Why reflection?
Just a quick note on why you should reflect. By reflecting on your experiences in the workplace, you will acquire a better understanding of the link between theory and practice. You will also be able to come to better conclusions and recommendations. Reflection helps you to also create new ideas and paradigms.
I am currently a senior lecturer at the South African National War College. In our practice the use of reflection plays a critical role in the internalisation and development of our learners. Unfortunately not all learners experience this as a positive experience as it is seen as additional work. I am of the opinion that it is because they do not always know HOW to do a reflection. I have seen summaries of lectures as a reflection; agenda's of presentations being listed or just a regurgitation of the content. I would like to include an example of an international learner's reflection to indicate that he does understand the concept.
ReplyDelete"Before joining the course I had fair understanding of the system and functioning of UN as well as peacekeeping ops. I had the opportunity to serve as UNMO in MONUC, DRC besides interacting with my colleagues and troops who had been deployed in various UN Missions across the globe. However, during this weak I have gathered huge information about the structures and functioning of UN systems and its interrelations with regional organisations especially AU and various IOs/NGOs, which in fact has given me insight into UN system from another perspective.
As the nature of conflict changed in post cold war era, the responses of international community have also transformed from simple peacekeeping ops under Chapter VI to complex peace support ops under Chapter VII encompassing the whole range i.e. peacemaking, peacekeeping, peace enforcement and peace building. Likewise the peacekeeping missions have also undergone fundamental restructuring wherein the concept of integrated mission and integrated mission planning with multidimensional outlook and ‘mandates’ has emerged under centralised management to harmonise the activities of all UN components in the field as against previous arrangements where peacekeeping/enforcement missions would operate separately from UN political / humanitarian missions and other development programmes.
More importantly, I have been able to clearly understand the views of scholars and analysts especially from RSA and the members of SANDF wrt the prospective role of AU, SADC, UN and IOs/NGOs in conflict prevention and management. The challenges in establishment of ASF and difficulties faced by AU ito resources etc have become clearer to me – so have the resolve and political will of African leadership in striving to realise the idea of ‘African solution to African problems’.
Finally, and more crucially for me as a military officer, I have been empowered to differentiate between the CPP involved in planning of integrated missions from that of conventional ops. The overlapping between three levels i.e. Strat/Op/Tac has diminished in the context of PSOs wherein C2 is becoming centralised at the highest (strat) level and decision making is ‘slipping’ to the lowest level (tac), which will ‘test’ the op level commanders and planners more than ever before."
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