The psychological and the cognitive: two sides of one coin

I had great plans for the week – I had baptized it my Bernstein week – having decided I would devote the week to reading Bernstein's original work. So on Saturday I was at the OU doing all the preparations, along with a range of administrative tasks, having also decided that until I came to Cape Town in March, I would be working on Saturdays. Then came Monday morning, and I just didn't want to get out of bed. I had forgotten that my psychological well being influences my ability to work effectively on this PhD. If something upset or affects you at a psychological or emotional level, it's bound to spill over into all the other aspects of your life. Emotional well being I suspect is a cornerstone of completing a PhD successfully. So just like I have to nurture and attend to my intellectual and cognitive needs and requirements, I have to maintain a positive and healthy emotional state; Being aware that problems or concerns in the other aspects of my personal life will invariable affect my work levels and my ability to concentrate. But life happens right? This is something I always used to tell my students – you can't forget about life while you are studying – and in my case the PhD happens right alongside my life. Today talking to a friend about what it takes to do a PhD or indeed become a PhD student – I was saying that it's more about being able to preserver through the whole variable and challenging process, with all its highs and lows, than a testament of one's cognitive or intellectual astuteness. Yes, you need some level of cognitive ability – but it's so essential having the necessary character to see the project through to its completion. So Monday was a 'lost' day – I just couldn't get going – instead I watched movies – deflected my reality onto the lives of some make-believe characters on a screen. Tuesday and Wednesday have been a lot better. I suspect that this is also just part of the process, after all I am only human, and my emotions are the basis of who I am, so I should at least acknowledge them. But it does make me wonder about the extent to which my personal happiness could/might dictate my productivity and the lengths to which I am prepared to go to ensure a healthy and positive emotional disposition.

More grappling in the mix

Today I attended the OU Academic Literacies group – an informally arranged group of academics and PhD students who see their research work as being broadly located under the academic literacies research perspective agenda. We were discussing the role, purpose and function of writing in HE. It’s a question I proposed and one that I don’t really understand and I wanted to use the expertise in the room (aka Mary Lea and Theresa Lillis) to illuminate my dull brain on this issue. I came prepared – with my spanking new digital voice recorder, to help with the failing memory and concentration brought about by middle age creeping up on me, and SA treats, springbok biltong, fruit flakes and a vuvuzela for my supervisor (hopefully to act as a mediating tool should the conversation get too rowdy). I came away from the meeting aware that in this context i.e. a British research focused academic environment, asking a simple question like, “What role does writing play in an HE academic context” will not generate a simple response. Maybe I was naïve in my thinking that I would get an articulate and detailed response of how these esteemed academics viewed this topic, one that I believed was fundamental to their core work. Instead our conversation revealed the layers, upon layers of various vantage points that construct how writing is understood in HE. I was reminded of ‘position’ – staking out a position in relation to the theoretical, ideological, or identity (i.e. researcher or practitioner) stance that informs how you approach the question or the lens you select to engage with the topic. I wondered if I really understood what it meant to take an academic literacies perspective on learning, writing and communication practice in HE? I wondered if I had made up my mind about whether I identified as a researcher or practitioner and how my South African identity and history impacted on how I theorised and conceptualised the broader issues associated with my research project. Interestingly and probably rather profoundly – both Theresa and Mary felt that it was very hard for research to be ‘translated’ seamlessly into pedagogic practice and that what is valued or accepted say within an academic literacies perspective is often strongly contested outside of that realm, exposing the ideological and power dynamics always at play. This is an accepted position within the ac lits field, and one pioneered by theorist like Brian Street, which argues and accounts for why one kind of literacy invariably attracts more value and status than another. This isn’t a very comforting conclusion to the imagined ideal I have been cultivating, that my academic literacies research is going to help me make curriculum and pedagogic practices more responsive to student needs. Thanks to my fancy new digital recorder I will be able to reflect retrospectively on the discussion and possibly gain a more refined ‘reading’ of the discussion and maybe, just maybe pinpoint my ‘position’ lurking in the background and waiting to emerge in all its glory.

Culture or individual style?

 

I've had an extended break from my academic work, spending three weeks in Cape Town. I returned to the Open University on Monday. Besides relaxing in the summer sun, soaking up my family and enjoying the company of friends, I also had the chance to connect, chat and share my research ideas with some colleagues and friends. I was stuck by the generosity of ideas, encouragements, constructive feedback and firm direction offered. But more importantly the sheer interest in my work – genuine interest. Coming back to England I am questioning whether the difference I have experienced in the academic domain here at the OU is a cultural one, or down to the individual style, even personality of academics? I had this very discussion today with a colleague and surprisingly we were pondering the same question. I thought that my experience was unique, but we were both grappling with whether to ascribe the disconnection, sometimes indifference and general unease we are experiencing with the whole supervision process to culture or personal style. Of course there is the issue of gender that we cannot exclude – again an issue that I shared in common with my friend, although with a slight role reversal in his case. It's not that our supervisors don't care or aren't interested – there is just this unknown 'something' that's affecting the learning/development process. For me this was brought into sharp focus in Cape Town. Maybe I'm used to firm, but encouraging direction and guidance administered at the right time. Maybe it's comforting and a relief not to search for words and feel tongue tie each time you are trying to explain or articulate your opinion and ideas within the supervision context. Maybe it's the knowledge that you are 'accepted', rather than constantly feeling you need to prove yourself and demonstrate your intelligence to be taken seriously. Maybe it's this strange, muddled, ambiguous stage I'm currently in – one where I think I should be more in touch with the theoretical and conceptual boundaries of my research and have a direction I wish to follow – but in reality I feel more like I've just jumped out of a plane, hundreds of miles from the ground and waiting for the parachute to open, ever conscious that I'm hurdling down to earth to my certain death, completely reliant on some tiny mechanism that will allow the chute to open and save me from being spattered like a bug on a windscreen. I want to have perspective and see the bigger picture; I want to know the general direction I need to head in – even if I am aware that the details, the specifics might change in the long run. Instead I have to rely on that 'little mechanism' that will save me.

 

I spoke to one of my supervisors today – I wanted to tell her that I was thinking of shifting my research focus. Based on my discussions in Cape Town I realised that I needed to reassign the Bernsteinian focus in my project for many reasons – that it might redirect my focus away from the academic literacies field into the scholarship of knowledge, that it has methodological implications forcing me to shift my unit of analysis away from student practices to that of staff, and rather fundamentally that if I really wanted to understand Bernstein and his project, making it a fundamental element in my work, I would need expert guidance to help me unpack and make sense of his theories. All I had been doing until now was skirting the periphery of his work and possibly getting it wrong too. While I have come to this realisation I still haven't been able to say – 'Well I'm not doing that, but I am doing this'. Today in my meeting I was trying to point this out, trying to make a case that I didn't know what my ultimate goal was and that it was important for me to unpack exactly what it is I wanted to uncover and possibly how I wanted to uncover the questions I felt needed answering. My supervisor in her wisdom (and I mean this with great respect because it is her wisdom that I acknowledge, appreciate and trust), was trying to reassure me that, the road is uncertain until you have data (that little mechanism???), and that attempts to pin down frameworks, directions, positions until you have data is near impossible. While I accept this in 'theory', in practice it is the most uncomfortable and frustrating conversation to have. Again making me wonder – is this culture or personal style? Why do I think that in SA I would have been helped to work out possible routes that would help in a very broad and general way to get to my proposed destination? Or am I being biased???

 

I've come away thinking – I don't care, I want to know where I'm heading, I want to have a 'workable, flexible' research question and general research area, with possible conceptual fields I might want to draw on, consider and explore. I need to have a rough map, that I can amend, colour in, adding textures and contours as I go along; but hell I need the freaking map – and anyone who knows me, will know that I really don't know my left from my right – so the map is essential. I believe, trust in 'the process' – my supervisor is basically highlighting the process – so why am I seemingly resisting, scared of, circumventing 'the process' – is it cultural or individual style?