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Reflective Paper

Individual Reflective Paper:
Impostorship and a   Loss of Innocence

This paper is intended to be a reflection of my learning experiences so far, and there is no question that there has been considerable - what I can now refer to as – acquisition of information. However, perhaps because it was something new, perhaps because it makes you ask why, the experience and the introduction of ‘reflection' and ‘critical reflection' has stood out above everything else. This has not been an entirely positive experience, to the contrary the overall feeling I have, to use the words of Brookfield (1994) is one of increased uncertainty and a loss of innocence.

I was one of three new members to join an already established ALS group, who had been together for a year. Thompson (2004) believes, that as members of a group become familiar with each other and trusting relationships are built, new group   members can present particular challenges of reliability   and   trust. Whilst I can relate this to my own work practices; I have worked for BT for around four years now and there is definitely the ‘BT think', the BT way of doing things and when new employee's have joined it has taken effort, time and understanding from both sides as values and beliefs have inevitably been different. However, was there this underlying foundation of trust in the original group? For all intents and purposes the original group, on the surface appeared to have common goals and understanding and it was impressed on us (in my opinion) that they had been a very close group, even socialising outside of the ALS sessions and I guess I took for granted that this was the case. It was explained me and the other new members that their ALS group had been known as the ‘lovey dovey' group by the larger learning organisation. For me this was a title that many in the group wanted to keep and hindered the formation of the ‘new' group. The new members were reminded on several occasions how ‘successful' the group had been...