which helped me to address some issues and also to brainstorm some potential solutions to help build bridges.
Bottled goodness (Photo credit: Geoff Jones)
When we discussed the impact of this exercise on research and teaching practices over dinner (courtesy once more of the incredibly empathetic Haleh Moravej and MetMunch), it became apparent that this was a very useful exercise for reflecting on fractured relationships with colleagues at work. It was also discussed how it could also be extremely beneficial when considering a piece of work or research. It may sound trite, but removing yourself from your working practices and considering how you are approaching a problem from an objective perspective can be an incredibly useful methodology of problem solving. This emotional intelligence and the use of feelings to motivate, plan, and achieve in one's life is something that has been proved to be extremely effective (see e.g. Salovey and Mayer, 1990).
Emotional intelligence: a key skill set in academia.
Empathy is also an important tool in the classroom, and can be used to help foster improved student learning (Gair, 2011), whilst also being instrumental for the effective teaching of culturally diverse students (McAllister and Irvine, 2002). I think that doing exercises like this with smaller groups of students would also be a great learning experience for all, and would help the students to reflect on their own relationships and learning practices.
Listening to the thoughts of others from the group, it was also apparent that people had benefited from taking the time out to actually address a problem, giving it the space and time to breathe that was needed to properly identify it as a problem. I think that as academics we sometimes get so caught up in the maelstrom of university life that we push things to the back of our minds far to often, and that rather than letting them fester we should instead take the time to acknowledge and deal with them out in the open.
The whole Staging Your Research journey has been of great benefit to me, and as well as connecting new colleagues from across the university, it has given me time and space to reflect on things in my research and teaching practices, allowing me to look at issues from new angles and perspectives. It has been a thoroughly enjoyable experience, and whilst I am sad that it is over in its current incantation, we have made plans to continue to meet as a group at the start of the next academic year. So watch this space…
References:
GAIR, S. 2011. Creating spaces for critical reflection in social work education: Learning from a classroom-based empathy project. Reflective Practice, 12, 791-802.
MCALLISTER, G. & IRVINE, J. J. 2002. The role of empathy in teaching culturally diverse students: A qualitative study of teachers' beliefs. Journal of Teacher Education, 53, 433-443.
SALOVEY, P. & MAYER, J. D. 1990. Emotional intelligence. Imagination, cognition and personality, 9, 185-211.











