Wordle clouds as a way of looking at my freewriting

Not all of the reflective freewriting is up to sharing on this blog – some of it is just intuitive rambling to start me thinking. This kind of writing indeed helps me identify my knowledge in a specific area and helps me generate the questions I need as I dive back into the literature.

I have been using the 750 words web site to give me motivation to write every day. It seems to be working and I may reflect in detail on the influence of that tool in the near future. Meanwhile, if I’m not posting some of what I am writing I will present the wordle cloud as a record of what I’ve been thinking about.

I often use Wordle clouds as a way of looking at a text from a different perspective – somehow breaking it up and jumbling the text like that and emphasizing terms and concepts which are high frequency gives me an additional way in to my thoughts.

Question of the day: Why qualitative research?

 

New start… exciting

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…

Changing directions in methodology

This morning I read chapter 7 in the book I mentioned yesterday:

Kouritzin, S. G., Piquemal, N. A., & Norman, R. (Eds.). (2008). Qualitative research challenging the orthodoxies in standard academic discourse(s). New York: Routledge.

The author, Suhanthie Motha, describes her research journey. Originally intending to base her study of beginning teachers on classroom observations and teacher interviews, Motha was encouraged to change her methodology when her participants felt the need for some kind of group interaction.

I was particularly interested in the way the author describes her role as “connected” researcher and deals with the dilemmas which arose when the way she saw classroom incidents differed from the way  teachers related them in her story.

The author  relates to her teacher partners (as she calls them and not participants) in a respectful and open relational manner. They really are partners in the generation of knowledge in this study. Motha describes her methodology as disturbing the traditional researcher heirarchy. She quotes Motha and Wong (2005) explaining that this blurring of roles enables  “inquiry that is truly dialogic, in which learning is a two-way street”. Sensitivity to issues connected to power and the nature of knowledge are central to this chapter.

In this chapter I was introduced to the work of Michelle Fine (1992) who presents three different stances that researchers can adopt in their writing: ventriloquy, voice, and activism. This is indeed an interesting way of analysing how the researcher is relating to the participant and his or her story. Motha is attempting to follow an approach of activism which she explains with a quote from Fine (p. 41): as a “deep responsibility to assess critically and continually our own, as well as informants’, changing opinions” .

I will certainly return to these definitions when I try to describe my methodology.

I admire Motha’s honesty when she admits:

“What I’m learning to accept is that this work is still me telling someone else’s story” (p. 116).

Despite the dialogic nature of this study, despite the concious effort to present the stories she heard around her kitchen table as they were intended and told, and despite the significant disturbance of the traditional researcher-teacher heirarchy, the author acknowledges the limitations in her study as it is written.

Motha, S. (2008). Afternoon tea at Su’s: Participant voice and community in critical feminist ethnography In S. G. Kouritzin, N. A. Piquemal & R. Norman (Eds.), Qualitative research: Challenging the orthodoxies in standard academic discourse(s). New York: Routledge.

Non-standard research – A dedication

I have just come across an interesting book:

Kouritzin, S. G., Piquemal, N. A., & Norman, R. (Eds.). (2008). Qualitative research challenging the orthodoxies in standard academic discourse(s). New York: Routledge.

On opening the first pages I met a thoughtful and  inspiring dedication:

“This book is dedicated to all the graduate students and academics who, by choosing to engage in non-standard research, have chosen a path that might generate uncertainty, vulnerability, tension and ambiguity as much as it might generate positive personal, academic and social change”.

At this stage of my academic journey I can certainly relate to the “uncertainty, vulnerability, tension and ambiguity” as I struggle with those feelings daily. I can report that I have already experienced personal change but I will have to wait and see whether I am able to have any kind of real academic or social influence. I certainly hope so!

Institutional Ethnography – Dorothy Smith

I have been trying to acquaint myself with the work of Dorothy Smith for some time. Although GP suggested I read Smith’s work on several opportunities, I continually found that I couldn’t see the connection to my own work. I kept putting her articles aside for later on.
Last week I had the opportunity to attend a lecture on Institutional Ethnography and the work of Smith by Dr Orly Binyamin at the Bar – Ilan University.
Before the lecture I reread an article by Smith and arrived with one question in mind: How is Institutional Ethnography connected to my research? How is it relevant?

I learned from the session that Institutional Ethnography is a “methodological perspective”, that you don’t have to “do an Institutional Ethnography”, that you can let the ideas, the perspective color your research.

I was interested to learn that IE is a way of approaching interviews, of opening up the opportunities  contained in interviews by concentrating on the social information they contain. Dr Binyamin stressed that often the context of the interview is far more important than the themes which emerge from the interview transcript.

IE aims to map the social environment in which interviewees act. It aims to explore the connections between these various contexts.

IE explores relations of control and places emphasis on public policy. It examines how these policies affect the interviewees.

IE contends that people in the field possess knowledge and can teach us from their experience. It is the researchers responsibility to take that knowledge one step further in order to promote change. The information possessed by the people in the field isn’t enough as they often don’t have the opportunity to understand the institutional framework which shapes their reality. This is an alternative to research which simply describes behaviour – this is research which promotes action.

Binyamin stressed that we are adding on to the knowledge of the interviewees and not questioning it. The everyday knowledge of the participant is relevant and real. The researcher takes this information and widens the viewpoint and examines it. We are all trapped in our own very specific worlds. Binyamin gave the example of an interview with a cleaner about his or her work. The researcher can hear all of his or her experience and knowledge about the job but will move on to ask others. There are other people, administrators, managers, etc who can shed light on the work of the cleaner through the examination of policies and texts (like contracts) which can shed different light on the professional reality of the cleaner.

Often we are partaking in relationships of control without being aware of it.

In Ethnography the researcher aims to arrive at the study in order to explore, in order to discover. The researcher begins with “I don’t know”.

The term “ruling relations” relates both to structural procedures and texts. Smith explains that often an individual believes that he or she is making their own decision without being aware that they are in fact conforming to the demands of social or institutional forces. Institutional policy enters our personal and professional lives and influences our actions. IE asks what we can learn about the social, the public aspects and not just the reality of the individual. Public refers to the context outside the home.

IE exmines the external contexts in addition to the internal world of the interviewee.

According to Smith the personal is political and the political is personal. In ethnology the political was often neglected.

Binyamin warns that IE is complicated and that she doesn’t allow her PhD students to try it.

What is important to hear in interviews?

  • Daily routines
  • how the everyday makes sense to the interviewee
  • What it means to belong to a certain group

IE suggests asking the interviewee what change is necessary? This is of course the connection to action…

Questions that need to be asked later:

  •  who are various interests and ruling relations paying service to?
  • How are the implications of policy permeating the reality of participants?
  • How are decisions made?
  • What discourses are being used (medical, legal…)?

Often in IE the researcher decides who else to intervew after hearing the participant.

Binyamin explained that IE offers concepts which can be useful in other methodologies. The study must be feasible, she warned against getting “carried away” – there is always a wider circle ready to be approached and interviewed.

The lecture concluded with the words: “Overturn what you took for granted and thought you knew…”.

Feedback!

thinking

Yesterday afternoon I presented a narrative I wrote over the recent holidays to the group of doctoral students I joined. First I must say that because of the meeting I was forced to sit down and write and the result was a 2500 word narrative about the teacher stories written by the teachers participating in my courses. I chose to write the narrative in a similar style to those I wrote for my MEd thesis and my article in English in Australia.

One of the things that interested me was the fact that I chose to write this narrative in Hebrew and not in English. I have been pondering over the reasons for this and have come up with three:

  1. I wanted to receive significant feedback from the group and thought it would be easier to achieve this if the text was in the members’ mother tongue
  2. The context of the narrative and the teacher-texts contained in it are Hebrew based
  3. I am thinking about my work more in Hebrew.

In my thesis examiners’ report, BD suggested I look into the bilingual aspect of my work more closely. He suggested I do far more than simply translating sections directly from one language to the other. I’m still not sure what this means…

I was surprised to receive compliments on the writing of the narrative, all three members commented on the readability and interest in the text. When I sent them the file, I was aware that I was feeling OK about sharing my writing and that I am definitely more confident about my writing skills than I was two years ago.

Most of our meeting was around the difficult “So what?” questions and the “What is this text?” “Do you consider this a research text?” “How does this fit in?” questions. I still find it very difficult to answer these questions and it was very important for me to sit and try and answer them intelligently and clearly. Many points arose and I have a lot of thinking to do to try to make things clearer.

I will write more about this soon, maybe then I will have some orderly thoughts (see image…). 

 

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

Bits and Pieces

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?

Private readings in public : schooling the literary imagination by Dennis Sumara

One of the books GP introduced me to while I was in Melbourne was:

Private readings in public : schooling the literary imagination by Dennis Sumara.

Sumara

I want to start with some short quotes in which Sumara describes the research process. I found this first chapter of the book very reassuring – I will attempt to explore the reasons why.

“This is also what it means to include research into one’s life. Like the reading of literary fictions, inquiry into lived experiences means deciding that the research will not simply be reduced to a series of “data gathering” tasks. Rather, it means that the researcher will dedicate her or his life to “learning to see” differently… the researcher must live a life that allows for this shift in perception, a life that includes a particular “focal practice”… (p. 9).

I believe that my decision to continue on with my study journey, beyond my Masters degree is strongly connected to this change in focus described by Sumara. I have honestly begun to learn to see the world in general and my work as an educator, in particular, differently.  I admit that this learning will probably be life long and that reflection and inquiry  will  be be developed slowly over time. I feel that every professional conversation, every text read and every new project which arises is somehow new material to be explored.

“During the course of my investigations into the schooling of shared reading there were many times when I felt a bit lost, unsure, confused and wished for the “good old” pre-determined research plan. In retrospect, I am pleased that I chose to put up with the ambiguity of it all, for although many deliberate decicisions were made that changed the course of the research path, as many unanticipated things occured that dramatically altered the course of my own understanding” (p. 11-12).

Each time I read another researcher openly admitting to the insecurities encounted on the road to success, I am relieved and grateful for their honesty. I imagine that my path will be crowded with questions, problems, dilemmas, dissatisfaction and doubt. The more I am convinced that this is natural and normal, the easier it will be to cope.

When I finished my Masters thesis and reflected on the process, I, like Sumara, was “pleased that I chose to put up with the ambiguity of it all”. I would never have reached my goal without it. Even now, I have no idea how the parts of the puzzle fit together, it certainly wasn’t planned ahead.

“I describe my inquiries as “post modern” because I am not claiming (or aiming) to present a unified, fixed or complete theory of reading or of shared reading in schools. I acknowledge that my inquiries evolved from a particular set of historical, cultural, and political situations that shaped not only my research method but my interpretations of the data that was gathered and the life that I lived around those inquiries and interpretations” (p. 12).

This quotation is brilliant and it seems I should read it aloud to myself at each intersection in my work. One of my goals is to look at how my interpretations are developing and how my life experience and my particular cultural context are influencing my work.

“There is a deep understanding that there is no word, no phrase, no theory, no narrative, that can ever capture the fullness of human thought and experience” (p. 14).

Another sentence that should be hung up above the desk. Experience and narrative are not the same thing. I should be exploring the relationship between them more.

This IS your father’s paradigm… / Patti Lather

Lather wrote this article in an attempt to understand the US government push for “evidence-based” scientific research in education. In this move, “the reductionisms of positivism, empiricism, and objectivism are assumed” (p. 16).

The author sees the return to the mandate of scientific research to be a reaction to the growth of alternative research methods and their use by women and political and cultural minorities.

Lather  explains that this is not the first time that scientific method as a solitary research path has been critiqued. She admits that she believed that there was a chance for policy to be shaped by non-traditional research.

Addressing this restricting connection between government policy and scientific research , Cochran-Smith (2002) wrote that in order to be financially supported “educational research must be evaluated “using experimental or quasi-experimental designs… with a preference for random-assignment experiments (Cochran-Smith , 2002, as cited in Lather, 2004, p. 18).

Lather reminds us that “The shift to qualitative methods in the 1970s was related to the difficulties of measuring what is educationally significant and th limits of causal models given the preponderance of interaction effects” (p. 20).

Which organizations are running after research money?

Which studies are encouraged and for what purposes?

Who pays for research grants and why?

Lather calls for educational researchers to refrain from following the natural sciences. She encourages researchers to ask complex questions, those that do not have single dimensional answers and in doing so, to “foster understanding, reflection, and action instead of a narrow translation of research into practice” (p. 23).

Lather sets out to disrupt the dominance of the white, male, academic voice in the production of educational knowledge.

Lather argues that although non-traditional research cannot be judged on “objectivity and systematicity” (p. 24), it is no less capable of valid knowledge production.

Lather optimistically remarks that “A rich production of counter-narratives is alive and kicking” (p. 26).

I believe I am part of this movement, making an effort to make other, more diverse voices heard in the production of educational knowledge.

Lather explains “… there is virtually no agreement … as to what constitutes science except, increasingly, the view that science is, like all human endeavor, a cultural practice and practice of culture” (p. 28).

 

 

Lather, P. (2004). This IS your father’s paradigm: Government intrusion and the case of qualitative research in education. Qualitative Inquiry,10(1), 15-34. doi:10:10.1177/1077800403256154