conceptual what? Huh?

My WIPS presentation happened today.

I wasn't that nervous (just a little bit at the start when the technology was letting us down) - a new thing for me in the UK. Since my return from Cape Town I've been saying to myself - own what you know and be confident in who you are - stop trying to fit into what you think 'other' people expect you to be. Oh and believe that I have something meaningful to contribute.

I had a good turn out, both my supervisors along with one of my probationary report assessors (who I really like for his approachable disposition and solid feedback) came to the session. Interestingly, when you prepare a presentation, it all sounds so logical, so coherent, even so funny - but when you do it, say the words you wrote down and people ask questions about things you didn't even contemplate - you realise how much you have taken for granted about people's understanding of your research/topic, and how you can never predict how people will interpret what you are saying. I know the communication experts will probably have some theory about what I have just tried to explain - but it never fails to amaze me how this is almost, always the case. Yet I will probably diligently prepare my presentation making all these assumptions again. I'm reminded of what I believed about learning when I was still teaching - i.e. the limited amount of control a teacher really exercises over what a student might learn in her class. The learning moment rests almost exclusively within the student's locus of control. Sure, as a teacher you can do things to help facilitate learning process, structure particular activities in certain ways etc...but it is the student who ultimately decides what it is they want to take away from the event. For learning to happen the student needs to be open to the possibility of learning.

On a more positive note I came away from the session inspired to write my probationary report and to clarify for myself and the reader what it is I have been doing for the past 6-8 months and why I'm interested in this research study. So I think I've achieved a encouraging outcome - I think I sound better written down anyway.

It's coming along nicely,thank you!

I've just finished my W(ork)I(n)P(rogress)S(eminar) presentation powerpoint - and I'm rather pleased with myself. The graphics took forever and I'm contemplating redoing one I have already included. Completing the presentation made me realise what a lot of work and effort I've put into my work to date. I'm so focused on down grading my efforts and energy, forever thinking I'm not working hard enough, that I'm never open to recognizing the work that I am doing. I've also realised, and its not the first time I've come to this realisation, that certain things - like writing a paper or doing a presentation - gets better with more process time. When done in a rush little mistakes creep in and you don't have the time to refine, clarify and consolidate what it is you want to say. My presentation, titled "Constructing conceptual frameworks: an idiosyncratic exploration" is only on Tuesday and I like the fact that I have at least two days to go over the presentation and just fine tune it.

I have two weeks until my next deadline; a cursory draft of the probationary report. The final report will be due on 1 June and my probationary review presentation and assessment will take place on 15 June.

 I had a look at some of the previous submissions and I was reassured that I have already put in most the intellectual and development work over the past 6 - 7 months that is required to do the report justice. At the moment the "report" (in abstract) consists of fragments of ideas and written pieces which I need to bring together to form a coherent argument for my research study and my readiness to complete it. The one missing part is my research methodology which I need to hone in on. I need to read more extensively around the issue of case study and ethnographic research, extend my range of sources, and consider in a more comprehensive manner the issue of analytical approach. But I'm feeling confident its a doable task, I've been working consistently since October and that must count in my favour; maybe even allowing me sometime to cut the grass and plant some flowers in my garden.

No more talking South African?

I'm back in the familiar environment of my Milton Keynes home and being reflective of the speed at which one is able to 'adjust' to a different country and culture. I can hardly believe I spent the past four weeks in Cape Town and keep wondering if it was merely a figment of my imagination. I suffered with the long journey back – I know I'm probably just whingeing, because in reality it wasn't THAT bad – total travelling time from door to door was just under 22 hours – but I was really out of it on Monday. Tuesday brought along my physiotherapy session which basically ended in me being 'kicked out of the programme' – I no longer have the deferred pain down my arms, the 4 treatment sessions allowed has been fulfilled and therefore the 'problem' has been solved, never mind that my back is as hard as a plank and that there has been marginal improvement in the flexibility of my spine since my first appointment. I've resolved to sort out my back problems by myself – it's not going to get any better by itself and it will continue to cause me problems because the nature of what I do forces me to sit at a desk hunched over for hours on end... "big sigh" So its up to me to make it better right?

Physical problems aside, what does it mean to be back in MK?

Well for one thing lots of time to work – no excuses not to work, clearly demonstrated by the fact that I am sitting at my desk at 11:50pm and thinking nothing much of it. But of course I also lose the balance and vibrancy of my existence in Cape Town. I realised while in Cape Town, talking about my study experiences in the UK, that I've given the 'context' here too much power over the process – basically I suppressed my own personality, needs and ways of being to accommodate the context and I need to wrestle that back into the picture. I also realised that I need to build up my confidence around asserting what I know and own my knowledge – it's what the writing people talk about when they refer to the development of the authorial voice in student writing – the increasing reliance on your own voice to articulate an argument rather than on the literature or the experts. So will this voice talk South African? Already I can feel my accent taking on the familiar 'British' note as the people around me ask me to repeat what I have just said. It was easier to be heard in Cape Town where we share so many common assumptions about our context and being 100% precise and logical is not the only goal of the conversation – shared meaning and understanding is constantly negotiated and facilitated by both speakers. Maybe the key is find a way for the South African talk to become infused and part of my 'British' speak. Translating the confidence I gain from being in the SA context by raising the currency of my SA talk in my UK environment in some way. Well it's a thought!

Different kind of reading

Last week in mid-panic over the fact that I had only read '8'? articles for my piece on multimodality - I read another 3 in a super productive 3 hour session at the library. I realised that my reading strategy just wasn't working. Interestingly then, that I also started to read around the area of literacies and technology - the work of Ilana Snyder in particular - who in the late 1990's started to talk about the shift from 'page to screen' in an attempt to describe how literacy practices were fundamentally changing due to technological innovation and development associated with the computer screen and internet technologies. Basically the suggestion is that screen based technologies are changing how we read, write and interact with information and knowledge. A big part of these shifting literacy practices is surface reading, especially common of reading practices on websites and hypertext-type texts. This got me thinking about my paper privileging reading practices and my insistence on take long written notes as I read each sentence or paragraph of an article, book or chapter. Its a practice I've used more or less successfully all my HE academic life. It takes a seriously long time, is often redundant but it has always worked for me. So why change?

Well I have just so much more 'reading' to do and I really don't have the time; its also so demoralizing when I realise how 'little' I've done within a particular time period and the mountains I still have to get through. This weekend I read through the bulk of the literacy and technology literature I brought along to SA (maybe 8-10 papers)  and I feel I have developed a general sense of the main arguments being articulated and how they might fit into my research agenda. All I have to do now is go back over each paper or article and extract the main points I have highlighted for my details notes. Importantly, I feel more confident about the use of my time and more encouraged to read more rather than being burdened with the thought of seeing my reading activities as a major chore I'd rather not tackle. Maybe this is the start of a new 'learning' strategy? Watch this space!

How much is enough?

I'm in slight panic mode...again. Just completed a written review of multimodality and its possible value to my research study and I've realised that I haven't done enough work to inform the piece.  I have about 8 references - so does it mean that since I've been in South Africa I have only read 8 pieces of literature? That doesn't seem like a moderately decent level of work and engagement for a PhD student. I thought I've been working consistently - and when you get up everyday and head for the library that might be a reasonable assumption one could make. But now when staring the 'output' straight in the eye, that assumption seems to be shattered. Thinking back on all the activities I have undertaken since I got here, I seem to have gotten my priorities all messed up - I've devoted so much of my time to servicing other people's needs and requests while setting aside my own work priorities, always thinking, "I'll catch up". I finished writing the piece at 10:30 this morning thanks to my niece who I had to drop off at school for 8am. But I've only just completed the editing process and still need to read through it one last time. What happen to all that time in between? "If I was MK" I say to myself, this piece would have been done and dusted by mid afternoon...maybe?!

Work/Life balance...its always tricky and doubly so when you don't have your 'own' space to comfortably retreat to. My lesson, when I return to Cape Town for my fieldwork I need to ensure that I create a comfortable work space that doesn't act against any energy and enthusiasm I have for my work. Being here longer will also allay my fears about making sure that I spend enough time with everyone important to me (again when I think about it I wonder if I have spent my time wisely giving the priority people in my life here in Cape Town my time or if I have rather just squandered my time on meaningless and unimportant activities).

This little moment has also made me reflect on a ongoing debate I have about how much is enough work or what is an appropriate pace for a PhD student? Followed by a big, big 'sigh'

A jumble of thoughts

I have so many thoughts running through my mind at the moment about my PhD journey and I'm finding it hard to find a coherent means to express it. Over the past two weeks I have had many 'encounters' with my old friends, colleagues, mentors...and each of these encounters had made me reflect on my PhD journey in different ways. Sometimes these reflections relate to 'product' issues – i.e. the actually outcome of my thesis, thus related to my topic or research methodology, and at other times I have been forced to think about the actual process of completing the degree. Maybe it's hard to separate out the two. But I feel that irrespective how conscientiously I try to articulate in words my thoughts and ideas as they relate to both product and process issues, what is reflected on paper or more appropriately, on screen doesn't come close to being an accurate account of all the thoughts and ideas running through my brain. Here is an abridged and possible disconnected list or 'note' of some of these thoughts as I feel them at this point in time, while I'm sitting here on the couch in Little Mowbray, Cape Town:

• I am part of a collective interchange of ideas channelled to me via my interactions with what seems to be a group of intelligent, intuitive and grounded women working in the education and development sectors
  
• That we all see the world in different ways, using different theoretical, methodological, conceptual tools and lens; these different vantage point allows us to see a comprehensive view of the world – the knack is allow one's self to really look at these completing views and see the value they bring to your own perspective
  
• Listening to other people's ideas, positions, perspectives helps to accentuate your own view, while possibility enhancing its strength and robustness
  
• I need to develop a way in which to stay grounded in the South African agenda – it's too easy to lose sight of what makes 'us' significant and unique, especially when living and working in England
  
• I have forgotten what I was like as a mature student in South Africa. My previous supervisors have both pointed this out to me and I need to find a way to reconnect to that 'personhood' and use it in my engagements with my Open University supervisors
  
• Other people see us differently to how we see ourselves – sometimes it extremely powerful, positive and redeeming to believe that 'other' reading of ourselves
  
• There is a way to bridge the divide between the ideals of the adult education and academic literacies fields; An adult educator needs to hold onto partisan perspectives that allow her to challenge and critique the inherently unequal social world and encourage her student to learn about, while challenging, the processes and practices they encounter. An academic literacies practitioner works within the system, even though critical of that system, her primary focus is on helping her students to successfully engage in the practices of academia, marking out how the system works so as to facilitate access to these privileged practices. Assessment however is a major stumbling block – I would argue that adult educators working predominantly in informal learning contexts don't have to deal with the negative effects of assessment on students and learning, while for academic literacies practitioners working in higher education – assessment becomes the mechanism whereby student's work must be recognised, judged and evaluated, thus forcing the practitioner to work in contrast to any positive, humanistic, development ideals associated with learning for learning sake which they might hold
  
• Holding onto these seemingly divergent perspectives is what can strengthen my thesis – the academic literacies perspective will allow me to focus on student literacy practices in a non-judgemental way and in so doing allow their voices to be heard – the adult education perspective will give me some of the conceptual and analytical tools, amongst others, to critique the structural mechanisms acting on and shaping the practices which student need to gain access to in order to be successful in higher education
  

People hear my voice here – even when it sounds all jumbled and incoherent to me!

The hidden adult educator in me

On Tuesday I attended a intimate seminar hosted by the Center for Adult and Continuing Education and Division of Lifelong learning at UWC. The topic - "Teaching adult education history in a time of uncertainty and hope" presented by Tony Brown from the University of Technology, Sydney. It wasn't so much the topic but the location of the seminar and the discussion that followed that struck me as the issue of identity was once again foregrounded. We see the world through the lenses of our identity - often our multiple identities. I was reminded of a time when I saw myself as an adult educator - an adult educator with a clear social justice agenda who saw 'progressive' and critical education as a fundamental means whereby adult learners would gain the means to challenge the status quo and necessarily critique their social world. I wondered why I keep forgetting this once upon a time identity because as indicated by scholars like Haggis, this field has so much to offer to our understanding of learning in higher education. But it has a radical and peripheral status and as a result I think it's hard as a practitioner to keep 'pissing against the wind'. Although having said that, the people at the seminar seemed enthused by their role and identity as adult education and development practitioners - happy to wage the war against inequality and keep pushing the social justice agenda.

I had a chat with my first masters supervisor: SW, who endearingly sneaked me a copy of her recent book. We had a lovely chat about my doctoral studies (of course she embarrassingly pointed out to the whole group that as a doctoral student I was surprisingly silent and that I should  have something to say) and the cultural vagaries associated with how the supervision process might be managed. We also spoke about the continuous struggles I had with my practitioner/researcher identities and how at the moment I was adopting the researcher identity in a bid to deal with the positioning privileged by my supervisors. In contrast, for S, the practitioner identity foregrounded her theoretical and practical activities, rather beautifully illustrated when she quickly switched into facilitator mode detailing how our discussion on identity might be translated into a classroom situation and how she would encourage adult learners to engage with and unpack issues of identity in a practical and reflective way. In a subsequent e-mail she made the following suggestion to me " I think that some more injections of good old fashioned partisanship is just what you need - you activist-scholar!" Excellent food for thought I think!

PhD in Cape Town

I've been in Cape Town for a week and finally I'm starting to carve out a 'study routine' for myself. I go and sit in the UCT library (my entrance to this prized resource has been achieved by dubious means - my access card has expired, but the security personnel don't really know this, so I sign in and no one is the wiser!) filled by mostly undergraduate students who are scanning their 'thick' course readers littered with brightly coloured highlighter reflected lines indicating salient points they hope they will remember in the upcoming test. The best thing of course is sitting on Jammie Steps - I reminisce about my own undergraduate years where I lived on those steps that wore down the backsides of my jeans due to the rough and textured edges of the steps. I'm feeling rather jaded and cynical about life and my studies - the PhD is so over rated. I'm suppose to be intelligent - darn only intelligent people get to explore theoretically complex ideas via a PhD - really? Then why do I feel so stupid and unintelligent most of the time? I imagine being that undergrad sitting on those steps about 20 years ago - I would have marvelled at anyone doing a masters, let alone a PhD and describe them as sophisticated, intelligent and definitely superior to me. Now that I'm in that position as a PhD student - I cant help thinking that I would prefer to be that lowly undergrad who had all the enthusiasm, interest and will power to change the world, the 20 year old who really believed that the education I was gaining would actually help me change the world and the lives of people in my community.

Now I am the critical, theoretical researcher far removed from the practical implementation realities of the classroom. But the PhD is like a necessary evil - I know I have to do it, I know it will give me the theoretical tools, insights and the political status to effect positive change. But I miss that bright eyed, optimistic, enthusiastic undergraduate filled with hope and determination to make a change to her society and country. Maybe if I sit long enough on those steps all those positive and starry eyed ideals will somehow filter into my being again...

Discourses of deficit

I've been inspired by being challenged. I completed my review of three papers written by Tamsin Haggis and she has inspired me by challenging me to 'think differently' about student learning in higher education. I don't think her ideas are completely new to me, but maybe I'm just more receptive to them now. The main argument that she makes is that thinking about learning in higher education is pervaded by psychological conceptualisation that places all the responsibility for the success or failure of learning within the student. As a result the dominant discourse in HE of students is that of deficit - its all about what they don't have, what they cant do, what the need to get, how they don't fit or cant adjust and how they should be fixed. How often, students who have failed a subject or a course are described as not being intellectually able (stupid or dumb, yes! most certainly in the department where I used to work) or if one was trying to be more politically correct - under prepared for university study. This is all part of the discourses of deficit!


And of course academics and the academy have an idealised version of the perfect student - one that is able to engage in a 'deep approach' to learning (a ubiquitous, psychologically informed conceptualisation of learning which Haggis in her 2003 paper critically unravels). Common to this learning approach is the focus on meaning and understanding and a critical engagement with the nature of the discipline or subject being studied. Surface approaches typically describe the focus on memorisation purely for exam purposes. Students therefore become segregated into the group that meets the expectations of their lectures (i.e using deep approaches) and those who do not (and for Haggis this typically means the majority of students in a mass HE system). Of course the system has responded to the needs of this disagreeable group, and a plethora of support programmes, new teaching technologies and pedagogic interventions have become the norm in the HE landscape - and I should know, I was often at the forefront, punting these to my colleagues
All of this narrative is set against a backdrop of a community that fails to critical reflect on its own values, culture and practices and indeed how the very way they exist might actually be the biggest barrier to learning that most students who join their ranks encounter. So she is calling for a shift away from psychologised views of learning to theorisation that instead considers placing the culture, discourse and practices of HE in the foreground of what might actually be causing problems associated with learning. 


Haggis also challenges implicit conceptualisation of responsibility for learning - suggesting that while the students still have "responsibility for reading, thinking and trying to engage with disciplinary meanings, but it is the teacher's responsibility to create pedagogic situations within which student positions and interpretations can form part of the subject they study". Teacher therefore have a responsibility to help students to learn how to do the learning in a particular subject - " how to think, question, search for evidence, accept evidence, and put evidence together to make an argument that is acceptable in that discipline" (Haggis, 2006).


I was reminded of a conversation I had last week during supervision about ideology -i.e. beliefs, values and ways of viewing the world - and ideologically positioning that results in certain beliefs being given more status than others and how this is often done in ways that makes what is essentially an unequal practice, seem implicit, the norm, value free. So HE and its deficit discourses function ideologically to maintain an education system that is inherently elitist and exclusionary and it co-opts its participants into thinking failure is a natural part of the process because not everyone can get a degree/diploma. My hands are soaked in blood!

OFF

I'm having an off week I think. All I have to do is read two papers, pick out the main threads and argument, link it to academic literacies as a conceptual frame and write a 1000 words essay that articulates my analysis. Simple! Well not so simple when your mind just cant get going. I've put it down to just one of those weeks when nothing seems to make sense. These weeks or days are often accompanied with feelings of negative self-worth and aimlessness. I've been entertaining thoughts of why the hell and I doing this PhD, I dont know anything worth knowing and certainly cant express it very well. I've been trying to console myself by finding loads of reading material - which unfortunately just makes me feel more inadequate as I try to figure out how the hell I'm going to do all that reading. I'm confident however, that 'this period' will pass, trying to reassure myself that I am 'intelligent' and can do this thing and most importantly, telling myself not to be so damn hard on myself.

on an abstract roll-a-coaster

I've just completed an abstract for a conference I'm going to in  Lille, France in September. I've already written a proposal which was accepted and now I had to complete a 'summary' of 1000 characters, including spaces...Huh? That's about 130 words - I whittled that thing down to nothingness and sent if off to a colleague to proofread as the scientific committee for the conference made it very clear that it is my personal responsibility to to "thoroughly control the linguistic quality of the summaries". I don't think I will do a good job at linguistic quality. Next up is to write an abstract for a Work-in-Progress Seminar (WIPS) I'm doing in April when I get back from South Africa. It is run internally within the research group (CREET)  I belong to at the OU. At least I'm not confined by a minuscule character limit and I have a sexy working title "Constructing conceptual frameworks: An idiosyncratic exploration". The presentation is aimed at my peers although an increasingly disturbing trend has resulted in loads of supervisors, professors and 'others'  more qualified than the presenters, generally, turning up, for what is meant to be a friendly and supportive presentation environment. I'm not sure how friendly it can be when a famous professor comments on the tardiness of your citation practices. Nevertheless, the work-in-progress theme, along with the mostly friendly overtones of the event, means that I can be fairly liberal with the descriptions of the presentation in the abstract and then tie things up more firmly when the presentation actually takes place. Well this is the plan anyway. Although knowing me, nothing will be dealt with in a liberal, matter of fact fashion, irrespective who the audience might be.