It's been a very enjoyable and emotional weekend as our son and daughter came home from university to celebrate their mum's big birthday and Mothers Day. Having all the family together these days is a rarity so we all savoured it and had a lot of fun and lots of catch up conversations.. We were a complete family again each fulfilling our role within it and it felt good.

It was fascinating to see how our son and daughter are growing up and becoming/being independent and this manifested itself on numerous occasions. In one conversation my daughter was discussing the possibility of travelling to Cambodia to work with an NGO.. her mum was not too keen but she suddenly said..'look you can advise me but I'm going to make the final decision on whether I go', I'd never heard that sort of thing before. 

I am just starting to think of wellbeing as a dimension of lifewide learning. My daughter has just started writing for her university newspaper so I have commissioned her to write an article for Lifewide Magazine (which she can also use for her newspaper) on how students understand their own wellbeing. I developed a simple questionnaire and interviewed her and her brother to pilot it. It worked a treat and we had good meaningful conversations. Both, in their individual ways, made the point that their wellbeing was not just about happiness or feeling good, but was much more about discovering, pursuing and achieving your purposes. Both indicated that trying to find your purpose and that they try to do this by taking on new things.. not at random, but guided by their interests, values and relationships.  

When I added my tags to the post I realised that this was the first time I'd had categorised a post using 'wellbeing' so it not a concept that comes in to my head very much. Perhaps the things I do and the relationships I have are so integrated into my wellbeing that I take it for granted. As a generalisation I do feel fulfilled and happy with my life. I am a valued member of a family that I am supporting and gaining much love in return. I enjoy my work which gives me challenge, interest and opportunity and a belief that  what I'm doing is worthwhile.

I latter completed the questionnaire myself and realised in doing so how much of my own sense of wellbeing was bound up with my family. Seeing them find and achieve their purposes, and playing a part in helping them do this, was perhaps the main source of my wellbeing.

WELLBEING QUESTIONNAIRE

1 What does 'wellbeing' mean to you?
I am very fortunate to have more than the basics in life including a lovely home and income to support my needs, time to do things I want to do and I am reasonably healthy and fit. These things all contribute to my sense of wellbeing. But ultimately wellbeing is about understanding and fulfilling my purposes - or at least the ones that I think are most important in my life.

My wellbeing is founded on the relationships I have with the people who matter most to me. My immediate family which includes my three children by my first marriage and my wife and three children and grandchildren from my second marriage. My greatest sense of achievement and fulfillment comes from the love and attention they give me and my involvement in their lives. Seeing and helping them grow up and find their own ways in life has given me my main purpose in life. A second set of purposes which cause me to get up in the morning is my work in promoting lifewide education. Here fulfillment comes from a sense of making progress in achieving the educational goals I believe in.

2 Is wellbeing linked to happiness? Are they the same thing?
Yes. I believe I am contented and happy with my circumstances and although things do crop up in life that make me anxious, sad and unhappy -  the big picture is one of happiness. But wellbeing is not only about happiness it is much more about discovering and pursuing purposes and doing things that you believe are worthwhile, meaningful and valuable and deep and meaningful forming relationships.

3 Which aspects of you does your wellbeing involve or affect?
Given what I have said it must affect me physically. Although I can no longer run because of my knee I am generally in good health and physically I can do most things that I need or want to do day to day. It affects me psychologically and emotionally - I generally feel positive and rarely suffer from negative feelings, and sadness can usually be offset with joy. Aspects of my daily life keep my mind active so it affects me intellectually. And spiritually, I am comfortable with my understanding of who I am, why I am here and what will happen to me when I die.

4  What sorts of things do you do that enable you to cultivate a sense of wellbeing?
I am surrounded by my family and I am involved in their lives, some more than others. At the moment I am helping my daughter a couple of days a week with childcare - looking after her 8 month old twins. Its hard work but very rewarding and it gives me a lot of pleasure to feel I am giving her practical help and time to do other things in her life. Beyond this my wife and I do lots of things with and for the family both immediate and more extended and these experiences ground me in the life of others.

I enjoy my work, and my writing it stimulates me intellectually and gives me the satisfaction of creating new things. I play in a band and  have weekly rehearsals and that also gives me enjoyment and challenge. When time and weather permit I like to get out into my garden and do things in it.

5 Is your sense of wellbeing something that comes from doing one thing or many things?
It comes from different things in different parts of my life - indeed having things happen and making things happen in different parts of my life enriches my sense of fulfillment and achievement.

 6  What sort of things erode your sense of wellbeing? Please give examples
Concerns and anxieties within the family have a big impact on my sense of wellbeing. For the most part these are small things that are all part and parcel of family living. But sometimes they are big. We have concerns that one of my daughter's premature twins might have brain damage because he stopped breathing when he was in the incubator. We watch intently for any developmental signs and it remains a concern that affects me emotionally. I also know that illness or injury has a negative impact. I damaged my knee playing badminton and discovered I also had arthritis and this has been painful, slows me down and inhibits me from doing anything really active like playing sport, jogging or long walks. Feeling overweight and slothful also makes me feel less good about myself. In the working side of my life feelings of not making progress or not achieving anything worthwhile erode my sense of wellbeing.

7 If you are unhappy about your state of wellbeing how do you change it? Can you give an example to illustrate?
Improving wellbeing always involves recognising what is causing the problem and doing something about it. A few months ago I felt overweight and this combined with my knee problem was making me feel not so good. I found a diet and stuck to it and began to lose my bulging stomach. But some of the really big things in life.. like the loss of a partner.. are hard to do much about.. grief and sadness are always with you no matter what you do. In my case I found someone else to share my life with her and her family, and my children,  helped me enormously to rebuild my life.

8  Is there a relationship between learning and developing and your sense of well being? Can you give an example to illustrate

Yes. I am conscious that so much of day to day living involves learning and developing in order to accomplish something or help someone else. This LWE project aimed at exploring the idea of wellbeing and how it relates to lifewide learning is involving me in finding out what others think wellbeing involves through on-line searches, in devising an interview protocol (this set of questions) and using it to have structured conversations with people (beginning with family). I will also use the opportunity to develop new relationships with people. I am learning through this process, and this is one example of a continuous process of learning and developing.

 9 Is there a relationship between wellbeing and achieving things that matter to you? If yes can you give an example?
Yes. Trying to achieve something I have decided to do becomes a significant focus for me and engages me on all fronts. If I do not make progress or the outcomes from what I am doing are not so good it makes me dissatisfied and that usually involves me in trying harder or trying something else. 

In the context of trying to help members of my family - just getting feedback that shows that what I have done has been valued is sufficient to make me feel that what I have done has been useful and worthwhile. Example - it was my wife's big birthday recently and she did not want any fuss being made. My wife is Iranian and in her culture birthdays are not celebrated as an adult and she is quite anti-birthdays. But I thought it was important to mark the occasion and planned/plotted a family celebration with the children and the two older ones came home from university for the weekend. I searched for and found a Persian restaurant with music and dancing and invited other close members of the family. We had a lovely evening and my wife really enjoyed it and the whole weekend. The best moment was when she said she would have to revise her view of birthdays! On such occasions you can tell when what you have tried to do has proved worthwhile.

10 On a scale of 1-10 where 1 is least and 10 is most important.. How important are these things in creating your sense of wellbeing.

1 Connecting with and having good relationships with people I come into contact with everyday 10
2 Being healthy and fit....physically active - walking, sport, dancing etc   9
3 Being involved in the world - being curious and aware of the world around me - looking and finding new opportunities 9
4 Feeling creative - doing things that give me a chance to be creative, inventive or resourceful 8
5 Continually learning and developing myself 9
6 Doing new things that interest me 9
7 Making progress in the things I am doing  10
8 Doing things with and for other people 10
9 Having a close relationship with someone I trust and can discuss anything with 10
10 Feeling that I am valued by the people that matter to me 10
11 Being able to do the things I want or need to do 10
12 Achieving something that I think is worthwhile 10

11 Why are the things that you rate most highly very important to your wellbeing?
All these things are important to my sense of wellbeing. Most of the things I rate highly are to do with relationships and affiliations. Perhaps I would add feeling loved as well as valued as being important, and feeling I am acting responsibly in fulfilling my role as a parent or friend.

Perhaps implicit, but could be made explicit, is the need to belong to something - to be part of a family and by extension to be part of a community (lifewide education).

The other feature about my sense of wellbeing is my need to achieve the things I value - the purposes that I have defined for myself. In this way it is intimately related to my lifewide learning and ongoing development as a person.

12 Is there anything that is important to you missing from the list?
My sense of wellbeing is an integral to the way I feel about myself and the life I live. It is not a static thing.. It is continuously evolving and has to be sustained through the things I chose to do and the way I try to do them. Because it is influenced by many things it has to be viewed holistically and evolving. I did not mention spirituality but perhaps our sense of wellbeing is what nurtures our spirit that carries and sustains us on our journey through life.

As my last blog revealed I have just begun a regular commitment to look after my daughter's twins so she can start working again. Its hard work but wonderfully rewarding in being able to spend the time with them. Coincidentally I came across the 'Granddad Programme' in Sweden which raised my awareness of the importance of intergenerational learning and how grandparents can be connected to new social processes for educating young people in schools.

I was a dad of three babies once (I still am a parent of older children/young adults) but I have never been a 'mum' before and I never had to look after two babies at once! Fortunately my daughter provides me with an excellent role model for how to look after and care for twins, she is totally dedicated to her children's wellbeing and development and I have leant much from watching her..But as I have been doing all the things that I needed to do to keep my grandsons safe, clean, well fed, contented and stimulated, I have been struck by the situational knowledge, capability and resilience it demands. These are things that have to be learnt through being involved but I was interested to come across this posting by Matthew Taylor on the idea that caring is a core capability and a disposition that we should be nurturing through our education system if we want a  better society. His ideas align well with our concerns for a lifewide concept of education.

Care as a core capabilityMatthew Taylor CEO at RSA

There is a crisis of care in our country and it comes in many parts. For a start there just isn’t enough to go around; whether it’s deprived children or isolated elders, in our crowded society many people lack the human contact and support that they need to flourish. This is despite the fact – reported by the ONS – that one in ten people provide unpaid care, that the proportion is steadily rising and most quickly among those who provide more than fifty hours a week.

Although the Coalition’s  announcement of a new funding framework is welcome, regardless of who pays professional care is proving increasingly unaffordable. Virtually every local authority in England has now restricted state funded provision to those with the most severe needs, and even they get a threadbare offer.

At a time when we need to maximise productive work, the expense of child care means UK employment rates among mothers are disappointing and much lower than many other European countries. And, as recurrent scandals in hospitals and care homes – of which Mid Staffordshire is the most recent and shocking – vividly illustrate, our institutions and professionals seem capable of ignoring the most basic care needs of their patients.

Meanwhile recently another debate has reopened; what should children learn in schools? Michael Gove’s policy shift on the EBacc still leaves him out of line with a growing international consensus that schools should equip children not just with subject based knowledge but the core capabilities they will need to be successful and responsible citizens. Below the u-turn headlines last week was a surprise reprisal for citizenship education, which contrary to expectations will remain a statutory part of the curriculum, with renewed emphasis on active participation in community volunteering.

This is an opportunity. It’s time we saw learning to provide care as essential to young people’s development.We learn about the joys, trials and tribulations of providing care in practice not in theory. Teaching care should revolve around a new ‘young people’s care experience’ through which all youngsters at some point between the ages of 14 and 18 are expected to undertake a hundred hours of work experience in a care setting such as a community nursery or a residential home.

There would be many benefits. Young people would have an experience which has a good chance of being useful to them in their career and which – unlike a lot else they learn at schools – certainly of value at some point in their life. The care institutions would get a flow of prepared young people to enhance the offer they make, especially around the face to face interaction which so often seems to be missing when things go wrong at places like Mid Staffs.

Having worked in Downing Street I am painfully aware that the implementation of an idea is as important as the idea itself. The devil is in the detail. I should thank my readers for some useful comments when I floated this idea last week and an insightful sixth form group at St Xavier’s college in Clapham who gave me forthright feedback when I recently floated the concept with them.

The Government decided some time ago to scrap mandatory work experience for older secondary school pupils. This didn’t get much push back, partly because the low quality of many work placements has given the whole idea a bad name among teachers and young people. So this scheme must be linked to accredited classroom learning and to high standards of supervision and support by the care workplaces. Pupils must be prepared for the experience and if they meet the standard they must get credible accreditation to put on their CVs. And the participating organisations –which could be from the public, voluntary or private sector – should be strongly encouraged to reward young people who successfully deliver the 100 hours – some public recognition and £50 can go a long way if you’re fifteen. Perhaps as Carl Allen suggested  we could make use of alternative currencies as the mode or reward.

It is also vital that the scheme is mandatory across all schools whatever their social mix. One of the problems with paid caring occupations is their low status. Feminist economists argue it is part a broader problem of downgrading what is seen as ‘women’s work’. The care experience should be seen as an opportunity and a privilege for all not a burdensome imposition. And, incidentally, this is vital for our economy. For all the talk of investment in science and high tech business, improving the quality of work in our ‘high touch’ service sector is vital to the sustainability of public services and the overall productivity of the economy.

The St Xavier’s students asked another question: Millions of young people are already care providers, looking after parents, grandparents or younger siblings. Isn’t it a bit much to ask them to add another 100 hours onto the several many spend every day looking after loved ones? It is a telling point and implementation has to leave room for schools to show common sense and compassion. But perhaps this is another upside. Far too often young carers lack the space or confidence to talk to their peer group about the challenges they face. By making care giving something we all value and all experience as part of growing up perhaps that too might change.

We spend all of our lives becoming the person we are but rarely stand back and analyse what it entails at the level of our daily lives - preferring to see our growth as a mysterious phenomenon. I have discovered I get great benefit from producing things, usually with other people, that cause me to think about my own circumstances. The latest issue of Lifewide Magazine which I worked on with the editor Jenny Willis focuses on the question of how we become the person we want, need or ought to be. Our Magazine is our most important vehicle for exploring different dimensions of the phenomenon of lifewide learning and development and the process of 'making' involving searching for, commissioning and writing content, and commissioning illustrations and working with the artist always exposes me to new ideas and reshapes my understandings. This issue was particularly significant in this respect. So many of the articles reveal just how precious the chance we have is to use our life to become the person that we try to be so that at the end of our life we are thankful for being that person and have no regrets that we were not someone else. Of course life throws things at us or takes us in all sorts of directions which we would not ask for and this is the reality of what we have to work with. But we can and should be inspired by the people who, through their own actions, show us how to live a life of purpose and meaning that influences and benefits all around them.

I had a fascinating and illuminating conversation with my daughter about how she thought she had become the person she is. She has clearly thought deeply about who she is and how she has become the person she is and what affects her day to day in being the person she wants to be. It was deeply personal and meaningful and I learnt so much from  the conversation.

I know I have the positivity gene which I inherited from my mother. I see it as a strength to think positively about events and situations even when most other people would think that there was nothing positive about them. The down side of that perhaps is that I generally don't acknowledge failure because my reasoning is that not being successful in something is merely one step on the journey to accomplishing something, or abandoning a particular course of action. I don't think that there is anything wrong with this but I need to recognise that it might be a weakness not to see something as a failure and to talk about it as a failure (rather than a step on the journey).. This was brought home to me in a TEDx talk by two college students Tara Suri & Niha Jain - Learning to Fail whose main theme was to admit failure and talk about it was good for you and provided an honest foundation on which to build. Rather, than perhaps a foundation of denial or minimalised interrogation that perhaps positivity encourages. By coincidence I was writing a background paper for my presentation at the  International Forum of Innovators in University Teaching (IFIUT) conference in Riyadh next February when I saw the TED talk and I think it was helpful in enabling me to be honest and open about the failure of SCEPTrE and me as leader of the enterprise in securing a future for the Lifewide Learning Award - particularly my failure to persuade my line manager that the award was something that was worth nurturing. It's hard to put myself back two years to remember my actions, my feelings and how my beliefs evolved in response to my manager's actions and words. But the writing process combined with the TED talk that had made an impression on me, made me question myself more deeply as to whether I had been persistent, skilful, forceful and subtle enough in my pursuit of success. I will never know whether a different outcome would have been achieved had I been better at persuading, or whether things had been different had the previous line manager remained in post for the final year of the project. Being honest about failure raises lots of 'what ifs' and these I don't find helpful in moving forward. What I do know is that if I believe in something I will try to find a way to progress or make something of it and this is the way I prefer to live my life.  So the failure of me and SCEPTrE to persuade the University that our concepts and practices relating to the idea of lifewide learning, education and personal development, would add value to the existing educational practices, provided me with the opportunity to take these ideas forward through a different mechanism (Lifewide Education Community Interest Company). Something that I would not have been able to do had SCEPTrE been successful.

But failure is rarely black and white. If I apply this way of thinking to the current Lifewide Learning Community enterprise in our first year I think we have been very successful - 200 registered members and an established presence, community website, Magazine, e-book and a Lifewide Development Award. We have much to celebrate. The current 'Failure' might be in not attracting enough people to the award - we know this and the focus in the New Year has to be on addressing this failure while maintaining and growing the other aspects of our enterprise. In other words failure is only failure when you give up and admit defeat. In the case of SCEPTrE we didn't give up- the university gave us up.

This week will be interesting because I'm contributing to a survey LWE survey aimed at revealing how, what and why we learn through our everyday experiences. It should reveal the ecology of  my lifwide learning. Three times a day I will spend  about 10mins recording these things and at the end of the week pool them with other contributors to see what emerges. I will also reflect on what my log tells me. Anyone is welcome to join the survey even if its only for a few days.  DOWNLOAD SURVEY TEMPLATE

 





Here is my completed log for the week

A Week in My Life - making sense of my activities and the learning/meaning I derive from them 

My week was atypical in the sense that it is not every week that I get the chance to participate in a conference and interact with people who shared the same sorts of interests and values as I have. But the rest of the week was typical of my current life. So what have I learnt from the process of recording and thinking about my experiences? 

ACTIVITIES
Out of a possible 168 hours (7x24h) I was active for about 112h (averaging about 16h per day). These were broken down into the following categories of activity 

WORK About 50 hours includes work for my company Chalk Mountain and Lifewide Education. This week it including  attending a conference. This week I spent considerably more time on LWE work. Also includes 6h for this recording and reflecting exercise. Quite a lot of my time was spent either preparing for the conference or trying to fix a problem with a website.            

FAMILY About 24h this includes family at home (my wife and daughter), family elsewhere (children at university and children/grandchildren living locally), and family overseas (mother and father in Australia and sisters in Australia).

DOWNTIME about 18h includes reading, listening to music, watching TV/ youtube for pleasure and education like Time Team and playing my drums

TRAVELLING about 14h mainly time in the car being a taxi service or travelling to friends and family. This week included travelling to and from Leeds to participate in a conference

CHORES about 6h includes - cleaning, shopping, preparing meals, ironing, doing odd jobs in house/garden

HABBITS
I am clearly a creature of habit and my life is quite routinised. I get up and go to bed at more or less the same time. I have breakfast, lunch and dinner at more or less the same time,   and the pattern of what I do each day when I am at home is more or less the same. I start working at around 8am and work until 12ish.. I eat lunch and watch time team, I work pm until late afternoon or evening. I have dinner at more or less the same time with my family and we use this opportunity of being together to learn about each other's lives, discuss family and make plans. Evenings after dinner are generally devoted to relaxing and I seem to do the same sort of things most evenings..  This routine might be seen in a negative way but they do not feel boring or constraining because I generally value what I am doing and derive meaning and enjoyment from the things I am doing most of the time. Indeed, negative emotions generally emerge when things get in the way of the things I am trying to do - like having to complete my tax returns.

SOCIAL INTERACTIONS
My main social interaction day to day is with my family wife and children, and thanks to my sister's call - my family in Australia. Some of these interactions are face to face and some via email/skype/telephone. Conversations and activities encourage the sharing  of daily events or news in each others lives the disclosure of feelings and practical and emotional support.

Another sort of social interaction is related to work and this is mainly focused on trying to make progress. Communication is mainly through email and I am grateful for the help and support given to me by other people involved in LWE.

Life is punctuated by less regular events like participating in conferences and this provides opportunity for face to face social interaction. 

PLANNED & UNPLANNED ACTIVITY
While there is a consistency regarding the pattern of my  activity the detail is only roughly planned from day to day. At the start of the week I know roughly what I want to try and achieve. But the details of each day only unfold within the day. There are also unanticipated events that emerge and create problems and new opportunities. This week I had two emergent situations. The first involved having to resolve a problem with the LWE website created by the person who hosts it making changes to the front page that I didn't like. The second event involved me responding to an email from Rob Ward offering me the chance to design and facilitate a workshop at the CRA conference on Friday. This is how it happened..

********************************
From: Rob Ward 
Sent: 19 November 2012 10:10
To: Norman Jasckson
Subject: Forthcoming Residential
Importance: High

Hi Norman
I'm needing to do some last minute tweaking of the Residential programme as the final short session on 'Creativity and PDP' (plenary workshop,
14.20-15.00 on Friday) can't now go ahead as planned.  Would you bewilling/able to offer a short contribution on this theme here?

Apologies for the short notice! BW Rob
********************************

Once I had thought about it I did see it as a real opportunity to try something new and develop myself in the process. 

**********************************************
From: Norman Jasckson
Sent: Mon 11/19/2012 2:14 PM
To: Rob Ward
Subject: RE: Forthcoming Residential
Okay how about trying to model creative use of technology? This process would need the room to be connected to internet and two CRA
staff to support - 1 connected to twitter, 1 connected to weebly.com a website building tool

THEME 'Using technology to stimulate students' creativity in recording ideas, experiences, learning and achievement'
Participants to assume that there are no constraints on the way technology might be used in their own PDP environments ie a blank sheet of paper.

DESIGN - process
1) Self-organise into groups of about 4 people. Groups must include someone with a smart phone.
2) 10mins - pool ideas in the group drawn from personal or imagined experiences
3) 10mins - choose 1 idea and create a poster on a sheet of flip chart paper to explain the idea also prepare a 1 min pitch
4) 5mins - find a quiet corner and person with smart phone a) takes a photo of poster  b) records 1 min explanatory pitch on phone
5) 5 mins group composes 140 character tweet to capture the essence of theiridea for twitter and tweet, photo of poster and 1 min video clip emailed to
CRA address
6) 10 mins CRA colleagues a) post tweets & images on twitter & B) upload video clips to weebly website..

outcome
The tweets would be displayed on the projector screen and if we had two screens we could also display the video clips.. People can go away and look
at the results.
*********************************************************

Between this email and the workshop I did the preparatory work necessary to make it work, I got support from JW who provided illustrative poster and recording and I liaised with DB from CRA to make sure we could do it. The workshop worked very well and I know I can add this sort of technologically enabled workshop to my repertoire of facilitation techniques. I had no idea that this would happen at the start of the week.

LEARNING & DEVELOPMENT
Unusually for me this week some of my learning was formal in the sense that I put myself into situations (presentations and workshops) with the intention of learning something. But, more typically, most of my learning was informal usually goal/achievement driven... a) completing my book project or b) trying to advance LWE. I did try several things I hadn't done before including a workshop design that seemed to engage participants and get some great results. Much of my learning was simply about gaining some new knowledge and much of it was through conversation mainly with people I already knew but who I had lost touch with. Most of my follow-up actions will be linked to this relational knowledge.  I would say that quite a lot of activity I engaged in did not lead to any significant or recognisable learning.  In terms of personal development - what I can do now that I couldn't do before the week started I would identify the workshop I facilitated and the techniques I developed to engage people and record their creations. That experiential knowledge, the capability I developed and used and the confidence I gained can be used again.

Most of my learning was driven by my needs. I needed to modify a logo so I learnt how to use photoshop top do it. I uploaded a slide show to weebly for the first time. I learned how to design and facilitate a workshop I took on. Some of my learning was simply a biproduct of enjoying myself.. like searching for music on Youtube, spotting a new band I liked on Later with Jools Holland. There is also learning of a more strategic in nature which is linked to my work namely reading articles and books that enable me to add to my understanding. This week I read a transcript and watched a video clip of John Seeley Brown's talk on the entrepreneurial learner which I think LWE can use. I had picked this up from a link in a blog by Jane Hart that I was examining with a view to commissioning a chapter for LWE e-book. Much of my learning comes from this sort of intelligent and sometimes haphazard searching.

I also continued to develop my understandings of the ways of thinking promoted by Clayton Christiensen by reading his book and trying to apply his ideas to what I was doing which I know will  have significance for LWE. 

Some of my learning has come from using tools like stat counter to monitor how my websites are being used. This is a new form of learning over the time the knowledge will be valuable to know what interventions draw people to our resources.

In a more typical week I would do a lot more writing. For me writing is a very important way of developing and organising my thinking, creating meaning and recording my understandings.  This log and the reflective piece served as my main writing task this week. 

MEANINGIn my family context meaning is created through the day to interactions and conversations we have and the things we do to help and encourage each other and give each other emotional and practical support.

In the work context meaning is created through my book and in developing and promoting LWE. I feel I made quite a lot of progress with the later this week both in the redesign of the website and in my involvement with the conference. Meaning is also created through interaction with my family and feeling that I am in some way helping them. Reflecting on my experience of participating at the CRA conference I felt that I had, at least momentarily, regained a lost identity and renewed a set of friendships/relationships with people and higher education that had been eroded because it was no longer part of my everyday experience. This meant a lot to me and it has taught me the value of trying to find or create these opportunities for my own wellbeing. I devoted a lot of time this week to intentionally learn about my own learning and meaning making. I probably spent 4 or 5 hours this week recording and analysing my activities and what I have learnt from them. The value in the process is that it has enabled me to examine more systematically what I'm doing and how I draw meaning and learning from my activities.

VALUES  & IDENTITIES
One of the purposes of this exercise was to examine the ways in which activities and behaviours, and what motivates them, reflect values and identities. Through the week I was mainly working with two sorts of identity.

The first identity I embodied was my working identity - my work is essentially academic (eg being a writer/scholar - the book commission I worked on), educational (applying my knowledge of how people learn to the concept of lifewide learning)  and educational developer (trying to influence other educators). The central values here are those of being professional in these fields and trying, through hard work, thinking and creativity to progress each of my work enterprises. An important part of my identity as a teacher is my ability to communicate ideas and engage people in using them. Because of the conference I was able to do both of these in presenting my ideas on lifewide development and facilitating a couple of workshops which enabled people to try out some tools I had developed, or enabled small groups to share ideas and create some original educational designs. It is very important for me to maintain this part of my identity but which is quite hard to do now that I am no longer working in an institution. As a result of reflecting on this I strengthened the way I market this aspect of my professional work on my website.

The second identity I embodied relates to me as a member of a large family and a complex set of relationships that make up my family ... as a father/step father, husband, grandfather, brother and son.... the central value here is the love for my family and my desire to care for and help family members and the value of staying in touch with each other.  This week, thanks to technology I was able to have interactions and good conversations with my wife and daughter at home.. with my daughter and son at university - telephone/skype, with my wife when I was a away and she was away by telephone and skype, with my mum and dad in Australia (telephone), my two sisters in Australia (skype) and my daughter and my three grandsons. This record shows the value of the technologies we have for enabling us to communicate across the world.

I also experienced two other sorts of identity during the week..

The first was a sense of regaining, at least for a short time, an identity I held a few years ago as a respected thought leader in higher education. By being with a group or people I had worked with, including people from two agencies I had worked for, and being reminded of the roles I played in enabling change to happen in the HE system, I felt part of that society or community again. Here the values were around championing an educational cause (PDP, and providing concrete practical support to enabling it to be implemented. The fact that my commitment has carried on beyond employment gives me credibility in this respect.

Another identity I nurtured was my identity as a drummer in a band. We normally practice every week so this identity gets validated when we come together. When I'm listening to music in the car I sometimes play our own music or I imagine playing the drums to whatever is being played. This week we didn't have a practice but I had an hours work out on Sunday. Here my values relate to my love of music and of making music particularly with others and trying to improve myself as a drummer.

COMPARISON OF HOW I USED MY RESOURCES WITH MY PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN
This is the first time I have ever taken a week of my life and tried to record how I have used it. In his book on Measuring Your Life Clayton Christensen (p62) talks about strategy -   Real strategy .. in our daily lives is created through hundreds of everyday decisions about how we spend our resources (our time). As you're living your life from day to day, how do you make sure you are holding in the right direction? Watch where your resources flow. If they are not supporting the strategy you have decided upon, then you're not implementing that strategy at all.  The personal development plan I made in September identified my most important goals as:

1 To lead and contribute to the further development and promotion of the Lifewide Education enterprise
2 To grow the Chalk Mountain business and deliver a good service to clients
3 To support my (large) family - do whatever is necessary to help them
4 To build a recording studio and develop the technical skills to record my band
5 To create a woodland garden
6 To be open and responsive to new possibilities and adapt to or take advantage of the unplanned and unexpected

I think my life this week has supported achievement of the first three goals and I had a good example of responding to goal six in accepting at short notice, the challenge to facilitate a workshop at the CRA conference.  Goals 4&5 are much lower in my list of priorities than the first three goals. So it would appear that, this week at least, is quite closely aligned to my personal strategy.

CONTEXTS & PROBLEM SOLVING
I often use John Stephenson's contexts and challenges tool to help me reflect on the things I am doing.  I would say that this week. Most of my activities have been in the familiar context and familiar problems domain but the conference and the activities I undertook did put me outside my comfort zone (unfamiliar context) and tackle an unfamiliar challenge ( the workshop on creative use of technology).


VALUE OF THE EXERCISE
I estimate that the whole exercise of recording and analysing my log took me about 7 hours which I have allocated to LWE work. So was it worth it? I think it's helped me appreciate the value of this sort of tool and reflective process to helping people appreciate their learning and development in their everyday lives. I now think that the process and outcomes could be usefully integrated into the Lifewide Development Award.

The exercise has:
1) enabled me to see my life as an integrated whole (during this period of time) and see how different parts of my life interact
2) revealed the patterns of daily activity in my life highlighting routines and more unusual activity and the motives for engaging in such activity
3) forced me to think about the learning that is associated with different sorts of activity and the potential ways in which I have developed/changed through only a week of living - indeed this reflective exercise has made a significant contribution to my learning this week added to my understanding of how to promote reflection on our own LWE
4) encouraged me to see the meaning I attribute to different activity in my life
5) enabled me to check how I am allocating my resources to the things I value and confirmed  that I am spending my time in ways that are consistent with the goals I set out in my personal development plan
6) enabled me to recognise that the identities I embody and enact  which are closely related to the things I value 
7) enabled me to apply some of the wisdom I have recently discovered in Clayton Christensen's book  to reflect on my own activity and behaviour. This has helped me see how some of the ideas in this book might be incorporated into the guidance and support we give to lifewide learners.

POST REWRITTEN 21 Nov   I just spent 15-20mins thinking up a nice process for a workshop at a conference on Friday.. Creating the ideas was enjoyable and they flowed easily but I know the really hard part will be to make the design work - to sell the idea quickly and get people engaged and get them to use their creativity to invent, record and share their own designs.  That will be the hard part of creation. The other thing I realised afterwards was the way I thought about the problem 'can you put on a workshop on this theme? was something I could not have done a few months ago because I did not have the skills or experience to use the technology in the way I have. So turning imagination into practical reality is clearly constrained by the skills and experiences we have. Here is my workshop design.  to be continued after the workshop....

Post workshop - the session was not so hard because I put a lot of time and effort into preparing the resources - a web page with instructions and examples. My role then became one of motivating and time keeping. I think the session went well and it was well received by the participants. Some of the products are posted HERE

Here is the issue of Lifewide Magazine where we explore the theme - I now have a much better appreciation of what it might mean for contemporary life.

The next issue of our Lifewide Magazine is being formed around this
African proverb... a cultural story with deep meanings, and I thought it was
worth spending the time to reflect on my own early life. My first thought was
that this is a story about lots of people being actively involved in helping and
enabling a child to grow up. That seems obvious I suppose most of us have
parents, siblings, aunts/uncles, cousins and grandparents and I guess in an
African village all would have played a part.. But I interpreted the story to mean that other members of the village would also be involved..perhaps to teach essential skills and pass on cultural wisdom that was essential for the health and survival of the village..

There was nothing exceptional about my childhood. I was born in 1950 in the middle of Manchester.. and my earliest memories (less than 5) are of a street of terraced houses (Camelford St) with front doors that opened onto the street. I have quite a lot of fragments of early memories and impressions of my surroundings. I know we had good neighbours who sometimes looked after me but I'm sure my early upbringing was dominated by mum and dad and home. When I was 5 I moved to the northwest side of Manchester a place called Monton.. to a home with a front and back garden..I remember that moving was a traumatic experience fore me. It was still a town, with a cotton mill and canal at the end of the road, but at least there were fields to play in..and without too many cars it was safe to play in the street..which I did with the kids nearby... the neighbours were friendly but I don't remember much of a community in the way I imagined the African proverb describes. As I became increasingly aware of who I was. I learnt what was right and wrong and suffered the consequences (usually a smack and being sent to bed) if I did not follow the rules or crossed a boundary...like playing on the railway.. or falling in the  canal..or answering back..

We considered ourselves as a good working class family you achieved through hard work and a good job was you aim in life. My parents ambition for me was not very great at that stage.. you left school at 16 and got a job... my dad left school at 14 and what was good enough for him was good enough for me.. (at that stage).. so I don't think I was encouraged in the
 sense of ever thinking that education was a way of making something of yourself. My mum had to look after all of us.. by the time I was 10 there were 5 of us! so she had her work cut out. Being the eldest I felt I was the one that was treated the harshest and I was the one that was always pushing at the boundaries .. like bed time.. So perhaps that became part of my
chararcter..

My mum was the one we spent most time with and she was the one who had to keep us under control and look after us..she worked very hard and for years she never had a pair of knitting needles out of her hands. She had a tremendous positive spirit and always saw the good in everyone and everything (still does) and although her ambitions for us were also limited she never
stopped encouraging us.. I owe my own positivity to her I'm sure. I know I was loved and cared for and their role model as parents has stood me in good stead for being one myself.

My father's gift to me was his work ethic (his own a reaction to his father who had been unemployed for most of his childhood when the family had suffered real poverty and led to his mothers early death). Whatever the weather he cycled the five miles to work and never missed a dayunless he literally couldn't climb on his bike.  He suffered from bronchitis and his presence was often announced by coughing.. I had to do my share of jobs like run errands and I was also volunteered! to cut
the hedges and grass of neighbours. I remember resenting it but if I'm honest all these things fed into me.

I'm sure I leant at primary school. I certainly learnt to be a member of a community, make friends, treat people with respect and
follow rules pushing at them from time to time and suffering the consequences.. I remember being caned on several occasions.  My school had not learnt how to get pupils through the 11+ with only one or two passing each year so no one was
surprised that I didn't pass it. 

From the age of 8 church choir and cubs expanded my horizons enormously -
and gave me my first taste of freedom away from parental control! Day trips by
train to Derbyshire and the Lake District or the N Wales coast... In all of
these activities I think I learned much from just being out in the world and
interacting with people and adults.  When I think more deeply about this I think
that both choir and cubs taught me the value of being part of a community, of
learning their cultures and being part of it, of doing things together and in
the case of the choir practicing an anthem over and over again and then performing it. I can with the benefit of hindsight see that this was important learning. Both cubs and choir required discipline and commitment.. once a week for cubs .. Sunday morning and evening for choir and Friday for practice..they both taught me a sense of belonging and they both taught me that if you stick at something long enough, with time you will become a leader one day.... head chorister in the choir or a sixer (responsible for at least people) in the cubs.. When I look back these were important things to learn at that age and I'm sure they shaped me psychology and spiritually (though not religeous).

What I do know is that by the age of 10 I had a good sense of who I was but
not who I wanted to be. Going to secondary school was my first defining moment - a gym, playing fields and organised sport was all I needed to become who I wanted to be. Sport (any) and teams became my life..and I was good at these things..my confidence and belief in myself grew. I loved my school and just being in the environment helped me grow up.. I was in the top class and I don't know how but I came top in my first term which entitled me to a crack at the 12+ exam. The first of three important second chances in my formal education. I was reluctant to try for the Grammar school as I liked my Secondary Modern school so much. My mum and dad thought I should try and sent me to see the vicar who they thought could influence me and he did.. I decided I would go and do the exam and then decide what to do.. I passed and then had to make the decision which was a no brainer for my parents but more difficult for me.. Needless to say I went and that was my second defining moment as a child.

Looking back I did not have any sense that I was raised by a community.. perhaps a village would have been different....my values were learnt through family, school and church, there were adults who undoubtedly influenced me and particularly controlled what I did but I think I learnt more from my friends and just being out and about in the world : a pattern that continued through my teens. Growing up and becoming me was a social process but it was more to do with participating in life than being shaped and influenced by significant others.

I am not sure that my early childhood story plays well into my interpretation of it 'takes a village idea'.. My story I think reflects more the idea that as we grow up we have to find and put ourselves into different communities in order to learn from
others and gain the experiences that will help us develop as people. Nor does my story play very well into the saying “Give
me the child until he is seven and I’ll give you the man”.  While early life influences are very important, and we
they most certainly shape our  beliefs and values, once we become aware of who we are and of our own agency, there are
opportunities that if we take them will enable us to become the person we want to be indeed perhaps its the way we start to learn who we want to be, We are not rigidly held in the mould of ourselves as a seven year old.

A beautiful day is all you need to motivate you to get out into the garden and today was a bright sunny day - the light just filled my head and it felt great. I resolved to have another go at the pathway I am making in the woods (its been a couple of weeks since I made a start on it) and spent several hours chopping at brambles and cutting branches off trees. But manual labour creates great space for thinking and amongst the scratches I thought what a powerful metaphor for living making pathways is. I am designing it as I build it. I know roughly the direction I want to go 'working with the grain' of the woods but the detail emerges as obstacles are encountered like half buried tree trunks that make me alter my route. I can't do it without the tools I have - spade, saw, pick axe. It involves a bit of pain and discomfort but opening up the lovely new spaces make it all worthwhile.

My activities this week have been mainly focused on three areas of my life - my family, my work (ChalkMountain book project) and LifewideEducation (launching our Award). 

1 Chalk Mountain - Last week I talked about how difficult it is sometimes to make a start. The chapter I have been writing has been a struggle over a long period of time. I put it off and put it off. I did bits here and there and generally hated doing it which is very unusual for me when the task involves writing. But eventually, when I couldn't put it off any longer, and having missed my own deadline twice, I did knuckle down and did it and the result was okay. At least it got us to the stage where we can see where to go next with it. This was in complete contrast to the experience I had writing another chapter the week before which was a joy and just flowed from my mind... I am not sure I learnt much from this struggle but I did get valuable feedback on both chapters which means I can now shape them to make a better fit with what the institution wants.. So the learning is reinforcing what I already know about the need for feedback in order to produce work that is useful.

 2 Lifewide Education - My biggest achievement this week was to launch the Lifewide Development Award on the 28/09. I spent time preparing a slide show for the introductory talk and gave the talk to students on the MA Human Resources Management course at Southampton Solent University. I have worked for a long time to reach this moment and done much work to create the guidance and the website infrastructure. It gave me a real sense of satisfaction in talking about what we are doing and explaining the strong positive ideas that underpin the practice.

 'Making' the slide show was enjoyable and I felt creative. It  resulted in some useful materials to help me explain the background, purposes,  structure, process and tools underlying the scheme. I realise that this slideshow is an important tool and I can see how I might produce a podcast for the  website from the materials. I think this was an example of 'learning by making  a tool'. It's always hard to judge what participants are thinking but my sense is that they found it interesting and I am hoping they will want to participate.

 In putting the materials together I came across the old African proverb - it takes a village to raise a child and recognised the wisdom in this and its value to LWE as a concept. It is a great metaphor for thecommunity-based enterprise that will have to underlie the Award if it is to be successful.  I'm delighted that the on-line Community Forum I established two weeks ago is working really well and I hope that we can draw in the learners to share their experiences.
 
3 My third area of activity relates to my family.. At the weekend my wife and I took our daughter to university. Not surprisingly she was  apprehensive and anxious moving away from home for the first time.  We had prepared her as best we could and she had prepared herself by spending three weeks in France - her first independent holiday. After an emotional farewell we left her to get on with it. A week later she tells us how hard it's been - surprisingly she is 'having to juggle loads of things' and
'it's been so frustrating spending three days trying to get logged on to the university system' and 'everywhere is so big and it's easy to get lost' and 'the buses don't come and I spent an hour waiting for one in the rain'. This is why
going to university is good for you - it's a nice (protected) wake up call to the real world after years of timetabled familiarity..

My oldest daughter is very much in the real world with one child of 5 and two month old twins and a husband in America.. So I spent some time trying to help.. I was even left for 2 hours by myself with them - that was quite an experience and only filled me even more with admiration.  But at least I can feed them both at the same time now and I am growing in confidence and experience of how to look after them.. Incidentally, she is also two thirds through on OU degree trying to
fit in the assignments around babies and no sleep.. Its quite humbling...

 So an interesting week in which I think I have achieved in three areas of my development plan..

Learning in passing -I clicked a Linked-In Learning without Frontiers  link to a blog by Gaurav Gupta http://agoodschool.blogspot.co.uk and discovered a lovely little blog site called the Good School site..In it I
found the it takes a village to raise a child proverb and I contacted the writer (an Indian) with an invitation to write a short piece for Lifewide Magazine which he is doing.. I feel its a good example of useful knowledge and relationships emerging by just following links.