Comments on: Mitgefuehl http://netmap.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/mitgefuehl/ Just another WordPress.com weblog Wed, 23 May 2012 22:08:39 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Eva Schiffer http://netmap.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/mitgefuehl/#comment-499 Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:55:12 +0000 http://netmap.wordpress.com/?p=321#comment-499 Dear Paolo,
I like your picture of “leaning forward over the void” and I know that often it’s the situations with strong emotions and not those when you are trapped between two limp slices of white bread (sandwich) where you learn most and are most likely to not forget the lesson.

Thanks for the encouraging reflections.

]]> By: Paolo Brunello http://netmap.wordpress.com/2008/09/30/mitgefuehl/#comment-493 Sat, 18 Oct 2008 10:46:04 +0000 http://netmap.wordpress.com/?p=321#comment-493 Hi Eva,
your post echos in my mind as it bounces against a similar dilemma I always face as an educator: feedback. The right balance between closeness and distance, and the reflexion on how to develop a sensitivity for it, to me is very similar to the sensitivity you have to develop as an educator/trainer to gauge the right mix of positive and negative feedback (positive and negative feedback as in evaluation, not in cybernetics terms) to give to your learners/trainees.
In my experience, it’s a fine and well timed mix of challenge & support that can serve as an effective motivator for learning. One has to constantly question what is the psychological state of the learner you are facing in terms of self-confidence and self-efficacy and then dose your feedback accordingly. This is not to say that if s/he feels down you have to compassionately cheer her/him up and “censure” negative feedback, or viceversa, drag her/him down if he feels good, nor to always compensate positive and negative feedback so that the result will be a painless mildly negative or positive average, as I often hear (the sandwich rule). It’s trickier than this, and my guess would be that we don’t have to fear emotions as we are led to do in our brainy, so-called western culture. Rather we should accept that even feeling bad, crying, having a hard time to fall asleep, in a word, suffer, it is not inherently negative as long as it is a temporary condition and not a chronic one. So my point is that to me professionalism, as you describe it, is about allowing oneself and others to experience strong feelings, “lean forward over the void”, while developing the capacity to get back to a balance, and most likely a new one.

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