Category Archives: research

Random PhD tips – the early years

One of the things that I’m finding with this study is that there is a wealth of advice out there and it still feels vaguely productive to pore over that instead of pressing on with actual “work”.

Here are some scattered tips and things that I’ve read and been told in no particular order.

The PhD is essentially a research apprenticeship. While one of the stated goals is to make a contribution to the scholarship, a large part of it is about demonstrating that you are able to competently carry out research and use it to build a solid argument. It doesn’t have to be massive or incredibly sophisticated – indeed, there’s a respect paper (yet to read but it’s on the list) titled “It’s a PhD, not a Nobel Prize” by Mullins and Kiley (2002).

In the early stage of your research, it’s all about the reading. You don’t know what you don’t know yet or where the literature will take you so it’s just about reading, reading and more reading. Everyone has said to enjoy this phase because you generally never get to be this indulgent again. (I’m happy with this advice but I also want to make sure that I make the most of the reading that I do so I’ve been fiddling around the edges looking for ways to capture the information, quotes, ideas and further reading to be found in it – partially in a bibliographic/citation tool (Zotero) and partially in blogging about it)

How to read is also a thing. Given the ridiculous amount of material out there, reading cover to cover isn’t going to get it done. I’ve repeated had it suggested to skim the abstract, the introduction and the conclusion, references and if this seems relevant, dip into the methodology. Then decide whether to proceed. This part I’m finding harder, as I’m yet to feel confident that I can make this judgement but I’m sure it will come with time. It seems sensible to put a little more trust into readings recommended by my supervisors and clever colleagues and so far, so good.

Building some solid organisational systems is a no brainer. This is something that I particularly enjoy – probably more than the work part that actually comes after it. Working out categories and folders and backups is great but I’ll have to press on pretty soon.

Emotional resilience is a pretty common theme in the advice literature. It’s a long, draining process requiring us to put our ideas and intellect on display to the world and there will inevitably be some tough feedback. There’s also a lot of talk about imposter syndrome – the fear that people will realise that we aren’t are smart as we make out. (I initially typed smark there, so I’m not sure what that says). This seems reasonably healthy to me – kind of the inverse of the Dunning Kruger effect.

I’ve already felt fairly conscious of the fact that many of my peers seem to be using more theoretical (dare I say jargony) terms in their writing and I wonder if I am judged for not doing this. (I have a political thing about “plain English” and accessible language but I do understand that there are some terms and concepts that are far more effectively communicated in “jargon”). At the moment, I feel that the best thing for me to do is to use the language that best enables me to share my thoughts. (I have found a glossary tool that I’ve added to this blog and will be populating at some point that adds mouse-over definitions for terms in the text. One of my favourite things about reading on the Kindle is being able to highlight words for an instant defintiion. The Trowler book that I’ve been banging on about has a nice linked glossary section at the back, that has helped me to get across concepts like ontology and epistemology, endogenous and etic, among others)

Communicating early and often is also a key theme in the advice so far – as a fairly self-reliant person this is certainly something that I’ll need to work on but I definitely see the value. Many hands etc etc. In the past I’ve liked/needed to thrash an idea out in my head to come up with some kind of solution that I was willing to share with others but I just don’t think this is going to cut it this time around.

Being open to ideas from seemingly unrelated areas is another great piece of advice. A lot of these have come from Inger “Thesis Whisperer” Mewburn’s blog and “How to Tame your PhD” book, I must add. Going to talks by other researchers might lead to any number of brain waves as you extrapolate their ideas to your context.

I’m not super close to the writing stage yet but like the idea of setting time limits to get certain things done. Avoiding that whole “work expands to fill the time available to it” trap. I’ve long been an advocate of Pomodoro technique (the hardest part is starting the timer) and I understand the notion of “the perfect is the enemy of the good/done”. All of this writing will go through umpteen drafts, so it doesn’t have to be good the first (or the fifth) time, it just has to be written.

Talking to people about what you’re doing and what you’re planning (particularly supervisors) can be an effective way to add some deadline and social pressure to do the work. (I’m still trying to work out exactly what I need to be doing yet – it seems like just reading is too easy)

There are a lot of people around that want to help us to succeed and are willing to help – there is research training, library skills training, communities of practice and reams of published advice. For all of this, I am particularly grateful. Thanks.

Thoughts on: “Doing Insider Research in Universities” (Trowler, 2012) Part 4 – Social practice theory

Ok, so one more post and I can put this book (Is it still a book on a Kindle?) down.

Social Practice theory is a direction that I’ve been encouraged to explore by my supervisor and I can see that if offers some promise if I do end up travelling down “how things work in organisations” type path.

I have to be honest, I understand that theory is important in underpinning the shape of one’s research and in being able to make a contribution to the scholarly world but what I’ve seen of SPT so far feels a little simplistic. Again, this is kind of the point of theory in that “making the familiar strange” type way and I have no doubt that the further into it I go, the more complex it will seem. On the plus side, there’s nothing in it yet that I strongly disagree with.

To paraphrase (horribly) my current understanding – the things that people do are influenced by their contexts and particularly the physical/material aspects of the things that they interact with. (The actions also influence the form that the material things take). People have a set of things that they do regularly and routinely. The contexts and external actors on these practices are important and should not be overlooked – these include the locations and groups where the actions take place.

Some interesting quotes from Trowler:

Practices have an evolving trajectory, rarely a revolutionary one

The process of context generation… is a very significant factor in changing organisations

Change initiatives work best when they are grounded in current sets of practices and build on them

(That has been a fairly common constant in much of what I have been reading of late – we want to scaffold “innovation” where possible. That and benchmarking really)

Trowler identifies what he calls eight “moments” in teaching and learning regimes (TLRs):

 which shape contextual concerns and which depict the social practices in place.
1. Recurrent practices
2. Tacit assumptions
3. Implicit theories of teaching and learning
4. Discursive repertoires
5. Conventions of appropriateness
6. Power relations
7. Subjectivities in interaction
8. Codes of signification

I’m not yet sure how I’ll start to unpack these but they appear to merit further consideration.

He wraps the book up with a discussion of further resources and some of the gaps in the current literature. He notes that there has been much less research looking into the organisational and management sides of higher education than other areas.

He goes on to examine some of the more common methodologies used in insider research in higher education, which gives me a few more leads to follow.

Common research methods or methodologies used in higher education research generally are: documentary analysis; comparative analysis; interviews; surveys; multivariate analyses; conceptual analyses, phenomenography; critical/feminist perspectives; and auto/biographical and observational studies

As an entry-way to this particular type of research, I found this book invaluable to setting the scene, systematically laying out the pros and cons of a range of approaches and providing some theoretical frameworks to wrap it up in. In fairness, I’m still at the stage where I don’t entirely know what I don’t know but there is an evenhandedness and accessibility to his writing that inspires some confidence.

I feel relatively confident that, given enough thought, it will be possible to conduct some interesting and worthwhile research in my institution.

 

Thoughts on: “Doing Insider Research in Universities” (Trowler, 2012) Part 3 – Good research design and ethics/politics

I’m not sure that this is how I’ll process all of the books that I read – in fact I’m almost certain that it isn’t – but I’ll continue this series of posts about Trowler – Doing Insider Research in Universities because I have found it to be a great way to dip my toe into the many issues that I will face in my research.

The next two chapters look at value and robustness in insider research (which, again, I take to be about being able to defend your methodology – and choosing a good one) and then the ethics and politics of insider research in your university, which is pretty much unavoidable.

He opens with a discussion of some of the criticisms that case studies face as well as some of the responses to these. I’ll leave it here in full as it sums it up well.

Case study researchers may find their work subject to the following criticisms (Flyvbjerg, 2006): it only yields concrete, practical knowledge rather than the supposedly more valuable general, theoretical and propositional knowledge;  generalization from one case is not possible and so the research does not contribute to the development of knowledge; the research can generate hypotheses, but other methods are necessary to test them and build theory; case study design contains a bias toward verification, i.e., a tendency to confirm the researcher’s preconceived notions. Both Flyvbjerg and Yin (2009) refute these criticisms, but those who research their own universities need to be clear about precisely what their research questions are, what the rationale behind the research design is, and what the truth claims are. This advice holds for any kind of research, but other designs tend to draw less critical fire.

(He also highlights Gomm et al (2000), Simons (2009) and Yin (2009) as great starting points for further investigation of case study methodology)

Trowler dips back into some of the ontological questions that he touched on earlier in the book, comparing the merits of the true vs the useful. (I may be oversimplifying this). This draws on Sayer’s notion of “practical adequacy” in prioritising the usefulness of information. I kind of get it but think I’ll need to dig a little deeper. I can see how some true things mightn’t necessarily be valuable but as for things that are kind of true…?

This is echoed in further discussions of Bassey’s idea of “fuzzy generalizations”. In short, this is about acknowledging that life is complex and theory won’t always accommodate the range of factors at play. So that rather than saying that in situation A, if B happens then C will follow, we might say in situation A, if B happens then C will generally follow between D and E% of the time. It’s not as neat and arguably not as helpful but no doubt more realistic.

In terms of the design of research, Trowler posits twelve questions for researchers to consider to test the rigour and quality of their proposed methods.

1. In designing the research, how do I know that my planned approach will answer the questions I have more fully than any other?
2. How do I design the research to take best advantage of the benefits of insider research while avoiding its pitfalls as far as possible?
3. Conceptually, how do I represent my organization, its culture and its practices? (And how does this representation shape my design?)
4. How and from whom will I secure access to the data I need? (Why them and why not others?)
5. Whom should I inform about the project, and how should I describe it, when I seek ‘informed’ consent? (And how might this affect my data?)
6. How will I ensure that the project is run ethically so that all participants and institutional bodies are protected? (While at the same time being as transparent as possible to readers so they can judge the robustness of my approach and conclusions?)
7. If I am using participant observation, what are the ethical issues in relation to the people I observe in natural settings? (And how might my answer to that question affect my data?)
8. If using interviews, what measures should I take to deal with interview bias? (And will they assure a sufficient degree of robustness?)
9. What should the balance be between collecting naturalistic data and formally ‘collected’ data? (And how can I offer assurances of robustness about conclusions drawn from both?)
10. How should I analyse the different forms of data I have, given that there will almost certainly be a large amount of various sorts? (And how do I ensure that sufficient and appropriate weight is given to each form of data in generating conclusions?)
11. How, and how much, will I communicate my findings to participants to ensure that they are happy with what I intend to make public? (And will this affect the way I present my conclusions to other audiences?)
12. Generally, in what other ways can I satisfy the reader about the robustness of my research and its findings?

(I was a little hesitant to just paste this in holus bolus but it all seems particularly valuable).

In very pragmatic terms, there will also inevitably be a number of ethical and political issues to consider when undertaking insider research in one’s own institution. The question of whether to anonymise the institution and the research participants is a live one – though at this stage, to me, it seems impractical and counterproductive, particularly when it could mean reducing the number of sources of data for fear of not being able to correctly reference them. The lack of transparency could also arguably lessen a reader’s view of the robustness of the research.

I also think that the question of to what extent people change their behaviour under observation is a valid one, however there are no doubt ways to mitigate this.

Politically, senior leaders in the organisation will imaginably want to feel confident that the research won’t damage the reputation of the university before granting access. Does this then lead to self-censorship and selective reporting if there are areas where there is room for improvement?

At a higher level of ethical debate, the selection of standpoints from which to pose questions and to begin observations and investigations can raise some concerns. If I fail to incorporate the perspective of voices that are less often heard, am I guilty of perpetuating the status quo?

Lots to think about and to be perfectly blunt, I would be naive not to factor in the question of what asking the wrong person the wrong question might mean for my career prospects in the organisation. Fortunately I have a little time to think about some of these things.

 

Thoughts on: “Doing Insider Research in Universities” (Trowler, 2012) Part 2 (Being an insider and research methodologies)

I just realised that Part 1 of these posts had been sitting in my drafts folder – waiting for ??? – so if it seems like I’ve had an incredibly productive burst of writing, yeah nah. (Which isn’t to say that I don’t have a fair bit to say about this book now, as I have found it particularly helpful)

One thing I have learned, sadly, is that the Kindle doesn’t sort “highlights” (selections that I’ve made in the text) by chapter, so my notes aren’t as useful to me as I might’ve hoped. I’ll know to add notes to the highlights as well next time, listing the chapter. (It is still pretty handy being able to collate them in the kindle.amazon.com/your_highlights page though)

Chapter 2: Researching Universities. 

Trowler looks here at some of the knowledge and data issues that we face when researching in universities. Primarily the nature of the different types of knowledge present – implicit and explicit.

Implicit relates to practice knowledge (a.k.a phronesis) that has been developed through experience and which can be harder to express in words. Things like how to deliver a rigorous and yet engaging lecture. Because it is lived knowledge, it can be argued that it carries more legitimacy than that which has come from theory. At the same time, it will be very important to remember that there can often be a gap between people’s perspectives of their actions and the actions themselves.

On the other side we find propositional or technical knowledge, which is more like your old fashioned book learning. Easier to express and generally more objective but if we take into consideration the fact that unis exist in different contexts and can have their own quirks, this knowledge is likely to be useful in different applications.

Trowler references Blackler (1995), who

distinguishes between five types of knowledge identified in the organizational literature: embodied; embedded; embrained; encultured and encoded. These terms describe, respectively, knowledge which lies in muscle memory and is seen in skilled physical performances (performative knowledge); that which is located in systematic routines; knowledge which lies in the brain (cognition); that which is located in shared meaning systems; and finally knowledge which is encoded in text of various sorts.

For the research that I’m considering – which currently seems to be drifting toward the role of the university as a whole (or as an “ecology” if you will), I can see that there may be value in most of these kinds of knowledge. I get the feeling that there is definitely going to be a need to consider some of the theories relating to organisations and management.

In a nutshell, I need to be mindful of the ontological and epistemological questions that come up relating to the nature of reality and of knowledge and have an answer ready for questions about how I have done so.

Chapter 3: Research design, data collection and theory

This is a major section for me as I’ve been out of the formal research loop for a long time. If you don’t read anything else in this book (and methodology is important to you), read this. This chapter runs through major methodological approaches, offering up pros and cons for all of them. Ultimately Trowler’s own research took an ethnographic case study approach in a single site and drew from four sources of data: “interviews, observant participation, documents generated within and without the institution and other studies of it”.

Having stepped us through the alternatives, Trowler’s case for his approach in his research appears sound. (Of course, at this stage I’m going off intuition rather than experience but my understanding is that as long as you can make a strong/valid enough argument for your methodology, you can pretty much do what you like)

He anchors this discussion with a comparison of two ontological perspectives (whether they exist as a dichotomy or as points on a spectrum is debatable, of course). There is the “realist” approach (more quantitative, tied to “correlations of a generalisable nature”) and the “social constructivist” (more qualitative, reality is more subjective, more specific but less generalisable).

A key question raised – and certainly one that I’ll need to consider – is that of single site vs multi site research. Beyond the basic logistical issues, there is also (for me) the matter of one site being insider research and another being outsider research. (Even though if I was to go with a second and even a third site, I have connections and relationships in both).

To be clearer, at this stage I’m considering primarily researching within my own university (ANU) and possibly the neighbouring University of Canberra. A third option could be my former employer, the Canberra Institute of Technology, a Vocational Education and Training provider. On the one hand, this would introduce a lot more variables to the things being examined – well-resourced, research “elite” university vs emerging, “standard” university vs resource-challenged teaching focused adult education provider. All of these variables will necessarily shape the data collected and the questions asked. On the other hand, being able to compare approaches to similar questions (how can we better support TELT practices) could well be more illuminating.

Trowler identifies 6 type of comparative projects of interest:

1. The factors influencing the success or otherwise of an innovation (for example around virtual learning environments’ deployment and use)
2. Approaches to management and leadership and their effectiveness
3. The implementation of a national policy
4. Compliance (or otherwise) with national quality (or other) guidelines
5. Professional practices in a discipline or field of study
6. Student responses to an innovation

To be honest, the added complexity feels like an overreach at this juncture – I’d rather do something simpler well. It does open the door for further research down the track of course.

Of the methodological approaches discussed, I’d summarise them as follows:

Ethnographic – Participant observation
Researcher ‘lives with the natives’ for prolonged periods of time, fly on the wall type observation, often starts froma particular standpoint, “should be for people and not just about them”, language and textual objects vital,

Action research
Focused on solving particular problems, researcher is often a practitioner, iterative processes

Evaluative research
“Evaluative research in higher education aims to attribute value and worth to individual, group, institutional or sectoral activities happening there”. Care needs to be taken to ensure that it makes a larger contribution (theoretical/methodological/professional) to knowledge in the academic world

Hypothesis testing
Often trying to replicate findings of other studies, may try to improve on methodological flaws in prior studies, applying and extending theory

From here, Trowler moves on to discussing the importance of connecting theory to research. From what I can see, it seems to be partially as a way of finding a standpoint and a set of questions and partially as a way of testing some of the hypotheses.

He offers a solid overview of the characteristics of theory:

1. It uses a set of interconnected concepts to classify the components of a system and how they are related.
2. This set is deployed to develop a set of systematically and logically related propositions that depict some aspect of the operation of the world.
3. These claim to provide an explanation for a range of phenomena by illuminating causal connections.
4. Theory should provide predictions which reduce uncertainty about the outcome of a specific set of conditions. These may be rough probabilistic or fuzzy predictions, and they should be corrigible – it should be possible to disconfirm or jeopardize them through observations of the world. In the hypothetico-deductive tradition, from which this viewpoint comes, theory offers statements of the form ‘in Z conditions, if X happens then Y will follow’.
5. Theory helps locate local social processes in wider structures, because it is these which lend predictability to the social world.
6. Finally, theory guides research interventions, helping to define research problems and appropriate research designs to investigate them.

One of the goals of theory seems to relate to being able to “render the normal strange”. A challenge to face as an insider researcher – and particularly in the face of information sources that will come with their own biases and preconceptions – is to maintain that objectivity.

One way of addressing this is by “the application of Stenhouse’s (1979) notion of the ‘second record’ (the use of a detailed understanding of meaning systems to ‘read’ interview data) to this kind of secondary data about the institution.”

Trowler mentions that he probably collected too much data which caused problems in the data analysis phase – no idea how to deal with that but this is something that I will look for in my further reading about research practices.

This chapter also includes a solid description of the methodology that he used in his own PhD research – I think what I’m going to need to do is to create a spreadsheet or database outlining different methodologies – that should be particularly helpful. (Already partially discussed above).

 

Thoughts on: “Doing Insider Research in Universities” (Trowler, 2012) Part 1

This book was recommended to me (I’m pretty sure) by Inger Mewburn and while it is relatively short, it is incredibly pertinent to my PhD research. One of the reasons that I chose my topic area (Factors influencing TELT practices in Higher Ed) is the level of access that I have to this world through my day job as a learning technologist. I’m relatively new to the Higher Ed sector, after spending a long time in Vocational Education and Training – the other adult learning sector – and while there are many commonalities, there are more than a few significant differences to navigate.

Trowler seems to have a refreshingly grounded perspective of the Higher Ed sector, celebrating its many strengths but not being afraid to name the areas for improvement. There’s a lot to unpack in this remarkably short (74 pages all up) book so I’m going to break it into chunks.

Chapter 1: Insider research: a brief overview

Launching into an examination of the pros and cons of conducting research in your own educational organisation, Trowler quotes Merton (1972) who suggests that

insider doctrine (that only insiders can do ‘proper’ research because of the depth of their understanding) and the ‘outsider’ doctrine (that only outsiders have the necessary detachment for robust research) are both fallacies because we rarely are ever completely an insider or an outsider

The main thing, Trowler suggests, is that it is vital to state explicitly in your justification of your research methodology exactly how an endogenous (insider) approach might “illuminate areas of interest” and “where it could obscure them” (and the steps taken to avoid this)

In broad terms, the advantages of endogenous research include:

  • “better access to naturalistic data… greater access to the second record (underlying meanings of statements made in person or in print) and hidden transcripts (the occluded articulations of power relations within organisations)”
  • “the researcher is better able to produce ‘emic’ accounts (ones meaningful to actors), especially using an ethnographic approach”
  • ” the insider researcher is empowered to deploy naturalistic data (records of activities that are neither elicited nor affected by the actions of social researchers), critical discourse analysis (an approach to the study of the production and effects of texts of all sorts) and phenomenography (an approach to the study of the social world which captures the different ways in which a concept is apprehended, usually through interviews with a range of respondents in a particular social field)”
  • “Being culturally literate; one can deploy different types of data, which are relatively easily available, in interrogating an argument”
  • “There may be a better chance of having a beneficial impact on university practices too, especially if the research project involves action research or when research questions address the implications for policy and practice of the project’s findings (LSE Public Policy Group, 2011)”
  • “In addition, specific groups, previously under-represented or dis-empowered may benefit. Insider research is one way of addressing this issue by shining a light on experiences and ways of knowing of women and other groups”

On the other hand, there can be some significant practical disadvantages to insider research

  • “One’s involvement as a participant in the site of research may mean loss of the ability to produce good, culturally neutral, ‘etic’ (culturally neutral depictions of the social world, describing behaviours) accounts because if can become difficult to ‘see’ some dimensions of social life; they easily become normalised for the participant (the literature talks about the difficulty for insiders of “rendering the normal strange”: Delamont, 2002).”
  • “Moreover, there may be a conflict between the role as a researcher and one’s professional or student role in the university. There may be issues of power differentials between the researcher and researched, in either direction, which can be very problematic both ethically and methodologically (see Ryan et al, 2011 for a discussion of this…)”
  • “Finally, respondents who know the researcher personally or by reputation may have pre-formed expectations of their alignments and preferences in ways which change their responses to questions (a form of the effect called ‘interview bias’)”

My thoughts: 

As a full-time employee of a university with what I feel are a number of interesting avenues for investigation on offer, I am still highly mindful of the fact that not everyone may be as supportive and open to research into our practices as one might expect. Higher education can be an environment where people are necessarily heavily invested in their own expertise – it is essentially their currency – and even when questions are asked of their teaching (or professional) practices (rather than their discipline knowledge), it can sometimes be taken poorly.

Any number of other political factors can come into play and, rightly or wrongly, need to be considered and accommodated. Anonymising the data is possible but it does feel as though this would impact the narrative aspects of the thesis and, realistically, given the links to papers and conference presentations and the relatively small size of the ed tech community in Australia, it’s hard to believe that people wouldn’t figure out who you are writing about anyway.

Putting these things aside, from a purely practical perspective, as a part-time researcher and full-time employee, being able to work on research (with the blessing of my manager) that directly benefits our organisation during work hours is highly appealing. Maintaining a high degree of mindfulness about keeping an analytical and objective mindset – “rendering the normal strange” – might take a degree of effort but with focus seems achievable.

Merton, R. K. (1972). Insiders and Outsiders: A Chapter in the Sociology of Knowledge. Americal Journal of Sociology.lsLSELDSE
LSE Public Policy Group. (2011, April). Maximizing the impacts of your research: A handbook for social scientists. Retrieved March 17, 2016, from http://www.lse.ac.uk/government/research/resgroups/LSEPublicPolicy/Docs/LSE_Impact_Handbook_April_2011.pdf
Ryan, L., Kofman, E., & Aaron, P. (2011). Insiders and outsiders: working with peer researchers in researching Muslim communities. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 14(1), 49–60. http://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2010.481835

Doing everything in the early days of a PhD

I suspect one of the advantages of starting a PhD a little later in life than many is having a greater sense of how and where to look for help. Three weeks in (officially), I’m a little overwhelmed with the scale of the job that I have taken on – but I’m “assured” (not reassured) that this is normal and also that this feeling never really goes away. (I’m also pretty sure that my knowledge of where and how to find help is marginal but I at least have a glimmer of an idea)

I’m also grateful to know a number of people that have already been there and are willing to share their hard earned experiences. Stubborn, younger me would’ve paid less heed to these lessons, needing to make my own mistakes (and there’s still plenty of time for that) and work everything out myself. Happily I’ve moved past that phase. I have a housemate in the 9th year of her Linguistics/Autism/something research, a number of friends (more sciencey) that are done and dusted and basically everyone that I work with that have also been there, done that.

This post isn’t about setting out to become one of the many how-to PhD bloggers – but I’m very happy that they’re out there. Particularly Inger (Thesis Whisperer) Mewburn, who I met before I even knew about that side of her and before I even saw myself doing this thing. She’s already been very supportive and helpful and being able to toddle along to her workshops is great. Her blog and that of Pat Thomson (“Patter”) are constantly talked up and are high on my to-read list.

The university offers a great range of workshops on all aspects of research and writing – sadly I’m a 3.5 hr bus ride away but I’m still making the weekly trip to the Thesis Proposal Writing Workshop and getting a lot from that. So far we’ve covered the basic bones of a thesis (and a proposal) and the fact that while there is some flexibility in structure, you’re still generally looking at ILMRaD (Introduction, Lit review, Methods, Report of research findings and Discussion). As someone from a story writing background, I’m very interesting in finding ways to spin a compelling story and so I think that the preference for putting the methodology up front is going to present some challenges here. (Arguably putting it up front would work if it was the story of me doing research but I feel like the thesis is more the story of the content and putting it at the start feels like explaining the magic trick before you’ve done it. I guess that’s the difference between academic and creative writing and it simply is what it is)

My (employer) college and university offers a similar range of training opportunities and is being quite generous in letting me make the most of them. I’ve also been pointed towards a host of books and articles, including “How to write a better thesis” by Evans (2014) just last night.

I have no doubt there will be many trials ahead but I find it entirely comforting that there are so many people that have gone before me that are willing and happy to share their knowledge and experiences. I haven’t even mentioned the gentle yet focused guidance I’ve had from my supervisors, Peter and Lina. We’re still talking about how regularly to meet and at this stage, where I’m gingerly stepping down the beach to the sea of possibility, I’ve been unsure how vital early meetings are (it seems like I just need to do a tonne of reading) but my housemate made a very helpful point last night that this is also a key relationship building time, which I guess is something I can overlook at times in the midst of all the other things going on.

Thoughts on: What is educational research? Changing perspectives through the 20th century (Nisbet, 2005)

This is a substantial and comprehensive paper that takes us on a journey from the late 19th century to the modern age. Nisbet explores the place of research in education and how it has shifted in focus and character over time in response to the needs and demands of stakeholders.

Nisbet broadly identifies three key shifts in the role of the researcher in education – “from academic theorist in phase 1, through expert consultant in phase 2, to reflective practitioner in phase 3.” Clearly these can never be absolutist descriptions as there are always going to be a range of types of research occurring at any time but they do still offer an interesting insight into the ways that cultural norms and trends have led research. He also rightly wonders whether “the growing acceptance of research in education… may have had the effect of restricting its scope”

Rather than focusing here on the entirety of this overview, I’ll look more at some of the key ideas. (I’m very much still at the point of needing to better understand the nature of formal research in education and I heartily recommend this paper if you’re interested in the context of this but a blog post will do it no justice)

Early educational research had a highly psychological and quantitative bent

The concept of educational research which was established was experimental, primarily psychological, involving measurement, seeking solutions to the educational problems of the day, and this interpretation monopolised educational research for the first half of the century

Edouarde Claparede delved into some interesting questions in the field of cognition in Experimental Pedagogy and the Psychology of the Child (1911), asking:

Before learning anything, it is necessary to learn how to learn (p.57)

How far are the various mental functions able to be independent of each other, or, on the other hand, how far do they reciprocally influence each other? [correlation and factor analysis] (p. 61)

When we educate a certain function, are we acting on others at the same time? [transfer of training] (p. 64)

The heavily science driven approach persisted for many decades, lead to a flourishing of standardised testing (as well as bizarre experiments where students were sprayed with a 1% solution of nerve gas to increase alertness). Some of the less radical work relating to student fatigue led to contemporary practices of limiting class times to around 40-45 minutes. Broadly however, education research was seen as an academic pursuit that was largely “out of touch with ‘real problems'”

Major shifts occurred in the 1960s when governments started to review education systems and practices and saw a need for supporting evidence for change. Researchers became more closely aligned with education departments who started to demand more of what they saw as relevant value for their money.

Relegating research to this instrumental role carries risks: trivialising, in pursuing volatile educational fashions; restrictive, in limiting research within the constraints of existing policy frameworks; potentially divisive, creating an elite group of researchers in alliance with authority; and ultimately damaging, in that it can leave the researchers wholly dependent on their powerful partner. Researchers who decline to accept this requirement, choosing an unpopular or unfashionable line of inquiry, are liable to find that they receive no grants, that their papers are not accepted by journals, or, if published, are not widely read or quoted.

Meanwhile, in the 1970s shifts in the parallel disciplines of psychology and sociology led to a move away from the long-standing quantitative methods in education and towards greater acceptance of qualitative approaches including case studies “exploring issues in more depth with relatively small numbers”. It aimed “at understanding and insight into the complexities of learning and human behaviour”.

This in turn saw a rise in Action Research and the teacher-researcher movement. Greater emphasis on reflective practices by teachers was (is) a key component of this. Other approaches also emerged.

The practice of measurement was also questioned. In-depth interviews provided a different kind of data, approaching a topic from the perspective of the interviewee rather than within a framework decided in advance by the researcher. This phenomenographic method (as it is called) has its roots in the philosophy of phenomenology, which opposes the positivism or naturalism inherent in contemporary science and technology – the standard scientific approach to knowledge by formulating hypotheses and designing experimental procedures to test these – on the grounds that this finds (or negates) only what the researcher is looking for, whereas the open-ended methods of phenomenography produce data for formulating new interpretive constructs. This approach focuses on awareness or ‘encountering’ and accepts the role of description in how we perceive situations and how we interpret or ‘understand’ them. Thus, from the interview transcripts, the researcher derives interpretive categories: for example, the way students speak about their reading and understanding leads to the categorisation of ‘deep’ and ‘surface’ learning (Entwhistle, 1981). Recognising the subjectivity involved, the interpretation is supported extensively by excerpts from the interview transcripts.

Further approaches drawn from the worlds of philosophical and sociological theory included:

Garfinkel (1967) introduced the term ‘ethnomethodology’ to describe his approach to research which explores ‘the patterns and structures discernible in societies’

(These) are not a matter of external social constraints, roles or functions imposed on hapless individuals but are produced through cultural and interpretive processes that people collaboratively use to make sense of the world and render it mutually comprehensible (Maclure, 2003, p. 188)

Arguably, much of this and other post-modern / poststructuralist approaches raise interesting and valuable questions but don’t appear to be used widely in educational research due to their lack of connection to more pressing practical questions facing educators.

This is evidenced most dramatically – and I would argue is manifested most apparently in the apparent government obsession with standardised testing and metrics – in the contemporary reality that ” evaluation and data gathering studies are more likely to attract funding than theoretical analyses which aim at insights into problems, the enlightenment function of research”. This is also clearly where the booming corporate face of education sits – the textbook publishers (Pearson, McGraw Hill etc) with their expanding range of teaching and testing products.

My thoughts and ideas

As ever, these are a little random in some ways and reflect some of the tangents that I went off on while reading this paper. Some are simply to-do items for further investigation.

Teacher reflection processes – if this is to be taken seriously as a form of professional development – need to be more tightly framed and/or led

How much research can I get my teachers to do into their practices – can we get the uni to support this? Can this become a more substantive part of their teaching professional development? Where is the carrot for this?

I need to look more deeply into the existing OLT research projects

A final quote:

But research has become part of every professional role today, and in education one task of professional development is to weave a research question into the expertise of teachers, leading them to adopt at a personal level the self-questioning approach which leads to reflection and understanding, and from there into action

This reminds me that professional development for higher ed “teachers” should be a vital avenue in my research and also makes me think about the value of reflection in a vacuum. Surely Communities of practice are a vital element of the step to action?

 

Claparède, E. (1911). Experimental Pedagogy and the Psychology of the Child. Longmans, Green and Company.

Entwistle, N. (1981). Styles of Learning and Teaching John Wiley UK.

Thoughts on: “What should count as Education Research: Notes towards a new paradigm” (Anyon, 2006)

I’m on my weekly bus trip to Sydney – between 3.5 – 4 hours – to take a workshop on Thesis Proposal Writing (and also to get to know my scholarly colleagues) so it seems like a good time to do some reading and jot down some ideas. (The super chatty backpackers of last week are gone and the bus is basically a big moving quiet library – with wifi, which is great in itself)

So I’ve diligently downloaded some of the recommended readings – in this case 

– and I start reading. Very quickly I realise that while it is an interesting enough chapter, focussing on the need for bigger picture research into the social and political contexts that surround the success or otherwise of education reform in “urban” American schools, it’s pretty well irrelevant to my own research.

This at least leads me to a few thoughts and ideas for TELT practices.

When teachers provide optional readings, it would be great if there was an option to

  1. tag them (ideally by both the teacher and student)
  2. support student recommendations/ratings
  3. directly include in-line options for commenting

It would also be valuable if teachers (while I’m focussing on Higher Ed, I think I’ll go with the term teachers instead of lecturers/academics for now) provided a short abstract or even just a basic description.

This got me thinking further about the informal student recommendation/rating systems that are currently in use and what we need to learn from them. Students at my university, the ANU – I guess I need to add a disclaimer on this blog about all opinions etc being my own and I don’t speak for the ANU – have created a lively Facebook space where they share information and opinions (and cat/possum pictures). These discussions often include questions about which are good (easy) courses or what lecturer x is like. I suspect that the nature of these communities – particularly the student ownership – makes officially sanctioned groups/pages less appealing, so it isn’t necessarily a matter of aping these practices, rather looking for opportunities to learn from them in our TELT practices.

My own supervisor has written about the student experience of TELT practices – I’ll be curious to see whether this question is addressed. (Reading that book is high on my list, I’m just trying to get my head around what it means to be a PhD student and researcher currently so this is the leaning of my reading to date)

The chapter does finish with a quote that I did find relevant though:

Most educational research seeks to provide guidance into how to alter existing policies or practices deemed problematic, but the extent to which research findings effect change is small. The impotence of most research to alter established policy and practice is well recognized

So even when it doesn’t appear that a reading is going to be of value, I guess it can still trigger other ideas and offer more universal thoughts.

Post Script: Just looking at the citation above, it’s clear that I need to get a better grasp of how to use Zotero in the browser. Any and all advice most welcome.

Thoughts on: A general framework for developing proposals – Developing Effective Research Proposals. (Punch, 2000)

book cover

Writing in this format for gathering my thoughts and collecting useful quotes and ideas from articles/books/etc proved fairly useful to me while completing my Masters so I figured that I’d give it a shot here now.

(Actually it’s funny now going back to that old blog as the final post was an overview of my thoughts about doing a research methodology subject, which seemed utterly redundant as it was the final subject in the degree and not an area that I felt that I would likely to spend any further time on)

Anyway, while I thought the first of these posts would relate to Paul Trowler’s mini-book on “Doing Insider Research in Universities”, I’m still working my way through (and enjoying) that and in the meantime was given Chapter 3 of Punch’s book about research proposals to read at the first of the Thesis Proposal Writing Workshop sessions offered by USyd ESW. (Homework, who knew?)

Punch offers a pragmatic and seemingly reasonable (based on my limited knowledge) approach to framing a research proposal. He readily acknowledges that there can be no single perfect approach but more a broad set of guiding principles that should enable one to hone one’s area of research interest down to specific and measurable data collection questions. (This isn’t to say that it won’t be a cyclical, iterative process with some potential dead-ends but ultimately it should result in a product that is “neat, well-structured and easy to follow”)

Here are some of the key points that I took from the chapter:

  • Three key questions at the heart of the proposal – What, Why and How (how coming later and including when, who and where – i.e. the methodology)
  • Why is important – the justification for the research and will often merit multiple sections
  • Logical flow from research area -> research topic -> general research questions -> specific research questions -> data collection questions

Possible examples:
Research area: youth suicide
Research topic: factors associated with the incidence of youth suicide
General research question: “What is the relationship between family background factors and the incidence of youth suicide?”
Specific research question: “What is the relationship between family income and the incidence of youth suicide?”

The point is to move toward questions that can be directly asked and answered.
“Is it clear what data will be required to answer this question?”
The answers to the general questions are the sum and synthesis of the more specific questions.

Punch prefers the term “indicators” to “factors” (which I have been tending to use to date) because “of its wide applicability across different types of research. It applies in quantitative and qualitative contexts, whereas the terms ‘dimensions’, ‘factors’ and ‘components’ have more quantitative connotations.

He also makes the point that the more well-considered the research questions are, the more they suggest the types of data that are necessary to answer them. “It is the idea behind the expression that ‘a question well asked is a question half-answered.'”

Punch goes on to point out that “should” questions (e.g. Should nurses wear white uniforms?) are unduly complex and require a lot of unpacking to answer. (Who’s to judge “should”?)
A more productive question might be “Do nurses think they should wear white uniforms?” – to which I would add maybe “Why do nurses think they should wear white uniforms?” – which perhaps gets more complicated but can still form a reasonable question to a nurse.

In broad terms, Punch then reiterates the importance of being clear on the what and the why of the research before moving on to methodology. There is some interesting discussion of the value of hypotheses in relation to the research questions – though at this stage I don’t think they will be relevant to my research – which links to aligning theory to the research questions.

Some reflections and questions raised.

At this early stage I’ve been concerned about my lack of a strong research background in terms of knowing what kind of methodology I plan to use. Many of my peers seem to have already mapped out the next 3-6 years and I’m still trying to figure out what I really want/need to find out.

This chapter has reminded me that figuring out the what and why – which I’ve made a modest start on in my mind at least – is vital in informing the next steps in the research.

It has also sparked a few random ideas and questions for me to pursue, which feels like a win.

Why don’t more people use TELT practices in Higher Ed / Adult Ed?
Is the learning technologist a factor? Where do we sit? In Organisation? or separately?
(There’s some crossover with pedagogy maybe. Also compliance and innovation)
How do these factors interrelate?

What if I start out by thinking there is a gap in the literature and there actually isn’t?
What’s the difference between a learning practice and a teaching practice?
Which factors (or sets of factors) impact TELT practices and how do they interrelate?
What actions are needed at what levels & contexts to mitigate the barrier factors?

Just finally, I’ve also decided on some tools to start my documenting process – Zotero and Scrivener. (Probably worthy of posts in their own right). The following bibliographic entry comes from the Zotpress plugin for WordPress and seems to have done a nice job in preview. (I do need to find out what the “official” citation style is. Currently I’m going APA because I like it)