The psychological and the cognitive: two sides of one coin

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

More grappling in the mix

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

Culture or individual style?

 

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

 

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

 

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

Teaching beats reading any day!

It's been three months since I started the PhD, it's also fast approaching the end of 2009. I'm in a slight panic. What do I have to show for my three months of scholarship? I'm worrying that it's not very much. The more I read, the more I realise that there is so much I need to know, so much I don't know, and so much that seems out of my intellectual reach. All the 'isms' out there, just when I think, hell I understand this – I then read something else about the same 'ism' and it doesn't make sense anymore…arggghhh! It's almost as if my level of understanding is simply at the basic descriptive level, within that particularly temporal moment, the moment is fleeting – once the moment is gone, so is my understanding. I fail to transfer the understanding into other contexts. But I love when I read other people's work and see how well they understand the object of their analysis. How they actually unpack the actual nature of complexity that they invariably find. I like this idea that I must be able to explain the nature of 'complexity' in how student learn, how they come to be a graduate, how they understand and use the various academic literacy practices they encounter in the educational environment they find themselves. And for that of course I must understand all these freaking 'isms'. So I need to read, read, read…and read some more. But one thing reading can't give you, is experience and the time to develop that level of experience. Again the more I read the work of some really insightful people in my field, or even listen to them in seminars or discussion groups, I realise how their understanding of one concept or idea has developed over time to a level of refinement that I can only dream of. They just know – how to use the concepts in different contexts, how to critique the concept from different positions, the origins of the concept and its evolution. I think getting to this point of insight only comes from working with the concept – theoretically and practically. Often I wish I was teaching the very concepts and theories I am trying to understand, so that I could internalise it. In order to teach something you really need to understand it – because your students will ask questions and demand that you deconstruct the concept and/or theory so that it makes sense to them. I miss teaching and I miss having a focus, a real life situation where the validity, the applicability, the dynamism, the changeability of a theory or concept can be 'tested'. It makes the theory/concept a real, living thing – not the abstract lifeless 'thing' I am trying to understand. I wonder if I will ever get over not being a teacher anymore.

Supervision Preparation Notes 10 December 2010

I presented these notes along with a discussion that focused on three different ways I had tried to incorporate Bernstein's concepts into a research design. This discussion became the basis around which I made an argument for why I had selected one of the designs.

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  10 weeks of 'searching' or trying to capture what I thought my intentions where re: PhD study
  
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    Key issues
    
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      Curriculum
      
      
      
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      Academic literacies
      
      
      
    
    
  
  
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  I see academic literacies are bringing new insights, more textured understanding of student experiences into curriculum work. This is what inspired my initial appeal to academic literacies
  
  
  
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  Past year at the OU has expanded my understanding of the full scope (almost) of academic literacies and I've developed a more sophisticated understanding of what the field is about and where I fit in (almost). I've also started to understand it as a perspective and how to distinguish its work – epistemologically, methodologically and contextually
  
  
  
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  What has been difficult – my dislocation from a place of practice, context to inform the research
  
  • 
    
    This distancing has created a distortion of what I saw as the 'problem' and how I wanted to conceptualise the 'problem'
    
    
    
  • 
    
    Thus a distortion of the focus of my research
    
    
    
  
  
• 
  
  Within the last week I read two article 'by accident'/serendipitously and this helped to realign my thinking – even bringing me back to reality.
  
  
  
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  Realisation that I've been fixated on Bernstein
  
  • 
    
    Red herring
    
    
    
  • 
    
    The processing of trying to 'fit' Bernstein's theoretical frameworks into a research design was illuminating
    
    • 
      
      Helped redirect my gaze back to my initial interest
      
      
      
    
    
  
  

ACCESS to disciplinary / practice based knowledge.

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  What are the implications of literacy practices for access agendas into disciplinary knowledge?
  
  
  
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  What are the implications of literacy practices for identity in relation to academia and industry/practice
  
  
  

Keywords : Access, academic literacy practice, constructions of knowledge (disciplinary knowledge, recontextualised knowledge, professional knowledge), identity

So what’s this all about again? Access what?...

For the better part of the last two months I have been wrestling with a conceptual problem. Whether to use, and how to use the theoretical work of Basil Bernstein, to inform my research agenda. I've been struggling not only to understand this theories and concepts, but also how I might want to use it in my own work. On Friday I sent my supervisors a draft document that outlined three possible options on how I might use these conceptual frameworks and how it might impact on my original research agenda and my data collection. Then two things happened – I read some academic literacies work, by UCT academics, Rochelle Kapp and Bongi Bangeni (2009) and critical literacy researchers, Allan Luke and Elizabeth Moje (2009), and I had a conversation with some non-academic people where I tried (miserably) to explain my research agenda. Reflecting on both these events while sitting on a London tube to an inter-university academic literacies forum at the Institute of Education at the University of London on Saturday - it all came together. I had forgotten why I started working in this field in the first place. I was interested in student access to their disciplinary environments – not just surface level access – like getting into the course and then getting mediocre results – but in depth epistemological access – access to the knowledge structures of the discipline, understanding how things work in the discipline and field of practice so that they could challenge, transform and change it – put their own stamp on it, not simply technicians operating one process in a machine that is their professional field, but actors with insight and eventually power to change how things actually work.


I forgot all of this and became bogged down by the specifics of Bernstein, important as his work is to my research; it is only a means to an end. Access and identity needs to be foregrounded in my work. My research needs to answer questions about the implications for access to disciplinary knowledge and how students' literacy practices reflect professional or academic identities, which in turn have particular implications for access to the field of academia or practice. This is a significant realisation and I feel I can move forward with some clear direction. Yay…finally!

Rah, Rah, Rah…the British and all that

Yesterday I attended a session on Interviewing Political Elites, hosted by the Social Science Student Forum. The session was brilliant! The presenter (http://www.open.ac.uk/socialsciences/staff/people-profile.php?name=Richard_Heffernan) was knowledgeable, insightful, humorous (with at times, a rather lovely dry British wit) but also extremely engaging and encouraging of dialogue with the participants. His was also really eloquent, using just the right but sophisticated words to create this almost lyrical narrative. You could just sit and listen to him – he commanded interest from his audience. For me he epitomised the British academic or dare I say the British middle class intellectual. When I first saw him I thought "Who is this person in a suit, tie and braces, he looks like someone from the city or parliament – certainly not a lecturer!" But as a lecturer of political science and someone interested in British politics, especially the Labour Party – who even interviewed Thatcher – he was dressing the part. This advice about interviewing these specific respondents, I felt would hold equally true for any interview. And I found so much of what he was saying of practical value – he could of course back up every little suggestion with anecdotal evidence, that made his advice all the more valid.

 

I have been paying attention recently to how people construct their own little narrative and discourses – using particular phrases and words – and to the uninitiated, (like me very often) I think – Wow! And am in awe of how articulate, intelligent, sophisticated they sound, juxtaposed to me, deficient of all these wonderful charms, mumbling along with my incorrect pronunciations and flat and dull vocabulary. But to be fair everyone develops a presentation style and presentation persona – complete with appropriate theoretical terms, relevant to your discipline etc…I think it might be better to appreciate the fact that good speakers have grown confident in their disciplinary discourse, and developed their own style, their own voice, able to hold up in different contextual situations, over time. So my time will come.

 

Comparing the two 'training' sessions, the quality and value were seriously variable, making me think that maybe not all training is good for you. Or rather that even if a session does not meet your expectations – if you focus in on other aspects of the event – like the facilitation style or try to uncover the meta-narrative of the event or even really dig down to unpack why it is you don't like what is going on – you learn. I wonder if this is the adult educator and budding ethnographer talking here! Interesting too that intellectually I got more from the session facilitated by the almost austere British academic, and not the touchy-feely and all laid back ex-South African.

Professional networking...so what?

Yesterday as part of the OU’s Doctoral Training Workshop Session – I spent two hours pondering the topic of “Developing personal and professional support networks” run by an expat South African boytjie nogals. Not it helped the session anyway!.


In the session yesterday, even though the facilitators used various experiential pedagogies and tried the whole touchy-feely approach, I had to ask myself “So what is the point of all of this, other than having two hours to talk about your own personal experiences or rather listen to the facilitators own personal experiences?” Also I had to say something right? So of course it was me being devil’s advocate and saying “Sure it’s great to have fellow students to talk to because only another PhD student will understand what you are going through, but what about all the competition between students!” I don’t think people there even considered that there might be competition in this game. Today I actually thought about sending the facilitator an e-mail and saying that I wasn’t sure what the purpose of the session was all about, maybe he could point it out to me. I was keen to attend the session because on Sunday I’m off to the SRHE Conference (Society for Research in Higher Education) http://www.srhe.ac.uk/conference2009/pgnr.info.asp
and simply wanted to learn something about networking, especially that ‘small talk thing’ that I just can’t seem to master. Its fine when people approach me and ask me questions, but I can’t seem to do the same in return. I actually remember telling a friend this when she dropped me off at the airport on my way to Dublin about 3 years ago. So the session didn’t bring me any closer to uncovering the great secrets of how to be good at breaking the ice at these big conferences. What I did however gain some insight about, is how networking can be a really organised and structured activity (my American discussion partner seemed to be so clued up on this, she even uses software and had management system to organise her networking activities, complete with an approach to fellow up e-mail post conference). The old adage applies “It’s who you know, more than what you know that will get you places”, and the session was just a fancy way of expressing this.

Also I became aware how important it is to be able to explain what your research is about in 2-3 sentences. To strip down all the juicy (but often complex) bits and just express the overall ideas – usually by referring to the general topic, rather than the specifics. This is something I must pay more attention to, and work out some strategy, especially for those small talk ice breakers I will probably encounter in South Wales on Monday. I have to add, that I was happy to brag about my ‘support’ network in South African and I guess this ties in with what I mentioned in my last entry – that I find the English PhD process more inclined to support a more individualistic approach, which often sits at odds with my needs and wants. I do however wonder, if all I am seeing are examples of practices that reinforces my existing perception, my somewhat ‘pejorative’ perception, that the processes here just does not work for me – that all they do is exclude me. An alternative question therefore is, “Am I (un) consciously excluding myself?

Only two months old

Looking back over the entries in my blog, it seems rather strange that I have only been a PhD student for 2 months because there are so many layers of complexity captured in these few reflections. I'm almost scared what two years at this game might produce. The past week has once again forced me to reflect on my positioning and identity. At one point this week I just said to myself – "Why the hell do you have to think in the way you do and ask questions? Why don't you just sit quietly in the corner and not draw attention to yourself". By speaking, asking questions, expressing your view point – you position yourself either in opposition or in solidarity to someone else's position. Of course this can be to your benefit or detriment. In many ways the PhD process is in part about learning, understanding, articulating and defending your particular position on a topic, so why was I so ruffled by this process this week. Guess it depends on how many people in the audience identifies and supports your position or whether you are simply just creating a disconnection. Sorry, I'm not being very clear. I went to a series of seminars this week – dealing with ethics, analysis methods and academic literacies. At each of these sessions I was vocal and just couldn't stop articulating my opinion. Great you say, yes finally I'm finding my voice. But what does this voice say about me? How do I see myself and how do others see me through the questions I ask and the comments I make. In the academic literacies reading group – I certainly positioned myself as a South African curriculum development practitioner; in the ethics seminar – as an ethnographer who will make certain decisions that will seek to protect my research participants and if necessary not disclose unsavoury activities if it negatively affects the reputation of the participants/institution but doesn't really affect the quality of the data I am able to obtain; in the analysis seminar - I was someone who wants to understand the epistemological basis of a particular methodology before buying into its approach. BUT this is my reading of my positioning and I know I might not have been seen in this light by colleagues listening to me. Importantly, do I want to stick out as different – do I want to accentuate my difference? Because I do feel very different in this context. In all these sessions I felt different; my difference was highlighted – through my accent, in my choice of words and use of phrases, in the stance I took on the topic, even through my use of Bernstein in academic literacies research.
But I see my difference not only in the view I take on a particular topic, I also see this whole PhD process differently. For me it's a collaborative process – I engage with my supervisors, mentors, other academics, research participants, colleagues and friends and so carefully weave a highly collaborative even communal construction of my understanding(s) over time. I don't do this alone – it's not an individual project or process. So I need people all the time, to hear me speak, to listen to, to ask questions, to engage with (even if they are dead or only speak to me through their words in articles and books), to explore and to be. And I seek people out – I want to see my supervisors as many times a month as I can – I want their opinions on the work I am doing, on my thinking and the ideas buzzing around in my head. I want to hear what other colleagues are doing and how they are managing this process – not for any malicious reasons, but simply as a way of sharing and learning from them. My position is that of – "I am, because of everyone else" – that sense of ubuntu. It's how I am in my personal life and certainly how I am academically. And this might be mistaken in rather disingenuous ways by some who are more inclined to an individualistic positionality. As was the case this week in what seemed a rather innocuous conversation about progress and supervision processes, where I inadvertently took some flak from a colleague who may have interpreted my engagement attempts as in some way negatively reflecting on the different way she was handling the whole PhD process.

As I said earlier this whole thing is about staking a claim on a particular aspect of a specific topic, developing an in depth, critical understanding and then defending that understanding. I also increasingly think that for me, it is about identifying how I want to position myself in relation to the underlying PhD process I want to follow, while becoming confident in the value of that process for me. Bring on the next two years…yeah right!

Over the top of my head

I read a paper last night by Karl Maton – a scholar who works with Basil Bernstein's theoretical frame but has also extended his concepts in innovative and intellectually stimulating ways. This paper was about theories that enable cumulative knowledge building and why Bernstein's theories have not enjoyed the same warm and positive reception as say Bourdieu. Well I managed to understand the overall gist of his argument, but actually grasped about 20% of the paper – the rest, well woooosh! over my head. But I was happy that I managed to finish reading the paper anyway. A common critique of Bernstein's writing and his theoretical exposition is that it is dense and highly abstract. To this Maton replies

"So while it is not necessarily more difficult to read and understand, whether it is experienced as such depends on whether one has the knowledge to understand the condensed concepts and/or the disposition to acquire that knowledge. This demands intellectual effort and the belief that this effort will yield rewards" (2008:34)

Makes one think hey!

Today at a seminar on thematic analysis (which was really great and did not go over my head, yet pushed me beyond my limits of understanding about this analysis method), I realised that there are so many 'things' I will have to juggle in my brain. All these bits and pieces about theoretical frameworks, their meta-histories and epistemologies, the data collection methods, the analysis methods and on, and on and on. All of these elements with their own rules, regulations and principles that need to be understood and applied. I asked a friend how the hell I will manage to keep all of this in my head. His simple reply was "Are you meant to keep them all in your head? Surely if you understand the principles, you don't have to store all the detail in your head?" See I'm thinking again.

Fireworks going off in my brain

From the title you can probably guess that I had a good supervision meeting yesterday. It was hard going for me, but so stimulating and challenging. We focused our discussion on the piece I had written with both my supervisors raising questions – in effect getting me to explain my understanding of BB and his theories. But their questions also forced me to think about how ‘others’ might view his work, along with how I would substantiate my use of his theories. I came away thinking, well I feel more confident about what I know about BB’s work and I am more astute at judging the perspectives other authors take when reading or engaging with his work. I can also see the gaps in my own understanding – primarily around the sociology of education – all those wonderful little “isms”. We also spoke about the relevance of BB’s work for my research – importantly the relationship between BB and academic literacies. An area I need to think and write about in the coming weeks.



On a more reflective note I was confront by two sort of related issues

• My own identity work

• How I give expression to my voice



Identity work

As yet I haven’t taken a firm position on my identity – I’m still struggling with this notion of ‘PhD student’ and would much rather be the ‘teacher-as-researcher’ I was a mere 13-14 months ago. Also I see myself as an academic developer, not an academic literacies researcher, yet I am working in the field of academic literacies without a background language, literacies or linguistics. So who am I and what position do I take? Mary made the point yesterday in our meeting that she was reading BB from an academic literacies perspective and couldn’t see his work with any other lens. As such she struggled to understand his position and questioned the use of his terminology etc…My experience had been an almost ‘neutral’ reading, seeing connections with my MRes research and my experiences of working in the HE field as a teacher. This connected a bit with the workshop I attended yesterday where the facilitator was stressing the importance of scholarly identity and authority in writing. I had to ask myself – so where are you located? I felt I couldn’t answer, but of course I have a stand – working with BB and academic literacies means I have taken a stand. One of the questions Robin asked me was whether I was still committed to the agenda which Bernstein’s work is aligned to – namely “deconstructing the ideological, political and social basis of knowledge and curriculum, while focusing on a concern for the consequences on these constructions for different social classes as they enter and engage with the educational system” So I have a stance, but I don’t feel I have taken on the authority of that stance (well not in a pure academic rhetorical way) – I am still tentatively testing the water, maybe as I forge and development a new identity and grapple with the boundaries that define those identities.



My voice

Two incidents made me think about this – firstly, during supervision, listening to myself try and explain my ideas and thoughts and thinking – hell I sound like a babbling fool. No sophistication or refinement in my word choices or vocabulary. Robin asked me if I could explain the controversy surrounding BB’s code theory – yes of course I could, but what came out of my mouth was another story all together. Secondly, while writing my blog last night, which took me almost an hour I was conscious that I was constantly editing my thoughts and expression – I wasn’t just saying what I thought, capturing my impressions and reflections, no I was constructing a position, fashioned in a sort of pseudo academic-come-casual voice. Was that the real me, was that really my voice? Then a comment from a friend today, referring specifically to how my writing was giving expression to my academic, and therefore formal rhetorical writing, development. I’m wondering if this is how I want this blog to develop. Is this ‘formalised’ writing curtailing my more reflective and affective insights? I looked at a hand written research journal I kept during my MRes and it was a gritty, raw and unmasked exploration of my thoughts and ideas – an aspect I don’t see in this blog. As I move towards one position I drift away from the other – and within the cultural context of the OU I perceive I should be talking, sounding, writing in a particular way, creating more internal conflict and contestation.



My voice and identity – two sides of the same coin, reflective of my current context, underlying intentions to project a version of my own reality, always aware of the audience and their interpretation of my voice and identity. Where the hell is that capeflatsgirl??? Heavy stuff hey!