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.