Category Archives: Off Campus Learning

New start… exciting

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I have been feeling a bit isolated recently and have noticed a lack of interaction surrounding my research since the intensive month I experienced in Australia. It’s not that I haven’t been working. Choosing to write a journal article as a means of getting myself going has proved useful. I am still waiting for feedback on the draft I submitted to International Journal X and I do indeed hope it will be accepted (after revisions… of course). Having a clear cut deadline to work towards gives me the kind of work-inducing pressure that I seem to need.

In the next two weeks I have three other urgent tasks – producing abstracts for two conferences to be held here in Israel this year (one national and the other international) and finalizing permission from the Chief Scientist’s Office so that I can begin my interviews ASAP.

I am excited that on Sunday I am travelling to Tel Aviv to participate in the Mofet Teacher Educator Interest Groups for qualitative researchers. I have never attended any of their sessions and this year I signed up for two different groups. I am looking forward to a whole day of stimulating discussion and thought provoking interaction. This, along with my ongoing doctoral writing group, will be another means of meeting people doing similar work to mine, here in Israel. I am interested to see how my work fits in to the academic puzzle here in this country.

In the morning I will be attending the interest group for researchers connected to action research. This group is run by Professor Michal Zellermayer from Levinsky College. The afternoon group deals with narrative inquiry and is run by Dr Gabriela Spector Mersel from Ben-Gurion University. This week there is a lecture by Professor Yehuda Bar-Shalom between the two sessions. There will be 5 days like this one throughout the 2011-2012 academic year.

If anyone reading this is attending, I would be honored to meet you…

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A  few weeks ago I wrote about being invited to join a small group of PG students who meet monthly and last week I attended my first session. The group meets once a month, each time in a different home.

A few days before the session, H emailed out materials she is dealing with at the moment (interview transcripts, interview summary etc) and wanted to hear our opinions and ideas. She was searching for a different way to look at her data. We drank hot tea and discussed how we read her texts differently from the way she reads them and how they can be examined in other ways. The discussion was informal and extremely supportive – thinking together out loud in order to help her find her way in the mass of data.

I was interested to feel H’s interview style and the way her transcripts were organized. I was fascinated by the way she records her thoughts about the data and her attempt to classify her interviewees into distinct groups. From her descriptions I learnt new terms and was introduced to new theories.

I m grateful to be part of the group and believe that it will  be stimulating and supportive. The chance to look at the writing of others in unfinished drafts and to hear other doctoral students discuss their deliberations and breakthrough moments will be very influential in my work. I will be able to contribute to others and at the same time negate some of the loneliness and isolation of being an off-campus student.

I am supposed to present some work at the next session. As I’m not doing much at the moment, this could pose a problem but I am going to look at it as an opportunity. I have decided that during the Passover holidays I am going to finish grading the assignments from my Z course and write a narrative about the whole experience. As I don’t  yet have ethics clearance to include those assignments in my work, I will have to write about the course as a whole and more about my experience and understandings. Having to have a draft to show is a positive step in the direction of getting something done.

RF picture: http://www.images.com/

Bits and Pieces

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I haven’t been around here (or my studies) for ages…

Work is extremely intensive and having three Professional Learning courses still going is keeping me more than busy. When I am exhausted after a full day at school and have to take the long drive to one of the Teacher PD centres, I try to tell myself that I am collecting experiences for my PhD.

I can say that the courses are going really well, and the comments and feedback I receive from the participants are excellent. When I finished the sessions in Z, most of the teachers told the staff of the centre that they are interested in an additional course next year. As I enjoyed the group I am happy about that and by then I should (must) have my ethics clearance so that the course will be included in my research – interviews, questionnaires and all).

I decided not to attend the sessions with Amanda Berry as I am taking two days off in two weeks time to attend the Israeli Qualitative Research Conference at Ben Gurion Uni in the south. The conference looks interesting and I am especially looking forward to hearing Prof Carolyn Ellis and Prof Arthur Bochner.

I’m sure the conference will give me a boost of energy and as I have both the Purim and the Passover holidays coming up, that is what I need. I am planning to lock myself away somewhere in the holidays (school maybe?) so that I can think, plan, read and write.

In addition, I am happy to announce that my proposal for Israel’s first International Conference on Academic Writing has been accepted! My paper “Teacher writing for Professional Learning” will appear on the program. The conference is in the Israeli summer, at the end of July.

Another new experience for me will be my first meeting with the group of 3 doctoral students that invited me to join their informal sessions. This group is based around academic writing and meets once every two months, each time in a different home. At each meeting, one member presents written texts for discussion and feedback. After my first meeting on Tuesday I will try to blog the experience. 

Finally, I am looking forward to a series of workshops being run by Monash for HDR students from all campuses. I have signed up as an online participant and once a month, on Fridays, I will have some live input and academic content and communications. Here it will be 2am Thursday night but… who cares?

Wandering down a new path

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There is no such beautiful walkway anywhere around here, or at least I haven’t found it, but I have been invited to wander down a new and promising path.

When I went to the lecture by Dr Clandinin in Jerusalem, I was asked for a lift  by a doctoral student who lives an hour or so from me. On the long drive home we had a great chat about her work and mine, about taking first steps in academia and of course about the seminar we had just attended. On the way, she told me that she was a participant in a small group of doctoral students and researchers which meets every two months or so to read work in progress, to discuss it and to give and receive feedback.

This week I received an email inviting me to join this group and of course I happily accepted.  Although I really don’t have time to take on more obligations, this is an opportunity too good to miss. I need to talk about my work and research in general with people, face to face. I also need to begin to understand how the academic world ticks over here. Again, I am feeling the loneliness of off campus research and if I am serious about pulling this through and successfully doing the work I am dreaming of doing, I need to develop additional support frameworks.

This morning I sent the four group members a letter of introduction and I will attend my first meeting in early February. I’m looking forward to it!

 

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Trying to Catch Up – My Visit Down-Under 2009

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OK, I’ve been in Australia for a week and a half already, and I feel that if I don’t start recording a bit of what I am going through, it will be lost.

I left Israel the day school finished for the year. Exhausted and stressed, I parted from my colleagues and from everything that the school year demands of me and got on the plane with my two younger children. Thank goodness they were cooperative and we all slept most of the way to Australia. The family welcome we received was as always, wonderful… our visit had begun.

Mylife is always intense, rushed and pressured, and so was the beginning of my month out here. The next morning, at 9 am, I was supposed to be at Monash University for the MERC (Monash Education Research Conference). I was panicking about finally turning up at the uni in person, after 3 years of online study. I was shy and unsure of how the day would go.

The day was interesting and varied. I payed particular attention to the kinds of work the research students were presenting and how they presented themselves as students and researchers.

The highlight of my day was finally meeting GP my supervisor and we had a nice lunch together. It seems to me that meeting someone face-to-face after years of online conversation is as unnerving as a real first time meeting.

The next article I attempt to write may very well be about distance education and the experiences I have had with it.  

After a weekend off (crammed full of family commitments), I was back at Monash on Monday and Tuesday. The Winter School for postgraduate students was a terrific way to get the feel of the campus, of the research assistance available and to start to chat to other new (and not so new) PhD students. The workshops were interesting and relevant and gave me a sense that I’m really getting started and that this PhD idea is viable.

I especially enjoyed the workshop by Dr  Judy Williams and Ros Winters on Self Study. The session on Autoethnography by Dr Peter De Vries and the sessions on writing by Rosemary Viete and Anne Prince were also very worthwhile.

One of the highlights of those days was going into the Matheson Library for the first time. The library staff have given me so much assistance over the past three years and really have catered for all my research needs, despite me being on the other side of the world. When I got to the Education section and started seeing the books I had used for my thesis (scanned as PDF files or read as ebooks) I almost couldn’t breathe. The excitement was immense. I had butterflies in my stomache and was simply overcome by the experience. I was shocked at my own reaction.

I took five books from the library that day. As I approached the loans desk, like a normal student doing an everyday act, only I was aware that I was a student in my fourth year at Monash, touching “real” library books for the first time.

My next post will tell about my experiences at the AATE coference in Hobart.