it's a long way to tipperary

This blog is reborn...

2011-06-25T10:25:00.001+01:00

...fully alive and person-centred! But, not here.

You can now find the blog here: http://aswonderfulassunsets.blogspot.com/

Changed because I've changed, but also in the end Posterous and Wordpress didn't feel as human as blogger...

Hello Again :-)

This blog is dead...

2010-03-31T11:48:00.001+01:00

...but lives on in a parallel blogosphere!

You can now find the blog here: http://tipperary.posterous.com/

Moved because was getting spammed, but also liking Posterous a little more than blogger (although I still need to tweak the look of the new blog when I get time)...

Bye :-)

Pierre Bourdieu (1930 – 2002)

2010-02-28T16:34:00.001Z

Although I'm now focussed on a totally different aspect of my research, namely the design, I'm still grappling with the knotty issue of what the core focus of my research actually is now. However, it is clear to me that I need to carry out a deep study of notions of 'community' and one possibility in exploring community more deeply is the idea of the 'symbolic community'. And this is where the name of Pierre Bourdieu has popped up in two different contexts, one an article about Identity and Citizenship, the other a talk about Discourse Analysis. The former noted Bourdieu as being an important theorist with regard to identity and, particularly, boundaries; the latter identified - amongst others - of his concept of 'symbolic domination', which struck me immediately as being a possible missing element in Communities of Practice theory (ie, power), which might tie in nicely with 'symbolic community'.

Bourdieu pioneered investigative frameworks and terminologies such as cultural, social, andsymbolic capital, and the concepts of habitus, field or location, and symbolic violence to reveal the dynamics of power relations in social life. His work emphasized the role of practice and embodiment or forms in social dynamics and worldview construction, often in opposition to universalized Western philosophical traditions

The first sentence of Language and Symbolic Power is witty enough to encourage me to read on, despite what has been called Bourdieu's 'circularity' : "In the Essay on the Introduction of the Concept of Negative Grandeur in Philosophy, Kant imagines a man who is miserly by ten degrees and who strives towards brotherly love by twelve degrees, in contrast with another man who is miserly by three degrees and capable of a generous intention by seven degrees, and who produces an act marked by four degrees of generosity."

Review: "Linguists, anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, folklorists converge more and more today in studies of situated discourse. The link between the dynamics of situations and the dynamics of society as a whole goes largely neglected. For that articulation one needs the resources of a social theory. Here Bourdieu′s analyses of symbolic power and practice are our best resource; one might say they are indispensable. The starting point is not the uniform language of educational elites and formal linguists, but expressive styles; not social structure as fixed and given, but fields and fractions in which identities are ever–contested; power as collusion as well as compulsion; configurations that theory not only discloses but also effects; all in all, a perspective that is both sceptical and empirical, broad yet subtle, engaged and insightful." Professor Dell Hymes, University of Virginia

RTM 3: Case Study (Christine Skelton)

2010-02-14T12:11:00.001Z

1. What is case study?

· An approach to research

· Educational and sociological case studies stress social interaction and social construction in situ

· It is a ‘case’ or a study in depth

It is not

· A single coherent approach to research

· A method

· A definitive account

2. Features of a case study

· Selection of a single of a situation, individual or group of interest or concern

· study of the case in its context

· Collection of information via arrange of data collection techniques including observation, interview and documentary analysis

3. Assumptions underpinning a case study in education

· Assumes that social reality is created through social interaction

· That social interaction is situated in particular contexts and histories

· The ‘case’ is arrived at through analysis of the perceptions and experiences of the participants

· It identifies and descries before trying to analyse and theorise

4. Weaknesses

· It is not possible to generalise from one, or a small number of cases, to the population as a whole – but, and this is important – it has value in and of itself

· Where to draw boundaries – what to include and not include; a case study can be endless! There’s always something else to find out about or somebody to ask.

5. Strengths

· Does a study on the impact of male unemployment on family and marital relations which involved examining the lives of 45 couples living in Kidderminster, constitute a case study?

o Yes, because it focuses on one location

o No, because Kidderminster is the backdrop not the context – there must be rich contextual explanation for any ‘backdrop’ to be contextualised (eg, CAL, uni structures, he in UK

6. Some types of case study: Robson (2002)

· Individual case study (of one person)

· Set of individual case studies

· Community Study – study of one or more local communities. Describes and analyses the pattern of, and relations between, main aspects of community life (politics, work, leisure, family life etc). Commonly descriptive, but may explore specific issues or be used in theory testing.

· Social Group Study – covers studies of both small direct contact groups (eg, families) and larger, more diffuse ones (eg, occupational groups). Describes and analyses relationships and activities.

· Studies of organisations and institutions. Studies of firms, workplaces, trades unions etc – many possible foci, eg., best practice, policy implementation and evaluation, industrial relations, management and organisational issues, organisational cultures, processes of change and adaptation etc.

· Studies of events, roles and relationships. Focus on a specific event – very varied, includes studies of police-citizen encounters, doctor-patient interactions etc.

7. Features of ethnography

· The shared cultural meanings of the behaviours, actions, events and contexts of a group of people are central to understanding the group. Your task is to uncover those meanings.

· Demands an insider’s perspective

· Need to observe and study the group in its natural setting and take part in what goes on there

· Participant observation is essential – but no method is ruled out

· Central focus of study and detailed research questions will emerge and evolve as researcher involvement continues

· Data collection is prolonged over time and has a series of phases

Adapted from Robson C (2002) Real World Research p.188

8. Access

· How do you collect data on something you already know and understand?

· How you are seen when you are in there

9. The pitfalls of researching a known workplace

· Why do you need to make the familiar strange?

· How do you make the familiar strange?

o Act the naive researcher – ask stupid questions, do not intervene

· But...

o Be aware of yourself – how do you appear to others – practice being an observer in a familiar setting

o Timetable participant observation but prepare to be flexible

o Power dynamics in the research relationship

10.Similarities between case study and ethnography

· Both concerned with context and history – what made it what it was – policy context etc

· Both concerned with experiences and views of participants

· Both involve multiple data collection (documentation, policy, history – more than just interviews)

· Both identify and describe – THEN start to analyse it and see what the categories are

11.Differences case study and ethnography

· Time

· Role of researcher

RMT3: Epistemology and Research Design (Christine Skelton)

2010-02-13T14:14:00.002Z

1. Overview

how research design relates to epistemology/methodology
how research epistemology/methodology relates to theory

2. What do we mean by research design?
2.1 Examples of research designs:

Experimental design
Longitudinal design
Case study design (see also ethnography) o Action research
Comparative design

3. How to decide which research design to use and what is the relationship between epistemology and framework?
How can we know the world? How can we know the best tools to find out things? Survey? Observation? How can we know?

We make a judgement based on our epistemological view, the way in which we perceive the world.

Very important: Be clear about your own epistemology and the theory that informs your analysis.

My epistemological position will inform the research I choose, it provides the framework.

Research design strategies do not, in themselves, assume ‘an’ epistemological position

Assignment for 2010

2010-01-22T10:53:00.000Z

Well, here we are in twennyten - the last quarter of last year was a time of some confusion, but I think that perhaps this can be a good thing, in that it's meant that I'm now trying to more clearly define what it is that I wish to find out about - and I am finally ready to have a look at the assignment. I don't even feel bad that I 'wasted' all that time over the xmas break - it was a necessary time of retrenchment before the big push! And here's the start of the campaign: I shall attempt to reorient my research as part of writing the 4,000 word assignment due on March 1st. I haven't got the first clue what this is supposed to be about but here's the blurb from Rachel's handout:

"Please discuss provisional titles and plans at an early stage of the module with the relevant course tutor and your supervisor. Ideally this assignment will reflect critically on an aspect of your own research context. This is an opportunity for you to analyse the culture of your chosen learning context or an aspect of the learning spaces and tools which affects your learning context.

You may conceive the role of this work as providing a theoretical framing for an aspect of your research;
alternatively you may see it as an opportunity for rich contextualisation of your main research study, or
an opportunity to collect data regarding a particular research question.

However, you will need to demonstrate widening your reading in an area relevant to the course module and critical analysis/application of this to your own learning culture(s) and context(s). You should discuss your ideas with your tutor and supervisor at an early stage in the writing process to agree a title and an outline plan."

The micro and the macro

2009-12-11T10:43:00.000Z

In response to this request to a VLE discussion list -

> I am a new researcher and I want to do a ! research about using VLE to increase the use of ICT by university teachers in a university.
> I am going to deliver ICT and VLE skills course in a continuing professional programme via VLE (Moodle).
> I need your help and suggestions about
>
> What are the ICT skills should I teach them?
>
> What are the VLE skills should I have in my model to teach them?.

This interesting answer...

Assess the needs of the university and diagnose your teachers' population to establish what kind of skills and attitudes they have developed concerning the use of technology in Education. One of the most difficult aspects to address in these kind of trainings is the resistance of faculty members to use VLEs as part of their regular classes. You may organize excellent workshops to teach how to use tools available on Moodle, but having teachers actually adopting them as part of their regular classes is really hard work. Teaching practices that have been established over a long time and "proved effective" are difficult to change and many experienced university teachers believe that the load of extra-work involved in the organization of online learning experiences just doesn't pay off in terms of improved learning outcomes. You have to show them practical examples of what kind of benefits they could have if they adopt a VLE-based methodology and be creative on motivational aspects. If you accomplish this, I believe you will have set the conditions for the development of a new technological culture at your university, which ultimately will lead to a more sustainable adoption of VLEs in regular classes.

Mmm. But, this doesn't address the Macro level. Why would an academic in a research-led University spend very much time at all on teaching? What's the pay-off?

Now where did I put that research Tom Tom?

2009-12-04T16:01:00.000Z

'My research is like a pretend juggernaut crashing into a wall' is a bit melodramatic but that's how it feels when something means so much to you and it's just so hard to see a way forward. The problem I wanted to 'solve' in my research was TIME; and it's TIME that has been the slippery pretend oil under the wheels of my pretend juggernaut causing the crash - the issue of TIME it seems is insuperable for academic colleagues in terms of engaging with technology for learning and teaching - TIME and research/admin priorities. Despite the best will in the world - and the will is there, of that I have no doubt - very few colleagues are able to prioritise this area of activity sufficiently that I am able to make the intended intervention with Communities of Practice; thus the juggernaut crashes, the research stalls...

So, thanks to Nick's sympathetic ear, this is my new working plan - it's in note form and I missed Nick's beautifully eloquent description of a way forward which took us both by surprise (must record these encounters in future!)...

I critique my project and critique the model - What has brought me to this point? What was the vision? What was the positive idea? I start with my vision, my reading that helped me sustain a vision of pedagogic practice in the University as a response to... Time? Well, yes, but a gazillion other things to do with - perhaps - the Sociology of Higher Education (possible early book to read Sociology of Higher Education: Contributions and Their Contexts and early article in the field Development of the Sociology of Higher Education by Burton R. Clark 1973).

I wanted to make an intervention - if I liberate myself from that it might be a more realistic account of the real conditions that pertain in a University like this, to give an account of the cultural conditions in the University that either impede or enable engagement. What is it - perhaps from Sociology of HE - that prevents or enables Communities of Practice to develop (there may be little pockets but it may not be the norm)? Can Communities of Practice be a solution in institutions that don't operate the taken-for-granted community model? What is the extent to which contemporary Universities can be considered to foster Communities of Practice? Possible starting point: Community by Gerard Delanty.

Affiliation to subjects vs University structures perhaps? Where does the individual academic get their sense of authenticity, power and recognition? Their CV... publications, awarded research projects - does the University itself give the status and recognition..?

The Idiot's Warehouse

2009-12-03T09:43:00.000Z

I know the idiot’s warehouse
Is always full.

I know each of us
Could run back and forth from there
All day long

And show everyone our vast collection.

Though tonight, Hafiz,
Retire from the madness for an hour,

Gather with some loyal friends
Or sit alone

And
Sing beautiful songs

To God

Boundaries and Spaces

2009-10-01T14:26:00.000+01:00

Extract from JISC report Higher Education in a Web 2.0 world

Those from whom we have taken oral evidence have been keen to impress on us the behavioural and attitudinal consequences of engagement with Web 2.0 that are apparent in several of the studies we have reviewed. These are a disposition to participate in peer networks and to share and, in the process, to develop a strong sense of community. The processes of participation and sharing are likely to be conducive to the development of what are deemed by one researcher (Grunwald, 2007) to be a ‘significant set of 21st century learning skills: communication, collaboration, creativity, leadership and technology proficiency’

These, we note, are entirely consistent with the employability skills that government, backed by employers, is keen to see developed. HE is already seized of this agenda and it is also a driving force in the reforms in the 14 to 19 curriculum that are now underway in all parts of the UK.

Less positively, perhaps, but understandably, the community spirit also leads to the formation of a clear sense of boundaries in web space. This has been typed (Locke, 2007) broadly as:

1. secret space: eg Short Message Service (SMS); Instant Message (IM)

2. group space: eg Bebo, Facebook

3. publishing space: eg blogs, wikis, YouTube

4. performance space: eg Second Life, World of Warcraft

5. participation space: eg meetings, markets, events

6. watching space: eg lectures

Young people are defensive about the first two, essentially the ‘me’ and ‘we’ spaces, as opposed to the others, the ‘see’ spaces. Hence, their discomfort with staff-initiated discussion groups in social networking space when they are at ease with those they set up themselves for study-related purposes. We have been told that there is considerable untapped potential for exploitation of this, effectively a third space within group space – somewhere between pure study/work and pure social – to support learning and teaching.

The first three might be employed usefully in the Web 2.0 course/to conceptualise ELGG

Web 2.0 for Collaboration and Learning - 5th Iteration (Autumn 2009)

2009-10-01T13:54:00.001+01:00

Bloodied but unbowed, the course has licked its wounds and is ready once more to share the cornucopia that can be Web 2.0. So, what has been learnt?

focus on individual engagement with the course before forming groups - my somewhat over-confident rush into tutor-created 'communities of practice' was ill-thought through and disastrously enacted! I started out convinced that the new cops arrangement would work and felt that this was borne out by the electric first session - which subsequently subsided quite suddenly (in a rash of alliteration, apparently) - online diffusion of responsibility vs individual engagement?
Course blog should be central rather than peripheral to a course
Organise participant account set-ups (gmail, igoogle, blogger) before the course begins - pre-course tasks

use igoogle right from the start and throughout as a bucket of web 2.0, a place to store everything, a PLE
give participants one thing at a time to focus on in sessions (ie, don't ask to focus on activity sheets, as well as what i'm doing or saying): 1. demo (eg google docs this is what it does - demo it, passive watching, sell it); 2. info sheet and participants do task (list of 5 things to do); 3 give support where needed but mostly just watch and collect things for a quick feedback at the end
include optional info sheets and further reading/links (eg google docs, include spreadsheets, forms, presentations) more examples of using the tools in your teaching or of other people using these tools in HE contexts.

Online Literature Review Advice

2009-08-02T12:18:00.002+01:00

Merten's advice (1998, p.39) about online Literature Review is somewhat out of date, but the three main sub-steps identified in a search strategy remain relevant:

identify preliminary sources: databases, abstracts, indexes, google scholar
identify primary research journals - examine reference lists at end of relevant articles or books - 'citations' from google scholar - go directly to journals relevant to topic
personal networking - talk to people doing work in areas related to your interest, at Bham, professional associations, eg. HEA - talk to people who have completed related work.

Mertens, D. M. (1998). Research methods in education and psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage

Pragmatism's History

2009-08-02T11:02:00.002+01:00

Mainly American: Peirce, William James and Dewey (Cherryholmes, 1992; Howe, 1988). For these pragmatists, truth is 'what works'. Hence the test is whether or not it is feasible to carry out worthwhile studies using qualitative and quantitative studies side by side (Tashakkori and Teddlie, 1998, pp. 137-70, provide an extensive set of examples).

From Robson, C. (2002, p.43). Real World Research: a resource for social scientists and practitioner-researchers, Blackwell Publishing.

See also

After positivism: a scientific attitude

2009-08-02T10:51:00.004+01:00

Robson (2002, p.18) makes a case for rejecting positivism but retaining a scientific attitude, by carrying out the research:

systematically - giving serious thought to what you are doing , and how and why you are doing it; in particular, being explicit about the nature of the observations that are made, the circumstances in which they are made and the role you take in making them;
sceptically - subjecting your ideas to possible disconfirmation, and also subjecting your observations and conclusions to scrutiny (by yourself, initially, then by others);
ethically - you follow a code of conduct for the research which ensures that the interests and concerns of those taking part, or possibly affected by, the research are safeguarded.

The intention behind working in this way is to seek the 'truth' about whatever is the subject of the research.

Robson, C. (2002). Real World Research: a resource for social scientists and practitioner-researchers, Blackwell Publishing)

Research Student Conference 2009

2009-07-06T16:48:00.003+01:00

Unfortunately I was only able to come along for the morning, but I did get my poster aired and there were a few people nice enough to have a looksee! I really enjoyed the presentations I saw (the use of technology in education) and thought the 'any questions' panel were great - really interesting! Especially liked the answer about:

research impact: identify the different audiences who might be interested in your research and write with those audiences in mind
methodology section will start by explaining who you are as a researcher, then go on to epistemology and ontology - what I believe to be valid knowledge.

Best other things:

thinking through my own research layout by seeing what others have done in their presentations
meeting up with fellow research students and finding out about a conference with Wenger attending (thanks Brendan!), as well as about an assignment linking Wenger and Kolb, both of which I like because they seem eminently practical as well as theoretical...

Feedback from Web 2.0 Course Spring 2009

2009-05-05T14:23:00.003+01:00

I posted the visual feedback earlier, so here's the more detailed textual version from the two post-course questions looking at pros and cons.

Q. What else would you have liked included in the course?

Perhaps more examples of using the tools in your teaching. I knew most of the tools before, but it hadn't really occurred to me to use blogs in teaching, for example. I now have some of an idea, but more of that would have been useful. Maybe it's something that needs to be followed up over the next few years, trying to stay in touch with people who attended the course and can report on their uses of technology in teaching.
I realise on reflection that I'd been hoping to find out about Google docs. I should probably have looked into this myself in the week when we were asked to investigate Google tools, but I think I thought it would come up later in the course.
Examples (where possible) of other people using these tools in HE contexts.
Perhaps explored a bit more of the Google tools (Google Docs, for instance) which apparently is very useful.

Q. What would you leave out?

Personally, I can't see the point of twitter, but other people liked it, so it's not something to take off.
Twitter
Nothing - we need to have our eyes opened, so even if stuff unpopular we should be aware of it. The sessions were short enough for no one product to dominate if you didn't take to it.
Not sure. It all fits together, and people have different needs, so leaving out stuff would mean there'd be gaps. Part of the whole thing is that there are many tools, and you pick what you think is useful.

In addition, one participant, an experienced University teacher, very kindly spoke to me at some length about various aspects of the course, with the result that I will include the following in the next iteration:

slow it down - and ss can only do one thing at once
what are they going to learn in each class - how long to learn each topic?
focus on google docs - important! build it into course formally
Strategy for approaching tools/activities in class and base everything on activity sheets so that participants have all they need to move at their own pace:
1. theory - here is x (eg google docs) this is what it does
2. demo it, passive watching, sell it)
3. participants use it - produce list of 5 things that you should do , list of activities - plus optional action sheets and further reading/links (eg google docs, include spreadsheets, forms, presentations

Design for Learning: bridging the gap

2009-05-04T19:12:00.011+01:00

Recently, I had a very interesting conversation with Liz Masterson, University of Oxford, who was at Birmingham to record some thoughts about my professional context for her research into the academic uses of Phoebe, a pedagogic planner. Apart from the planner itself being of interest (especially now I've engaged with Birmingham's own DIBL/DEBL), Liz told me about two approaches to design, one being a very highly engineered bridge, the other being a rag chair:

Now, clearly the bridge is an amazing and significant human achievement and it is designed to staggeringly precise specifications - for me, though, I immediately felt some connection with the rag chair, as a metaphor for learning design - something about the fact that it's clearly taken time, effort and ingenuity to create, but that is eminently functional, as well as being oh so soft and welcoming! On reflection, though, even the bridge has to be very flexible in its function, being able to absorb the effects of the weather and so on...

Anyway, back to the rag chairs. On the website (see link below), the talk is of these designs being about user engagement, sustainability and Interactivity - and creating "spaces that connect with the user on a personal level". Remember, they're not talking about design for learning, but about the design of furniture!

In the PowerPoint slides Liz sent me later, there was an extract from a JISC background document for D4L programme:

‘design for learning’ is not a new practice but rather a new way of designating practices that are intrinsic to teaching and the support of learning. However, the availability of designed, standards-based systems in the learning and teaching environment have thrown a new emphasis on those aspects of the process that can be ‘designed’ in advance, and articulated and shared across different contexts of practice.

Design bridges the gap between technology and the human world; it can involve the application of “systematic principles and methods;” yet simultaneously it is “pervaded by intuition [and] tacit knowledge,” and is “a creative activity that cannot be fully reduced to standard steps” (Winograd, 1996, pp. xx, xxii).

It's a beautifully seductive phrase and one that I've lately realised is key to my own research: design bridges the gap between technology and the human world.

The real structure of scientific revolutions

2009-05-04T17:31:00.002+01:00

Books for Learning and Transformation

2009-05-04T17:11:00.004+01:00

I was pleased to discover these photographs on my phone just now - it was at the start of the 'Learning and Transformation' section of the course and Rachel had arranged the books beautifully on the table for us to peruse. I had the bright idea of taking pictures of them so that I could blog it here later and didn't get round to it. In a way, I'm glad I didn't as I've recently been grappling with Etienne Wenger, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygtosky and Yrjö Engeström - obviouslyI'm always going to come off worse in a struggle with such Titans, but - and don't tell them - I'm very stubborn and the fight is about seeing the world anew and I do and I'm grateful to them. I'm particularly looking forward to my encounters with John Dewey and Jerome Bruner, but remain open to all-comers...

Communities of Practice and Web 2.0 - increased focus on collaboration

2009-04-19T11:50:00.013+01:00

My reading on Communities of Practice (CoPs) - especially legitimate peripheral participation, where newcomers play an important role in the CoP by developing and using collaborative skills - has transformed the way I see the course developing. For the next iteration, I want to get rid of individual blogs and use instead collaborative blogs of perhaps 3-4 members each. Each blogging group will have a mixture of mentor/apprentice roles, so that nascent CoPs - not a CoP, so perhaps Community of Learning or CoL (quite neat - col also for collaboration!) - will be apparent from the beginning of the course, rather than towards the end. I am also considering reaching out to expert roles from outside the course, in terms of participants from previous iterations of the course. There are, however, sensitive issues of safety and trust in the learning environment to consider. A few points:

Advantage of this approach is that it will also save a lot of time in the first session for setting individual blogs up - I will set the blogs up and enroll participants as author/administrators.
I will produce activity/action sheets for participants to work at their own pace (thanks Tom!) which sits squarely with the CoPs theory of learning. The acivity sheets will show how to set up your own individual blog for later and will contain links for further open-ended exploration.
I will also set up google groups for each CoL to communicate and there will be an added focus on Google Docs for collaboration (Tom again :-)
Google Talk and Twitter might also be recommended as useful communication vehicles for the groups (although I have to be careful not to overkill the technology)
In terms of forming the groups, I have already sent out the briefest of 'questionnaires' (a simple scale asking for participants to indicate where they best fit in terms of their experience or understanding of such things as blogs, twitter, rss readers, delicious, wikis, podcasts) - I'm hoping the results of this will at least give some indication of 'expert' and 'apprentice' roles for group composition.

Visual Feedback from Web 2.0 Course Spring 2009

2009-04-07T13:50:00.001+01:00

Beautiful word cloud from http://www.wordle.net/

Shock of the Old 2009: Poster

2009-04-01T11:08:00.006+01:00

Here is my poster submission for the Shock of the Old 2009 Conference - Digital literacy: the role of new media in the HE curriculum (you can click on it for a larger view):

I'd like to start a small dialogue around this here, so please do leave a comment, addressing one or all of the following questions, or anything that you consider to be a key issue here:

What are the key issues around motivation for staff in HE to enhance their digital literacy skills?
What are the barriers to increased use of technologies for learning in HE - and how can they be overcome?
How can interest in and use of technologies for learning be sustained over the longer term?

Education - base and superstructure

2009-03-20T20:04:00.004Z

Education plays the fullest of parts in the Superstructure and so maintains and legitimates the base - which in turn shapes education to its goal of exploiting the proletariat. It's an old model by now but it still resounds with big T truth...

The Politics of Teaching and Learning

2009-03-20T19:03:00.005Z

This course has been a real surprise - sometimes the sessions I think may be least useful directly to my research (come on, I have to be pragmatic, it's tough working and studying too - actually, the fact that I have to are part of what I've learnt as well, this is not a middle class experience for the most part) are the most thought-provoking.

This particular session was a revelation, bringing me up sharp and causing me to re-evaluate my own place in the education system that has had such a big impact on my personal development, my aspirations, my lived existence. I learnt that all education is political, suffused with power and authority and all its reinforcing symbols - and I made instant connections with my own school and work rebellions - appropriate celebrity biog chapter: the troubled years. But, no, not troubled, rather appalling, wasteful, cruel - and it still goes on, the schools turning out drones for uninspiring, insecure and even dangerous work while the state elite nurture their children for the boss class.

In short, a few rather intense hours on a saturday have changed the way I see the world. Mr Lennon knew:

We don't live in an age of heroes, so John was being ironic, but anyway, with my usual oppositional gusto, I do have heroes - just not many: Gandhi, Tony Benn and now my Professor for this session, the inestimable Clive Harber.

Assignment 3: Learning and Transformation Notes

2009-03-20T18:47:00.002Z

There is a growing rapprochement between Communities of Practice and Activity Theory.

Communities of Practice is peripheral to the central journey, good at capturing dynamics
SocioCultural ACtivity Theory is not good at capturing dynamics - some argue that we cannot see inside and that only the outside is relevant (this is a break with cognitivism). Activity theory stops at the boundaries of individuals - can't say what's in people's heads, need motivation, power/influence...
How might the two be brought together?
How might the two be brought together in my research?

Key: what is the element of study in terms of interaction? Activity theory triangle - roles, responsibilities and tools. Yrjö Engeström's version - the bottom of the triangle.

Assignment 3: Learning and Transformation

2009-03-20T18:10:00.002Z

Compare, through critical evaluation, two theoretical perspectives concerning education which relate to your research interest, and make the case for choosing one of them and how it will inform the methodology of your study.

4,000 words. Deadline 1st June 2009

First conference presentation about my research

2009-03-07T07:52:00.011Z

The conference was the University of Birmingham's 6th Annual Learning and Teaching Conference: 'Visions for Learning'.

I used the Mindmeister collaborative mind-mapping software to frame the presentation - or I would have done, except there was no internet connection (!) so plan B was a static image file (see image) which was okay, but it didn't allow me to use links to course blogs and reveal nodes. I was pretty nervous, but, because I'd made it a fairly active session (see the Two Fundamental Rules of Teaching), the spotlight wasn't always on me, which is a help sometimes...

After all the preparation I'd made for the session, the time went by VERY quickly and I don't feel like I said very much about my research per se, Communities of Practice and so on, probably more about the course that's the basis of the research. Still, I think it was a good start and seemed to be well recieved. I've posted some feedback for participants from the presentation here in my work-related blog.

Things I learnt in an EndNote Training Session

2009-03-05T16:49:00.002Z

You can...

add file attachments for full text articles - a great filing system for articles
add a comma to ensure names are in correct order, eg Environmental Agency,
use Web of Science search in endnote - includes social science index
export and import refs: http://www.i-cite.bham.ac.uk/export.shtml
use localised connections and styles - University of Birmingham here: http://www.i-cite.bham.ac.uk/endnote.shtml
find full text: highlight article and find full text in 'references'
Use Preferences - to show 'file attachment'
Can also change author number and style (template) in preferences
cite while u write: highlight your ref in endnote, go to Word/Tools/Endnote/insert selected citation
add page numbers to ref - edit citation in Word (write pp. in 'suffix' box - space before pp.) (nb there is a list if more than one)
Format bibliography - Edit/output styles in endnote - put space in by adding field paragraph end

Do we know a community of practice when we see one?

2009-02-22T10:51:00.010Z

This is a review of a paper by Theo Wubbels, commenting on the strengths and weaknesses of the papers on communities of practice in a special issue of Technology, Pedagogy and Education. There are four key themes:

The character of Communities of Practice (CoPs)
External inputs in reflection in teacher education
the relation between concepts 'CoPs' and 'Learning Community'
the combination of pedagogy- and technology-driven developments in teacher education

1. The Character of Communities of Practice
Most important features of a CoP (226):

process of social learning...
...occurs when people who have a common interest in some subject or problem...
...collaborate over an extended period...
...to share ideas, find solutions and build innovations

Important concept in CoPs: 'legitimate peripheral participation' of new members. (226) Learning is not now thought of as acquisition of knowledge within the mind of an individual, but the movement from peripheral to full participation in a CoP.

Ibid - discussion of degree to which communities studied fulfil the conditions of a CoP - can we call it a CoP?

2. Reflection and External Input
In Constructivism and Activity Theory, reflection is an important vehicle for learning. Schön's model stipulates that practitioners have an active and productive relationship with their professional knowledge base.

3. CoPs and Learning Communities
(228) The existence of a supervisor, instructor, facilitator moves a community away from an authentic CoP, thus the concept of a 'learning community'. Important question for my research: is it helpful to see the in-course community as a learning community and the post-course community as a CoP?

4. Pedagogy- and Technology-Driven
These papers (ie, in the book) show the possibilities of creating online communities (as do, eg, Salmon etc) but I wonder if the real challenge is to sustain the communities afterwards.

Very significant (231) How do I know the intervention has made a difference?

Wubbels' 'further research' offer some very fruitful and directive avenues for my research and are worth reporting at length:

I hope that by building on clear distinctions between learning communities and communities of practice,fruitful combinations of the strengths of both types of communities can be developed.This may help solve the design problem mentioned by Evans and Powell: communitiesof practice perhaps cannot be designed but communities to enhance learning can.In order to do this successfully I would urge educators to not only use theories onlearning, but also to use theories on teaching.
Research is needed on the conditions to be fulfilled to speak of a communityof practice (e.g. how much sense of community do participants need to feel in order for such a community to be successful?). This should be connected to researchinto factors contributing to the sustainability of communities and into the effects of such communities on teacher thinking and acting. It would also be advisable toinclude in such research the quest for interaction effects between features of the community and teacher characteristics; some teachers use communities differentlythan others, as is clear in this issue.
In addition to pedagogically driven research, technology-driven research is also needed. What technologies are natural vehicles for supporting sustainable communities and what may even hinder the development of such communities?

Reference
Wubbels, T. (2007). "Do we know a community of practice when we see one?" Technology, Pedagogy and Education 16(2): 225 - 233.

Ontological Fish

2009-02-21T10:31:00.009Z

In his children’s book, Fish is Fish, Leo Lionni tells a story of a friendship between a tadpole and a minnow. They love their life in the pond as they both grow up. Once the tadpole becomes a frog, he follows his urge to explore the world outside of the pond. When he returns, he regales the fish with tales of brightly coloured birds, cows with pink bags of milk, and people who wear clothes. The illustrations in the book show that while the frog is talking, thought bubbles of the fish show fish with brightly coloured wings and tails flying through the sky; fish with ears, horns and pink bags of milk; and fish wearing clothes and walking upright on their tails. The point being that what the fish ‘sees’ is a product of the nature of his reality and the ways he has come to know things. Different views of the world and different ways of gathering knowledge exist.

More assignment struggles

2009-02-21T09:02:00.004Z

Finally, by taking some holidays, I've found some space to read - and it is wonderful! There's so much to take on board, but it's changing the way I see, yes the thesis development, but also my professional contexts at work. Anyway, today I write and it feels challenging but exciting and doable.

And: I need to fully prepare a triangulated set of tools in readiness for another run of the course in the autumn.

Creativity and Motivation: sparks

2009-02-18T21:37:00.000Z

Work as play as motivation as competition as creativity as... it's all one, it's all a flow. The following might all be tied together somehow:

How do we learn to comment on blog posts?

2009-02-16T19:42:00.000Z

A very well expressed summary of the concept of 'legitimate peripheral participation from "Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0":

Mastering a field of knowledge involves not only “learning about” the subject matter but also “learning to be” a full participant in the field. This involves acquiring the practices and the norms of established practitioners in that field or acculturating into a community of practice. Historically, apprenticeship programs and supervised graduate research have provided students with opportunities to observe and then to emulate how experts function. Apprentices traditionally begin learning by taking on simple tasks, under the watchful eye of a master, through a process that has been described as “legitimate peripheral participation”; they then progress to more demanding tasks as their skills improve.

It's all about social learning, being part of a community, knowing we are writing for an audience, becoming a part of the global dialogue - beautifully captured by this teacher:

Because my goal as a teacher is to bring my students into full legitimate participation in the community of instructional technologists as quickly as possible, all student writing was done on public blogs. The writing students did in the first few weeks was interesting but average. In the fourth week, however, I posted a list of links to all the student blogs and mentioned the list on my own blog. I also encouraged the students to start reading one another's writing. The difference in the writing that next week was startling. Each student wrote significantly more than they had previously. Each piece was more thoughtful. Students commented on each other's writing and interlinked their pieces to show related or contradicting thoughts. Then one of the student assignments was commented on and linked to from a very prominent blogger. Many people read the student blogs and subscribed to some of them. When these outside comments showed up, indicating that the students really were plugging into the international community's discourse, the quality of the writing improved again. The power of peer review had been brought to bear on the assignments.

From Minds on Fire: Open Education, the Long Tail, and Learning 2.0 by John Seely Brown and Richard P. Adler, 2008

Struggles with assignment 2

2009-02-08T11:52:00.000Z

The biggest struggle so far has been trying to find time to sit down and immerse myself in the work - I'm still fighting with this, but I guess it's an issue that won't go away and I'll just have to find a way to do it. One way I've found at the moment is a monastic-style jedi-mind and ABSOLUTE FOCUS! What this means, in my case, is forget about social events, no booze, get all impending job-related work out of the way and be scarily well-organised. All of this I have done. Where does it leave me viz the assignment?

Well, yes, nearer, for sure, but still not clear. I chose the assignment exploring the epistemologica/ontological assumptions of two or three key articles - for the practical reason that I would be forced to identify some key articles for my research and so move things along a little more. Fine in principle, but it turns out the key articles I've found so far are not really weighty enough for this kind of analysis, or are reviews of other works - however, as is the way, these have given me some good leads towards some that may be. More searching to do, but ever ever closer...

Still, I'm fully immersed in reading, which is where I want to be (even my bedtime reading isa nice book about Communities of Practice - I sleep the sleep of the virtuous).

Some significant ideas about my research generally that have stemmed from my current reading (Wubbels, 2007) for the assignment:

the giants that Jack the researcher must encounter in their castles in the sky are Lave, Wenger, Kolb and Vygotsky - read the originals;
if the community during the course are closer to a 'learning community' because of the facilitator's influence, then perhaps the more interesting research is in sustaining these communitiesas they develop into a 'community of practice' - what factors might possibly enable this?
How will I know that the 'intervention' made has made a difference? Not by self-reporting, that's for sure. Something like triangulated methods will increase validity of research.

Wubbels, T. (2007). "Do we know a community of practice when we see one?" Technology, Pedagogy and Education 16(2): 225 - 233.

Learning and Transformation: Notes for Assignment 3

2009-01-27T10:20:00.000Z

Move toward my own personal view of these theories of learning and teaching and how they relate to me and my research.

Produce a lesson plan for one lesson and evaluate it through the lens of one of the learning theories, look at it through these lenses (eg, communities of practice, Vygotsky - that aspect was behaviourist, etc) - bring the theory to life. And then perhaps revisit the design for a CoP (for example).

Q: what impacts most on learning? The close relationships around the learner are the most transformative - but the other variables impact, too (institutional, political).

Learning and Transformation: Activity Theory

2009-01-27T10:12:00.001Z

My initial notes about Yrjö Engeström's (Scandinavian) Activity Theory are that it is a strategy for analysing whole systems. That's it. Oh, and don't read E before V. So, I'll collect a few more resources here as I go:

Video interview with Yrjö Engeström ( Recorded 16th January 2002, at CSALT, Lancaster University, UK).

If you find good stuff yourself, do leave a comment here and I'll update the post.

Behaviourism

2009-01-24T18:13:00.000Z

Here's a nice intro to Skinner from Yale's online courses. I'm trying to find something about the Skinner/Chomsky debate, so if you have something let me know...

I'll populate this more as I go along, but I couldn't resist this video, which rather beautifully captures the main points:

Credits: Josh and Mike (with Hilary Putnam).

Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

2009-01-24T18:04:00.000Z

Maslow's hierarchy of needs is a theory in psychology, proposed by Abraham Maslow in his 1943 paper A Theory of Human Motivation, which he subsequently extended to include his observations of humans' innate curiosity.

Maslow's hierarchy is often depicted as a pyramid consisting of five levels: the first lower level is being associated with Physiological needs, while the top levels are termed growth needs associated with psychological needs. Deficiency needs must be met first. Once these are met, seeking to satisfy growth needs drives personal growth. The higher needs in this hierarchy only come into focus when the lower needs in the pyramid are met. Once an individual has moved upwards to the next level, needs in the lower level will no longer be prioritized. If a lower set of needs is no longer being met, the individual will temporarily re-prioritize those needs by focusing attention on the unfulfilled needs, but will not permanently regress to the lower level. For instance, an EdD student at the esteem level who is sat in a freezing cold classroom will spend a great deal of time concentrating on his physiological needs, but will continue to value his work performance (esteem needs) and will likely engage with his studies after a hot bath.

Source: Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

Constructivist and Humanist Mind Map

2009-01-24T17:53:00.000Z

Behavourist, Cognitive and Miscellaneous Mind Map

2009-01-24T17:52:00.000Z

Learning Theorists Mind Map

2009-01-24T17:49:00.000Z

Click on the mind map for a better view. Source of this and the two subsequent maps: http://carolyn.jlcarroll.net/index.html

Learning and Transformation: Approaches to Learning (Rachel Pilkington)

2009-01-24T17:18:00.000Z

We explored four theoretical orientations:

behaviourist
cognitive and cognitive constructivist
humanist
social, situational and social constructivist

First of all Rachel led us by the hand through the theories, giving the group (expanded today into a very welcome and robust 8 people) plenty of chance for discussion in order to reduce the levels of cognitive dissonance. In the second half, we had a straightforward group discussion, which was extremely pertinent to my own research and clarified a few issues in my mind, especially around the concept of motivation and the institutional context of learning/research.

I took fairly thin notes, which really are a number of things to do to follow this up, so these will appear over the coming week. However, one of them was to mind map the four theoretical orientations so I thought I'd have a quick scout of the web and I found a site designed for visually oriented learners - with (you guessed!) mindmaps of Learning Theories.

I'll save the images and post them here for posterity, because I can't see how recent the site is and my guess is not all that recent, which means that it could disappear if I just link to it (but remember they won't click through - and note that not all of the links on the site work).

The url: http://carolyn.jlcarroll.net/index.html and by all means send a nice email to the site owner at cjacobs1898@earthlink.net

Where to get the data...?

2009-01-23T15:11:00.000Z

i don't just have to survey my participants - i can also survey academia generally (the college) to ascertain attitudes and feelings, and approaches to digital literacy + stats and jisc reports, google scholar and such lazy hand-me-downs as 'generation y' (what do I understand by it?)

Pivotal research note?

2009-01-23T15:02:00.000Z

Could Dewey be a useful starting point? 'education', 'pragmatic' oh, I'm a fellow traveller! It seems that what works is key: finding an effective learning and teaching approach for digital literacy amongst academics. See p17 Johnson, R. and A. Onwuegbuzie (2004). "Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm Whose Time Has Come." Educational Researcher 33(7): 14.

Reflexive or Reflective

2009-01-23T14:24:00.000Z

I've just added to the wiki glossary of research terms for 'reflexivity' - and I've been wondering what are the differences between 'reflexive' and 'reflective' in terms of research methodology, epistemology and so on... and does it matter?

England (1994) suggests that "...reflexivity is self-critical sympathetic introspection and the self-conscious analytical scrutiny of the self as researcher." (author's emphasis) - so is the difference simply the deliberate positioning of self in the role of 'researcher'? Perhaps so, as Barry states that "Reflexivity emphasizes an awareness of the researcher's own presence in the research process."

However, I can't find a comparison of the terms and wondered if anybody out there has a suggestion?

Texts:

Barry, C., N. Britten, et al. (1999). "Using Reflexivity to Optimize Teamwork in Qualitative Research." Qualitative Health Research 9(1): 30.

England, K. (1994). "Getting Personal: Reflexivity, Positionality, and Feminist Research*." The Professional Geographer 46(1): 80-89.

RMT2 Assignment

2008-12-07T17:31:00.000Z

20 Credit Assignment: 4,000 words.

Identify two or three of the key articles within your proposed topic area and analyse the epistemological and ontological assumptions that the articles are making about the nature of the research in question.
With reference to a research diary explore the aims and nature of your own research and identify some of the philosophical values and assumptions underpinning the initial development of your research question.
Critically evaluate the implications of two research paradigms for the emerging purposes, questions and design of your own project.
Explain your emerging understanding of the relations between context, researcher and research object.
What particular theoretical perspectives or orientations appear to be most relevant to your emerging research focus?
What is the role of language, text and discourse in terms of your emerging understanding of the research process for your particular focus?

Extra Guidance:

Intro - interpretation and clear definition of the question - identify two or three articles (append)
don't take for granted what you read, look beneath the surface - the course has given epistemological and ontological positions, objectivist, subjectivist - which paradigm, criticise it - is there a fit between author's advertised theory and the following methodology - give a lawyer's argument
References - only works cited...
choose a significant journal article between 5-8k words
research articles don't always make epistemological assumptions explicit
how is epistemological contaminated by ontological? the two are connected - ontological is sex, epistemological is gender...
1.5 line spacing

Harvard Referencing

2008-12-06T14:15:00.000Z

Phill recommends this:

http://libweb.anglia.ac.uk/referencing/harvard.htm

It's pretty fine!

Identity Questions: researching race and ethnicity (Dr Paul Warmington)

2008-12-06T12:54:00.000Z

or "Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em: racialised categories and educational research"

1. Ontology and Practice

the concept shifts across time and space, it is unstable - but it is still used as a workable category and notions of race are invoked every day

do we regard race as an objective 'fact of nature'?
do we mean that it fits intelligibly with other concepts of categories
do we simply mean that it works in a practical ('as if') sense? It may not be real, but we live as if it were, as if it were a thing
what consequences do different concepts of race have?

2. Race is a social construction.

although race may have no biological meaning... it has an extremely important and highly contested social one Omi (2001) p. 243;
through 'race' categorisations individuals can be 'located as social subjects with a given and fixed identity Grosvenor (1997) p.9

Fake units of human diversity (Pollock 2004); Lots of boundaries used to achieve certain kinds of social ordering, black/white, jewish/gentile, Anglo-Indian, black youth, white working class, muslim women, asylum seekers... these boundaries emerge as new categories, thus proving that race is a social construct.

Racial Categories (crude) in Birmingham

white (british, irish) 70.4%
Asian (Indian, pakistani, bangladeshi) 19.5%
Black (African/African-Caribbean) 6.1%
Mixed (White/Black, White/Asian) 2.9%
Chinese 0.5%
Other 0.6%

From 2001 Census

3. Thinking about Race

race is a social construct, not a biogenetic feature (processes, practices, relationships)
...invoked as the basis of social action ('as if' it were a real 'thing')
race as social practice(s): situated, shifting in form and sifnificance (producing different local categories)
Race (in its contemporary post-imperial form) is a relatively recent concept (historically specific - not to be conflated with ahistorical notions of difference)
race does not exist in isolation from other social divisions
race is central to the social/political formation (ie, not just BNP, KKK)
race / racism - not aberrant ('elsewhere-ing', 'transposition')

The historical function of race and racialisation was to create impermeable boundaries. The concept of race locks people into 'their category' - permanently.

Poststructuralism and postmodernism as contemporary reflexive discourses. Paradigm Matters 4 (Dr Nick Peim)

2008-12-06T11:32:00.000Z

This is Nick's perspective... postmodernism grows out of poststructuralism...

Heidegger 1927 Being and Time - asks questions about the meaning of being, but says that we have to look at the being who asks the question - what can we say about ourselves that we are prone to ask these questions - this is a huge reflexive anthropological exercise

Jean Baudrillard - extreme exponent of poststructuralist/postmodernist (pspm) thinking - his book caused a scandal in the world - especially amongst those on the left wanting to challenge imperialism - The Gulf War Did Not Happen. The point (and Nick doesn't necessarily subscribe to this position) is that these events are mediated to us, represented through media texts and that we have no direct knowledge, access to the war.

These writers focus on language as the thing that configures what we do - not us acting on the world, but the world acting on us. Organising our relations with the world (in pspm)

1. Postmodern Research: a Copernican Revolution?

The following are some of the key points about pspm

attentive to subjectivities - positions, perspectives, modalities (ways of being, ways of knowing)
objects of knowledge - open to constant redefinition (reconstituted in practice of research) = multiple / dialogic
heightens awareness of practice(s): that confer identities - institutions, discourses, positions: power...
Extends notion of political = everywhere... (eg politics of representation). Taken from 2nd wave of feminism
Deconstruction (very strongly identified with Derrida, although even he is ambiguous about it): as practice / attitude / orientation -
- challenges the oppositions that shape thought
- calls the order of things into question (what kinds of meanings are generated? what kinds of practices construed?)
- acknowledges power and institutions (implies some kind of force - Derrida uses 'violence')
- is interminable

2. The Linguistic Turn 1: Language and Being

"...in thinking Being comes to language. Language is the house of Being. In its home man dwells. Those who think and those who create with words are the guardians of this home" (Heidegger, Letter on Humanism, 1947). Language is not something we have command and control over - it structures and organises us.
"Man (sic) acts as though he were the shaper and master of language, while in fact language remains the master of man' (Heidegger, Building, Dwelling, Thinking, 1951)

3. The Linguistic Turn 2: Wittgenstein's Story

Prominence and importance of language -

From the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus 'logical grammar - logical syntax' - to... finished this book when he was a young man and it claims to have solved all of the language problems, setting a logical order of things in which to do things within language.
Changes his perspective. Philosophical Investigations: 'the rough ground' ... (he previously tried to provide a smooth ground); 'if a lion could speak, we wouldn't be able to understand what it said...' (its thought processes would be different, we don't live in a lion world). He breaks language into language games - eg, football commentary, keep it tight at the back, push the long ball forward, the playmaker - loses meaning outside this context, football discourse.

4. Harbingers of Postmodernity

Nietzsche: death of God, metaphors of 'Truth'. 'God' is an author, an explainer, authority, a way of thinking about ontology - so there is no great authority, no certainty... Thus, we have to construct our own worlds. .N's idea of the 'überman' was really about a human being who could define their own existence
Freud: the 'promethean discovery' of the unconscious. We don't know what we are. We can never know. Only a small portion of ourselves is conscious. The unconscious impinges on the conscious in ways that we don't know about. You think about one thing, but talk about a mother (he he). Our being in the world is predicated on desire, drive, our sexuality, our identity. We cannot claim to be 'rational' beings.
Heidegger: the question of Being, 'dasein' and technology. We cannot transcend our historical, geographical, cultural specificity - we are grounded and have attachments.
Marxism: base/superstructure - hegemony and RSAs / ISAs: the anthropological turn... Implies that all we see as cultural is something more than that, another force drives it. (Gramsci and Althusser later showed how things have a relative independence to the economic base). Again, this perspective says that we are not agents of our own destiny, we are products of something else.

→ the linguistic turn... philosophy, anthropology, psychology... 'semiotics' (F de S, 1916)

5. Three 'Poststructuralists'

Lacan (1900-1981) - psychoanalysis as a theory of being. Follower of Freud, claims to be true to Freud. Rewrites Freud in terms of the acqusition of language.
Foucault (1926-1984) - discourse and episteme. our understanding of things in any domain is already configured by what we can say about it, the dominant discourse in the world of practice. There are also alternative discourses for knowing, understanding, acting.
Derrida (1930-2004) - the enclosure of 'western metaphysics'. The systems, the possibilities of thinking are contained within western metaphysics - which means, for Derrida, the space in which we live that informs our understanding of things in the everyday.

6. Lacan

Language is central to being and identity - we acquire an identity and a whole symbolic system which defines how we see things and how we see ourselves
The divided subject: the imaginary; the symbolic; the real = orders of beings
We are immersed in language and can't get out; signifier always points - to another signifier. Language is at work... restless desire...

7. Foucault

Operates with the idea of discourse: questions the unities of familiar discourses on language, text and meaning: 'author', 'work': the author = the name of the author...
Concerned to identify 'the juridicial and institutional system that encompasses, determines and articulates the universe of discourses'. Polysemic texts vs. juridicial, institutional character of discourses. What are the rules?
Discourses, for Foucault - institutionally and historically specific practices; practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak; are historically provisional and 'epistemic'... Discourses are always located. How does this work in the context of your research?

Famous paper "What is an Author?" - questions the idea of the integrated self, problematises. Relevant to our engagement with theory and practice.

8. Derrida

Language is central to knowledge and philosophy. 'Il n' y a pas de hors texte...' There is no 'outside of language' to allow us direct contact with the world...
Anti-enlightenment view of language. Language is not a tight unity... not a matter of correspondence ... (trace and supplement)
Critique of 'western metaphysics' (from Plato to Hegel). Metaphysics = embedded in our everyday language.

9. The Postmodern Condition (Lyotard) - I

His book: the Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (1979)

PMC = a report on the condition of knowledge
Boundary issues: modernity / postmodernity; condition - or description of the world?
End of grand narratives and unities: hybridity + bricolage + concern with 'language games' (LW)

10. The Postmodern Condition (Lyotard) - II

Every utterance is amove in a 'game': no rules, no game...
But language games are incommensurable: denotative game is different from the prescriptive game which is different from the technical game
Dominant word for Lyotard is agnostics: sees relations within games - and between games - as conflictual...

11. The Postmodern Condition (Lyotard) - III

Big distinction between scientific knowledge and narrative knowledge: scientific knowledge requires the supervention of denotative language game; narrative - connotative
Scientific knowledge must have recourse to the language of argumentation and proof - Narrative knowledge is classified as backward, primitive, composed of custom, opinion, ideology (fables, myths, legends...)
But scientific knowledge cannot claim to be the true knowledge without recourse to Narrative Knowledge (which from its own point of view is not kind of knowledge at all) - the story of progress, or...

The dawn of realisation: it's the bits you don't see...

2008-11-28T18:21:00.001Z

Up until now, I've regarded participants who don't complete the "Web 2.0 for Collaboration and Learning" course as a real shame but probably unavoidable - after reading numerous research articles it dawned on me that participants who do not complete are potentially the most important for my research, possibly revealing barriers to completion, to developing digital literacy.

Rigour in Qualitative Research: a range of strategies

2008-11-28T18:11:00.000Z

The following table summarises Shenton's detailed approach to Guba's four criteria for Trustworthiness:

Citation: Shenton, A. (2004). "Strategies for ensuring trustworthiness in qualitative research projects." Education for Information 22(2): 63-75.

Reflections on today's sessions

2008-11-22T15:33:00.000Z

For the most part, sessions 1 and 3, by David and Nick respectively, were recaps of stuff we did a few weeks ago: most welcome! The 2nd session, a specific piece of research about language in the classroom, was not especially relevant in the course context, but it was interesting to see how the researcher approached his research. Indeed it was this 2nd, tangential session, that got me thinking about the following two points that might prove useful to my thesis development:

give the context of the research first - what is the picture within which I and the academics (participants) operate? Govt policy, jisc, Universies, the University, College of Arts - then set this within the theory - then comes the data...
Research diary - vignettes about how I feel about my research participants, an ongoing account attempting to make the researcher visible.

An introduction to the phenomenology of research relations (Dr Nick Peim)

2008-11-22T14:33:00.000Z

1. What is Phenomenology?

The science or study of phenomena, or things as they are perceived, as opposed to the study of being, or the nature of things as they are (ontology).
The philosophical investigation and description of conscious experience in all its varieties without reference to the question of whenter what is experienced is objectively real.

Two ways of thinking about our relation to nature - innate and open with yearning for natural objects, or that it's socially conditioned (see Derrida and Deconstruction). Our understanding is culturally conditioned to some extent. Our ideas of subject/object, our subjectivity is instructed by that which is outside us, not just by ourselves.

2. Subject / Object

3. Modalities of knowledge

concept of 'foreknowledge': all those understandings with which we approach phenomena... (moods, attitudes etc) - we don't walk around being surprised with things we encounter
Practical knowledge: knowing in situ...
Ontological knowledge: interrogative modality: 'the question...'

4. Context / 'world'

Significance of 'context' - as what frames subject-object relations... (where does it begin and end?) - 'world'
Dimensions of context: temporal, physical, social, cultural, institutional...

5. Perspective

'Let us, from now on, be on our guard against the hallowed philosophers' myth of a 'pure, will-less, painless, timeless knower'; let us beware of the tentacles of such contradictory notions as 'pure reason', 'absolute knowledge', 'absolute intelligence'. All these concepts presuppose an eye such as no living being can imagine, an eye required to have no direction, to abrogate its active and interpretive powers - precisely those powers that alone make of seeing, seeing something. All seeing is essentially perspective, and so is all knowing.' (Nietzsche, 1956, p.255)

6. The Subject

Who is it that can tell me who I am?' (King Lear: William Shakespeare). Louis Althusser's (Marxist philosopher) interpellated subject: 'hailing' - self-recognition / misrecognition ... ideology. Refers to the idea of how we respond to how others perceive or inerpellate us.
Judith Butler (post-structuralist theorist, interested in Derrida) - locates the subject within 'regulative discourse' includes within it 'disciplinary techniques' through which subjects perform specific stylized actions - modalities of subjectivity ('free individual', teachers, LEA officer...); but also - Foucault celebrates 'care of the self' as technique of self-fashioning...

Education and Critical Theory (Prof. Hartley)

2008-11-22T13:27:00.000Z

We’ve looked at two types of knowledge so far:

We theorise data from empirical research and try to reach big T truths. Natural science method.
Seek to understand - Phenomenology, social constructionism, ethnomethodology, interpretism.

Emancipatory theory is a third type of knowledge – are you seeking to change the world. Informed by critical theory.

Key is Jurgen Habermas. Knowledge and Human Interests. Late 1960s critical theorist.

Habermas’ ‘cognitive interests’:

Type of Cognitive Interest	Type of Knowledge	Mode of Enquiry
Technical Interest – generating knowledge which makes things work better	Instrumental – how to knowledge	Empirical/natural science – dominant in social sciences until mid 70s, statistics, ‘facts’ as numbers – generalisations, ‘objective’
Practical Interest – understanding and interpreting the acts of others	Practical/Understanding (of others) – make explicit the things that people do in a taken-for-granted way	Hermeneutics (imputation of meaning) or interpretive – can’t make generalisations
Emancipatory – general purpose of research is to effect democratic ideals, remove inequalities	Emancipatory/reflection – you may wish to change an injustice that your reflection has produced	Critical Theory Critical Educational Science

1. The Technical Interest

Habermas felt that more and more aspects of our life were becoming as if they were technical - the privileging of the scientific method is quite dangerous. Science is important, but... only in so far as it applies to the material world. The problem comes in applying that technical view to matters moral, social (like education). E.g., Not only a surgeon should decide who gets a transplant - they may be able to give us information. It is not technical, but moral, a public matter to decide. Habermas' point is that science is in no position to make moral judgements. They may inform our decisions, but not exclusive right to decide.

Best way to decide is to generate an 'ideal speech situation'. Everybody agrees, in a debate, about the 'rules of engagement'. Everybody who has an interest in this issue should be admitted to this 'ideal speech situation'.

How would we look at education under Habermas' view? Viewed through the lens of a cognitive interest that is technical would say that there is a basics about education - one best way of teaching, assessing, organising our schools, universities. We would be obsessed by rendering everything as objectives, lists, aims etc. Education endeavour is rendered technical, measurable, comparative. It is given a spurious certainty. Saw this in 1980s/90s 'efficiency movement', everything measurable. If this technical view were right then there would be a natural curriculum that everybody agrees to - national curriculum, the basics, the way it is. Habermas says this is defining education like the parts of a car, fixed immutable. But, whose basics?

Habermas would say that gathering these facts, surveys etc is all very well, but they have to be theorised and explained - they don't speak for themselves and are open to interpretation.

2. The Practical (interpretive)

Habermas' second cognitive interest is the practical. not looking at input/output, but at the process - what goes on in a university? what do people take for granted?

The purpose of this kind of research is to make explicit our taken-for-granted assumptions. Discern patterns of behaviour, power relations. This kind of cognitive interest is informed by a phenomenological approach - impute meanings and make them explicit. Job is interpretation. The technical mindset renders everything certain, whereas this practical interest says that not everything about education is a given, but a social construction.

Habermas would say that it's very interesting to know what people's definitions of reality are, but it doesn't go far enough and runs the risk of 'reification', the danger that the interpretations that people have become 'thinglike', objectified in your mind so that they can never be deconstructed and any other way.

3. Emancipatory

Emancipation is from libidinal, institutional or environmental forces which limit our options and rational control over our lives but have been taken for granted as beyond human control. Insights gained through critical self-awareness are emancipatory in the sense that at least one can recognise the correct reasons for his or her problems. (Mezirow, 1981:5)

How do we reconcile the contradictions between democracy and capitalism? What are they?

Democract (legitimation) Liberty vs Capitalism (accumulation) requires liberty

Democracy requires equality. The logic of capitalism is inequality.

Fraternity vs dog eat dog competitive individualism

Critical theory says that the state must manage this tension. The state must legitimate the system as democratic, yet enable capitalism to flourish. Education plays a crucial part in the management of the contradictions between capitalism and democracy, to reconcile. How? At different times, capitalism has different needs:

1945-1965 the crisis of rationality. 1944 Education Act enshrined the principle of equal opportunity. By mid 50s/60s evidence accumulating that this policy not working and there was a 'legitimation' crisis, the govt not holding up the democratic end of the problem. Shift balance - comprehensives in 60s, catch up the democratic deficit of education.
1970s OPEC oil cartel created crisis leading to education for business, for the economy. The state trying to rebalance. Education for accumulation, not legitimation. Restore profitability.
Early 1980s - the crisis of motivation (the decline of the work ethic). The emergence of 'young people' as a social category, at risk , marginal to the economy, weak family ties, not belonging to the church - loose, needed to be institutionalised. Thus, the modularisation of further education, bite-sized chunks. Solving motivation crisis and keeping kids off the streets.
90s and present decade, state caught between democracy and capitalism. The crises of legitimation, accumulation and motivation. The idea of the marketisation of education dressed up in rhetoric of democracy - ownership, freedom to choose, responsibility for your own learning. The latest legitimatory discourse is 'personalisation' - satisfies capitalism AND democracy, fosters consumerism, getting us ready to be consumers - but it also speaks to the person and sounds democratic.

Critical Educational Science

A critical educational science has the aim of transforming education; it is directed at educational change. The aims of explanation (characteristic of the positivist view of educational research) or understanding (characteristic of the interpretive view) are merely moments in the transformative process, rather than sufficient ends in themselves. [...] Carr, W. and Kemmis, S (1986) Becoming critical: education, knowledge and action. Falmer. (classic text in this area).

A critical educational science, however, has a view of educational reform that is participatory and collaborative; it envisages a form of educational research which is conducted by those in education themselves. Carr, W. and Kemmis, S (1986) Becoming critical: education, knowledge and action. Falmer.

It takes a view of educational research as a critical analysis directed at the transformation of educational practices, the educational understandings and educational values of those involved in the process, and the social and institutional structures which provide frameworks for their action. (Carr and Kemmis, 1986:1567)

Carr, W. and Kemmis, S (1986) Becoming critical: education, knowledge and action. Falmer.

Viz my research: take a position; decide 'what counts as knowledge'?

Web 2.0 for Collaboration and Learning (2nd iteration)

2008-11-20T12:41:00.000Z

This course ran for 6 weeks from 15/10 - 19/11 in the Department of Medieval and Modern History, with 8 participants.

Modifications for next time:

Create a wiki to use as a resource for course links and, especially, for learning and teaching uses of the various tools.
Support this with single page handout with important links and space for 'my gmail address and password' and 'my blog address' (or just google 'blogger' and enter your gmail details - you don't need the '@googlemail' part)
Podcast as intro to course - embed in wiki (above) use template here: http://dori3.typepad.com/my_weblog/ad418-research-methods-po.html
Foreground following instructions
Develop clearer assignment and quiz for Web 2.0

RMT1 Assignment Notes

2008-11-09T10:40:00.000Z

Writing Guidelines

2008-11-09T10:01:00.001Z

General Points

Start by understanding the question. Think about how the topic has been discussed in the Sessions. Having understood the question, gather the evidence by relevant reading. Think about recommended reading. Select your reading so that this helps you to answer the question. Take brief notes of pertinent points, including references. Always put the text aside and write your notes in your own words so there is no danger of plagiarism.

Think about the question again in the light of your reading and you are ready to plan.

Think out a simple structure. Create an outline of headings, statements or questions that follow an orderly and logical sequence. The logical structure can be expressed in the paragraphs you intend to write. Subheadings can be useful in organising work. These subheadings can be taken out of the final version and should be taken out in the essay, which should flow as a single argument with an introduction, main section and conclusion.

When you have reflected upon the question and your planned answer, start to write. Don't wait until you think you know everything; writing will clarify your thinking. Writing straight onto the word processor is the best way because it allows you to draft and move things about easily or insert and remove sections at will.

Try to make it a good read, enjoyable and interesting. You could start with an anecdote, a particular experience that leads into the first paragraph of your answer. Or you could lead with a quotation or a comment that illustrates an issue you intend to discuss.

Follow your plan to cover the points you identified. Insert new relevant material if this occurs to you, but keep your focus on the question. If it does not help you to answer the question, leave it out. Do not pad it out with repetitious and irrelevant information

Once written, edit it. Check for relevance, structure, repetition and readability.

The Essay

It is important to structure your work and to try to plan out how you will write it before you do. Of course, this can (and should) be done straight onto the word processor, as indicated above. Below is one example of how a particular essay title can be answered just to help you clarify how you might want to go about answering a question.

Example: "Consider one of the four theoretical approaches to learning and teaching and critically discuss the application of this approach in your own learning context"

Introduction

It is important to state in the introduction what you are going to deal with in the essay, so that the reader is clear about what you are going to cover and how your essay will be structured.

Example: "In this essay, I will outline my knowledge of constructivism and will highlight how that knowledge has informed my teaching practice. My focus will be on developing critical thinking in Geography. I will illustrate my answer with reference to example lessons I have observed."

The key issue is to take the question apart, to think about each aspect of it and to think about how you will structure your answer. You may even want to re-state the question in your introduction in order to help discipline yourself to sticking to answering the question.

Content

For the rest of the essay, it is important to try to structure your paragraphs so that they follow the structure you have outlined in the introduction. It is a good rule of thumb to stick to one point in each paragraph and to think carefully about how you link different paragraphs. The first sentence indicates what you will cover in that paragraph. You need to keep referring back to that sentence to make sure you are sticking to the point for the rest of the paragraph.

Example: The paragraph could for example start with the following sentence: "I will start by outlining my understanding of cognitive constructivism." For the rest of the paragraph you could then explain your understanding of what is involved in a cognitive constructivist approach. A good linking paragraph might be to indicate that cognitive constructivism is related to be different from social constructivism. The next paragraph could then focus on comparing and contrasting cognitive constructivism with social constructivism. You could then move on to aspects of your lesson plan that reflect either cognitive or social approaches to constructivism.

Conclusion

Always end with a conclusion that basically summarises the issues raised in the essay. You do not at this stage introduce new concepts or information. For the conclusion, one sentence is not enough. You need to summarise what you have said - in particular to reflect back and comment on the main elements of the title and to state the main points you want to draw from what you have written.

Appendices

When you use Appendices, make sure they are adequately explained in the text (e.g. "Examples of the objectives for the lesson are given in Appendix 1.") and give each Appendix a clear title which spells out what it contains or illustrates.

The purpose of appendices is to provide readers with additional background evidence, allowing them to check the writer's arguments, summaries and conclusions against the original resources. These might include resources you have made e.g. PowerPoint or spreadsheets, screen shots from the Internet or other resource, examples of childrens' printed work, evaluation sheets, or lesson plans.

Appendices must not be essential reading. That is, the tutor should not be expected to examine such material in detail in order to make sense of the essay and assess the student's work. If the material is essential to the argument it should be included in the text. It should be noted that any appendices must be used in the text (i.e. referred to) or they will not be read as part of the assignment. They should each be given a number (e.g. Appendix 1; Appendix 2) and a title. The number of words in the appendices does not count towards the required number of words for the assignment.

Referencing

2008-11-09T09:50:00.000Z

Within the text

Do not use footnotes to show the references you quote in the text. Put all your references in a list at the end of your assignment. When referring to a published book or article in the text, do the following:

if there is just one author (called Sally Tomlinson whose book or article was published in 1995): Tomlinson (1995) said that all children with...
if there are two authors (called Richard Evans and Sonia Smith whose book or article was published in 1993 ): Evans and Smith (1993) made a study...
if there are more than two authors, write the names of all the authors the first time. Subsequently, the first author only can be cited, followed by 'et al': Norwich et al., (1987) maintain that...
if several authors writing in separate books or journals support the statement you make, then put down the authors in alphabetical order: Many researchers have found that early intervention leads to a better outcome for children with special needs (see Carr, 1987; Foster, 1992; Khan, 1991; Rutter and Bartak, 1978).

When using a verbatim quotation from a book or article, it should be written exactly as it appeared in the original source, with the same words and punctuation and enclosed in quotation marks. The number of the page from which the quote is taken should be stated at the end of the quote. If a few words are left out then this must be indicated by a series of three dots: "Whether this programme will achieve its long term goals... will depend on a number of factors." (Davies, 1995, p.35). If any other changes have been made, such as underlining or italicising key words, the change should be clearly indicated by adding, at the end of the quotation - (the emphasis given is the writer's).

When using references quoted in a book or article you have read, although it is preferable to go to the original source, in some cases this might not be possible. You may therefore need to refer to the work of someone who has been mentioned by another author. For example, an author's work (Dawson) in 1943 might be mentioned by a researcher (Gardener) in a 1994 publication, but you cannot access the 1943 article. In this case, if you wanted to refer to Dawson's work, you would type: Dawson (1943) cited in Gardener (1994) gives... You would then only give the reference to Gardener's book in the reference list at the end. Do not put the initials of the author in the assignment - only their surname, unless there are two different authors with the same surname. You do need to put their initials in the reference list at the end of the assignment though.

When an author has written more than one text to which you need to refer in the same year, use ‘a’ next to the date to mark the first text mentioned, and then ‘b’ for the next one, and so on. Thus: Howlin (1999a) Howlin (1999b).

At the end of the assignment

All books and journal articles you have referred to in the text should be listed at the end of the assignment under the heading 'References'. In this list you would include books, journals, chapters in books, tests and manuals. The format for each kind of reference is given below. The date indicated for the book is that of the edition, not the print-run, of the work used. References should be in alphabetical order of author's surname and date.

Books should be referenced like this: Wing, L. (1996) Autistic Spectrum Disorders, London: Constable.

Journal articles should be referenced like this: Evans, D. and Brown, S. E. (1985) ‘Integration in mainstream schools’. Journal of Special Education, 3, pp 4-9.

A chapter of an edited book should be referenced to emphasise the author of the cited chapter: Stackhouse, J. (1989) ‘Relationship between spoken and written language disorders’. In K. Mogford, and J. Sadler (eds) Child Language Disability. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Underlining may be used instead of italics for the title of a book or journal.

Electronic communications referencing

There are, so far, few guidelines on citations from electroinc communication. Therefore we suggest that if you have contacted people by e-mail for information, you should acknowledge their response as follows:

Miller, C. C.J.Miller@bham.ac.uk Speech and Language difficulties query - 14 May 1997. Personal e-mail (16 May 1997)

World Wide Web (WWW) Pages

The elements of a web page document should include: Author, initials, date of publication, document title, medium, edition, place of publication, publisher, Date of publication, date of update/revision, Date of Citation, Availability (location of document) and Date accessed.

Example: Rosenshine, B.; Meister, C.; Chapman, S. (1996). Teaching students to generate questions: a review of the intervention studies. Review of Educational Research, 66 (2), 181-221. Available at URL: http://www.jstor.org/sici?sici=0034-6543(199622)66:2<181:tstgqa>2.0.CO;2-M&cookieSet=1
[Last accessed 12/09/07].

A few hints and tips

Web pages can disappear so it is a good idea to download the item if it is short, print it off and attach it to your assignment as an appendix.
Anyone can put up web pages so treat with due caution as you might the imprint of any unknown publisher. Academic (ac (K) or edu (USA) for example in the address) and other well-established websites are more likely to be reliable. But read critically as you would any imprint.
Important principle for quoting references is consistency - adopt the same practices throughout.
If you cannot identify the author, use the organisation or company responsible for the source (i.e. Microsoft, University of Birmingham). Note: You can often find this out by working your way back up the URL address to the home page of the site.
If the source is likely to be temporary it may be useful to print a copy to ensure that you have hard evidence
Important principle for quoting references is consistency - adopt the same practices throughout
You should get a sender's permission to quote a message (i.e. from email for example, especially if you quote their email address.)

Quotes from web-based study material

You may wish to quote the course notes or study materials. You follow the usual format for quoting and you cite the author(s) and date of the quote. In the Reference section at the end of your work you put the full reference.

Example:

Pilkington, R (2007) Approaches to Learning, Learning and ICT, Unit 1 of Web based Course Content, School of Education, The University of Birmingham.

Quotes from Discussion Board

You may need to reference other people's postings, particularly if you choose an assignment which reflects on your experience of online discussion. You follow the usual format for quoting (indenting, reducing font size, keeping italics and other cited authors).

For referencing in body of text:

Author, initials, date of posting in brackets.

Example: Bloggs, F (15th October 2007).

For referencing at end of Portfolio:

Author, date of posting, Programme of Study, where the posting came from and the thread it belongs to.

Example: Bloggs, F (15th October 2007) Learning and ICT (web based), Discussion Board.

Other Suggestions

Ask a friend or colleague to read through the draft of your work to check for errors and readability. Ask them to comment on:

Whether any sections need to be shortened or expanded or omitted altogether
Whether some of the information might be presented in the form of a diagram or table or added in an Appendix
Any sentences or diagrams or Appendices which are not clear

The following publication may be helpful:

Northedge, A. (1990) The Good Study Guide. Milton Keynes: The Open University.

the Heisenberg uncertainty principle

2008-11-08T19:04:00.000Z

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle suggests that the material world is much more elusive than we thought. Also, the act of perception (the observer effect) changes the thing being seen.

There's a great explanation in the first half of this video and some REALLY terrible dialogue in the second half, so it's a win-win situation. Remember, though, by watching the video you change it (and maybe improve it...):

Ladder Reading

2008-11-08T19:01:00.000Z

To find out if an article is THE ONE, read:

the introduction
the conclusion
the first line of each paragraph

You should get enough of the sense of it to make a decision whether or not to read more carefully. It's worth a try!

RMT2: 6 - From Questions to Design – class and disadvantage (Prof David Hartley)

2008-11-08T18:54:00.000Z

1944 Education Act - equality of educational opportunity – the equal chance to become unequal – trying to bring about a meritocratic social order – but not equality of outcome

During 1950s and 60s research into effects of this – a catalogue of despair – correlation between social class and educational acheivement very high indeed

Question for undertaking social class research – how to operationalise the research, what would we look for?

.....................

How to operationalise social class. Depending on your theory, you will define social class differently – how does society cohere? 3 perspectives, functionalism (occupation), marxism (ownership of means of production) and weber’s objections to marxism (Marx didn’t see the divisions in social classes).

1. Structural functionalism.

Society coheres as follows: superimpose the metaphor of a machine or biological organism on society. We know how a machine works with its interlocking component parts which keep a system working. Applied to society, education, economy, church – can be equated to the parts of a machine. All institutions are functional for one another. Theory emerged during Industrial revolution.

Problem is that the theory assumes a consensus, everybody plays a role and if there is conflict, we can fix it. eg, the family’s output, children, will function correctly for the school.

The whole thing is stitched together by a ‘central value system’ which = protestant ethic.

Functionalism socialises and individualises. Education is thus a selection function – it also curbs egoism (socialises children into a normative social order, limiting individuality).

If ‘measured intelligence’ works, there should be no disparity due to class – 75% of university students should be working class, which represent 75% of the population. Rates of social mobility are obdurately persistent.

Functionalists operationalise social class on the basis of occupation – non-manual tends to be higher than manual.

2. Marxist theory of society

A Marxist theorist would conceptualise social class in two ways: a theory of how capitalist society coheres – this is the important one here – and the production of social change.

The Marxist theory of how capitalist society coheres - how does capitalist society hold together? All of us consent to the system of capitalism, regard it as natural, the end of history, no other way, survival of the fittest invoked as an endorsement. The logic of capitalism is that of winners and losers. How can this be? Ideology – an illusion, a misrepresentation of reality, ideas dissimated by educational institutions. Thus, the educational system is ideological.

A social class is a class which shares a common position in relation to the ownership of the means of production. If they own it, they are petit bourgeoisie, if they don’t they the proletariat.

Capitalist society coheres on the basis of ideology – the misrepresentation of reality – which comes from the realm of ideas, to which education is prominent.

3. Weber’s objections to Marxism

Max Weber spent his life in debate with the ghost of Karl Marx – why hasn’t the proletariat risen up as a class? Why has capitalism been able to keep going?

Weber says. It’s not possible for a social class to be completely cohesive in itself and for itself. The working class is riven by status considerations (religion, ethnicity, gender etc) which cause divisions in social class. Can also be divided on party lines (Lab.Cons) – what we have in modern society is, within a social class, configurations of party, status etc lines, which make it difficult for a class to cohere.

All of these studies have omitted stg. They take a cohort of children at the beginning of their education and then look at the output. But, what about the process of school? What happens to kids in different kinds of schools? This is neglected. It is expensive to carry out ethnographic research in schools over a long period of time.

RMT 2: 4 - Some principles of phenomenological hermeneutics (Dr Nick Peim)

2008-11-08T18:04:00.000Z

(based on Gadamer’s Truth and Method 1960 – hermeneutics, how we know stuff, how we theorise the nature of knowledge – we all operate within a specific horizon, the Q is how can we move beyond this to something that is new?)

Three things: 1. Situation, 2. language and the relation of 3 .self to knowledge

How do these things apply to our own research or research context/orientation?

Michael Halliday – the context of situations (tautology)

1.a Situation: history, time and place

Objectivity – knowledge always inhabits a specific time, place, way of thinking and seeing – how can it be objective...?
We are ‘thrown’... not transcendental – we find things as we are, where we are
Specific being within our world – but ‘world’ here is not simple – world of education, of psychology – and world in the bigger sense
We are positioned – but where and how?
forms of understanding – tools of knowledge, a product of our world – an aspect of that contingency, that thrownness

1.b Situation – confronting

we are confronted with the Other (in many guises)
tools to hand (including language?) and fore-understandings (embedded knowledge, from Gadamer)
Being positioned – contingent factors: ‘heritage’ or what we inherit, ethnicity or belonging, language, education, but also choices – political, cultural, personal – professional history and experiences ~ these factors add up to stg we call identity

2.a Language – reality and signs

reality is already mediated to us by common signs – sign systems – that articulate the world (from anthropology – anthro + pos, the study of human beings) – study of hopi language, grammatical structures – sapier worff hypothesis – living within a particular language is like a destiny towards seeing, knowing and experiencing the world, it is structured by language, we are ordered, guided, directed by our language – Jacques Lacan, we don’t use language, language uses us
living in the intertext...
symbolic order precedes our entry
but language is collective and uncontested
we ‘read’ the world
interpretation = relation with others (GG) ‘mitwelt’ (MH)

2.b Language: the house of being:

language speaks man (Heidegger)
constitutive function of language (destiny?)
the limits of my language are the limits of my world (Wittgenstein)
language as separation from world and self – difference(s) – language is always at one remove from what it represents so we always stand as different

2.c Language the excess of being (language can never cover the totality of reality)

experience of the world – symbolically mediated
but this is not the world nor all of the world
the meaning of Being?
the ‘almost said’ of language – hence metaphor, image, narrative, nuance, polysemy...
sign, meaning, surplus and supplement

2.d Language as dynamic force

languages – traces of history
language of knowledge changes
language varies – specialist languages (topology, theoretical physics) vary – discourses
and discourses vary across time (phlogiston) and according to position
meaning – sites of struggle

3.a Self and knowledge: (the possibility of self-) consciousness

is specific: consciousness of...
we are oriented towards things in consciousness (‘intention’ – from Husserl, the phenomenologist)
this intentionality is at the heart of knowing
the concept of ‘care’ occurs in Being and Time (Martin Heidegger: 1928) – we live in the world in an interested, motivated way
Care – already engaged (so when we enter the world of research we are motivated)

3.b Self and knowledge: ‘care’

knowledge engages – at many levels
most knowledge is familiar and embedded
we know things intimately
‘ready-to-hand’ knowledge may be interrupted or disturbed: may become present-at-hand’ (MH – see Brecht, problematised the world as we thought it was, theatre as making things strange)
Through other eyes... (‘if only...’); when broken or out of context

3.c Self and knowledge: self-consciousness

this structure of knowing – based on difference – applies to ourselves, too
this distance/difference – produces... significations, the making and remaking of experience (world-forming)

3.d Self and knowledge: culture

self-understanding must resort to what is ‘ready-at-hand’ = cultural tools or equipment
Understanding (‘reading’ / interpreting) engages the self (as encounter with Other)
Understanding something: not an end in itself – engages domain (of thing/meaning) and self
Self as cultural / historical entity

Structure of Understanding 1

‘Foreunderstanding’ precedes understanding
The knowere – has a stance, an anticipation and a contextualisation = hermeneutic circle (self-limiting condition of knowledge)
Prejudice – hermeneutic problem .. GG (the enlightenment goal of elimnating all prejudices is a prejudice)

Structure of understanding II

World is resistant and exceeds our signification: so, forunderstandings and knowledge get revised
The hermeutic experience involves the fusion of horizons
This opens the prison-house of language… although there are limits to this expansion

Horizons

reality, symbolic world – Gadamer’s Truth and Method – is always represented symbolically – limit or horizon – the idea that we could know everything is always doomed
other horizons – the Other: entities, positionings...

Method for Understanding

No stable method: no stable ‘ideal’ meaning(s) – only existential meaning
The historical self confronts the historical entity enveloped in the symbolic dimension ie cultural specificity
But may be aware of differences – positionality, temporality, discourse

Last words form Habermas (b. 1929) and Derrida (1930-2005)

Habermas introduces a political note in relation to unrealized grounds of injustice within one’s own horizon – hence a need for vigilance and reflection
Deconstruction – concerned to reveal the hierarchies in systems of thought – to render them open to question

Major Research Paradigms

2008-11-06T18:07:00.000Z

An overview of esearch paradigms and their assumptions:

positivistic/scientific research - knowledge is universal (generalisability), measurable and value-free;
ideas of multiple realities led to interpretive research - where the aim of research is not objective knowledge, but understanding - the context is interpreted by the researcher
Critical social research, where the aim is critique and emancipation - action research fits this paradigm if you are openly political - the researcher is embedded within the research group, one of the group - knowledge is highly contextualised

Yes - all in this little video:

The Why of Research: Paradigmatic and Pragmatic Considerations

2008-11-06T14:52:00.001Z

The aim of this chapter is to enable students to help students to begin making "...thoughtful research decisions and defend their positions to advisors and committee members within [the] broader context of what it means to do research."

The current position within social science research:

'Research' as a concept is contested (by postmodernism, poststructuralism)
'Objectivity' is questioned (subjectivity, researcher's values allowed in)
'Validity' and 'Reliability' have been critiqued and reconceptualised.

Because more research now is qualitative, there is "...a greater responsibility to be knowledgeable about the philosophical issues embedded in research and their pragmatic implications."

The chapter is structured as follows:

The philosophical origins of positivist, post-positivist and alternative research paradigms;
An examination of three studies set in their paradigmatic contexts.

The authors hope the reader can answer the question of why research should not be considered to be merely a set of techniques or methods - and how does the researcher's philosophical stance

or paradigm inform their use of theory, methodology or methods?

Part One: The philosophical origins of positivist, post-positivist and alternative research paradigms

The table shows relationship between the chosen view of reality (paradigm) and orientation to research:

There is no universally-agreed label/category for paradigms, but some of the newer paradigms include: constructivism, feminism, interpretavism, critical, emancipatory, poststructural, and postmodern.

Paradigms...

1. Positivism

- Comte c. 1850 - analyse society with the tools and logic of the natural sciences. "Although positivism has been declared officially dead, its philosophical assumptions still influence the social sciences through postpositivism and society."

2. Post-Positivism - laws governing the universe exist but are difficult to ascertain - objectivity should be a goal but beliefs and values of researchers are embedded in the entire research process.

- Dewey c. 1910 - questioned the existence of fixed truths

- Adorno, Marcuse, Fromm 1930s - hegemony of positivism had powerful negative consequences on society

- Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle - questioned certainty and objectivity of positivism

- Popper - science not inductive but hypothetico-deductive

- Kuhn - embedded paradigm shifts in broader historical contexts

- Feyerabend - focus on the absurd in science

- Minority groups and women 1960s and 70s - questioned powerful influence and consequence on their own status - unequal power relations between researchers and those who are marginalised.

- Currently, not just one postpositivism paradigm:

Carr and Kemmis (1986) - 3 forms of educational research:
Lather (1991/99) added a fourth, poststructural/postmodern
Lincoln & Guba's (2000) 5 paradigms:
- positivism
- post-positivism
- critical theory
- constructivism
- participatory
Crotty (1998)
- positivism
- post-positivism
- constructivism
- interpretivism
- critical inquiry
- feminism
- postmodernism

3. Alternative Paradigms - constructivist, critical, feminist, postmodern/poststructural

The current state of educational research is "post-paradigmatic diaspora" (Lather, 1991)

Constructivism

Reality does not exist 'out there' but is constructed by human beings in relation to each other. Reality is thus contingent on human meaning-making and there can be no objectivity.

Paradigms that challenge the status quo - critical, feminist, postmodern/poststructural

The following elements are common and link these three research paradigms:

positivistic research cannot capture the complexity of people's thinking and further marginalises oppressed peoples
a researcher's values and beliefs are significant in the conceptualisation, implementation and analysis of the research
knowledge is socially constructed and that facts should always be viewed within their historical, political, social and economic contexts
research has always been and is currently implicated in relations of power and has political and social consequences
unequal power relations are inherent in research and that researchers must attempt to alter that traditional hierarchical relationship between "researched" and researcher
oppression is complex and by focusing only on race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and/or sexual orientation simplifies the multiple positions and contradictions that individuals simultaneously inhabit
power and knowledge are intricately tied together through discursive practices
an explicit attempt to challenge oppressive social and economic practices must be made through the research process

As can be easily seen, constructivists would embrace the first three assumptions. However, the assumptions that follow, which focus on issues of power and oppression, are more reflective of critical, feminist and postmodern/poststructural approaches to research.

Feminism

Feminist researchers focus on how the subject position of the female operates in a largely patriarchal society, exploring how gender remains hidden in common phenomena.

Postmodern/Poststructural

Focuses on ways that meaning is produced and struggled over and challenges notions of:

universal truths
the supremacy of rationality
the goal of progress.

Foucault - central concept of 'discourse' = how people speak about a phenomenon, or how they frame or understand it. Power and knowledge are intricately tied together in the concept of discourse. Thus, discourses construct how we may think or not think about something - and dominant discourses wield the most power. A critique of positivism might target terms such as validity and reliability as determining how a research project is conceptualised and whether it will be acceptable to committee members and advisors.

Part Two: An examination of three studies set in their paradigmatic contexts.

The following studies exemplify some of the paradigmatic differences above - and they parallel the discussion of paradigms:

A Quantitative Study, postpositivistic paradigm
A Qualitative Study, postpositivistic with both quantitative and qualitative methods
A Critical Qualitative Study, critical paradigm

1. A Quantitative Study

Dawes, Horan, and Hackett (2000) used theory to develop their hypotheses to test the relationship of variables through the use of instruments. They adhered to accepted postpositivistic principles of validity and reliability, so generalisability and prediction were outcomes they sought.

2. A Qualitative Study within Postpositivism: Grounded Theory

Ellibee (1997) employs a grounded perspective with a qualitative investigation (interviews) - thus it is part of the postpositivistic tradition.

3. A Critical Qualitative Study

Darrah (1994):

used natural settings as sites of his study
placed more emphasis on meaning and process
was more concerned with a holistic understanding of phenomena
tried to illuminate the contextual differences in different places and with different people- ungeneralisability

Conclusions

"We believe that uncertainty envelopes the world of research..."

Recommendations:

open up research - encourage a paradigm proliferation
researchers must acknowledge the philosophical assumptions - not as technicians applying a set of methods and practices
the scholar-researcher must be able to articulate "the why of their research both paradigmatically and pragmatically..."

Bettis, P.J. & Gregson, J.A. (2001) The why of research: Paradigmatic and pragmatic considerations. In E.I. Farmer and J. W. Rojewski (Eds.), Research Pathways: Writing Professional Papers, Theses, and Dissertations in Education. University Press of America.

The Hourglass Model

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Research is often conducted using the hourglass model:

The hourglass model starts with a broad spectrum for research, focusing in on the required information through the methodology of the project (like the neck of the hourglass), then expands the research in the form of discussion and results.

Acknowledgements: Research Methods Knowledge Base.

RMT1: Assignment

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Either

Identify one or more (no more than three) key constructs / issue(s) identified in the module and complete a critical consideration of the nature and implications of all of these for your own research context.

Create a 2000 word educational package that is an introductory guide and lexicon for the 'novice educational researcher' containing both a short article or text for independent reading and a separate power point presentation for the classroom.

Please ensure that you support this writing / assignment by reference to several core texts identified in the research methodology literature.

Coordinating tutor: Dr Chris Corcoron

Assignment: 2000 words, due 1st December 2008

RMT 2: 3. On Becoming an Educational Researcher (Prof David Hartley)

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Find research 'not in progress'.

Key Question 1: what kind of knowledge am I seeking to generate? 3 ways of thinking

i. instrumental/technical
ii. interpretive - get at the meaning, cultural interpretations, power etc
iii. critical action - action research, make a difference

But, they can cross over.

Key Question 2: The researcher needs to have a view - an epistemological/theoretical position - what is it?

Choose a discipline: sociology, philosophy, psychology
Choose a standpoint: constructionist, phenomenology, scientific study (input/output research), interpretivist.

BE CRITICAL! Why have I taken this theoretical stance and not that one?

RMT 2: 1. Science, Education and the Scientific Method. Paradigm Matters 1 (Prof David Hartley)

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Our habitual world view - bureaucratised from our first confrontation with an institution (school). Social constructions become sedimented and take on an objectvity. This means that they can be deconstructed (questioned and remade).

In the middle ages, there was a different mind set: people were moody, gave vent to feelings; they had carnivals and no sense of shame as we understand it; you either followed the Catholic Church or went to Dante's Inferno...

Cathedrals were enormous, cavernous, cool places with incence, choirs - all meant to induce awe before the power of the church. Now, it's business - symbolisations of power imposed on us by the dominant groups in society.

Blind Faith became questioned by reason. The Age of Reason led to questioning everything, theorising society, sociology.

Positivism and the concept of progress.

The modern period started about 1750. The sense of time in the Middle Ages was cyclical - ebb and flow of the tides, day and night; now it's linear - watches, restrictions.

There is a search to counter the cool reason of science - fundamentalism, gambling - a sense of emotionality or community which we seem to have lost.

So, we're in an age of science and we want to theorise and explain the world. The epistemological question is what counts as knowledge?
Science has made huge improvements in our understanding of the material world - the epistemological question is can the same understanding be gained from the social world?

A paradigm is a community of scholars, of theorists, with a shared agreement about epistemological standpoint, methods and methodology and how they will interpret the evidence.

A paradigm shift

From the Ancient Greeks to C16th the dominant view of the universe was geocentric (from Ptolemy).
Polish astronomer Mikolaj Kopernik (Nicolas Copernicus) - the sun was the centre so we were no longer the privileged observers of the universe. Heliocentric.
paradigm-breakers will be ridiculed, marked as wrong, or dangerous.

Paradigm Wars:

A paradigm shift - the same evidence of the senses, but a different interpretation. Social science research had a paradigm - that the world out there is knowable.

In 1970s there was a paradigmatic dispute - we can't see the natural world the same as the social world; people are not rocks, they think and have concepts of the world.

Social scientists have concepts about people, who also have concepts. So the question should be: should we use the scientific method for social research?

Hermeneutics - motivational understanding.

What kind of understanding is possible? What understanding to assign to it?

You drop a pencil - we can apprehend and describe it, but - hermeneutics - what motivated you to drop it? How do we find out? We can ask - but you might lie. Contextualise it - get something from the context - have you done it before? Do you do it regularly?

But. The theory of dropping the pencil cannot be a big T Truth. Social science deals with context-bound little t truths.

Research is not how many people are in the room, males, females - this description and it is a part. Research is explanatory.

Empirical - reasoning from the evidence.

Evidence-informed policy is a big buzzword - the government wants educational policy supported by scientific method. This suggests that the world out there can be measured objectively. It can be described, but the tricky question is why?

How do we get around our value-loaded positions and give objectivity? We declare our values from the outset...

So, the key epistemological question is what counts as knowledge and how do we get there?

RMT 2: 2. Research Objects and Orientations (Dr Nick Peim)

2008-11-03T15:02:00.000Z

Whenever we look at something we are engaged in some kind of relationship between a subject and an object...

Hermeneutics - how do we stand in relation to an object? How does your orientation to the object (as a subject) determine what you can know about the object? And what are the implications of that knowledge for the object?

The orientation always happens within a specific context.

The context is also structured, organised, framed - maybe even determined - by the world it inhabits...

Research Orientations

Starting point - how does this research arise?

(WHAT?) the object of researchWhat is the nature of the object of my research? In what ways might this object be explored? To define an object, give an account, its nature - the social context, how people think they learn, institutions or an institution in particular. Literature review.
(WHY?) Defining the context of research. Where - within what domains of experience - does the object reside? Rationale.
(WHERE?) Defining the subject of research. Where is the researcher positioned? School of thought. Action research? Interpretivist?
(THE SPECIFICS OF THE ABOVE Qs) Defining the aims of the research. What does the research seek to achieve? (for the object? for the context? for the subject?). To make an impact, effect a change:

- object - empower academics (and then students), positive change
- context - make policy change in institution approach to learning and teaching
- subject - make a contribution

The Two Fundamental Rules of Teaching

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Let the Students do the work
The more you teach, the less they learn

Search Strategies for Electronic Resources

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"Fostering Communities of Practice to enable creative, technology-enhanced learning in a UK research led Higher Education institution."

1. Sum up topic and write down as many key terms associated with the topic as you can: IT, education, HE

2. Identify key concepts: research-led, HE, Arts, communities of practice, creativity, technology-enhanced learning, web 2.0.

3. Boolean combinations:

technology AND creativity/communities of practice/learning/Web 2.0;
communities of practice AND learning/web 2.0/creativity
creativity AND learning/web 2.0
web 2.0 AND learning

4. Truncations/wild cards for plurals/alternative spellings: communit*, creativ*, learn*, technolog*

5. Search limits (geography, time, language):

Thesis: First Thoughts Questions

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"Fostering Communities of Practice to enable creative, technology-enhanced learning in a UK research led Higher Education institution."

what is meant by Communities of Practice in this context?
Is there a relationship between discipline (Arts) and extent of online learning and teaching?
Are there any differences due to age or length of service? Gender?
What barriers to using technologies for learning do participants identify?
What barriers do students identify? Are they the same?
What do participants feel would enhance their use of technologies to overcome any barriers?
Are there any age/gender-based differences experienced in barriers to learning using learning technologies?
Can participants identify their existing CoPs
How do their existing CoPs help them professionally?
How can a CoP help them to more effectivly utilise technologies for learning and teaching?
How can a CoP help particpants to sustain their interest in and use of technologies for learning over the longer term?
How do I 'set up' a community of practice?
How do I set the research in its institutional, sectoral, local and national settings? Is this where 'originality' lurks (broodingly) for the thesis?
Are there any relevant key initiatives? What could be the research's implications for future policy and practice?
How do I identify the relevant extant literature?
Is my research 'action research'?
Should there be a comparative research element to the research? Perhaps between disciplines?
What are the ethical issues raised by the research?
How do I measure change before and after? Which methods will answer the question I've set?
If I'm measuring the effect of CoPs on 'engagement', would a comparator be 'the course without a community'?

Draft Research Interests

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Suggested Supervisor: Dr Rachel M. Pilkington

Draft Title for Research: Fostering Communities of Practice to enable creative, technology-enhanced learning in a UK research led Higher Education institution.

Aims: To investigate whether the development of Communities of Practice can help to foster a sustained interest in and use of technologies for learning and teaching in the Arts. To explore ideas of creativy, risk-taking and motivation in learning and make practical use of these ideas in the development of courses.

Brief Description of Learning Context: The College of Arts and Law would like to see more and more effective use of online learning and teaching. A course in Web 2.0 technologies will be the medium for developing communities of practice.

Initial Research Question or hypothesis: Fostering communities of practice can motivate academics in the Arts to take risks and be creative with regard to using technology for learning and teaching over the long term.

Initial thoughts on methods: Questionnaire before and after, initially, to find extent of technology use and attitudes to technology-enhanced learning. Focus groups to tease out CoPs impact. Follow-up studies annually. Statistical data on numbers in CAL using technologies year on year. Students data collection. Action Research.

Expected Outcomes:

impact on provision of e-Learning service in CAL
wider and more effective use of online learning and teaching in CAL
number of active Communities of Practice in CAL supporting each others' professional practice
impact on CAL learning and teaching strategy

Information Skills for Graduates: 3. Tracing Official Publications and Statistics

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All government/government-sponsored publications
parliamentary and non-parliamentary
UK Parliamentary publications - to trace house of commons papers is a two stage process - find paper, then trace it (to find number within sequence for each)

- Index to the House of Commons Parliamentary Papers 1801- (on elibrary)
- In library zone 1B
- UKOP (official publications) - on elibrary
- Official Documents site: http://www.official-documents.gov.uk/
- Command Papers (set out proposed rouse of action - white papers, green
  papers, reports - prefixed by Cm)
- Legislation - Acts of Parliament, Statutory Instruments
Non-Parliamentary Publications - available through library search plus www.direct.gov.uk
European Union - European Documentation Centre (EDC) upper floor of ERC
Official Statistics - zone 1C of main Library + Education statistics collection

Information Skills for Graduates: 2. Staying Current

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2.1 Using Standard Databases

British Education Index - create alert
CSA/Assia - log in - advanced search - click on please log in to my research - create alert
Set up alerts in individual journals

2.2 Table of Contents Services

Zetoc provides access to the British Library's Electronic Table of Contents of around 20,000 current journals and around 16,000 conference proceedings published per year. http://zetoc.mimas.ac.uk
Zetoc alert system - choose Birmingham University
Add journals, author or title searches

2.3 eLibrary Resources

Anything here keeps you up to date!

2.4 Open Access Resources

University of Birmingham Research Archive - UBIRA:
- ePrints: http://eprints.bham.ac.uk - full text of published, peer reviewed research material
- ePapers: http://epapers.bham.ac.uk - working papers, conference papers, technical reports
- eTheses (this is the really useful one so far): http://etheses.bham.ac.uk - full text electronic copies of theses produced by university research postgraduates

2.5 Appropriate Internet Resources

speech marks for phrases
boolean searching, and or not
specify the domain you want, eg, .ac.uk
use specialised search engines -
- Google advanced search (best to log in to elibrary first)
- Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.com/
- Intute: http://www.intute.ac.uk/ (social sciences covers education)
  - browse by subject - education
  - conferences and events (link on left)
Regard - Economic and Social Research Research Council Database of funded research: www.regard.ac.uk - search, advanced search, help
NFER - National Foundation for Educational Research - www.nfer.org.uk
DCFS - www.dcsf.gov.uk
Homepages of University Departments
Social Bookmarking, eg, CiteULike
Mail Groups:
- Discussion Groups
- JiscMail is a major academic service in UK: http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/
  - by subject (eg education)
  - category pages
  - have a look at discussions in specific lists
- Usenet Lists - http://groups.google.com - allows you to search for messages

Information Skills for Graduates: 1. Searching

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Configure proxy server
Athens is an authentication system - it checks if you are a legit student (it's being replaced by Shibolleth)
To find eBrary, log in, click on 'find resource' and search ebrary

1.1 Articles

Social Science/Education Databases:
- BEI - use $ for plurals etc - to find British Education Index - log into ebrary, find resource and search BEI (NB use search term 'education'):
- ERA - Education Research Abstracts
- Australian
- ERIC (American/International)
- Web of Science - a big educational database, includes Social Science Citation index - this means you can search to see who has cited a key paper as an alternative route to
  material on your topic.
- CSA - Cambridge Scientific Abstracts - is a database and can search further, for instance ASSIA Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts - choose social sciences as subject area

1.2 Theses

Good to find writer's reference list - Most are not full text, simply finding them
- Bham Library - restrict search to theses
- Index to Theses - ebrary - search 'theses' (4 resources)
- ETHOS - British library strategy to digitise all theses - free access to full texts of UK
  research: http://www.ethos.ac.uk/ - but not working yet! Go to library and ask for an inter-library loan (fill out form and copyright form) - the library will physically get it for you.
- Networked Digital Library (Australian)
- ProQuest Dissertations and Theses - includes 24 page pdf preview (acknowledgements and introduction and beginning)

1.3 Electronic Journals

Ebrary Find e-Journal
Search in library catalogue

1.4 Books

Bham Library catalogue
To find the following databases:
- go into ebrary
- find resource
- 'browse by subject' tab
- select 'general resources' from categories
- Select 'catalogues' from sub-categories
- Select eg, Copac or bookdata online
Copac - more libraries, but books only - no full texts: http://www.copac.ac.uk/

Bookdata Online (books in print) from eLibrary - http://www.nielsenbookdataonline.com/bdol/ - select 'search now' under 'book search' heading.

Communities of Practice vs Learning Communities

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They relate. Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, early 90s. So, the question is, how to frame my own research/Web 2.0 with an explicit focus on Communities of Practice (cops)?

Induction and Research Methods Training 1: 5th October 2008 (Dr Chris Corcoran and Dr Paul Warmington)

2008-10-25T17:00:00.000+01:00

Finally got round to writing about this even though it's about a month ago now. I found the first day pretty chaotic but interesting, although I felt somewhat overwhelmed by the sheer amount of paperwork and just... stuff that we've to do! I still haven't read much of it (although I will). I'm just not sure where it all fits in, really. Initial steps on the journey at least...

Overall, I'm glad to have made a start and am very much looking forward to the journey itself. This is an off-the-cuff poem to summarise the day and it's really as good as any other summary I might try to make:

I heard the word reliable

It sounded like a mumble

Then valid sounded stolid

An ontological jumble

And OMG hermeneutics

For subjective gymnastics

From methods to methodology

I need a nice, long, cool

pint of lager to get me

Epist-emology

In the interests of ethical fairness, I suppose I should declare that I was quite majorly hungover - a mistake I shan't be making again!

Taught Doctorate (from the brochure)

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This doctoral level qualification is partly assessed through a structured programme of course based assessments related to research methods and to subject-focused areas of study. The taught doctorate is completed by a dissertation of approximately 50,000 words. Minimum period of study is normally four years part-time.

Introducing the EdD

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Here's the official blurb about the Doctorate in Education on the website. It's aimed at 'those wishing to pursue research that can be applied to their own teaching and learning contexts' - that'll be me, then. I'm working in the College of Arts at Birmingham University and would like to make a difference in the use of technologies for learning in the College, which demands an understanding of... well, of so many things, as I'm quickly learning from the seminars I've attended. The more I learn, the more questions there are...