Linking my placement experiences to the academic theory:

Throughout my time on my Careers in Sport sports marketing placement I used various models of reflection to critically reflect back upon my experiences, to help determine my strengths, weaknesses and future improvements. This post will bring together the majority of my key placement experiences and link into the theoretical models of reflection. In addition I will use Dacre Pool and Sewell's 'Career Edge - Key to employability model' as a foundation for my placement experiences, as this model provides a basis of the key components which are absolutely essential in order to create a graduates key employability skills ( Dacre Pool and Sewell, 2007). The employability model can be see again below, as it illustrates the five key components a graduate needs to develop to strengthen their employability skills.

Career Edge Model - (Dacre Pool and Sewell, 2007) 

By using this employability model it enables me as a graduate to understand what key components I need to work upon in order to make me 'employable' to future employers. 

With much research pointing to work experience as being something that prospective employer’s value greatly in graduates (Brown and Hesketh, 2004), I felt that by undergoing this module placement would enable me to achieve all of the core components on the employability model. This is because my placement allowed me to gain work experience, enable me to put my learnt theoretical knowledge into practice, develop core general skills, such as communication, team working and confidence, and also develop my emotional intelligence, such as understanding my own and people's thoughts and emotions.

The image below shows an metaphorical model of employability, and shows that by undergoing the five core fundamental components, you can then reflect upon your key experiences and make firm evaluates on your own personal performance, which can help develop your 'self-efficacy, self-confidence, and self-esteem'. Once all of these key components have been identified and critically reflected upon, you can use all of your experiences and personal development to unlock employability.

As a brief overview of all of the current tasks which I have been assignment to complete over the placement I have completed the following:

• Attend weekly primary school sports events: I helped organise the event on the day, as well obtain feedback from the pupils and the teachers. In addition, I took photos and videos as part of our official SSP Social Media Sites and Website Page. One consideration I had to take into account was data protection. As preliminary highlighted in my Negotiated Learning Agreeing Form I identified that releasing photos of particular students on public sites which were not allowed was an issues I had to adhere to. Therefore before each event I went around all of the schools and identified which pupils couldn't have their photos taken, and therefore they simply wouldn't be photographed during the event and put on our official SSP internet pages. This experience developed a whole array of my transferable skills, including, communication, confidence, team working, professional image, responsibility, leadership, and commitment to turn up to each event on a regular basis.
• Lease with the Local press at the Lancashire Evening Post. My task here was to email a press release to the LEP before each event, informing them on the key details of our event. Our aim here was to either get a reporter to visit one of our events, or for the LEP to publish one of our events in the local newspapers. After the events I would send out a follow up report, informing the LEP the results of the event, as well as the best photos from the event too. This task developed my written communication skills especially, as well as developing my time management skills, and professional image.
• Regular development of the Official SSP Website Page and Social Media Sites. Before each event I would post an upcoming status on our upcoming events to inform the schools what events were taking place and where. Then after each event I would publish the results of the events on our Twitter page and Website, along with photos and videos of the event too. This task was a key learning experience for me, and developed my time management skills, due to managing two sites on a regular basis. This helped to further develop my independent working skills, responsibility. In addition, my creativity and imagination skills were considerably developed throughout this placement task as I had to ensure that the posts on Twitter and the creation of our brand new Website were exciting and engaging platforms for our target marketing to follow us on. Therefore this task really helped me to develop a whole array of transferable skills, and this had significantly helped my achieve the Career Edge component of 'generic skills'.
• Attending the Annual South Ribble School Sports Conference. As highlighted in my previous post, at the end of March 2015, I attended the SSP conference which comprised of a number of Primary School Physical Education teachers and Head Teachers coming along as a day of developing their understanding of what the SSP do as a partnership and our current initiatives. My role on the day was taking three workshops for the delegates. Each workshop lasted for 20 minutes and there was 10-12 teachers per group. My role was to inform the delegates on what we do as a partnership, and are developing in terms of digital marketing and communications. Therefore I talked about the social media development and our new website. Prior to the event I created a workshop power point for each delegate to work from, and this provided them with the access to test out of new website and social media sites, to really understand how we as a partnership are trying to expand into the digital market. This experience considerably developed my communication and confidence skills when talking to the delegates, and also developed my professionalism. In addition my decision making skills were also tested, as I have to make on the spot decisions throughout the workshops. My preparation skills was also strengthening due to having to create a power point prior to the workshops, as well as create a 20 minute SSP video montage which was being projected to the delegates during the conference intervals. Therefore, my creativity was again being developed when creating this video montage, as well as my time management.
• One of my other tasks was to attend termly SSP team meetings. These meetings would usually last around two hours and comprised of a review of the previous term, and then our upcoming duties and events. My task for each meeting was to show the team my developments with regards to our Social Media sites, and our website. These meetings also gave me the opportunity to ask my team mates their opinions on certain aspects of the digital marketing communications, to ensure that it wasn't just my input all the time. This task helped to develop my organisation skills, team working skills, and also my decision making and patience, due to gaining perspectives from my team mates before jumping into decisions without others thoughts.

Therefore, as previously highlighted. these were my main placement duties in brief. These duties were carried out on a regular basis and had many learning experiences throughout the way. 

Please see my upcoming post of some evidence of placement duties I carried out, as well as a reference from my placement supervisor on my current placement performance.

From undergoing these key learning experiences I then used the following self-reflective models to reflect upon my experiences and determine significant areas of success and future improvement. 

The models which I used to reflect upon my experiences were:

• Gibbs (1988) Reflection Cycle - Learning by doing model (see below).

• Kolb's  (1984) Experiential Learning Cycle - (see below)

• Schon's (1991) Concept of 'Reflection in Action' and 'Reflection on Action'. This Linked into the Chimp Paradox Mind Management Model too (see below)

• Johari's Window of self- awareness. Model linking into emotional intelligence and stages after reflection stage. (see below). 

Overall, I used these models throughout my placement experience, especially, Schon's 'reflection in action' during my learning experiences on placement, and then 'reflection on action' after each experience. The Gibbs and Kolbs Experiential Learning cycle models were used together at the end of my placement experiences. I worked through each stage of the cycle to identify what I had done on placement, what were my thoughts on my experience (successful or unsuccessful), and then analysed how I would make the outcomes more successful in future situations.
The Johair's Window was a model I used a throughout and also after my placement experiences. This model helped me to develop my emotions and understand not only my emotions, but of other people to. This helped me develop a appreciation of my thoughts and my decisions (which linked into managing my 'inner chimp' (mind) during decision making tasks. In addition, the model helped me to develop thoughts of other people, and what they may think of me, and this help to develop my self-awareness, confidence and esteem.

Looking at the academic literature on emotion intelligence, emotional Intelligence is all about how people recognise, use, understand and recognise emotion (Mayer and Salovey, 1997). It is very important for me as an university student and soon becoming a graduate, to understand emotional intelligence, as higher levels of EI have better social relationships, academic achievement, work performance and psychological well being (Mayer, Roberts and Barsade, 2008). In addition, high emotional intelligence in the workplace influences good work performance (O'boyle Jr, et al., 2010), leadership (Kerr, et al., 2006), team working (Vitello-Cicciu, 2001), and also good confidence in emotional abilities predicts graduate employability (Dacre Pool and Qualter, 2013). Therefore by developing an understanding of my emotions and my team mates on placement could help my identify areas of common knowledge known by all, and blind and hidden areas (Johari's window) to identify people emotions which not everyone knows. This helped to develop our team working skills and work performance.

References:

Brown, P., Hesketh. A.J. (2004). The mismanagement of talent: Employability and jobs in the knowledge economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Dacre Pool, L., Sewell, P. (2007). The key to employability: developing a practical model of graduate employability. Education + Training, 49 (4) p277 – 289.

Dacre Pool, L., Qualter, P. (2013).  Emotional Self-Efficacy, Graduate Employability and Career Satisfaction: Testing the Associations. Australian Journal of Psychology. 65(4).

Kerr, R., Garvin, J., Heaton, N., Boyle, E. (2006).  Emotional intelligence and leadership effectiveness.  Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 27(4), p265–279.

Mayer, J.D., Roberts, R.D., Barsade, S.G. (2008).  Human Abilities: Emotional Intelligence.  Annual Review of Psychology, 59, p507–536.

Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P. (1997).  What Is Emotional Intelligence?  In P. Salovey & D. Sluyter (Eds.), Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence: Implications for educators. New York: Basic Books.

O’Boyle, Jr., E.H., Humphrey, R.H., Pollack, J.M., Hawver, T.H., Story, P.A. (2010). The relation between emotional intelligence and job performance: A meta-analysis.  Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(5), p788-818. 

Vitello-Cicciu, J.M. (2001). Leadership Practices and Emotional Intelligence of Nursing Leaders (unpublished dissertation), Santa Barbara, CA., Fielding Graduate Institute. Cited in Vitello-Cicciu, J.M. (2003).  Emotional Intelligence. Nursing Management, October, 2003.