6th Israeli Conference on Qualitative Research

Last night I returned from a two day conference in Beer Sheva at the Ben Gurion University. The conference, The 6th Israeli Conference on Qualitative Research was organized by the Israeli Centre for Qualitative Research.

bskenes poster

This was the third time I have been to the conference and the second time I have participated. The conference is different from other conferences I have been to as it has a much more local feeling to it. All presentations are in Hebrew and apart from one guest speaker from overseas (Professor Juliet Corbin), all lecturers were Israeli.

Four years ago, when I went to this conference for the first time, I didn’t know anybody. I spent most of the time time wondering what a conference on methodology really means and I felt an outsider. Last time I participated I felt more involved, I also knew some people through my doctoral writing group and the interest groups I participate in at Mofet. This time I felt part of a community, a vibrant learning community in which I definitely have a place. It is fascinating to hear about the work of others and to try to locate my own research in relation to that of my peers.

One of the highlights for me was to hear top quality researchers present their work and to have the opportunity to enter into a dialogue with them. One spectacular session dealt with the boundaries of qualitative research. Each of the panel members explained how she views the limitations – what is included and what isn’t and how we define the requirements of research under this title. Much of the discussion was about testing the boundaries. Professor Einat Peled summed up by saying that we have to be aware that experienced and recognized scholars can allow themselves to test those boundaries far further than doctoral students. We watched a fascinating video – an autoethnographic movie made in a Masters program – part 1 and part 2 (we saw part 2). Made me think!

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My paper dealt with translation in qualitative research and presented my own experiences translating in my PhD study.

The Hebrew abstract:

התרגום במחקר האיכותני: דילמות לשוניות, תרבותיות ומתודולוגיות

לעתים מתייחסים לתרגום נתונים כתהליך ניטרלי ואובייקטיבי, עניין טכני של העברת חומרים משפה אחת למשנה. חוקרים אחרים, רואים את השפה כחלון לזהותו של האדם, מחשבותיו ודעותיו. המכירים בתפקיד הפרשני של התרגום, מבינים ששפה היא יותר מהמשמעות הבסיסית של כל מילה ומילה וטוענים שתהליך התרגום משפיע על  טיב המחקר. לפי גישה זו, מתרגמים הם שותפים פעילים בהפקת ידע במחקר.

בזמן עריכת מחקר פעולה נרטיבי על למידה של מורים בישראל, התעוררו בי שאלות הקשורות למקום התרגום במחקר האיכותני. העיסוק בתרגום מעלה שאלות לשוניות, תרבותיות ומתודולוגיות. כדוקטורנטית באוניברסיטה באוסטרליה, החוקרת את עבודתה החינוכית בישראל, מחקרי נערך בעברית ויוצג באנגלית, שפת אמי.

בהרצאה זו אדון בדילמות המתודולוגיות הקשורות לתרגום במחקר. שאלות אלו מתייחסות לשלב שבו נכון לתרגם, איזה חלק מהנתונים יש לתרגם וכיצד מתמודדים עם ההבדלים בין השפות, הבדלים לשוניים ותרבותיים. בנוסף אתייחס לשאלות האפיסטמולוגיות הקשורות למי מתרגם טקסטים במהלך המחקר והשפעת הרקע השפתי והתרבותי של המתרגם. אדגים את המורכבות הטמונה בניתוח נתונים מחקריים שנוצרו בשפה אחת ומועדים לפרסום בשפה אחרת. דוגמא לדילמה שמלווה את עבודתי היא הקושי לחזור למשתתפים על מנת לשמוע כיצד הם מגיבים לפרשנותי, אם אינם שולטים בשפה האנגלית.

בהרצאה זו אביא דוגמאות מהמחקר שלי המציגות את תפקידי כחוקרת דו-לשונית. אציג את ההחלטה לתרגם את הנתונים בעצמי כחלק אינטגרלי של תהליך הניתוח. שפה אינה ניטרלית, היא משקפת את ההקשר בו נוצרה. הבחירות הלשוניות של האדם מייצגות את תהליכי החשיבה הייחודיות שלו. אדגיש את הצורך בהצגת מעשה התרגום באופן גלוי במחקר על מנת  לאפשר דיאלוג פתוח סביב הבחירות השפתיות של המשתתפים.

It was an enormous honour for me to present in a session chaired by Professor Amia Lieblich, one of the scholars I admire most. As expected, there were many people in the audience, despite the fact that it was the last session of the conference. Amia spoke about her recent book, Arak for Breakfast, a non fiction book (for the general audience) based on her research into a group of older residents of Tel Aviv who meet daily on the beach at a coffee shop, early in the morning. She told that Oxford Uni Press has invited her to translate the book and transform it into an “academic” text. She described this process which is far different from any other academic writing I have encountered. As this is participatory research (Amia is part of the breakfast community), it will be extremely interesting to see how the text is transformed. I was interested to hear that the final chapter, that which Amia described as autoethnographic has been replaced.

Amia

I feel that my session was well received, questions were asked and I had a real opportunity to discuss my work. Although my experience with translating research data and doing research in one country and presenting it for examination in another is fairly rare, in Israel, all academics have to deal with translation issues when preparing their work for publication in English journals and presentation at international conferences.

Other relevant and interesting sessions I attended dealt with analysing data, narrative in real life situations, narrative inquiry, ethics in qualitative research, and action research.

As always, when I return from a conference, I have a burning desire to get on with my thesis!

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moshav kenes

kenes 11

 

My presentation at the conference: Professional Writing in Many Voices: Exploring My Learning from a Bakhtinian Perspective

This morning I want to write about my own conference presentation for the 6th International Conference on Teacher Education: Changing Reality through Education. I feel that for me, this conference was about taking risks. I decided to send in an abstract at the very last minute and sat down to write it the day the call for papers closed. I thus had no time to consult with others or to receive feedback on my writing. In time, I was notified that my abstract had been accepted.

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As usual with my writing, I decided on a topic which needed a lot of reading, writing and thinking, a topic which is connected to my PhD and that the preparation for the presentation would directly contribute to my doctoral work. I decided to write about the ways in which I am beginning to explore my own professional writing from a Bakhtinian perspective. This was the first time that I was attempting to publicly articulate my knowledge and understandings of the complex materials I have been reading. I knew it was time to start verbalizing those understandings but was extremely wary of the task. There were similarities between this paper and my last: “Academic Blogging as a Dialogic Process” at the 2012 “Academic Writing and Beyond” conference.

Diving in again to the writings of Bakhtin and those that provide commentary on his theories, I began to extend my understandings. Each engagement with those complex materials is challenging and leaves me with a sense of uncertainty.

My “way in”, as usual, was to try to relate the concepts to events, conversations, thoughts or practice. In order to prepare the conference paper I thought about my major aims and directions in the talk and then returned to my own writing. I reread my own blog posts from the past few years and my freewriting in my research journal. I was searching for snippets of text in which Bakhtinian concepts afforded me an additional understandings or allowed me to see myself and my work differently from the way a first reading portrays. I found many sections of writing which were suitable.

The next stage was to return to Paul Sullivan (2012) and to reread the chapter:  “Using Dialogue to Explore Subjectivity” a number of times and then to return to the sections of text I had chosen and to start articulating the connections I found. Sullivan’s book is very clear but the task of making sense of my own identity and practice in light of the theories presented was not easy.

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I did not know how familiar my audience would be with Bakhtin so I need to add some introductory comments.

The 15 minute time limit on my paper made the work “doable”, and I do believe the audience received a taste of the kinds of textual work I am doing. I believe I showed how dialogue and other Bakhtinian concepts can indeed be useful in text interpretation.

 The session I was placed in was titled “Writings and Narratives in Self-Development” and was chaired by Dr Orna Schatz-Oppenheimer. Orna has written a great deal on the role of narrative in teacher learning and has worked with teacher stories in particular. In addition, she was my pedagogical teacher 20+ years ago when I was a dip Ed student and I have fond memories of her work with me. The papers were all interesting and relevant to my own work but I particularly enjoyed the paper by Gili Talmor from the Branco Weiss Institute who talked about their project called “Writing based disciplinary pedagogy”. I will indeed look further into this projects which involves teacher writing and student writing in the disciplines as a school culture. Another interesting paper was presented by Etti Gordon Ginzburg. She discussed letter writing in the learning of new immigrants training to be teachers in Israel.

My major excitement for the day was when I discovered that Professor Michael Connelly was present in our session. Orna had invited him to take part. Connelly remarked that he was impressed by what he had heard in the papers and told me that Dr Julian Kitchen (who I mentioned in my paper) had been a student of his. I feel honored that an academic of Connelly’s status, a respected writer who I have read and reread, heard my paper on this occasion.

 Following this positive learning experience, it is time to continue on and to utilize this knowledge in my close reading of the interview transcripts I have collected so far. The conference paper gave me confidence in my growing understandings and paved the way for my next steps.

Changing Reality through Education – 6th International conference on teacher education

The school holidays are here! After completing the preparation and delivery of my conference paper for the 6th International conference on teacher education, I can say that the holiday is definitely starting. I will of course be going in to school a few days a week but it will be at my own pace and there will be a lot of peace and quiet there.

I wish to write about the conference this morning. Unfortunately I was only able to attend the second and third days. I really enjoyed being part of the conference in which the atmosphere was positive and dynamic. The organization of the conference was amazing – everybody made a real effort to adhere to the timetable and everything went according to plan. During the breaks, the food and coffee were delicious. The program was clear and helpful and there were very few speaker and venue changes.

Wednesday, the second day of the conference, was held at the David Yellin Academic College in Jerusalem. When I arrived at the gateway, I was overtaken by an enormous sense of excitement. I studied teaching (in a one year changeover course for BA graduates) here in 1987 or 1988. When I studied here I was a very new immigrant, hardly knowing how to get by in Hebrew, determined on being a homeroom teacher in Israeli primary schools, and not “just an English teacher” (as I thought then. I don’t know how much I understood here in the theory or didactics classes, but I learnt from my relationships with the people and from my wonderful 10 hours a week practical experience in two Jerusalem schools. It was fascinating to remember myself walking down the corridors, to be aware of how the college itself has been transformed and how I, myself, have moved on from being a new immigrant enthusiastic to join the world of education, to being a presenter at an international conference, reporting on my practice as a teacher, teacher educator and researcher. I hadn’t been back to David Yellin since I completed my year there, well over 20 years ago and I was indeed happy to have the opportunity to revisit.

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I will write about my own paper in the next post, here I want to record some of the highlights for me.

I think the highlight of the conference for me was the opportunity of hearing some of the ‘big names” in research on education and teacher education, some of the most important figures in qualitative methodologies.

Yesterday I attended a keynote by Professor Jack Whitehead from Liverpool Hope University in the United Kingdom. Professor Whitehead, whose respected work on Action research I know well, presented in an enthusiastic and extremely clear manner. In my mind, two of the most interesting points in the talk were when Professor Whitehead urged us to be “true to ourselves” and to start using visual media and not just written text in our research. He went on to remind that description is simply not enough. We must be committed to analysis in order to explain the nature of our influence in our professional contexts. We are obliged to make our knowledge public in an explanatory sense well beyond descriptive text.

Professor Whitehead referred to the conference program and remarked that only 2-3 papers contained the word “I” in their title and focus. He expressed his hope that by the next conference, many more participants will present what they themselves are doing to improve their practice.

I will certainly revisit Whitehead’s web site Action.Research.net, a resource I have used before. The speaker used his site to illustrate his point that this kind of research is now acceptable (there are over 34 PhDs supervised by him and shared openly with readers on the site). The honest sharing of knowledge and materials, together with the passion expressed verbally and non-verbally by the speaker, were extremely inspiring.

whitehead

I attended a fascinating round table chaired by Dr Shoshana Keiny of Ben Gurion University in which a discourse group was presented. This is a large group of teacher educators / researchers, who have been gathering regularly for the past 12 years. There is no set goal for the group or its meetings and it is not chaired or facilitated by any one individual. The group does, however, research its activity and discourse and tries to learn from the interaction among participants and from the way in which participation in the community influences the practice of members, each in his or her own professional field and context. I can’t say that I reached full understanding of the way the group was established or the way it functions, but the idea of collaboration, sharing and just simply “being” together certainly caught my attention. I was reminded of Mary Kooy’s book clubs, but there she had clear goals and an agenda. There is clearly something extraordinary in the group as it has been maintained over such a long period and members drive extremely long distances to participate. Food for thought!

Other highlights for me were hearing Professor Miriam Ben Peretz, Professor Sharon Feiman-Nemser, and of course Professor Michael Connelly (who I will write about later).

One abstract accepted and another submitted! Conferences 2012 underway

I was happy to receive a positive response to the abstract I submitted to The Fifth Israeli Conference of Qualitative Research to be held in February at the Ben Gurion University in the south of Israel. I attended the conference two years ago but did not dare to try to join the conversation – now it feels as though the time is right.

My abstract ( in Hebrew)

והרהרתי לעצמי: מי לומד יותר?

כמדריכה לחינוך לשוני, יזמתי השתלמויות מורים במשרד החינוך העוסקות בהוראת הכתיבה. בנוסף לעיסוק בפדגוגיה, בהשתלמויות אלו, המורים נפגשים עם הכתיבה ככלי ללמידה והעצמה מקצועית.  בארבע שנים האחרונות השתתפו כ-250 מורים מבתי ספר יסודיים בשש ערים במחוז צפון.

כמורת מורים העוסקת במחקר על למידתם המקצועית של מורים, אני מודעת לכך שלאורך תהליכי ההוראה וההערכה, אני בעצמי מתפתחת באופן תמידי. למידה זו מתרחשת בהקשרים חברתיים מגוונים: בדיאלוג עם המורים המשתתפים בהשתלמויות בהנחייתי, באמצעות השיח הכתוב בפורום המתוקשב שמלווה את ההשתלמויות ובחשיפה לפרקטיקה של המורים בכיתותיהם. למידה זו מתרחבת כאשר אני יוזמת דיאלוג עם חוקרים אחרים סביב טקסטים כתובים שאני מפיקה על עבודתי.

כמחנכת וכחוקרת העורכת מחקר פעולה נרטיבי על עבודתי עם המורים, הכתיבה עצמה היא ציר מרכזי בלמידתי ובעבודתי. עבורי, הכתיבה היא דרך עוצמתית לחקור את מעשיי. הכתיבה מאפשרת לי לעקוב אחרי שינויים במחשבתי ובעמדותיי ולהבין את המניעים לשינוי. דרך הכתיבה אני שואלת את עצמי שאלות ומגבשת כיווני פעולה. כתיבה רפלקטיבית ביומן מחקר ובבלוג, עוזרת לי לערוך רפלקציה משמעותית, לשקול חלופות ולהגיע למסקנות.

בהרצאתי אציג דוגמאות של טקסטים רפלקטיביים, המעידים על הלמידה שלי מתוך שיח ופעולה וקטעים מתוך ההתכתבות שלי עם מורים. בנוסף, אציג את הדרך שבה, לאורך שנים,  למידה זו מוצאת את אותותיה בעבודתי, במחקרי ובפרסומיי. אמחיש כיצד הידע שלי מקריאה מקצועית מעובד בכתיבה רפלקטיבית, מוצא את דרכו לעשייה החינוכית שלי ומעובד שוב בכתיבה מקצועית. לבסוף, אדון בתרומתו של בלוג מחקרי להתפתותי המקצועית.

בחקר הפדגוגיה שלנו כמורי מורים, עלינו לתאר את דרכי הוראה שלנו, להמליל את הידע שנוצר באינטראקציות מקצועיות שונות ולשתף עמיתים בידע שנבנה. הרצאה זו הינה צעד נוסף בשיתוף ובחיפוש דיאלוג מסוג זה.

The other abstract, which I submitted today is in English. If it is accepted (and I really hope it will be) I will post it here in March. The paper for that second conference is about blogging as an academic activity. I am interested in exploring the dialogic nature of blogging in general and academic blogging in particular

Thinking about writing… again…

This morning I got up early to reread the article I submitted to journal X about a month ago.

As I read I jotted a few points in the margins and identified a few issues I should work on. What surprised me though, was the intensity of the feeling that the text is far more complex than anything that I am capable of producing. My immediate reaction was to “tweet”:

“I just reread an article I wrote and submitted a month ago. Yet again I had the: “Did I really write that? I can’t do that again” feeling”.

I reread the article as I suggested that it be discussed by the Action Research and Self Study interest group I joined at the Mofet Institute. I desire feedback which will help me revise the article when it returns from the peer reviewers. I am interested in understanding more about how my work fits into the Israeli context of Action research. I am eager to be able to name the type of writing I am doing and to further pursue how it will eventually blend into my PhD thesis.

As it is I am stuck. I have not begun a new piece of writing since I submitted the article and submitted an abstract for the The Fifth Israeli Conference of  Qualitative Research.

Both of those events are essentialy unfinished and that  is somehow preventing me from producing something new. I suppose this is something other academics and writers experience.

This is always a complicated time of the year for me as a student. In Israeli terms I am mid year and running full steam (or trying to!) and the university, my supervisors and all are in Christmas mode, summer leave mode. I am trying hard to motivate myself to start writing a brand new section, something that will enliven me and push me further in the process.

Cartoon – Toondoo: http://www.toondoo.com/

 

Preparing my conference paper for the ALEA conference – Melbourne, 2011

I have been working for several days on my paper for the ALEA conference and am constantly feeling that I am going around in circles and not getting anywhere. I usually prepare my papers together with the visuals in the Powerpoint and it usually works well because the division into a progression of slides gives me the structure of my talk. Here it isn’t working, there is no progression as I am jumping backwards and forwards, getting lost in way too may slides.

My problem is now clear to me – I am simply trying to say too much in too many directions. I will have my audience’s attention for 15-20 minutes and I have to make the most of that short time.
What is the most important thing I want to say? What will interest them most?
I imagine that the audience will mainly be made up of teachers and teacher educators. They will probably be more interested in my practice than in my research or in the literature on professional learning. As I have chosen the research strand in the conference, I will need to balance describing the narrative study I am involved in while presenting the professional learning I facilitate.
If this is the case, the heart of this talk should be these lines from my paper abstract:
“Drawing on my narrative inquiry, this paper explores my own efforts to adopt characteristics of relational teacher education and narrative writing with Israeli primary school teachers struggling to enrich the writing of their pupils. Narratives, letters and other authentic texts are presented as I describe my experiences of powerful in-service professional learning, mediated by writing, in supportive learning groups… Suggestions about how writing might be used in school-based and external professional learning and in faculty renewal are offered.”
If I am talking to teachers, I should stress that the activities I do in my courses can be performed collaboratively in schools by groups of teachers. It is important that the positive outcomes of these courses aren’t seen as a one-off event, relevant to one particular context. I believe that the principles on which I have built these courses are relevant for all literacy teachers (all teachers?) whether they are in a formal learning framework or not.
If I am talking to teacher educators, I would like them to examine their own practice through mine. Hearing about my work in Israel may give them new ideas to incorporate in their own environments and may reinforce what they are doing. I would love to develop a dialogue with some of these people. I am interested to hear about similar work and about other ways teachers who are interested in improving their writing pedagogy work. If I am talking to teacher educators, my own role as leader of professional learning should not be omitted, it is definitely central to the dynamics of the course.
I must remember that as I am describing a context far removed from Australia, I will need to spend a good few minutes describing the learning environment in question.
I could start my paper by giving the audience 3 minutes to write down why they chose to come to my session. That would give them a taste of the atmosphere in my sessions; teachers sitting together and being given the opportunity to stop and think on paper. That idea would not work of course if I am placed on the program with other speakers.

As usual, thinking in writing has helped me clear the fog. I’m off to rework my presentation…

Tickets bought, 11 weeks to go…

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We are all so excited. This week we finalized our tickets to Australia and will fly out early in July. I can’t wait to spend significant time with family and also to have a bit of a holiday.

Of course there is no pleasure without business…

In the first two weeks of July I will be very busy attending the Education Winter School and the ALEA National Conference at the Melbourne Hilton hotel. I will present papers both at the Monash MERC day and at ALEA.

Some time in the third week I will present my PhD proposal to a confirmation panel. I am busy revising my proposal and am fairly happy with my progress at this stage. I must say that I am very grateful to both my supervisors for the excellent feedback they provided on my first draft. I have been noticing that their clear comments make it possible for me to systematically revisit my writing, think about what is missing and explore the changes which are required. I am managing to do this relatively calmly. Last week I had the opportunity to discuss this paper with  both GP & SB in a Skype conversation and that helped me probe the issues worrying me even further.  

The revision process is made up of rereading my text, thinking, becoming acquainted with suggested literature, playing around with new ideas, writing and rewriting.  I am lucky to have the Passover break to devote myself to this writing.

The more I read the more I find there is to read, I just wish I had more time to devote to this endeavor, I really do enjoy it!

Today I am a student… – more identity issues

I have written often about my varied roles and identities, and usually I concentrate on the struggle to devote enough time and energy to each role. When I am Nikki the teacher, I am constantly troubled that I  am not devoting enough time and / or effort to my PhD and when I do grab the time for my studies, I always have a nagging conscience that I’m not “working”.

Friday is usually my main PhD day – getting up at 4 am well before the family and throwing myself into whatever I’m supposed to be doing (my literature review at the moment). Yesterday I did something different. I got into the car at 6:30 am and drove all the way to Tel Aviv University, to join an Israeli forum for PhD students. The group is run under the auspices of the Tel Aviv sociology school but is open to other humanities research students. Yesterday there was an interesting session with Dr Nitza Berkovitch from Ben Gurion University.

The session was about building an academic career, in particular how, when and why to present at conferences. I gained a lot from the information supplied but also from just “being there”. I need these pushes every now and again. I need to say to myself: “Yes, Nikki, you really are a PhD student, you really are writing a doctorate…”. When I can stop and say these things to myself, I get tremendous pleasure from “being there”, feeling a student, acting as a student and even being able to imagine the day when I will be able to devote myself to research, teacher learning …

As soon as I sat down in the lecture room, organized in a circular fashion, I saw an ex-student of mine. I recognized her immediately, even though I haven’t seen her for 20 years and despite the fact that she was 11 and in grade 6 when I saw her last. When we left the room I approached her and said hello. She recognized me instantly and said “Nikki!”.

“You remember me?” I asked. “Of course” she replied, “I especially remember you reading books to us and I remember the question and answer box you made for us for our sex education lessons”.

I was happy to meet her and happy that there were things I did which were significant. However, the meeting did other things for me. The whole identity issue washed over me again – I came here as a student but even here I can’t be just  a PhD student. Maybe I should come to terms with the fact that my roles are so intertwined that they can’t ever be separated. When I am acting as a leader of professional learning, I am talking to the teachers as a colleague, as a teacher. When I am writing my doctorate, I am writing it as a researcher (still don’t feel comfortable with that title!) but also as a teacher and teacher educator.

Something else happened when I met my student, I also felt old – something I deal with every time I put my PhD hat on. How on earth can one of my grade 6 students be doing a PhD?

I walked away smiling happily. I had a wonderful day!

Disappointment…

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When I returned from the conference in Be’er Sheva, I sat down and wrote two long emails to presenters who do similar work to mine. I approached them both after they gave their papers and both suggested I make contact. Unfortunately, neither of them even replied to me. Shame…

Maybe there is more to this?

In the past there have been at least two others, people who I know are doing interesting work in the field of narrative here in Israel and they didn’t respond either. Should I be taking this personally?

 

image: http://www.everystockphoto.com/photo.php?imageId=3622