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Friday 30 October 2009

PhD as Process

Yet another interesting but slow week in the progress of my PhD. Officially I’ve been at it for just about a month and psychologically it’s a big shift from what I was doing last year. I feel more relaxed, less anxious and probably more excited about my work than I was last year. At the moment I am worrying a bit about the pace of my progress and wonder if I should be working more. I’ve decided to work everyday even if it’s only for 2 hours and so far I have been able to maintain this work ethic. I had two insightful conversations this week about the nature of the PhD; one with a lecturer who works in my building, Jan – who inadvertently asked how things were going and then 15 minutes later we were still chatting while my tea got cold, and the other one with my supervisor Robin – again an informal chat meant to last 20-30 minutes, but that went on for at least an hour. The main thrust of both these conversations; or rather what I took out of these conversations is the notion of the PhD as process. The value of having an understanding of, and developing reflective insight about what, how and when you are doing something. Also how your research fits in or challenges current debates in your field and in broader arena of higher education. Most importantly I am in control of the process, I need to shape it and take out of it what I need most. Very scary thought!




Robin and I were also talking about Bernstein (of course) and his main project i.e. finding ways to make education more accessible and equal to working class kids. I was saying to Robin that I wasn’t sure of the extent to which I wanted to use Bernstein and whether my research agenda was overtly seeking to change pedagogic practices in favour of working class kids getting access to the ‘goods of the academy’. Reflecting a bit more on this issue, I realised that even if I don’t overtly seek to pursue this agenda – issues of discrimination and inequality inherent in education (irrespective of the context) will come to the surface and I will be confront with it and will have to make a decision about what I do about it. Ignore it, or confront it, highlighting the inequalities and provoke change. Thus making a politic stand or using my research to take a political position. Again scary stuff…



I’m starting to see the educational world and its processes through the lenses provided by Bernstein (without understanding all the complex bits and pieces) and I feel proud of myself in a small way – because I understand his theories in sufficient depth to conceptualise its working in the practices I encounter. Next week I have to put all these loose and floating thoughts into a coherent format and present some written motivation for why I want to use his work and the possible value it might offer.

Monday 26 October 2009

and my brain went blank!

It's been a slow start to the week. I just couldn't get my brain working today. It must have taken me all of 3 hours to write a 300 word abstract on the findings of my MRes research. I want to write a paper, ready for a conference or better yet submission to a journal, focusing specifically on the nature of student academic literacy practices in the web design and development course I investigated, while I have the time.

Browsing over my dissertation the words on the various pages seemed like they were written by an anonymous somebody, because I did not recognise it as being my own knowledge. Surely if someone asked me about my research, in general or the various concepts I used in particular, I would be unable to answer them in any articulate manner. This got me thinking...How the hell will I be able to 'hold' onto all the information I will no doubt gather over the next couple of year and coherently talk  about it? I always believed that one's knowledge is consolidated through its practical application. Once you work with concepts they become real for you, once you can apply them to other situations, you see how they can work in practice and through this process your understanding and indeed knowledge is enhanced. So how will all of this work when all I am doing is a theoretical, abstract and internal process with limited practical validation? Am I meant to wait for everything to come to me once I have written the thesis, defended it in the viva, been awarded with the degree and then unleached to the poor unsuspecting minons (no disrespect intended) who think I should now know it all? All these questions and so little answers. Process! I need to allow the process to do its 'thang' and make a self-respecting, knowledge harbouring and sharing academic/intellectual out of me.

Wednesday 21 October 2009

Different tribes

Things have been pretty slow these past couple of days. Went to the OU Social Science Students Praxis seminar today. Very interesting. Someone from SA talked about spaticality and the informal sector (I'll come back to this in a moment). I thought the seminar would focus on research methodologies etc, but the main focus seemed to be a 'space' where students could present their findings.

Reflecting on some of the work I've been reading around academic disciplines and how knowledge has been compartmentalised into different 'tribes' (not sure who first used this term in this way) it was interesting to see all of this being played out as students did their presentations. Also viewed from a academic literacy practice perspective the 'practices' evident in the room clearly delinated the group as 'social scientists' and in particular are Human Geography researchers. I was amazed at the nomalisation used and how everyone in the room seemed to automatically agree with the usage of certain terms. They were'nt contested althought I was saying to myself  "What the hell does governmentality mean?" Two of the presented were used ethnography methodologies and often these sounded like autoethnographies - yet no questions were raised about the methodologies or indeed the problems or concerns associated with participant observation or research reactivity/reflexivity. It was almost as if the methodology was taken as given. Another interesting issue was how their work was framed by a 'grand' (for want of a better word) social theory or philosophy (all three presenters drew extensively on Foucault) whereas my work and the work in my field, while acknowledging these ideas or base theoretically views, have used them to formulate theories about education or learning or literacy practices in education. These students are certainly doing research for research sake - producing knowledge for the purpose of understand a phenomena in more detail and adding to what is already known about it. Taking me back to a debate I had with a tutor last year - the very distinquished Martyn Hammersley - about the purpose of research and what its purpose should be. I am of the opinion that research needs to be directed by some purpose beyond simply doing it to enhance knowledge, rather there should be some practical outcome. Research for research sake is something of a luxury that very few of us can pursue - as a practitioner I feel the power of research lies in its ability to provide insights into practical everyday problems or dilemmas face by ordinary people.

The socio-cultural ways of using reading and writing in this context though was the most interesting to see and I'm pleased that I can look at these situations and almost automatically consider the literacy practices at play and what the 'sakes' are for those able to draw on and engage with the necessary practices. Also interesting is the issue of contextual influence of the discipline, the discourse, the field, the tribe that acts to regulate what knowledge is acceptable, recognised and sanctioned - and of course who gets left behind when not conforming to the social norms that governing the social interaction.

Monday 19 October 2009

British Library

Thanks to Stephen my friend and colleague from the OU, I was introduced to the 'glory' of the British Library today. I was most impressed. Sure I have often done a document delivery via the OU so gained access to their catalogue, but to actually use their library was amazing. The building is rather modern and their approach to the space and how a library should be used could be described as rather progressive. Free WiFi every where, cafes and open spaces for people to sit and chat and work. So the place is alive and a buzz with people and conversation and activity. But then they have these reading rooms, where you enter into silence and I guess into a community of like minded people all focused on gained the most from the books spread out in front them. I guess its this community that is so absent from my life at the OU and maybe I can find some of it at the British Library.

I've started to plot how I might use Bernstein's pedagogic device and its relationship with the core focus of my research, student academic literacy practices. But its early days yet!

Sunday 18 October 2009

Basil Berstein and me

I've been reading the work of Basil Bernstein - the leading sociologist of education who sadly died in September 2000. I'm trying to find a theoretical framework to understand and account for, what one of my supervisors, Mary Lea, calls 'institutional conditions'. All the structural things within an academic setting that has an influence on student academic literacy practices. So I'm looking at the immense and influential work of Bernstein. He proposes a theory of codes that allows one to describe how knowledge is produced, transmitted and reproduced - but most importantly, the consequences to different groups of these processes. Basically for Bernstein - education, rather than fulfilling its ideological role of eradicating social class advantages in schooling and society, reproduces the gross inequalities in society, which especially disadvantage children of the working class. His theory offers many concepts and rules, like classification (the degree of boundary maintence between areas of knowledge or subjects), framing (the control exercised over the selection, organisation, pacing and timing of knowledge transmission in the pedagogic relationship between students and teachers) and the pedagogic device (that helps to explain how knowledge is recontextualised into academic forms and structures). Ultimately, he links these processes to broader society especially social class and power relations. I'm wondering how I could use his theories, his work. How I will get to understand his theories and which would be most applicable. I've also wondered about the ontological value and linkage between his theories and those of academic literacies. Are they compatible? Can they be used together? But more importantly are my research aims similar to those of Bernstein's project is i.e. uncovering/accounting for the structural basis for educational inequality prevalent in the research site I'm exploring? I'm starting to think that I need to become clear about what exactly I want this project to become. What do I really want to focus on? What are the core issues and what are the issues that can happily sit on the perimeter? Is my study primarily about academic literacies or is it a sociological project? How can I marry these two theoretical aspects and what possible compromises need to be made by each marriage partner? Alternatively I might be seeing the whole thing in a rather reductionist way into an either/or choice I have to make. The sociological aspects of Bernstein's work is very exciting but also very daunting- his theories are complex and I'm struggling to make sense of all the rules and interpretations of the rules and of course the underlying philosophical/ideological tenants of his theories. Maybe I'm just too scared to embrace a critical theory perspective, being happy to inhabit an interpretativist realm where all views are possible.
My task then for the coming week is to unpack and unearth Mr Bernstein a little more, dig a bit deeper and see what I can find. Hopefully in this whole process my understanding will be enhanced and I can come a bit closer to answering some of the questions posed above or, even better, reframe them.

Saturday 17 October 2009

An so it starts

At my first supervision meeting on Tuesday this week, one of my supervisors, Robin, 'innocently' suggested I start a blog-as-reflective-research-journal. Since then I've had the though running through my brain. Should I? Should'nt I? Seems the 'should' option succeeded in winning this battle. Blogging seems to be the 'new' space academics are meant to crave out for themselves. A place where they can raise their profile or go digital. So I was rather cynical about having yet another digital profile, and what this might signal to the world out there. But Robin was clear about how I could regulate who could or could'nt have access to my post, and that sort-of provided some reassurances. Also having started the research process (whatever that might mean) I've had all these thoughts float around in my head. So writing it down seemed like the natural thing to do. With a blog the natural space for those writings. I've just been reading a book on English punctuation so very aware of my useless spelling and grammar and therefore think I need to place some proviso, for 'followers' or whatever you call people who follow and comment on blogs, about correcting my spelling and grammar. Mmm, that won't work well for theacademic profile I'm hoping to build with this blog. So my first post does'nt add anything significant associated with the supposed aim of this blog. Maybe next time.