Axon - The Teaching Hot Wash: The Value of Reflective Practice - Ep5 Published March 24, 2023 Air University Teaching and Learning Center This is Axon, the Air University Teaching and Learning Center podcast. At Axon, we make connections between teachers, learners, and ideas in military education. The opinions, conclusions, and recommendations expressed or implied in this podcast are solely those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent the view of Air University, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or any other US Government agency. Follow us online at www.airuniversity.af.edu/TLC or on Twitter at @airteaching for more. Dr. Megan Hennessey Hey hello, I am Doctor Megan Hennessey. I'm the Director of the Air University Teaching and Learning Center, your host of the Axon podcast. Here today, and very excited to have with us, Doctor JW Womack, Assistant Professor of Leadership at Air War College and Instructor at the Leader Development Course at Air University. Hey JW. Dr. JW Womack Hey, Megan. Great to see you. Dr. Megan Hennessey Great to see you. Congratulations on your Ed.D. Tell us a little bit about what program that was and how that helps you. Thank you. Dr. JW Womack Fantastic. Thanks. The program was a 100% online program through the University of Southern California. Chose that one very deliberately, as all of us do who are on that academic, “what'- the-next-thing” charge. I looked around at the few programs that existed that I could work on while still teaching at Air University. So, I got to Air University in January of 2019. I started the program in September of 2019 and COVID was brought to us in the winter of 2020, so I was one of those who worked the dissertation through the pandemic. And I think that there were a couple of things that if I look back on that, that helped. It also magnified the significance of the topic. We sent a lot of people home. They had a lot of extra time and it just so happened that what I wrote about and researched was the concept of applying reflective practice to teaching. Dr. Megan Hennessey Well, now you have to tell us what that is. What is reflective practice for those who don't know? Dr. JW Womack So, on the surface, what most people will think of as reflection is some kind of a mixture, Megan, where they'll go back in time and they'll think, especially in the education community. What I noticed here around the academic circle, specifically, they might talk with a colleague about a lesson that they shared, a lecture they gave, maybe even a reading they assigned, a video they showed. And what I found was that the definition of reflective practice or reflection was looking back and studying something that we were a part of; how it was being applied was looking back and wondering, “What should I do differently next time?,” and what I wanted to do is I wanted to slow down that process. And then I even wanted to take a really deep dive into what could we be reflecting on that would be in service of the student body who come to our school. Dr. Megan Hennessey So, are you talking like hot wash culture? That's something we're familiar with in the Air Force, right? Is it similar? Dr. JW Womack You know the hot wash when I got here, and we realized at the end of every teaching day we were going to stand in the hallway. We called it a hall call. The thinking was that if we were standing up, then it would be a shorter meeting. And again, when we went around the circle, it was, “What did we do and what should we do differently?” And the doing, it continued to come down to “what reading did we assign? What lecture did we give? What video did we show? What asset did we use to teach the students?” Whatever that thing was and so, where my, kind of, the introduction of the paper, I call it a little paper, as I was writing it. Dr. JW Womack Introduction really took a look at the history of reflective practice going back to John Dewey to Schön’s models; and by the way, any reflective practice model that I found, it was simply questions: “What happened? Why did it happen? Who did it happen around?” And then it started getting into the more open-ended, the more kind of ontological view. If you were what could have happened or what might happen if we changed things, or did something a little bit differently? So, I think your note about the hot wash culture is spot on. Dr. Megan Hennessey So, has it been easy? I know you did your dissertation research, but also being a faculty member here, has it been easy for you to then influence the faculty culture at Air War College and the Leader Development Course to prioritize reflection, since there are many of them used to that hot wash line of business. Dr. JW Womack One thing I realize is that it's extra work and, in an environment where we are already taxed, let's just say it: For the teacher or instructor or professor [we have] a job where we're never done. Alright, I'll be watching a movie and I'll think of an introduction to my next speech. I'll be reading a book and I'll think about the middle part of the next paper I'm working on. So now, all of a sudden, in the environments that we're in, it's going to come down to when I'm with a colleague, “What question do I ask her or him about the day?” Then what we realized, the move that we made here at the Leader Development Course is we changed the question a little bit from “what happened today” or “tell me about the day.” When I look at someone, I say “tell me because of today.” “What are you thinking because of today? What's present for you?” All of a sudden people would look back and they go, “Well this thing happened and because of that, I'm feeling like my students are more engaged… or distant. I'm thinking that I might need to share this information this way instead of that way…” Basically what I wanted to do is I wanted to bring that reflective practice from focusing on the past where it starts, but then pulling it in. Dr. Megan Hennessey OK. And it sounds like you had a really diverse population. You had interviewees that had from one year of experience to teaching all the way up to twenty-two and a half; tell us a little bit about your sample. Dr. JW Womack Very deliberately so; it was this snowball sampling. What I did was by the time I had gotten here and I started the dissertation about a year into my coursework. So if you're doing the math, that was about 19 months into my experience here at Air University, and by that time I had made a few friends. That's always interesting cause I want to watch how close am to the people that I'm interviewing. I did not interview anybody that I work with on a daily basisdaily and then from there I went from the people I knew. I said, “Who do I not know with a breadth and depth of experience that would be willing to have a conversation about reflective practice?” So I was really focused on populations. I wanted military and civilian diversity. I wanted male and female diversity; and, I wanted that time span as well and we did a good job. At least that's what my dissertation committee said. Dr. Megan Hennessey Said, well, you passed. So I guess you did do a good job. Let's dive into your findings. What if you’re finding is that there's no shared understanding of the value of reflecting on teaching methods, and that's your verbiage there? That seems pretty heavy and like it could have some connections to organizational behavior and culture. Tell us more about the data that informs that finding and what it means. Dr. JW Womack So comments that we heard I heard in the interviews relative to well, “Why would I look back on something I did, if what I've been doing is working?” Why would I look back on something I did if I'm not being measured on that?” So very quickly, it became this balance between -what's the saying – “What gets measured becomes meaningful.” And I found in my own experience that I was not being measured on my reflective practice, was not being measured on the reflection that I was doing. As long as we got through a hot wash and people slapped the table on how things went, and then we could keep on pressing. And so the comments that I heard that allowed me to think that maybe there's a differing of shared understanding those came when people told me about their reflective practice and I got the range. I had people tell me that they reflect when they're driving home. They reflect when they're on a long run on the week. You won't have to ask very many people, “Where do you have good ideas?” and someone's going to say in the shower! And what we realized is that those kinds of - call them - haphazard, right? I don’t want to go for a bike ride because that’s the only time of my day that I get to reflect. So then when people got back into the office, one of the findings that was in line with that was that there wasn’t a shared, not just shared understanding but a shared process. So that rose to the surface and then in in my recommendations at the end, one of the things that I recommend, we'll get there in a moment, but one of the things that I recommended was early in the year to have that unit to have that cadre, to have that department ask ourselves what are the things that we want to have reflected on at the end of this term. So that way there was a little bit of objective setting up on the front side so that when they went through the hot washes, at least they'd had some kind of an idea that there was a direction to go in. Dr. Megan Hennessey Yeah, I'm writing down lots of questions more than we have time for, but something that you said, you know, you shared that people, your participants shared that they had reflective thoughts as they were riding bikes in their shower, you know, driving home. These reminded me very much of our last keynote speaker at the Military Scholarship of teaching and Learning Forum; it was Susan Rock who wrote minding bodies. And I'm wondering if you know this is perhaps a little nuance, but is there some kind of connection to be made for military educators specifically because most of us are very physical, many come from military backgrounds where we've had to be physical. Is there a connection to be made? Between embodiment and situated cognition and reflection for us. Dr. JW Womack I'm thinking of [the book] The Extended Mind by Annie Murphy Paul, the concept that the environment that I'm in not only can the context of what I'm in affect how I think or what I think about, but also that that can be trained so very, very tactical. For example, if I walk into a classroom and there is a whiteboard and half of the whiteboard has a line down it and it says “Do Not Erase” and there is stuff on the whiteboard, that is a different capture tool than if I walk into a classroom and there's a clear whiteboard with the message, “Fill me up by the end of the day!” So, what I wanted to do is I. Want to take a look at it and what a great set up that you just gave. So someone who comes from the background of because what is the other thing that all of our military members have the background of? It's checklists and process. So the moment that I start to blend, here are some things that I could try that might let me get a little bit more out of the day to bring into tomorrow and then just take a look at what are the practices or what are the experiments and I mean anybody who studies any kind of psychology. They're going to come across the term thought experiment and Albert Einstein figured out by sitting on a train wondering if a flashlight was going faster or slower if it was on the ground. So, what the thought experiment was. And I want that to be the driver behind it all, as an instructor, I am gifted hearts and minds in a classroom, and I get them for 50 to 90 minutes at a time, and at the end of those 50 or 90 minutes, I want to be very cognizant of moving on to the next thing, vice going back through those 50 to 90 minutes and asking myself a couple of pointed questions. Dr. Megan Hennessey Are there certain question types or verbiage that you can ask based on your findings that will ensure educators specifically in military education environment are continuing to reflect even after they leave the classroom. Are there like trigger words or certain things that you know are going to push their cognitive buttons? Dr. JW Womack So I was tracking through that entire question until I got the sense of that guarantee results. So this is where I always say result may vary, but yes and if the model were a triangle because you know triangle is a good military model, there are three kinds of reflections that I can do. Dr. Megan Hennessey OK. Dr. JW Womack Looking back, the one I can do is the transactional, right in the classroom, that would be the information given out, received, processed, and utilized. “Can the students write an essay after the class? Can they write a book review after the book review? Can they pass a test based on the transaction of information that went back and forth?” The next one, then, would be the relationships. Now this is nuance because the one relationship people are going to think of obviously is going to be the relationship to the students in the class. And especially in PME, one of the things that we find over and over again, if you line people up who have been to any kind of professional military education … if I asked them, “What was valuable about your time in PME?” You know what they're going to say right? Dr. JW Womack Part of the value of being there are the relationships that they built with one another. What I found was being added that was being talked around, not necessarily about was the students’ relationship to the material. It was going beyond the transactional. I know what year this happened and I know who signed the paper then. It was building a relationship and relating more of well what was happening at the time. Why? Why could something that happened in 1987 never have happened in 1943? How are we building that relationship? And then the third one, and this is the onus, this is, I think this is the responsibility of us instructors. I haven't read this yet; this is mine that I gave myself. So, I'm going to drop questions into myself. How did I? How did what I do factor into the students’ opportunity? As a result of deepening their relationship to both the material and to one another. Because we were so brilliant at passing the transactional information now. You are following along, as you're listening to this, if you drew that as a triangle, now overlay a circle on it. Because that's when we start to run. So, while I want to make sure that I stop at the angles, I want to make sure about the transaction… “Has the information been presented and consumed?” Then I move down. “Are we building a relationship? Are our students listening to one another? If we’re doing a Socratic methodology, are they sharing with one another and deepening their thoughts?” And then is there an opportunity that someone comes up and says, “Hey, I now know what I want to write my paper on, and I hadn’t thought about it until just now!” Yes, I feel like now we can turn that triangle into a circle transaction relationship opportunity back to transaction. Dr. Megan Hennessey Thank you, that's deep. But you made. It simple for us at the wheel. We do love our triangles and circles. You write about reflective practice, speaking about relationships as a quote stakeholder goal. What does that mean? Dr. JW Womack Our students will start everything we ask. And then they will deviate in time. So, as I review, as I reflect on, as I look back on what I did as the “in-charge person” of that classroom, and I ask myself, “What did I do? And because of that, what do we have that we never had before?” So that's that responsibility, that, that onus, that's really important to me is so that the next time, if I get another shot, the next time I meet with that group. So this, you know, instructors who teach a term course, they might see their students. 12 maybe 16 times. I want to make sure that over those 12 to 16 times I'm doing that due diligence of what I call the reflective practice. What information was transferred back and forth? How are people deepening their relationships to the one another because they're going to bomb-burst from here? They’re going to graduate from that program. They’re going to go back out whether they’re a Guardian, an Airman, a Soldier, a Sailor, a Marine, a civilian. They’re going to look back on this time and then build their opportunities because of that. Dr. Megan Hennessey Yeah, that reminds me of conversations that we always have about, you know who is the end user of professional military education? Is it the student? Is it the American people or the nation that’s represented? You know, the citizenry and the nation that’s represented by our international officers? What’s the end state? Dr. JW Womack Megan, that you know what you just said, what came forward for me? I’m very fortunate that my primary duty at LDC as an instructor. Our course is 8 days long. And several times in my course I’ll have a diversity not just of AFSC, but also a lot of rank in my class; I have Officers and Enlisted. I have GS civilians and we also enroll lead volunteer spouses to be. The common denominator for these four peoples is that they are all one to two years out from a command leadership position. So, two years out from being an SEL 1 1/2 years out from being a commander, they are about to become a director, a GS 13/14/15, they have a spouse who is going to take command and they want to know, “What is this?” [They wonder] What is this squadron command thing like and what came forward when you were just sharing that. So who's my primary customer? Is it the people in the squadron, or the students I teach? It's the families of the squadron, of the folks that I get to serve in our course and I see a very it's a straight line; it's not even dotted. It's a straight line because if I can get a DO [Director of Operations] today, who's 18 months out from taking the guidon, she or he now has 18 months to prepare for that 700 or 124 or 852 person squadron. Dr. Megan Hennessey Repair and reflect as per your research. So as I was looking through your dissertation. I have to ask you about this one. It might be a little contentious but one of your participants said, “… people in leadership aren't really intellectuals, and so that tends to decrease, enabling reflective practice.” Break that down for us. Give us your opinion. These were not your words. This was from someone you interviewed. Can you give us some context, or give us your thoughts on that. Dr. JW Womack Sure, the little bit of context and all of the interviews, of course, are confidential, so we maintain that. The light that it shined for me was the unique opportunity of a professional military education institute where we have a range of who's here. You started off this conversation, congratulating me on my EdD. We have folks who have JD degrees, PhDs, and EdD's. Not only is it going to come with a felt understanding. It's also going to come with and I'm going to watch my words here and interpretation from others. Dr. Megan Hennessey That's very diplomatic. Dr. JW Womack And I wanted to capture the essence. I wanted to honor that participant with those words. But what I wanted to do is exactly what you and I are doing right now, which is, “Hey, there is a graduation of how people think about one another in this, in academia.” I do not think this is only involved in PME. And so I want to get that context out there that I wanted to honor the fact that someone would be that willing to share the opinion. What does it mean? It means that in an organization such as ours - now I'm speaking for the university that I teach at, which is, I mean, what do we have 400,000 students a year at some point? That Come through Air University. We have folks who are attempting to get their second, sometimes their third masters. We have people who are here. Now, let's go to faculty. We have teachers here who are lifetime or get them from Pennsylvania to come to us. Dr. Megan Hennessey You're very kind. Dr. JW Womack And then we have fellows, right? We have civilians whose lifelong passion had been to teach at a university. We have civilians. They let me in at age 47 without my terminal degree, right? We both took a risk on one another. I moved here from Santa Barbara and they let me teach for two years without my terminal. That investment through time, and so what comes forward for me is how do we have? Rigorous conversations that incorporate the totality of the human experience. We have students who come here for 10 months. We have students who come here - they just had a one-year remote tour command away from their spouse - to do one more year; to “geo batch.” They're going to go somewhere else and they might command for two. We're asking them to move three times in four years, and that instructor up in front of that room, I'm wondering, hoping, praying that she is reflecting. “Did I get the transactional stuff right? Did I help that student build a relationship not just to one another, but to the material, to the experience? What opportunities did they get by coming here that they could not have gotten anywhere else?” That is, I think how we heighten the value of our PME experience. Dr. Megan Hennessey I feel like on this podcast I need to ring a bell anytime a guest says the word rigorous, and this will be my last question to you. And then maybe we can open it up for your final thoughts. You said rigorous conversations and that made my mind leap to “how military education, specifically professional military education, is beholden.” We have a responsibility to be accountable to the American people for our learning outcomes, and part of that includes assessment is there, you know, as we continue to talk about the value of reflective. Directness is there a danger of this becoming just one more thing we need to assess. Dr. JW Womack Right, and that was where at the end to end of the paper as I got to the recommendations, we had to look at and then I keep, I will continue to use the word context a little bit out in front. So contextually, what will I need to have done this year? In relationship to reflection, that may not stand the test of time. So, as we were drawing down forces that were coming out of the desert, we were building those up right now as the pacing threat increases. As students whose AFSC's and entire backgrounds are focused on date stamp this interview, the Eastern front between Ukraine and Russia or the Northern Sea and in China and Japan, as their minds are there, how are they doing here? And that debt that we owe to the American public for sending someone to us, pulling them out of their job for a year, to pour into them at the end, we need to be able to give them grades. As instructors, as professors, as course directors, my ask or my invitation is that the department get together at some regular cadence and talk about the concept of reflection and they talk about the concept of reflection because I want to make sure that what the students are getting. The information they're getting, the relationships are building and the opportunities they have. Dr. Megan Hennessey You are an excellent ambassador for Air university, Sir. Is there anything else you want to? Share with us today? Dr. JW Womack I thank you all, for those of you who tune into this as a regular thing, Megan to the TLC and the Air University Library, thank you for continuing to do this work. What I find is that people keep coming to a source to get ideas and information. I will ask, look down the hallway or look in your phone. Everybody right now go make a date to go talk with a friend and have a conversation about how you're doing and what you're working on, and maybe help each other out with a couple of the things that could be better in the next little bit. That would be my invitation to us all. Dr. Megan Hennessey Thank you so much, Doctor JW Womack, Assistant Professor of Leadership at Air War College and faculty member at the Leader Development Course. Thank you for being with us today. Dr. JW Womack Thank you everybody.