resolutions for a new year

I'm somehow feeling compelled to write something about the year drawing to a close and the one just in front of me. But what can I say about 2011? There were good times, there were bad times, there were challenging times - no more or less than any other year I guess. It's the year I finally started to see my research become a practical reality as I stepped in the field with enthusiasm and excitement. It was also the year that I spent 6 months in my home town and really didn't want to return to the UK but forced myself anyway. It's the year I almost cried in supervision twice and the year I felt the cold in the UK for the first time. I probably hated my PhD most in this year but also decided that it was time to stop hating it and focus on seeing the positive in the whole experience even if I wasn't learning the 'stuff' I thought I would/should be learning. It's also been the year that I felt least capable intellectually to complete the PhD...a serious blow to my confidence. I finally started to see and comprehend the impact on my life of the decision to complete a PhD in the UK. I've been fundamentally changed by this experience...more so because I came to the UK, rather than simply doing the PhD. I have constantly wondered what it would have been like to do this PhD somewhere else, under different circumstances...how fundamentally it would have changed me then. But this is my path, this is what I'm meant to be doing at this point in my life and I'm meant to be having these experiences even if they have been deeply uncomfortable and challenging for the most part.

2012...the future in only a couple of days time...well if I did have a resolution it would be to finish my PhD in 2012 but in such a way that I still find some enjoyment in the exercise and that I still have the compassion to appreciate at face value the experiences of those around me also completing the same exercise. I want to stay positive even in the face of adversity and I expect adversity to live with me for most of the year to come, but I know this is just one of the many experiences that have/will shape my life...only one, no more significant or insignificant than what has come before this or that will follow. It just is. If I had a resolution to guide me through 2012 then I guess this will probably be it.

1 January 2011

Oh research questions change yet again...

These are more syntactical changes...oh whatever? I feel more comfortable with these at the moment anyway...

1.What are the literacy practices used to produce multimodal assignments in two vocational South African national diploma courses?

2.What knowledge types or practices become foregrounded through the production of multimodal assignments in two vocational South African national diploma courses?

3.Why do certain literacy practices and knowledge become privileged when such assignments are produced? 

Ending the year on a positive note!

I think this is what most of use hope for...that we can end the year in a positive, forward looking frame of mind. I'm grateful this is how I'm able to end the 2011 academic year. This is especially strange because on Sunday I couldn't have predicted it would turn out like this. It just happened really as a result of some rather accidental bumping into people and informal conversations about Christmas cards, the Christmas holidays, Sweden and Christmas carols. The past 3-6 months have been a trying time for me on all fronts and I've been hammered psychologically by constant self-doubt, confusion over how to take my research forward and what felt like divergent expectations. About 8 weeks ago I decided I would impose a positive spin on all things PhD related. This helped me think differently about how I wanted to communicate my immediate feelings about completing the PhD - it did not, however, help resolve the self-doubt that was (is?) constantly floating around me and seemed to be fanned by my formal supervision experiences. Yes, supervision as a concept, process, entity governing and informing the PhD has been an almost constant source of frustration and disdain for me, and this often had very little to do with my own supervision experiences. But finally the scales have tipped and I'm starting to think differently about supervision too. Not that I have forgotten or chosen to ignore all the issues of power and inequality that sustain this primary way in which the PhD process is managed and taught in most places across the globe...I have just come to realise that it is a process I need and want. That I need and want the input my supervisors make; their direction, guidance and insights are an invaluable part of my successful progress - I couldn't do it without them, I don't want to do it without them and if I doubted it before a series of events over the past week have made it clear to me that they have as much of a vested interest in me as I have in myself. We are all batting for the same team - Team Lynn. I also know that I have to trust them as I go into my final months in the run up to submission - and this trust must be built on sincerity not on the power and status they have. At the moment I have a sincere trust in them. So the year has ended well for me...I'm tired (physically and mentally), exhausted, pressured, confused, worried, insecure, sometimes slightly panicked, but I'm looking forward positively...2012 will happen and I will get out on the other side, that I completely know!

changing research questions

Following supervision earlier this week where my use of particular phrases where brought under the spotlight I've been rethinking my research questions. This sounds like a more focused activity than it really was. I have my research questions stuck up just above my monitor at my desk and along side my desk on the wardrobe in my room - my form of subliminal messaging.

Today while in the middle of a major 'stuck' crisis I looked up at my research questions and started to restructure them - so it was a rather serendipitous reaction - and it helped make me feel productive in a seriously unproductive day. Of course I could also see it as a bit of a distraction as I made changes and decided to print the results in colour and thus have to walk a flight of stairs to retrieve my printing for the colour printer in the department. All this walking up and down must have taken up at least 30 minutes of my day.  I've tried to make up for it tonight, after a failed attempt to be social and attend the Post Graduate Student Society's Xmas do...my attempt to be social didn't fail because I went, however the event itself was a major fail - boring as hell and over by 7:30pm! I forced myself to write for 30 minutes and ended up writing for at least 40 minutes and maybe, just maybe I think I might be un-sticking myself...slowly, lets hope this continues in the morning.

New research questions of course...for now anyway!

1.What are the literacy practices used to produce multimodal assignments in two vocational South African national diploma courses?

–Why do certain literacy practices become privileged when such assignments are produced?

2.What knowledge types or practices become foregrounded through the production of multimodal assignments in two vocational South African national diploma courses?

–Why do certain knowledge become foregrounded when such assignments are produced?

A bit repetitive hey...mmm, ok I suspect the subliminal effect will kick in again soon and produce yet another iteration.

An expert on qualitative data analysis

I had the privilege of listening to Martyn Hammersley talk about qualitative data analysis yesterday. Ok so it was about two months too late, but that didn't detract from the sheer quality and brilliance of the presentation. I think he is just such a good teacher - he is clear, comprehensive, knowledgeable, approachable, gentle, unassuming, open. While sitting in the room listening to him I kept thinking to me myself - I want to be able to talk like that about my research, about my research methodology - simple, clear English underpinned by a deep understanding of all the complexity that does into qualitative data analysis. It was such an inspiration. He was able to unpack the actual process of data analysis - in concrete, discrete, practical steps - without diminishing the complexity of the task. Some other interesting things he mentioned yesterday

- In planning a qualitative PhD research project (and more so for an ethnographic study) his estimation is that you need at least 1 1/2 years after all your data collection to finish the thesis (this means I'm about 3 months off)
- for an ethnographic project you cannot under estimate the amount of time required to 'process' your raw data and get it into a format where you can start to use it (again this took me roughly 3 months and I think I was super speedy)
- grounded theory is really an approach to research design, not a data analysis approach
- analysis software can't do the analysis for you, such software is most productively used for the storage, categorisation and retrieval of large sets of data

An excellent session and of course he invited us to e-mail him if we had any major questions which couldn't be addressed during the short time allocated to the session. Guess what I'm going to be doing?

thinking about learning

In my teacher days the issue of learning came up quite a bit. What do you understand as learning? How does learning happen? What is learning? How do you help someone to learn? I remember that in my role of 'curriculum officer' in my department we were tasked with helping lecturers try to connect their understandings or philosophies of learning with their teaching practice and to make these philosophies visible. In my teaching portfolio I too had to do a similar task - suggest what my philosophy of learning was and how my teaching approaches tried to match it.

Now I'm the learner and I have teachers who I guess are going through similar processes as I've outlined above in relation to my learning and their teaching. But as the learner I've also been thinking about my own learning, my learning during this PhD process. So how am I learning, what am I learning, what helps my learning, what hinders my learning, how does supervision help me to learn, how does talking about my research help me to help, how does writing help me to learn, what do I need to learn? Am I learning? These are such deeply personal, yet abstract, conceptual questions - open to interpretation, open to multiple, yet, valid responses or answers. I feel that at some level, yes, I can answer these questions, but at another, maybe personal, internalised, level I don't really know. Learning is not the same thing all the time - different contexts mean you learning differently, or need different things to help you learn, sometimes you learn unhelpful things too.

Accounting for what I've learnt at this point in the PhD process is a scary thing for me, while I know I'm learning I can't seem to quantify what exactly it is that I've been learning or exactly what it is I need to learn. I wonder also if I am learning but just haven't found a way to 'show', 'express', 'demonstrate' this learning in a way that I recognise and my teachers and peers recognise in the same way.

Yesterday when I was mulling over these points and wondering if indeed I had the necessary cognitive capacity to learn in the ways I think are expected of me, SLP pointed out that what your PhD experience is meant to highlight or affirm IS your able to learn and grapple with really complex issues. And I don't mean in terms of the social or status related recognition you get because you can craft a 100 000 word text, conforming to some or other prescription (I'm being a bit disparaging and dismissive here, when I do really appreciate the effort, on all fronts needed, to produce a PhD thesis) or turning you into an arrogant prick filled with self importance because you know a lot about a really small area of knowledge. But rather the PhD experience is meant to affirm and support this idea that you are learning (in all its glorious and most positive connotations) and that you have the capacity to learn in very tangible ways (even though it is within the very specific contextual reality of the PhD), rather than filling you with self-doubt.

analysis in my sights

I'm sitting at my desk at the OU and the sun (yes sun) is streaming into the room from the top window so that it is beaming down on me. It's amazing what the slightest bit of sunshine does for my disposition - it's hard to be negative with the sun shining in an otherwise grey, damp and cold country. I slept really poorly last night, fuelled by the slight panic I felt upon realising that I have so many things to do - academic and personal before leaving the UK in the next 10 or so days. A thought crossed my mind - would I cope to stay here at the OU all through Xmas simply to work? It has some sort of twisted romantic (if you're inlove with your studies that is) illusion about committment to ones work, that maybe, I secretly covert but would never be able to pull off (I think I'm probably too well adjusted for that kind of obsession). Work, work, work a constant love-hate relationship. All this moving around is so destablising - of course I say it's ok and that I can adjust when I arrive in the 'new' but 'temporary' surroundings - well the moving buys me the stuff I can't have, but desperately want, when sitting all alone in my bedroom in MK. So I have to convince myself that I can pull it off and I guess if my track record is anything to go by, I do pull it off about 85-90% of the time.

But I'm starting to get my teeth into my analysis and as it probably always does, it's turning all my preconceived notions about what 'my analysis' will look like on its head. In a good and productive way...I think, mostly! I'm at that point where I want to dig deeper and I want to think differently, explore other options, look at the data from different angles - all very exciting stuff, but also stuff that needs to be contained somehow. I've just completed the analysis of one practice in one of my cases - in the initial data description I wrote, the discussion of this practice accounted for maybe 3 pages - now in the first analytical iteration it's already a whopping 10 pages and I can see how I can still add depth to this rendition. I can't really see an endpoint just yet, only the possibilities of how it might fit in with an analytic frame that I can see slowly coming into being. Let's see if I can maintain this optomism as I work through all the other practice examples in my study and once I start to put my interpretations 'out there' for all to praise or trash.

Analysis mini-breakthrough and tension headache

I had a productive, unproductive day today. Since the weekend when I started work on my analysis framework I've developed a mild but continuous headache. On Saturday and Sunday I simply ignored the headache as it moved from the side of my head over to the front and then all the way back down into my neck. Yesterday I definitely registered it and took some paracetamol, but the bugger just didn't subside. I woke up with a more intense headache this morning - almost as if it was saying to me 'hey you take notice of me, I'm actually here to stay'. When I got to work this morning I took another two paracetamol and then went on to have this really productive meeting as I tried to once again ignore my throbbing head. The headache coincided with the analytical block I've been experiencing.

Last night was a pretty low point as I'd been sitting with my case studies, research questions, key words guiding the analysis process, theme ideas for most of the day yet couldn't see a way out of the maze. And of course my throbbing head didn't help either. Yeah I'd reworked my research questions but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how I was meant to approach the analysis - in a concrete, practical way. I had some ideas but they just didn't make sense, took more on a tangent of other theoretical concepts and approaches and I just couldn't see the wood for the trees. It felt like a thick impenetrable fog. I knew I need to speak to someone, I need to just bounce some ideas off someone else, explain what I was thinking and some of the connections I was making. Luckily for me I was able to do all of this today - explain myself, unpack my ideas and ask for direction - thank goodness for colleague/friends working with the same theoretical and methodological concepts. Yes JT came to my rescue this morning and gave me some concrete suggestions on how I could move forward...take the first step towards making sense. So it was productive morning, some of the fog lifting ever so slightly and the restoration of my faith in myself. Maybe my brain cells do actually function. The restorative value of  moving beyond these little, little impasses is completely amazing. I felt so stuck last night and today I see possibility, but also more than just possibility - I see something that is doable, writeable, within my reach. Maybe I can actually tell this story, maybe this story is actually worth tell after all.

So besides this mini breakthrough I haven't done much work since 12pm this afternoon, the headache forced me to come home by 2pm and I've been popping pills, sleeping and doing unrelated personal things since then. So, please Mr headache play along now and fade away so I can work on making the possibilities a reality, well at least in time for supervision next Tuesday.

in motion

The PhD is a process more than a product, certainly for me anyway. I suspect that I will remember the process more than the final thesis or product. Processes are invariably fluid - they are in motion - they change and aren't static. Over the past week I had to change my plans and adjust my deliverables for the next 2-3 months and so am feeling this sense of motion and maybe I'm also experiencing motion sickness. I was on course to work on my Research Methodology chapter over the next month but after a supervision meeting last week took up the suggestion that I should push ahead with the analysis process (yes another process). I've been avoiding analysis because I didn't (don't) feel comfortable with going down that route at the moment. Partly, I guess because I want to remain in a comfort zone of what I know, what I can handle and analysis feels like letting go of all the supports I've created for myself. But I though what the hell just do it. Take a stab! It's not a bad thing as I need to prepare for some presentations I hope to make in Cape Town and a book chapter I need to write. So in the grand scheme of things it probably is the right thing to do now.

Prompted by this push to analyse - I've been forced to revisit my research questions, in fact to go back to my whole research design. I went back to what I know, what I've worked with before to help structure and develop my design...the famous Maxwell model. I've now discovered that I only used it once over my PhD process which is a real shame because I've found it really productive in articulating and visualising my research design in previous work.

So in April 2010 this is what I was thinking...

In June 2010 until November 2011 these were my research questions

When I started my category indexing in October/November i.e. working with my data I refined my research goals, which I describe here as 'Intellectual Puzzle' using Jennifer Mason's terminology in the following way and linked it to my then research questions...

In the past week I've revisited the whole research design incorporating the new insights gained from the case studies I had written. The cases were primarily descriptive and lacked analytical insight and going back to the research design is an attempt to help focus the analytical work I have to do. So on December 1 2011 this is what my research design and research questions looks like...

My research questions aren't perfect and I'm still playing around with syntax and implied meaning, but these questions represent, in a far more coherent way, the emergent data. This unfolding creation in many ways reflects the iterative nature of research design in qualitative and ethnographic research and how almost constant adjustment to the five elements that make up the design structure will be required. In my past research work similar changes and movement were also evident, in many respects it was expected. Now I'm almost disappointed that I haven't been more flexible in my thinking and that I didn't use this approach more strategically, periodically to guide my thinking. Raising regrets, if I now look at my data or the gaps in my data I could produce a long list of 'disappointments' relation to what I should have done better when collecting my data...but again this is a common feeling/problem that many researchers experience and while I acknowledge these gaps, I still trust the integrity of the data collection procedures I used and I can comfortably work with the data I have. As a researcher using ethnographic, qualitative and interpretative methodologies how can you not be 'disappointed' with the data or not find gaps...I don't think one can even collect the 'perfect data', because there is always movement, motion, fluidity in your thinking, in your interpretation, in the influences on your interpretation. The trick is to manage that movement and create coherence and I think the Maxwell model might be a way for me to exercise this management. 

when is a draft really a draft?

I've just sent off a 'draft' for one of my case studies. I've been agonising about it for the past couple of days...it's just too rough around the edges and I probably need a good week to smooth it out. But what is a draft if not rough around the edges? I just haven't been able to get myself to accept this common sense, logical understand of what the term 'draft' might mean. I remember the days when I did have a more realistic understanding and appreciation for the notion of 'draft' when applied to my writing - I had a lot more freedom to express myself and enjoyed more sleep. Now I feel I'm crippled by having to get it 'just right' before I send it off, fearful of what the readers might think of me if my thoughts and ideas aren't tied together neatly and coherently. Anyway it's off and I have the beginnings of a case that can really become something wonderful (if I may say so myself) and insightfully tell a story about some complex practices and inspiring people...all I need is some more time to think, organise my thoughts, and the determination to make it a reality

Trying hard...HARD to make sense of my data

My desk at the OU

Papers everywhere, two computers surely this is a good sign of progress in making sense of one's data? Well I hope so anyway even if it's only symbolic -I'll take any help I can get at this point.

the work/life balance mystery

I took the weekend off and went to Brighton. The drive down was easy and practically stress free, considering the harrowing congestion of the English motorways. Brighton was light, bright, breezy and from my friend's large and inviting sofa I sat and watched a sea of tiny waves bob about. I didn't take my computer along which was bliss and so didn't look at e-mails or constantly check facebook for most of the weekend. It felt almost normal. Sunday was a heavenly day and I went out in only a fleece enjoying the sunshine, seagulls and blue sky, not the mention the non-academic conversation.

But of course by now work was starting to take up space at the back of my mind. I planned to leave at 3pm in the hope of avoiding the Sunday afternoon traffic and getting home with enough time to put in a few hours of work but, as usually happens, I only drove my little Micra pass the Brighton Pier at 4pm and was punished for this by having to endure a 3 hour drive back to Milton Keynes. I arrived drained, tired and certainly not in the mood to work. But I sat down at my computer and worked my way through corrections, to the case I've been working on, for maybe an hour, an hour and a half. I was slow and disinterested - usually a red light indicator to stop and come back to it later - I obliged.

Of course if I didn't take the weekend off I would have been further along, the corrections would have been done and I would have felt more interested in thinking differently about my writing and adding, changing, amending bits and pieces here and there. These tasks would not have spilt over into the new week that had new tasks and activities already assigned to it. Oh goodness and so it goes. Tuesday and I'm still trying to recover from my relaxing weekend away - said with a very sarcastic tone - it feels like 'the work/life balance' is a thing of mystery to me. I can't seem to grasp it - I know it's good for me and essential to my mental health and finishing this PhD but it's a slippery little bugger and my hands don't seem to have enough grip. Crazy!

trying a little positivity

I'm in the final 10 months of my funded PhD and I need to change, do things differently. For most of my time in the UK I've struggled with this experience, feeling more like a fish out of water. But since my return from Cape Town, after my fieldwork period, my levels of negativity towards 'the PhD' (I talk about it as if it were a physical thing, almost human like) have steady risen. And it doesn't really help my cause because I still want to complete this bit of research and I also acknowledge the validity of the outcome. So when I bad mouth 'the PhD' I bad mouth myself and that's not been very good for my general mental health. I realise that the most challenging bits to this whole process is likely be on the road ahead of me, in the next 10 months (and dare I say possible 11 or 12?), and if I want to get to the other side I need to be focused, calm, confident and positive. But above all of this, I don't like what all this negativity to doing to me as a person anyway. I also know that I've been here before - willing myself to be more positive and open towards the process and obviously I gotten a bit lost along the way - but it's only 10 months and I feel I ought to made more of an effort. I don't want my lasting memory of this experience to be one shrouded in negativity, even bitterness. So here I go again...to hope, positivity, tenacity, resilience, endurance and triumph over adversity...lets see if agency can overcome structure.

Sense of urgency

Its strange how time changes things and how new titles, identities and labels have an impact of what you do, how you do it and how you see yourself in the world. I've been a 3rd year PhD students for just over a month now and I feel profoundly different. Other 3rd year PhD students also seem different too. We are all more stressed, anxious, directed, intent. We come to our working space more frequently - especially those of us who have preferred to work from home in our previous life. Well I've made the shift to working at the OU for very practical reasons; a) it's warmer there, b) I have limited space in my new 'room' so all my books currently live on my work desk, c) my work/life balance is so up to shit that going to the OU once a day gives me an opportunity to step outside my flat and at least have some social contact. I think in my fantasy of how I should be 'doing' this PhD I sit working in a warm cosy room, filled with all my academic paraphernalia, and through the window I can look upon the world outside.


The PhD and its deadlines seem to hang heavy on our shoulders. There is a shift in the dynamic that defines this thing called 'doing a PhD'. I'm particularly anxious about my looming deadline - I mentioned, in passing to my supervisor on Monday, that I wish I had an extra three months, she relied calmly 'Well you can have another three months if you want'. But can I really? And if I had those three months would I feel less anxious? At the moment I'm so deadline driven it's insane and I just feel all my time frames are completely unrealistic. This focus on deadline seems to take away and hide the 'juicy' bits , the exciting and explorative dynamic of working with the data and the interpretative and analytical process that I'm currently in the middle of. I know people always lament about the tedium associated with analysis - when you are wrangling with the data in a bid to make sense of it - but I rather enjoy this part. Anyway enough navel-gazing I have a deadline to meet - 18 November!

an encouraging supervision

Yes it was. I was happy with how I managed the meeting and by all accounts my supervisors were happy with the case study I presented. My main concern with the case was understandability - was I able to present the case environment in such a way that my readers would get a comprehensive sense of the various dynamics present in that context. And would my writing be accessible, readable and descriptive enough. It seems I achieved my goal - so I'm relieved and now I also have a basic outline on which to model or structure the next case. Analysis still feels like a long way ahead of me, but it's always interesting when your readers pick up interesting bits from your writing that didn't really occur to you, or highlight issues of significance for them that you overlooked as mundane. I think these are rich moments that can be cultivated and explored to help bring out hidden 'gems' which are visible in ones work but overlooked. To harness the value from these moments I'm thinking that I should compile a list of the interesting questions, comments or highlights made about my research that come from these critical readings of my work - hopefully the list can then act as a reflective point from which I can interrogate my own thinking and assumptions - allowing me to step inside the context in an authentic manner, but also step outside the data and the context offering an critical interpretative view.

Balance...zumba style

Went to a Zumba class tonight for the first time in more than 2 months and its was fantastic. I've realised that I must find ways to do other things besides working on my PhD...working/focusing only on my PhD makes me miserable and grumpy. I need some physical outlet but more importantly I need to make sure my shoulders can cope with all the crouching over a desk or computer I'm going to subject them to over the next 12-15 months. I would like to think that irrespective of what is going down in my life - PhD or otherwise - that I can take 2 hours out of my week to jump around and wiggle my hips to some crazy Latin tunes. A positive end to the day casting a bright hue on the days ahead.

still indexing categories but with some reflection

I'm about half way through the categorisation/coding of the data from my second case study. I've hit some snags associated with the Atlas software, particularly around the cumbersome nature of having 'codes' from the previous case inform and cloud the indexing work for the new case. Also all the codes get lumped together so filtering which codes apply specifically to one case and not the other presented some challenges. I keep wondering if my decision to work with only one unit and using a specific Altas related filtering system to separate documents into my two cases was working for me. But because I've never used the software before and the advice I was getting was based on a different kind of research study with different kinds of data it was really hard to make an informed decision. For the moment I've decided to carry on as is, but have found ways to signal clearly in the category naming the different cases the code applies to. It's a bit laborious and it means that I now have something like 120 code categories, but it's my workable solution. I also had to let go of worrying about the 'amount' of codes I actually had - as if the number of codes bears some correlation to whether or not you are doing a good job or not of this stage of the data reviewing and analysis. What I have come to realise is that it doesn't really matter what your codes, categories, indexing units are or how many of them you have - their function is really to guide you in the retrieve of interesting, useful slices of data for further analysis. If you have made some good decision about the naming conventions etc...that helps with retrieval later (because the time lag between doing the actual indexing work and retrieval can be quite big and your memory can let you down). But the main work happens when you look at all the quotes sitting under a particular category and then try to make sense of it. Some attention to detail at the indexing/coding stage helps of course - but it doesn't mean that there won't be problems when you actually have to work with those slices of data later.

So having sort-of resolved this little challenge that was causing me endless frustration earlier this week the indexing for this new case has proceeded fairly smoothly, if not slowly. I'm trying to learn from my experiences and just do a broad-brush-stroke first level sweep of the data. My strategy, which I found worked well for the other case, is after this initial indexing round to then listen/read all the data again - outside of Atlas - before doing a second round of indexing/coding and then finally start the strategic retrieval process where I get a print out of all the quotes under particular categories and begin to ask myself..."ok so what is going on here?"

All great right? The process seems robust enough and suitably plausible and remember I have some literature to back up my approach (always useful). But time of course, the sneaky bastard, is not being helpful. I looked at my work plan which I only revised on 24 August 2011 and I'm behind. How can I fall behind in like 2 months - the deadlines I set for the end of November will not, cannot be achieved. It's just impossible - even if I work 10 hours per day almost everyday until the end of the November I don't think I'll be able to meet that deadline (and beside can you imagine what a 'happy' person I might be working 10 hours a day everyday for the next month?). This isn't procedural work I have to do...I have to call upon all my understanding, my intellectual capacity, my cognitive insights developed over the last 4-6 years to try and make sense of my data, to see a story, an angle worthy of telling. It's all down to identifying, shaping, crafting that story...that will be the numb of my PhD. I don't think its something you can push or force out. And the strange thing is - this part of the work, this stage is what I find most rewarding, most respectful and accommodating of my research participants, the students and their learning - because it's where I start to see their perspective, their view, their understanding and experiences and try to represent that as authentically as I can in my work. That can't be forced out, I don't believe anyway. So I'm behind, always freaking behind and trying to stay sane and carve out some balance in my life.

crazy making sense of Atlas and my data

I'm in between enjoying this second round of indexing the data of my new case study and being extremely frustrated by the constraints of Atlas (the software I'm using to help with the indexing, categorising and retrieval of interesting slices of data). I need to make a decision soon about how I'm going to deal with this frustration...tomorrow I think!

I love working with my data, especially when I see things come together, that is the exciting part, but of course it's also a tedious process of starring at the screen and struggling to make sense of what participants are trying to say or how to interpret these contributions. I have lots and lots to do and I need to do it quickly...big sigh! Work consistently...one day at a time...yeah, yeah of course.

mixed bag of a week

I had a really strange all-over-the-place kind of week. I guess filtered through lots of anger and frustration fuelled by stories of bad supervision experiences and my own writing troubles. Writing really is about making meaning through your writing - writing isn't an end-product, it is the process of making meaning, making sense, making clear what it is you want to say. I'm about 1/3 away from the end of my case study or rather I should say this iteration of this case study draft. The hard part is coming i.e. making sense of the literacy practices in the case site. But I'm getting there, I'm finding a comfortable way to use Atlas to help extract the slices of data I need to illustrate the points I am trying to make and how to use to the slices of data to help understand what is going on in the site. I'm hoping to finish this off by next weekend because I have a three day break in Estonia starting today...how's that for a bit of balanced life?

A friend of mine said something like this to me late last week - 'You need to get comfortable with the pace you are working at and that some days will be slower than others. Get comfortable with the fact that sometimes it just isn't going to work on that day...but it's ok'. Wise words me thinks !

wondering...

I have 12 months left of my paid full-time PhD studentship. I wonder how this experience might have been shaped if I did it part-time, if I funded it myself, if I did it with different supervisors, if I did it in South Africa. How much do these seemingly, inconsequential contextual issues impact on the experience of the PhD? Think I've lamented about these issues previously, well maybe many time in the past.

I'm constantly reminded how my learning experience is certainly not what I signed up for. I constantly encounter  examples (of my own and those of my colleagues) that show how the whole structuring of the PhD process,  especially the supervision relationship, is riddled with inequalities and unfairness. How do you suck that up for three years without becoming either completely demoralised, disconnected or jaded by this practice of learning?

uneventful nothingness kind-of-day

Yes unfortunately nothing much happening today. I'm trying but nothing is happening today. More looking at the mind maps I created yesterday, more reassuring myself that I don't need to have an argument to present in order to start writing about the emergent themes from my data, more reading of the research methodology literature to reassure myself and do something other than switching on the TV, more tweaking of the previous case study draft I wrote having made a decision I would write up the emerging themes as part of the case study. The cart is definitely in front of the horse as I try to figure out the story and make the parts of the story fit together instead of just writing up the parts and worrying about coherence and connection a bit later on when the story is more developed in my mind. Maybe this is just a delaying tactic...maybe I should go out walking. Yeah maybe I should go out walking.

making sense of my data

I completed the second round of indexing my data - (I still have to get used to calling it indexing categories rather than the simple 'coding' - I think I sound slightly more sophisticated using this new term and it avoids possible confusion that I might be involved in developing a website or something using some or other programming language). Now comes the task of trying to make sense of what my data is saying. It might be easy to just using the indexing categories I already have as a spring board for a discussion of my data. But those categories only make sense when used within the context of that particular tasks - i.e. looking at individual data documents and trying to slice up the data into interpretative categories that offer a description about that snippet of information. In a sense it's an almost decontextualised activity. Now I need to bring the outcomes of this categorizing activity into some sort of unified whole and tell a story about how all the previously disconnected bits of information or categories fit or don't fit together within a context of the department where the data was originally collected and not forgetting within the context of my research study...which reminds me What are my research questions again? Basically  I now need to look through all the categories to find thematic coherences - themes that might stretch over multiple categories or connect with specific categories in specific ways. Mmm...

I've been brainstorming and have some coherent looking mind maps with some viable themes - thus evidence of this intellectual pursuit . Unfortunately my need to always see the bigger picture first before drilling down to the specifics means I'm a bit stuck. I'm not sure what the bigger picture is just yet.  What I think I should do is focus on the description of the specifics without needing to know it's significance in relation to the bigger picture just yet. By describing what I've identified in my mind maps as broad themes I think their significance as the 'bigger picture' will start to be illuminated as part of description process. But for me this is an almost counter-intuitive approach. So I have to fight what my gut and strangely my brain is telling me...and do what my rational academic self is instructing me to do. Maybe a little digression to Jennifer Mason is in order!

Understanding what I'm doing

Last week after supervision I had a little 'crisis of confidence' episode. I didn't feel very certain about the procedures I was using to guide my coding activities. When I feel like that I usually ask for help or try to find help - so I asked the supervisors and tried to find some relevant literature. To me it doesn't matter if someone else thinks that I'm handling a situation well, it's how I feel about my handling of the situation that often matters. I just wanted some reassurance what I was on the right path and guidance if I wasn't.

I found Jennifer Mason's 'Qualitative Researching' and used the chapter on 'Organising and Indexing Qualitative Date'. Not only did it provide the necessarily reassurances I needed, often supporting the very practices I had put in place to guide what I was calling 'coding', it also suggested some additional practical procedures I could use as I continued to forge ahead with this stage of my research.

Often with qualitative informed methodologies, you are simply told - 'immerse yourself in your data', 'let your data talk to you' or 'just code for themes' - but what does this really mean? When you 'do' these things, or what you think constitutes 'doing these things', very often if doesn't measure up to the expectations of those who told you to 'do' it in the first place. Sometimes the literature can and does help - it provides a language of description for the things you are doing and clear steps that can be taken to guide your practice. Now I feel more confident in explaining what I am currently doing i.e. that I'm in the data organisations and indexing phase of my research, why this phase is important and how it fits into the rest of my research study.

So....a) I'm trying to create indexing categories that allow me to tag sections of my data, b) I have chosen to read my data in an interpretative and reflexive manner, c) these categories are related to the intellectual puzzle I'm trying to solve through my research, the type of data I've collected and my research questions, d)  using Atlas means I have a data base-type solution for the indexing and quick retrieve of data chunks - Atlas is not an analysis tool, I am only using it as an organisation and retrieve tool, the analysis of the chunks of data so easily accessible via the Atlas software will come much later.

And...in addition to these somewhat conceptual thoughts about what this phase of my research entails, Mason also offers some practical suggestions about what immersion might mean, like just listening to my recordings and re-reading my fieldnotes again, without the Atlas imposed categorisations I have already imposed and that it is perfectly ok to revise and review the indexing categories I already have. These categories don't automatically become your themes...and how you use the chunks of data is depended on many things, which her chapter on 'Marking Convincing arguments with qualitative data' will no doubt illuminate.

three years already?

Yes it is actually and while in some sense it has really rushed pass, in others senses I have left each and every minute of it. The whole week I've been thinking about this anniversary and reflecting on how I could never have imagined, even more than anything else that has happened in my life, that things would turn out as they have for me over these past three years.

In the past year I've began to see what a great fracture the move to the UK has been for my life. It's been dislocating, disruptive, fragmenting. And it's not something that I have come to terms with yet. Its almost like each time I consider it I see new angles and examples of this fragmentation. I'm settled here, but in so many other ways I'm just not. Academically ,especially in the first year, I felt stable but the longer I stay in the course the more unstable I feel. It's as if the longer I stay here the more I feel marked out as not belonging, not fitting in, always trying to say it or do it like they do it here, but always feeling like I just cant get 'that' right.

I'm not saying this whole experience has been negative, I'm just reflecting on what it has been and how much it has forced me to change, adjust and stay the same. The future is a blur for me, I can't plot out what I want to do next year or the next or in six years time. Somehow that isn't important - well of course it's important, but not important enough. It's like I know it will work out anyway. Maybe it's just my lack of ambition - simply happy to teach and never one to tie education to work opportunities. I just believe in education for education sake, a deeply personal thing (of course you can use it for social change etc...) something about the individual wanting to understand something to make their life better at a very intellectual level. If it helps or feeds into other aspects of your life or has a social outcome, then that it the bonus.

Supervision,oh supervision

Last Friday in some glorious sunlight, SP and I sat in the Hub on some fairly comfortable chairs and waxed lyrically about our triumphs and tribulations as PhD students. Supervision as always dominated our discussion. It's the thing of nightmares and wet dreams and when you walking into a supervision meeting you are never quite sure whether you will be experiencing your worse nightmare or your most delicious wet dream (the sexual analogues, where the hell are they coming from?). I suspect that about 50% of your time as a students is spent trying to work out what is going on in your supervisory relationship, how to make things better, how to deal with your supervisors in relation to work demands and interpersonal dynamics or how to survive the freaking process. We didn't get to a point where we were able to reach any definite conclusions or solutions, as usual it was an open-ended discussion, something we could pick up, right where we left it, usually after one of us had a supervision meeting. Over the weekend I thought about writing up some of my thoughts about our discussion and my thoughts on the whole supervisory relationship in general, but, it's hard work generating these thoughts into coherent and logical sentences and I needed my energy to complete my progress report, review a paper and write some comments on that and tackle some transcriptions.


But it was obviously a matter that couldn't be left alone...because I had supervision today. I have the some old ritual with each supervision - I prepare, I write little notes of the issues I want to raise and my position on each of these issues and try to think positive thoughts in the run up to the meeting. I tell myself that as a 40 year old proud, intelligent, confident woman I can deal with anything and shouldn't feel intimidated. And in many ways this ritualised practice has worked well for me over the years at the OU. I have also noticed a new found urge to not only be aware of the power differential in the relationship, but to diffuse it through consciously reminding myself that I have a voice and I don't have to play the 'onderdaniger' student role if I don't want to. All my previous supervision experiences have been positive and affirming engagements, no reason why can has to be different. I have to change my perception...and maybe my experiences will change accordingly to.


But you know...things are never what they seem. Supervision today wasn't bad, it wasn't negative, it wasn't particularly affirming either (a pocket or two of it sprinkled in here and there) - it just was. I didn't come out of it bursting with enthusiasm for my ongoing research tasks or with new inspiration and ideas germinating by the second. Well maybe that's a bit melodramatic - expectations of germinating ideas post-supervision. Its just that thing about supervision, you always leave not knowing, not sure if it was good, if it was bad, if you performed appropriately, if you got what they meant, if they got what you meant. Spawning countless future discussions with colleague about what it might all have meant.
 Maybe therein lies the secret...supervision is about getting you to think, maybe even think differently.


Reflecting on my supervision experience today and the collective experiences of myself and my colleagues over the past 3 years...I am reminded of something Ron Barnett said at a conference I attended in 2007 - he said that students' assignments could be likened to gifts being offered for consideration and review. Gifts carefully prepared by students and filled with their anticipation and aspirations. These gifts needed to be received by lecturers sensitive to what might have gone into the preparation and not just simply dismissed  or given tired and disinterested attention. The metaphor of gift...

and this is so different

I'm in the middle of writing up a first draft for one of my cases - nothing analytic, just some descriptive and exploratory stuff. I'm struck by how different the process is - the writing process that is - to all the other stuff I've been doing over the past two, no eight months. Writing has its own momentum and you just have to go with it. It eats you up inside and waits for no one - when the ideas are flowing you can't do anything about it except writing...I remember SP talking about how he couldn't sleep for wanting to write, how he had this insatiable desire to write, write, write until he was finished. When I'm writing I can sit up until whatever time if I want to get my ideas down on paper. Of course I'm not raising the times when writing is painful, slow, frustrating, when you just cant find the words you need - but in a way that isn't really the point of what I'm trying to say here.

I just want to savour this experience of difference and smile actually because this act of physically producing what I'm thinking, almost an act of crystallisation of something abstract, can be a very beautiful thing. I'm hoping my positive and optimistic sense this morning will remain with me for the rest of the day while I try to complete, write, what I need to today.

structural outline of what needs to be written today

irritated and panicked

That's how I feel at the moment. How I've been feeling for the past few days. Just irritated and irritated with all things, but mostly the freaking PhD. I just want to enjoy the experience - really that is all I want but it feels like the whole freaking world is conspiring again this wish of mine.

Of course this isn't the whole story, it never is - I can't tell the whole story, the whole story only plays itself out in my mind at 1 or 2am at night when I can't fall asleep because my brain won't shut down with all the thoughts, ideas,anxieties running through it. I'm thinking about deadlines - the small little deadlines, like writing up a draft case study due on Thursday - and the big one, writing a thesis of 80 000 word by September 2012. The deadlines and its weight press down on my chest and I feel like I can't breath. Of course my rational self says, "take it one step at a time, once you get going you will be fine...this too will pass". But my rational self is having an immense battle with this other irrational, irritated and panicked self, practically paralysed by the deadlines and the amount of work that still needs doing. I just so much want to enjoy this whole process and the more I don't enjoy it the more pressure I put on myself to enjoy it and the more critical I get at myself for not freaking enjoying it. Oh how I am my worse enemy.

Anyway - psychosis aside - I've just completed my first coding cycle of about 60 documents. Tedious and at times monotonous but interesting and affirming - connecting me back to my fieldwork, the participants, the sounds, smells, the texture of that context. My categories need refinement, they need to be sharper, more precise, clearer and strangely I'm looking forward to doing that. To finding the story I want to tell. But the deadlines, the freaking deadlines and me wanting to do everything right the first time...working against me. My rational self is saying, " take it easy, you know what you need to do, write the freaking case study, write what you have at the moment, it doesn't have to be perfect, you just have to get it down, your thinking at this point in time". Yeah, yeah rational self I hear you.

Analysis in Atlas

I'm in analysis mode. I've just completed the first stab at analysing all the fieldnotes I produced for one of my research sites. The process is ok, a bit tedious having to read off and stare at the computer monitor for most of the day. I'm still not sure how working in Atlas will help pull all the threads together - I think this is more a issue about my unfamiliarity with the software than me registering a lack of confidence in using the software for my analysis. Interestingly, the more I work with the coding process the more patterns start to come through. I remember thinking on Tuesday when I just started with the coding - "What the hell is this going to give me?" So I'm feeling more reassured about where I'm going even if it isn't clear exactly what the specific direction is just yet.

I think I mentioned before, that I was taking guidance from my applied linguists friend and using aspects of his methodology, namely to complete a small pilot, to work out or operationalize some of my coding categories . I think it was/is a useful strategy but I also have to acknowledge that there is just so much fuzziness in qualitative methodologies and my coding categories always seem to bleed into each other. But having a strict and thought through 'definition' of the many of the codes beforehand is helping me to be more discerning about my coding choices. My coding definitions are sharper and more consistently applied across my data set - so I can 'tell' the different between a literacy practice vs a textual practice. Of course the definitions are my creation but I'm just trying to be reliable in how I apply that choice across all my data examples. I know this is sounding a bit prescriptive and tending towards a positivist paradigm, but I think I'm just trying to ensure a higher level of reliability in my coding approach. And in a couple of months after I've trawled the research methodology literature I will be able to offer an more credible argument for why I'm doing my coding in this manner...Yay, something to look forward to.

For now, back to Atlas and some of the other data I collected...lets see what that exercise delivers.

after the holiday

I've been away on a short holiday. A holiday I didn't really want to come back from. I've been dreading having to go back to work. Yet for about 50% of the said holiday my thoughts drifted to my work and how I was falling behind because of the holiday. No rest for the wicked...and I'm starting to feel very wicked. Before the holiday I felt on the cusp on something - enthusiasm even for my work, for the work that needs to be done to get this freaking PhD out of the way. If there is anything I'm determined to do in the next 12 months it's to get this freaking PhD out of the way. So over the next couple of days I will get back my rhythm, my routine, my determination and just maybe my enthusiasm to finish this freaking PhD. I so wish I felt differently about my PhD,  it wasn't suppose to be like this, I was suppose to like it, enjoy it, learn from it...but as my good friend, recently taking inspirational advice from Tony Soprano, keeps telling "What you gonna do?"

Notting Hill Carnival

Salsa in the streets at Carnival

St Keverne, Cornwall

The Lizard, Cornwall

Mullion Cove Harbour, Cornwall

My great nephew Luke at his naming ceremony

a relaxing over-lunch supervision meeting...

and the follow up e-mail just sent to both supervisors. I already feel a weight lifted off my shoulders for a while anyway :-)

This is just a brief summary of the main issues discussed earlier today



- a revised work plan was presented that will hopefully allow more time for the analysis process while maintaining the overall September 2012 deadline (see attached)
- results of a pilot coding exercise completed in Atlas were discussed; the exercise allowed me to test for the use of the literacy and text practices code categories and develop coding category descriptions for these and any additional codes resulting from this initial analysis exercise. I've developed an organisational structure for my data to match the organisation framework of the Atlas package - this activity has forced me to make firm decisions about which data segments will be included in the formal Atlas informed analysis activity (attached is a rough illustration of my data hierarchy, which also contains the total number of documents that will be analysed in Atlas). The code categories developed during this pilot exercise will inform the first round of analysis of the Film and Video department.
- I have about 10-15 outstanding recordings that need to be transcribed (attached find an inventory of what I've completed to date based on their different 'transcriptions types'. The green shaded blocks indicate the outstanding transcriptions)
- my next deadline is 15 September: a descriptive case study discussion of the Film and Video department


If you would like a copy of the pilot code descriptions I'm happy to e-mail this to you.


Have a wonderful long weekend (bank holiday weekend)

my pilot in atlas

Yay! It has finally started...well if this were a multimodal blog you would realise that the written expression is meant as a sarcastic take on the that fact that while it has actually started, there is certainly nothing to be remotely enthusiastic about. Basically today I  started to pilot my basic coding categories on a small set of documents that are fairly similar to the types that will form part of the larger thesis analysis. I only really had two upfront codes - literacy practices and textual practices which I tried to operationalised i.e. explain how I would identify them in my data. As the coding progressed more code categories were added and sub-levels created. I now need to refine what I mean by these initial coding categories so that I can be consistent in how I use them across a larger data set. I worked on 4 documents and it took me the whole freaking day. Just very basic coding - nothing fancy, nothing special...leading to another important, although recently, clearly overlooked realisation. I HAVE TO MUCH FLIPPING DATA! I can't physically code it all - well certainly not if I want to finish this f&%$ing PhD by September 2012. So I've been brutal and cut throat today. I've made decisions and I'm going to stick to  it. In relation to the data that will be included in the Atlas formal analysis process - my selection is enough to tell my story in a plausible, credible and justifiable way.

But alas, Atlas has brought along some additional organisational and structural challenges for me to overcome - yes more organisation and structuring of data into folders and files ready for analysis (well this ever end I ask myself). Seems like I'm more of an administrator than a researcher at the moment.

Data Organisation and Selection for Atlas Analysis

a pilot it is

I've been subsumed (correct word?) by data and transcribing for the past week. Somewhat resentful that my current work-plan does not allow or cater for the amount of time I've take to get my data ready for analysis. This weekend I finished a complete data set for one of my case studies which meant I could start the analysis process for Case 1. Of course Case 2 is incomplete - there are about 8 formal interviews that still need to be transcribed and a stack of interactional data and informal interviews.

But, today in the spirit of making a stab at the analysis phase of my work, I had a mini-tutorial session with SP on the Atlas software that I will use for my analysis. We got to talking about all things related and unrelated to the software, the analysis process, approaches to coding, operationalisation of codes, what to say to supervisors, being burnt out and the importance to taking breaks from one's work, using drop-box and how to manage my image files and their relation to the coding process. But long story short...I have too much data, or rather I have more than enough data to make a solid and valid argument. Generating additional data through the transcription of all my collected recordings is not a smart move that this stage. Well that's the advice been offered to me anyway. And I know its good advice, I've been told this before - be strategic because you don't have time - but one is always caught in that precarious place where you fear that leaving out 'that interview' will rob your argument, your thesis of that all important bits of information. You become over cautious about everything and 'precious' about all the data you collected, which of course does a lot for your ego in the comparison stakes with other PhD students - which when you come to think if it, is as pointless an activity as young men bragging about the size of their penises, because as any experienced woman would know, it really has nothing to do with penis size its how that freaking penis gets used.

So what to do? Well firstly - take stock of the all data I've collected and make a firm decision about outstanding transcription requirements. Here I need to be brutal - seriously! I don't have the time to become precious about what data gets 'included' in my final data set. On another level, all the data I've collected will be used in my work - simply the act of collecting a piece of data has assisted in the development of my ideas and understandings of the various contexts. The fact that it isn't directly referenced in the actual thesis - is almost irrelevant. Secondly, I need to Pilot the data in Atlas and refine my coding schemes.

So that's the work cut out for me for the rest of the week. Happy Days!

Transcribing, transcribing, transcribing

I have nothing much to say, except that I'm transcribing my arse off...Oh and I've made some decision about South Africa. I think I will be back for about 4-5 weeks in the new year. Just having made that decision, not doing anything else about it yet, like book a ticket etc...has given me a new spring in my typing fingers...Ok I'm short on comic relief. Anybody would be after almost 2 weeks of solid transcribing. I'm not being ruthless enough with my raw data, I want to capture too much...scared I'm going to leave something out.

My new tactic - tomorrow I'm going to try just listening to the interviews and interactional recordings I made. Lets see if that can get me to Atlas_ti a bit quicker.

How Swedish people spend their sunny summer days and early evenings

an issue of representation

It was either I continue with my transcription duties or sit and write a blog entry. I figured blogging would be way more interesting than trying to make my fingers type as fast as the voice I was hearing on the other side of my headset. I think I'm at my most distracted when I have to transcribe or listen to recorded interviews. Anyway, to help get myself out of the mountain of un-transcribed interviews I've allocated a specific day for each freaking interview - a make shift roster in the hope that this will spur me on to finish this boring task and get on with the analysis. A draft case study needing writing awaits! Due date 15 September.

But I also needed to write up my supervision notes, which meant I had to listen to the recording I made -see no getting away from listening to recordings this week - and of course I get a more refined, sophisticated sense of the discussion from the 'second reading/listening'. An important issue raised during supervision, and one which has occupied me for a while now, is how I'm going to approach how I represent my participants in my thesis. On a simple level I need to make a decision about how I will anonymise my participants - even though many of them weren't that bothered about me protecting their identity. But they signed a consent form that says I would do this, so I have to do it. Some even picked their own pseudonyms. So will I chose to de-gender and de-racialise their identities or maintain this aspect and simply change their names? The more fundamental issue of course, and the one that concerns me most, is what are the consequences of such a choice in relation to how participants come across or how they get represented in the thesis, as reflective of the broader socio-political context that is South Africa. Will they then simply become yet another example of how black-african, coloured, white people or women 'behave' within an educational context, maybe reflective of rampant stereotypes about how they should or shouldn't, do or don't, behave? Will my thesis simply reinforce negative, destructive, one-dimensional views and perceptions of these different groups and is it my duty as a responsible, ethical researcher and South African to ensure that how I portray my participants doesn't perpetuate such stereotypes. I don't have a answer to these questions and concerns, I've been reading around the area of race and representation within the SA context and I'm interested in exploring post-colonial theorisation more in the hope that I will come to some workable solution. And I haven't even included the debates I need to have about how I will represent myself in my thesis.

What is clear is that an additional angle, for inclusion in my thesis, has been raised by this concern; namely the need for a substantial discussion of research ethics, especially the contradiction that lay between theory and practice when applied to the issue of confidentiality and privacy within different contextual realities - a discussion I think that started way back in my MRes year.

 Goodness, guess what? I'm talking about my thesis as if it is a reality...wow! It really has begun.

and the world is a better place when...

Supervision goes well.

I had a good supervision session today. Good because it was relaxed and because my supervisors were generally happy with what I had to say and the progress I was making. It was also good because I didn't feel constrained by my language use or unable to express myself. But I guess I'm at that stage of the game where the stakes are pretty low. I'm still transcribing, the analysis hasn't started and I haven't started to write anything related to my research. Well I have been writing, but nothing that could remotely be called academic. So things are wonderful and filled with optimism and possibility. So I don't have to justify anything I'm doing - well I do, but not in the same way as I will have to once I start trying to make sense of the data I've collected and try to construct an argument based on my research. We talked about what I've been doing to date, how my current activities fit or don't fit into my proposed work plan, some of the choices I need to make and how to move forward armed with an awareness of all these variables.

An interesting outcome of this meeting was the unexpected validation of a little document I constructed - that was meant to plot out the 'story of my data collection process'. My intentions for the document was simply that it acted as a record of my fieldwork activities and that it serve as a springboard for further reflective engagements with the activities that comprised my fieldwork experience. I was going to go back to it and continually add notes, reflections, comments as I constructed a more detailed and reflexive account of data collection journey. But apparently in its current form it's providing a valuable roadmap of my experiences that an external assessor might find very insightful as a complementary guide to a methodology chapter. Wow...I certainly didn't see that one coming, but I'm chuffed nonetheless because the document has evolved in a positive way beyond its narrow original purpose. This might be the first addition to my appendix. My thesis has started, albeit with the appendix - who said you need to start at the beginning anyway.

Another positive outcome from the meeting - well not directly the meeting, but more the preparation for the meeting - was that I'm actually using this blog in a productive way to support the reflexive component of my thesis development. I referred to an entry I made a couple of weeks ago regarding how my fieldnote practices  evolved. While I have been sensitive about writing about my fieldwork experiences, as an ethical response to protecting the participants of my study, it is acting as a valuable source of reflective commentary on my researcher practices. Again, as I start to construct or re-construct my fieldwork experiences this will be a fruitful and valuable repository of insights.

In six weeks time I will have to deliver my first piece of PhD thesis writing...that is pretty significant. At the moment my thesis world feels like broad brush watercolour strokes on a canvas. You can just about make out defined shapes and elements, but it is mostly sweeping colours, bleeding into each other across the canvas. Lots of finer details that still  missing from the picture, lots of finer details I haven't quite figured out yet. And I'm filled equally with excitement, anticipation and anxiety, trepidation at the prospect of filling in that finer detail.

transcribing in the grey, humidity of England

On a positive note, I realised that I get up every morning and want to do my transcriptions. That, without any prompting or encouragement I actually want to work on my research - a rather positive little silver lining in the dark clouds outside. Surprisingly, I haven't found it too tedious as yet, but I still have a very long way to go. The surface of the transcription work has just been scratched. Why did I think I would only need 2 weeks to get it all done? So I'm at least a week behind my schedule. I'm on track, of course, if I'm following my Plan B workplan - but that's a swear word at the moment - "jou ma se Plan B". 


So I sit here in my room, the one I rearranged on Tuesday night, and now surprising has space for a chest of draws, with my headset on, starring intently at my laptop screen, with my new glare-resistant glasses, which are really too big for my face, but they were the cheapest, sort-of-cool frames I could get at Tesco's (hell! Tesco, exactly! not the height of fashion and sophistication by a long shot), with my foot on the pedal (yes I use a foot pedal) and my fingers tapping at the key board at an alarming speed as I make almost instantaneous decision about which bits of the discussion I will or wont include. Ah! the analysis has started before I've transferred my data  to Atlas...it has all begun.


I'm pleased I'm all excited about this rather menial,though crucial task, because it ain't no fun sitting in this room by myself, where one day blurs into the next and I fantasize about engaging conversations with really people in a shared physical space. Saying hello to a shop assistant as you pack your groceries does seems to fall short on the social contact stakes.

-900 words and a shadow of what it was

I was asked last week to cut my HERD article down by 1000 words. Because my article included four diagrams and images and was thus going to exceed the prescribed page length for an article, the editor-in-chief started to make some noises about the suitability of its inclusion. This 'request' came a few days after I was told that my implementation of APA was scrappy and incomplete. And it was scrappy and incomplete, so I sat and manually corrected my references - every pain staking comma and full stop. This week I cut about 900 words out of my original article and I'm sitting here wondering - was it really worth it, just so I can get published? I re-read the article and all the interesting bits, the students voices, the complexity that is the context is gone. Of course I can argue that I need to write more precisely and learn to cut out the unnecessary comments, the repetition and focus on making the argument come through clearly - but then the writing, the story, the narrative, the voices (mine and those of the context) is somehow lost. One of my supervisors always says that writing for journals is a soulless exercise because you have to strip your research down to the bone and you can never really  tell the story, the complete story that is your research. Another of her little bugbears is the fact that visual texts are inadequately accommodated by journal editors - my experience is obviously a case in point. She is going to love it when I tell her my story next week.

So I stripped the article to the bone and it will be published, under a slightly altered title too...yes another recommendation, which I did however contest somewhat. So that's Editors 2 : Lynn 1 - I guess its the best outcome I could hope for as a novice research and writer "she says in a cynical and unimpressed tone"

so what I've been up to

I've gone slightly AWOL for the past week and a bit. I say slightly because I'm still working but I'm just not working at the OU or in the UK or at a normal work pace. It's been a good break and something I needed to help take my mind off the fact that I'm having serious withdrawal symptoms from being in Cape Town. But that is an on-going saga that needs a whole entry devoted to it.

The island of Fejan in the Stockholm archipelago

According to my more detailed week-by-week workplan, I was meant to be tackling transcription over these last two week in July. I'm feeling the pressure of my Plan A workplan that only gives me 1 month to organise and prepare my data for analysis. I have about 70 interviews and interactional recordings, and even with some strategic selection of specific recordings and events, there is no way, unless of course all I do over this two week period is sit in front of my PC and transcribe, can I possibly complete all this work. Then as I started to work on my fieldnotes I realise a major gap in the entries for my first research site. In retrospect I can kick myself that I didn't pick this up while in the field and sort it out then. But to be kind to myself these gaps are more a reflection on how my fieldnote collection changed over the fieldwork period, than an indication that I was lazy or inattentive during fieldwork. When I started my fieldwork I had a particular approach to collecting/recording fieldnotes. I recorded hand written descriptive notes in a fieldwork journal and electronic analytical memo on my laptop. For the first week or so all I used was the journal, and I never copied these notes electronically. So as I worked at authenticating my fieldnotes using both the electronic and journal notes I started to see major gaps in the descriptive quality of the notes. Also by the time I went to the second research site I decided to combine the process of description and analytical insights into one fieldnote for each day in the field. I thus needed to ensure come continuity in the fieldnotes over the entire fieldwork period.

Confused? Complicated? Yes of course, I certainly was for most of last week as I worked to align my journal entries with the electronic ones, a process that took me the better part of last week and which I only completed yesterday. I remember while in the field how demanding it was to write the fieldnotes in first place, then doubting my ability to accurately and insightfully capture events, people and practices. I really needed so much energy and time to write my notes and as fieldwork progressed I worked out various strategies that either didn't work (as the method used above illustrates) or only worked for a short while. It was only in the final 6 weeks of fieldwork that I eventful developed a suitable method that suited my work patterns and energy levels. I would hand write in my journal, fairly detailed descriptions of what was happening in the field on a particular day. Then either later that day or evening, if I managed to put aside some time, or more commonly when I took a half-day or day off , I would sit and electronically capture both descriptive and analytical insights of my participant observation activities. Usually I would write up to three or four fieldwork days in one sitting. I think practice resulted in a good mixture of descriptive, analytical and reflective elements in my fieldnotes. However, my attempts to fill the gaps created by my developing fieldnote writing approach means I'm about a week behind with my transcription. I'll have to see how helpful my brand new foot pedal, courtesy of CREET at the OU, is in reducing the transcription time. Somehow I think I need more than a swanky foot pedal to help me play catch-up.