game changing

Nearly at the end: come with me to my new blog

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Thu, 22 Jan 2015 20:57:00 +0000

Hello - a quick post here.

Thanks to all of you who have read, added comments and generally shown interest in my PhD journey. It's been wonderful to share it with you. Here's a bit of an update. I finished a final draft of my thesis a while back (I'll be discreet) but after some administrative challenges, I've waited to get a date for my Viva. I'm very nearly there and pleased for that. What a wonderful journey which has really shaped me as a person. The blog is a great record for me to look back and build upon.

Like most useful and inspiring experiences, this one has forward momentum. It continues to shape my teaching and research interests and I am beginning to enjoy building on some of my PhD ideas through a new blog. That's only a part of things, but I'd love you to join me there so I can continue to chat with you and hear your contributions.

So - please consider visiting that new blog and subscribing to my posts. I'd love to see you there.

http://visualisingpractice.blogspot.co.uk/

Ian

The final (PhD) stretch

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 18:51:00 +0000

My lack of posts recently (sorry about that) has been mainly due to all effort going into completing my thesis. As I write this post, at the end of a long list of posts, I am smiling a bit. Not too broadly, you understand, there are Endnote references to drop in and a mock, then actual Viva to do. It feels like I have been doing this thing for ever - but actually, I have made great progress, completing the thesis (pre Viva) in four years part time. Here are a few of the things I have learnt:

My thinking has changed.
I have immersed myself in what at times has seemed like an ocean of ideas, and had to grapple with them, gaining some sort of mastery over them. It is true that you do the work of a PhD in your head, and beyond words on pages my mind has been turning over ideas and relating them. This has caused me to develop larger explanations and understandings of the things I focused my study on. It has caused me to be aware of my own position as a researcher and writer, and to ask questions. Doing this over a sustained period changes your thinking.

I have learnt about writing
Not that you would know that from this blog, but I have changed as a writer. I will go on changing, of course, but perhaps one of the most significant things I have learnt is that I waste lots of words, and I am not trying not to. This is ironic, as I spent quite some time today editing down my thesis so it would fit in the "10% over the maximum word limit" allowance. I have learnt about voice, establishing and sustaining a narrative and so much more. I now love (and can hate) writing, but it is more part of me now.

I have taught myself sociology and philosophy (well, a decent chunk)
Someone should have given me a reality check early on - or perhaps they were decent enough to trust my potential. Either way, apart from some diversionary reading in my first and masters degrees, I have not studied sociology or philosophy. I then decided to work with Paul Ricoeur as my main philosophical influence. I am glad I didn't know how ambitious that was at the start. Going where I needed to meant I had to grapple with words, sentences, paragraphs and chapters I did not understand. Worse than that, in order to understand them, I need to understand the other people's arguments referenced or implied. This has truly stretched me. I know this because I can now pick up even quite complex social theory and philosophy texts and find a way of making sense, and enjoying them. Usually. Unless they are rubbish.

I have made some wonderful connections
I honestly am amazed by the wonderful set of connections I feel I have with people in real life and through twitter / Google+. I am amazed and proud that I was one of the first four people to start off the #phdchat community on twitter, which has become massive today, connecting research students across the globe and going beyond our original conversations. I look forward to maintaining links, and hopefully meeting some people in real time. Talking with colleagues, and people at conferences has also been great, and I realise I love hearing about others' research. I look forward to supervising my own PhD students, and I love that I will get to start as a second supervisor once I am through.

Challenging and innovating has paid off
To quote the cheesy book - "Feel the fear and do it anyway". I am so pleased that I have mixed things up a little, chosen the uncomfortable, not the easy route, and been forced to do that whilst being rigorous. I love that I have been able to invest into and develop existing skills (such as use of visual methods) and stretch new ones.

Nearly at the end, I am a bit bored of the thesis, as is to be expected, but I look forward to conversations about implications and next steps. Of course, I have written about this in the conclusion, but that is the beginning of a conversation. This may not be my last post in this blog, but I am nearly there. Amazing.

Working with feedback

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 21:17:00 +0000

I am still thinking about a conversation I had today with a respected colleague and friend who was kind enough to read my 'thesis so far'. I've not shared it with many people, and want to avoid falling into the trap of taking too much advice, but this conversation was so helpful I need to tell you about it. Let me talk you through the parts of the conversation, and point out a few things about hearing and working with feedback.

Some context: this was a conversation with someone whom I regularly talked theory, research and writing with. We had just under an hour to catch up and for me to hear a few thoughts about how they found my draft thesis. It's - I think - in a fairly advanced stage, but at the time I sent it through was without an introduction or conclusion. I felt positively about the conversation and arrived ready to think and to listen. This itself was important; I think if I had arrived wound up, or worried about a writing project, I might have been reactive or sought to jump in with a whole list of questions. Believe me, I did have a whole set of questions and things I wasn't happy with, but I purposefully focused on listening and appreciating someone else's views.

Be careful what (and who) you ask

It started well. I was a bit surprised, even. My colleague started with some views about my findings and discussion chapter. I'd re-worked this chapter, as it was the first I was asked to write, I suspect to help me capture my thoughts following my final block of data analysis. I was surprised to hear they thought it worked, it flowed, and I'd managed to discuss concepts and insights. I was all ready for this to be the chapter I was going to hear all the bad news about. The thing I thought was the thing wasn't the thing. Good job I don't write like this in the thesis. Instead, as I would have confirmed, the chapter I was most bored by was in need of the most work.

We quickly got to the material which would benefit most from work, in their opinion. When they told me it was the literature review, my heart sank. It was like telling Frodo and Sam they had to go back to Mordor. Writing it was a pain and felt laborious, like stitching diverse and confusing parts together. My second supervisor, who has taught me so much about writing, had also pointed out that my feelings about the chapter were there for all to read (between the lines). I should have seen it coming. Here's some of the major thoughts offered as I heard them;

write about the things I need to write about; the things that respond to the research questions.
make each section cumulative; it would benefit from building and should not be a bland survey
point out limitations, who is getting it wrong and what material adds

I had a moment when my brain froze and simply shouted at me "you are not going over that again". In effect, I had stopped listening, or part of me had. I was stuck in the experience of putting that chapter together and how it was unsatisfactory in a few ways. I had worked so hard on getting it to that place; no way was I going to mess with it now. Actually, I wasn't being 'told' to do anything, this was a friendly conversation, but I was weighing every word, calculating every implication. Good job I'm not dramatic. PhD life can do that to you.

As I came back to the conversation, I suggested that my whole relationship with this particular chapter had been framed by some trepidation. I was attempting to span huge subjects, and was coming to some of them without much of a background in sociology or philosophy. The result was a lack of thinking about what the literature review needed to do in the thesis, and what I got on with was something more like a survey. I even found myself saying that I just wanted to get from point A to point B so I could justify what followed. Oh.

So, we were beginning to agree: I could see how the chapter needed to contribute in a more active and constructive way to the thesis. We agreed that it wasn't that a re-write was called for, but some material could probably just go, whilst other material needed structuring so I was building and going somewhere. My colleague then offered an opinion that really hit home; they suggested that I was too accommodating. I was wary of some of this material, and I saw that I was simply pinning it in place. I had my kid gloves on. It hit home because we were talking about my learning and my journey. Later chapters got right in there and did the work, this wasn't. I had shifted from being a anxious impostor and now was writing rom a much more confident place. The literature review wasn't sounding like me.

I have a plan about how I could take the material I have, edit some out, and structure the rest into three sections which takes readers on a journey through things readers need to know, what my research questions were asking. I will be clearer about what the literature contributes, what's wrong and why and where I pick up.

I am still irritated. Just for the record. But once I reflect, and focus on advice from my supervisors I think I know what it is I need to work on to get this thesis done.

Thinking with a brush and a pen

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Thu, 02 Jan 2014 21:41:00 +0000

I made an agreement with myself that I wouldn't work on my PhD (or mark assignments, for that matter) over the Christmas holidays, and I haven't...really. What I did do was to use two of my recent acquisitions (a book by Tim Ingold and some art material) and 'played'. Before my break, I'd been re-working my 'findings and discussion' chapter of my PhD thesis, which had involved me in thinking about how I had represented and explored the findings of my research, which included non cartographic 'maps'. See an example below:

A section of one of the 'maps' I produced in exploring
connections and patterns amongst narrative data in my study.

Representing narrative data ('stories') as maps got me thinking about how any given part of a story connects with other parts, and actions, in interesting ways. I won't go into that here, as that's the stuff of the thesis, but suffice to say that seeing patterns on maps of narrative data is productive. Thinking in this way is not new in itself: literary material and visual arts uses things like metaphor to talk about life stories. Apart from the post-modernists, we tend to look for meaning among the parts, and identify, or look for patterns in more or less insightful ways.

I'm one of those who thinks that we can benefit from representing stories in other (visual) ways; to unsettle cosy romantic stories, to challenge established ways of looking, to open up understanding to those who don't see themselves as literary or academic. This is uncomfortable territory for academics who like a very strict divide between data 'analysis' and 'interpretation'. That's a debate which I don't want to oversimplify here, but my own shorthand is that I think we can approach data in hermeneutic ways, so that - as Paul Ricoeur said - description can become understanding. This does not mean that interpretive work can do the same things as so called 'objective' analysis of quantative data, but we need to do much more to understand stories - of biography, or of practice.

So: I've worked with my own maps to begin to find ways to see stories differently, to 'open up' ways of understanding the practices that construct narratives. I'm only just beginning, of course. This hunch was confirmed over the last couple of weeks when I read Tim Ingold's book "Lines: A Brief History" (Ingold, 2007). Ingold is a social anthropologist, and writes wonderfully about the history of the line. I'll summarise his work elsewhere, but let's just say that he drew on some sources I have always noticed to talk about our strange contemporary relationship with the line, which serves as the quickest route between two points, instead of a trace or thread created in what he calls "wayfaring". Ingold's discussion of how lines move, and what their function is helped me think about how my own maps could possibly evolve.

I worked through these thoughts as I read, and subsequently drew. I uploaded my early thoughts to issuu, which is a handy online publishing format. There is a link to my issuu here. It's not meant to be an explanation in any formal sense, but it's here to give you an idea of 'thinking aloud'.

A screenshot of one of the pairs of pages from my issuu.
See the full thing after the link given above.

Facing writing challenges (without being a drama queen)

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Sun, 08 Dec 2013 16:01:00 +0000

Sometimes we don't get to choose the ideal conditions in which to write. It's great to have longer stretches of time, and an environment in which we can think things through. Sometimes, we have to work with stolen bits of time, and to stop and start writing around other responsibilities. This works well for editing (most of the time) but less well for substantial writing tasks. On those occasions, cue the dramatic music.

A silent scream (thanks to 'The Actor')

Firstly, I've been working on some suggestions for editing a couple of chapters from one of my supervisors. I've got lots of respect for this person, as they write, and edit, lots. They write wonderfully well. Of course, getting a draft chapter back with lots of suggestions was quite challenging, and I had quite an emotional reaction. As I've worked through the suggestions, I've seen how my writing is now much clearer. I can see that hardly any of the content has needed to change, but the technical aspects of writing itself has benefited from some work. On receiving these suggestions, my first thought was 'Oh: I haven't learn't anything about writing'. It's been good to realise that people who write well are those who remain committed to improving their writing. When I despaired at those suggestions for editing those chapters, one of the professors in my Faculty casually said to me "I get that from her too", and reminded me that we can all benefit from thinking about our writing. Whilst some of the suggestions reflected this persons' stylistic preferences, 95% of them helped me to focus on what I meant to communicate, and was mainly about 'streamlining' my text by stripping out unnecessary words and bringing some consistency to how I was using simple things like in-text citations. Writing longer pieces of work, and living with bigger projects like a PhD thesis, can make us blind to what we are actually writing. I've thought lots recently about how important it is to actually communicate what readers' need to know. Living with ideas for an extended period of time don't make them automatically understandable to others!

'The Notebook'

So, that was the easy bit.

In my last despairing blog post I was dangling over the edge of a chapter, my fingers barely gripping onto the last shreds of enthusiasm and self belief. Ok, a closer description of this particular dilemma is that I didn't quite know how to approach that difficult re-working of my findings and discussion chapter. Not quite the same, but you get the idea. Like all of these jobs that lurk in the back of your mind 24/7, there are practical and psychological ones. The psychological challenge of returning to a complex and mashed up chapter was, for me, the fear of unpicking the metaphorical knitting. I knew I needed to focus, clarify and structure, so that key findings and insights were front and centre. I was quite petulant, you see, because I felt that I'd already put in hard work on this chapter in getting the raw materials down. I'd been through a hefty interpretive process and the pulpy mess that was my findings and discussion chapter was high quality pulpy mess; an organic, wholesome one, even. So, returning to the chapter was like being sent to my room, even if I had sent myself there.

I'm not Picasso, and it's not a masterpiece.

Out came the trusty notebook; and not even the Evernote electronic one. In desperate times, the paper one was required. I needed to produce solutions that I could carry round with me and leave open. I began the fightback with a conversation with my friendly second supervisor, who helped me get a good feel for what I needed to do here, which didn't involve a total re-write. Having done that, I added a fuller summary of the biography and narrative themes for my participants. That helped, as it re-focused me. After that, I tackled the horrific issue of the extent to which I would separate the findings and discussion. You may well have strong views about what should be done in situations like this. In my case, I knew I wanted to pull them apart a little, but had listened to too many people who all appointed themselves as experts on my thesis. My own compromise, which I have yet to work, was to introduce each section with examples of how each participant did that 'thing' (the chapter is presented along the lines of six themes for presenting what was findings and discussion) then to move into a discussion. Because the study was hermeneutic and involved collaborative sense-making work with participants, the 'findings' were also discussion. The discussion started in the first session, so to speak. Anyway, I thought (think) that I had avoided a complete separation of findings and discussion (which I didn't want) and also a complete mash-up where I pulped findings and discussion together in a way which was just as unhelpful. If only I approached it like I used to draw and paint, where I valued the process of re-working an image.

Perhaps I am being dramatic because my life has not had much space for this sort of writing work, or because it feels 'high stakes' ('surely this is where my genius must sparkle' sort of thing). Either way, I have begun the fightback.

The distorting effect of the home stretch

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Tue, 26 Nov 2013 22:03:00 +0000

I've slipped into a strange sort of mental place at this stage in my PhD. I've got a chapter to re-write, then an introduction and a conclusion. I should be feeling motivated and some weight coming off my shoulders. I don't, and I've only just realised that I've just lost some perspective. It's a rare moment of stopping, the TV is on and someone is working out why someone has been murdered in the background. I'm wondering why my confidence in my writing, and even my grasp of some of the concepts I've been working with has slipped. I've got an awful feeling an external examiner will read the thesis and will go well, it's *OK* but...

I think editing your own work, and returning to a very early draft of an important chapter is wearing. I anticipate the material and ideas I have only discussed with my supervisors being exposed to others, and wonder if it's all smoke and mirrors. On other occasions, I go back to my thesis, hoping to magically 'see' those insights that I simply need to foreground in order to make it all fall into place. I am bored with bits (lots?) of it, and feel that I'm stating the obvious.

Oh dear, I am in need of perspective I will only get at the other end. I do realise that when I'm away from the material I do have the potential to be excited again, and to engage with new ideas. It's all still there, but I need to see this through. Practically, I think like most people in my situation I need to carry on and not be so hard on myself. I'm working hard in my full time job in HE, and not doing much fun. That affects perspective. Onwards.

Tales from the library: learning (again) about writing

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Wed, 21 Aug 2013 18:55:00 +0000

OK, for those of us in the Northern hemisphere, it's been summer. Most of the time. For me, that's involved a great family holiday to Brittany (France), more than a bit of planning for next years' courses and...writing. Oh, and more writing. To prove the holiday bit, see the pictures.

If you're reading this, you may do writing of your own. You and I know a long list of things about writing, but the thing is, these things only stay in our heads for short periods of time. Most of the time we are writing idiots. When we are writing, we realise things such as:

Despite the best background reading, planing and drafting the ACTUAL process of writing is a bit of a discovery, as the text created brings is done at a particular moment, has to connect to writing before and writing you anticipate coming after and so on. Unless you are copying, the act of writing is (hopefully) an act of thinking things through, even if it isn't the first time you have thought about them. Writing is messy, and often hard work.
Things you thought would fit together into a neat little narrative don't. In my case, I had a well developed plan for a review of literature. The plan looked great, but I just couldn't string certain sections together. I was beginning to tell a story, and some content I thought would be helpful just didn't contribute to that story. I had to improvise and re-think.
Writing takes time, but most of us don't have the luxury of uninterrupted hours of writing in an ivory tower. I have learnt to use different 'slots' of time for different things, and to prepare well to make the best use of writing time. For lots of writing, time just has to be made, and writing needs prioritising over emails, planning and even reading that Game of Thrones book.
Sometimes I have just had to walk away, or the writing and I would have had a fight. On occasion, having some space from a section that just wasn't working was the best thing. Of course, on other occasions, I just needed to slog through. Judging when to step back and when to press on is a learnt skill. The litmus test involves having a headache, obsessing over silly little details and getting angry. Step away from the keyboard, sir.
Sometimes we just don't need to include certain things. I have made the mistake, on several occasions, of spending quite a long time on a particular section that if I was honest, I didn't really need. Perhaps it was something I thought I should know, but it just wasn't needed. None of us are immune from writing cul-de-sacs (planning minimises them), but I have tried to learn to spot them early on, and to be ruthless. If I'm not sure, I'll cut and paste the text somewhere else and if I don't miss it, it's usually a confirmation.
Some things might even need major revision, but editing is part of writing. I think on a bad day I have this idea that I will write, it will be done, and then I will simply move on. Sometimes this happens. I crashed a few days ago when I realised that my draft findings and discussion chapter needed major work. I wanted to curl up into a ball. I complained to several people. After this, I had to summarise the contents of the chapter for my annual PhD progression report, and realised that in this case, re-working the material really improved it. I am almost reconciled to the idea of re-writing and editing that huge monster of a chapter.

Because of my surprising ability to forget about writing, I could add to this list. The important thing is that I am...doing it. I've avoided procrastination, and made progress as a result.

Keep your eyes on the goal: stay on target.
(See what I did there?)

Writing at the speed of snail

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Wed, 17 Jul 2013 20:27:00 +0000

I must be mad. Finding myself stuck in go slow speed in writing my literature review, I thought a bit of writing might help. Perhaps it might. I know in my head that the process of writing is a combination of planning, persistence and...grappling. This last week has felt like 'grappling', which is my shorthand for the work involved in moving from a plan to actually configuring a text that works, makes sense, is relevant and flows. Reflecting on this now, I wonder if I need to examine my expectations. Perhaps because I am impatient, I want to make quick progress but I've been starting my literature review chapter with a particularly picky policy discourse section.

It's dense stuff, and it's felt like 'stitching' numerous texts together, ensuring I have the exact bibliographic details for each as I go added to Endnote. Aaargh. Every few words I've had to locate an document from government archives (often with difficulty). I'm pretty good at finding things, but this has been testing. As I've written, I've been unsure as to how much detail was needed. I finished writing one section today and was hit by a horrible feeling that I will have to edit most of it out, as I'd got to 5,000 words in what needs to be about 15,000 for about six sections. Aaargh again.

I thought I knew what I wanted to say, but I guess the truth is that I could have thought more about what I wanted to achieve; what the review needed in terms of the building narrative. Would this have helped? Perhaps. I'm not going to beat myself up, because the material will be useful for other things in time even if it does not get used. Perhaps I needed to write this thing out in full so that I can distill it down. I need to see the full 'arc' of the policy story so that I can think about which elements are pertinent to the questions I am asking and the draft chapters that follow it. You never know, someone reading this material who knows nothing about Sure Start Children's Centres or the discourses of English early years policy might just need it.

I will persist, but I note the need for motivation as I grapple with the next set of texts and the story I want to tell. I have a cup of tea lined up with my second supervisor tomorrow, who may need to give me a slap.

Shortest post ever: publishing from / alongside my thesis

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Thu, 04 Jul 2013 21:07:00 +0000

I got an email today from the editor of the Gender in Management: An International Journal saying that I have my first article from / alongside my PhD thesis published online today. Milestone.

Robson, I. (2013) “Women’s leadership as narrative practice: identifying ‘tent making’, ‘dancing’ and ‘orchestrating’ in UK Early Years Services”, in Special Edition: “Experiences of Women Leaders in Alternative Sites of Organization”, Gender in Management: An International Journal, Volume 28, Issue 6.

On facing up to what I'm really writing in my PhD..

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 12:29:00 +0000

I had quite a bit of interest in a tweet (you know, the thing you do on Twitter) I posted at the end of May on the subject of writing up your ideas. Here it is:

Naturally, I had a few people tell me I was being particularly philosophical in that tweet - which worryingly tells you something about most of my output - but I also had quite a few people 'favorite' it. Of course, that can mean anything; people 'favorite' cat pictures, after all. I have decided, knowing some of these people, that it's been favorited and retweeted because it resonates with other people's experience. I shall try to explain what I mean and how it came about for me.

Living with ideas for an extended period of time is something that PhD students, researchers and academics do as part of the job. This is a great privilege but is one that, in my view, needs to be handled carefully. Whilst I'm involved in other research and writing in my day job as a lecturer, I'll talk here about my PhD research and writing. Undertaking PhD (or similar) study involves becoming immersed often several academic discourses; different 'worlds' of ideas and ways of seeing the world. This is a process that takes time, and much of the PhD journey occurs as we wrestle with new ideas and perspectives and return to them many times as our understanding is expanded.

During that time, ideas and arguments gradually coalesce: I understand ways of seeing, theoretical perspectives and individual ideas. I relate authors and positions, and create my own conceptual 'map'. In my experience, ideas co-exist in different states of formation and are not all articulated. The strange thing is, despite all the writing I have been doing as I go along, some of the most important ideas can remain in a surprisingly basic state of articulation, or don't get configured within an overall argument. It is challenging to hit the right balance between holding ideas loosely, so I remain open to learning and challenge, and beginning to commit to a position.

As I am writing my thesis, I have realised that some ideas come surprisingly easy, whilst others (that I felt comfortable with) caused me more problems when I sought to commit them to paper. I found myself saying 'don't I know this now?' and having to go back to texts to articulate the exact nature of the relationships between ideas. In some cases, I realised I had used ideas 'iconically': they sounded good, they acted as good metaphors for conversation, but they needed 'opening up' and clearly articulating. Should I have let myself get away with this for so long?

The process of writing is part of the learning process, as it involves the shift of knowledge and understanding from one state (conversational, tacit, emergent) to another (clearly more articulated). Writing over the last few weeks has reminded me that forced me to let go of some ideas and to face up to what I can actually achieve within a specific study and word limit. One of my biggest challenges came when I realised that I wasn't really creating a hybrid theoretical framework drawing together Ricouer, GH Mead and others. I could do that, but my study didn't need to do it. I could have done that, but I would have written a 30,000 word theory chapter. The alternative will be better, and it represents a sort of 'growing up' of my thinking.

PhD paranoia and justifying my theory frame?

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 22:27:00 +0000

I've been getting increasingly concerned about defending the theoretical framework constructed for my PhD study. This has built on (that fairly common) impostor syndrome I think part time mature students often have about their study, but it's more than that. I have dutifully read all of those articles and blog posts about how PhDs are examined, and heard from others who - on the surface at least - seem confident about their rationale for their choice and use of their theory frame. These things have led me to those predictable - 'how do I measure up' comparisons. I imagine any other Phd researcher saying "Oh, you haven't created a relational map of the whole of social theory and philosophy, located your theory frame in it and then justified your position in relation to all other points?...Ohhhhh".

I am being dramatic, but you get the idea. Let me let you in to my thinking process at the risk of pulling the curtain back on what I could otherwise present as some very 'intellectual' process. You see, I realised today whilst talking to a friend at work that I really have constructed a theory frame to reflect how I already thought. In other words, my theory frame was not selected through some cool, depersonalised purely logical or theoretical process. I realise in saying this that somewhere someone is going to accuse me of simply wanting to confirm or reify my own prejudices, but I'd not see it like that. I'll explain.

[This is a picture of our cat. She has no such worries. Neither is she likely to pass her viva.]

I came to my PhD study with a clear idea of the questions I wanted to ask, albeit in an embryonic form. I also came as a mature student and experienced professional who had thought about how they thought. Only now do I see that my immersion into PhD study and it's various communities and discourses has somehow prompted a weird sort of response from me. I had begun to construct a forced rationale for why I was using Ricoeur and Mead in the way I was. What I've realised - properly - today is that I had a way of thinking and being which I brought to my study, and I shaped my theory frame to help articulate my position. I see this as trying to achieve some honestly about the choices I have already made which position me in relation to my study. Those of you who talk Bourdieu might waffle on about 'habitus' to help explain this.

What I'm thinking today is that, as someone who is working with narratives and using a hermeneutic approach in my studies, I have configured a narrative (the theory frame) from my practices which in many ways prefigured it. After all, I am arguing in my thesis that practices and narratives are mutually constitutive so I'm also applying this to how I came to express my questions and articulate my ideas.

I might still have to fight impostor syndrome, but i have a line of thinking to pursue here. I am not willing to disregard the way I was already positioned in relation to my study, and I should not apologise for talking about how it has shaped the construction of my theory frame, instead I shall see this as a strength. Of course, this does not mean I will not address questions or inconsistencies, but I won't base my theoretical validity on needing to know about, and justify in relation to everything there is to know.

From data to draft: got to have a process

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 14:51:00 +0000

It started with this Tweet.

That quick comment got me thinking about something that is simple, but I have realised is so important to my research: having a process to follow. You might remember that I recently blogged about (my) secret to success in a PhD. It got the most number of hits of any of my posts. everyone knows they need to do this, but struggles with it. I suspect that is because 'making progress' is not simple, we have multiple tasks, and defining 'important' can be tricky. We need to reflect, read and talk to find a way forward. Here's an example.

In this case, I had the rather dubious task of taking my 'next steps' now that I had worked with my data (interpreted, rather than analysed feels a better fit). I had six key insights that I could audit trail back to a process of looking at the data in multiple ways. I was advised to maintain some of the momentum I had and to draft a findings and discussion chapter, knowing I'd come back to it as other chapters took shape. I had to think carefully about how to start.

In this case, in order to begin writing, I felt I needed some of the data to hand. Specifically, I wanted to group quotes in such a way that I could write thematically. I'm working with narratives, and I want to keep those voices close. Given my topic (how talk about self and talk about practices relate) I can get fairly philosophical fairly quickly, but I want to do that whilst (re) representing participants voices. My first step was to code all of my data again against those six insights. It gave me 60 pages of 11pt text. After about ten minutes of trying to put the right quotes together, I realised that it was going to be impossible. That would be 'cut and paste' from hell. No, I wanted to see them all laid out; after all, I'd used interactive 'sorting' and positioning methods in my research, and that worked so well.

The first thing I did was to print off those sixty pages. Then get my scissors out and cut them up. I'd didn't feel very intellectual. I then grouped them into clear plastic 'pockets' so the quotes relating to each key insight were together. I quickly realised that an initial 'sort through' was required, so I went through each 'pocket' and looked at each one in terms of it's ability to 'speak' about that particular theme. I pretty much reduced each pocket by half.

I then needed to find a way of grouping quotes within these six themes. By now, I am very familiar with all of them and their contexts, so that helped. Hours of coding, then re-coding for other things had paid off. Practically, I found that getting my highlighter pen out helped here - I could group common quotes much more quickly. Then I laid them out, and fought off the cat who became very interested in them.

Despite the process feeling a bit mechanical and 'painting by numbers' what I did next was to staple groups of quotes together. These were the potential raw materials for sub sections. When I thought about it, I realised that as I reviewed my 'data analysis' plan I had been on a multi layered and 'back and forth' process of hermeneutic discovery (see previous posts on this). I was looking at patterns. Even at this rather mechanistic stage, I realised that I was doing rather sophisticated work in judging the extent that quotes illustrated the insights I had arrived at by going through a previous process of coding, reviewing, memoing and so on. I was going back along that process, and in a way it was testing out the strength (or not) of the insights I felt I had come to. The process was mind numbing, but reassuring and illuminating at times.

I realised that there are some things you should not rush or skip. I could have pulled (from memory) some quotes to say something about the insights I'd come to - which came from a thorough process of analysis. You could say that selecting quotes was decorative, but not in this study - this is a study of narratives, and I needed that dynamic relationship between the emerging thesis and the data. This activity - going back through the process - was exactly the movement back and forth along the hermeneutic 'arc' from explanation to understanding (and back) that Ricoeur talks about in his work.

I now have a work document with quotes grouped into the six insights, and into sections within that. I will start writing and will then begin to draw on the theoretical material which will feature elsewhere. I have a process in other words, and that helps.

My 2.0 research journey (Prezi)

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Tue, 26 Mar 2013 14:34:00 +0000

Engaging audiences for my research

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Tue, 19 Mar 2013 19:45:00 +0000

There's nothing like settling down to write your thesis 'proper' for distracting yourself. Suddenly, all sorts of projects come to mind. This week, whilst not (yet) getting distracted from putting one of my thesis chapters together, I had some sort of mad dream about dissemination and wider popular and professional sharing of my PhD insights.

I just can't help myself - my career has always involved making things accessible to people, and I believe passionately that academics can do so much more to make their research accessible, relevant and (gasp!) interesting. That's what comes of working with children and young people for years. Combine that with an obsession with visual methods (and methodologies) and art direction, graphic design and events and you have a dangerous combination.

The daydream went something like this: I realised I had dozens and dozens of drawings produced as part of my visual methodology. If you have read previous posts, you might remember that I've used images in my work with PhD participants as they we have talked about narrative identity and its' relation to their 'social worlds'.

These images are NOT simply illustration, they supported very real 'co-configuration' of narratives; but what I have found is that they are a way into talking about both the process and the insights around my research. Combine that with all that wonderful narrative data and some blather from me, I have the raw ingredients of an installation or event.

So; permit me to continue my fantasy if you will. I am imagining a room full of these images, along with actors' voicing sound clips of narrative from the study. Throw in a few explanatory panels and even some interactive activities...oh, and some guest speakers, good lighting and a well designed brochure and something interesting could happen. In this (wonderful) fantasy, I'm imagining inviting general, academic and professional audiences to an event/reception at which they might be intrigued to explore some ideas and insights into professional narratives of leaders within Early Childhood services.

I shared my ideas with my principal supervisor and they were well received. As it happens, my ambitions for disseminating my 'results' (that term isn't suited) fits the priorities for my University. We even have a creative partnership with the BALTIC centre for contemporary art in Newcastle, so you never know what creative collaborations I could manage?

Ultimately, it's not an event, or an installation, or even self promotion that's the point: for me, the focus is generating meaningful insight into practice and leadership development using visual and narrative methodologies. It's about showing that hermeneutics and philosophy can be practical, and it's about helping people ask new questions. I have a responsibility to engage them in that conversation, and I think I have a pretty good way in.

The secrets of making progress in (my) PhD

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:23:00 +0000

In the last week, I drafted out what I currently think are six key insights my data has given me into my subject. This comes off the back of monumental whinging about the process that led up to it, i.e. careful return to data sources and memoing around them. I am really pleased, even though I know that these insights will be refined perhaps out of all recognition as I understand what it is that I am trying to describe. I am meeting with my supervisors over the course of the next week and feel pleased I can talk through an 'audit trail' a process is has led me thus far. I told friends and #phdchat peers on Twitter and received typical encouragement.

One of my supervisors tells me I am making especially good progress. He's supervised lots of research students, and a fair few members of staff doing their PhD the 'wrong way round' like myself. In my institution, most new members of staff need to have their PhD before being employed. I was lucky in that I came in at the right time, from practice, and of course offered extensive professional insights (as well as academic) required on the courses I teach on. I've been told that members of staff often take longer than I am, or 'stall' in their PhD journey for various reasons. That's got me thinking about why that is, consequently, I offer my personal secrets for my own success. See if they could apply to you - or if you could advise me how to improve.

1. Be purposeful. I find that making the small steps required relies on a clear goal. The goal in my own form of (narrative) research is continually refined (not re-written); it gave me energy. losing sight of why you are doing it saps energy and motivation, so pay attention to it.

2. Keep going. As long as you are heading in the right direction - journalling and making good use of supervision help here - just being determined to keep working at it is half the battle. A huge undertaking requires chipping away at, and most of the time we might not feel like the small tasks that build important foundations.

3. Reflect and continually 'scan'. I find that I need to understand what I am doing and why - in other words, I have to understand the significance of what I am doing, even if that is transcribing or memoing. I can do so many things with my time, but I have in mind a list of potential key tasks and consider what I should be putting my effort into. I am thinking of a cook in a busy kitchen with many pots all simmering or boiling. I need to know what to stir. For me, it's about putting energies into the right thing at the right time.

4. Connect and imagine. Instead of seeing the imagination as a distraction, in my case I try to use my imagination as a way of connecting ideas. Doing a PhD involves lots of reading, working with data, journalling and so on. Our brains are great pattern making and connecting machines, so I think we should use them, and make note of 'little' insights we might have. One of my recent insights, perhaps one that will end up being my main finding came about because I paid attention to that 'small voice' when reviewing memos. What I noted initially wasn't very exciting, but it developed into something quite exciting.

5. Use the time. If, like me, your research degree is done 'part time' then it competes with the other stuff. In my case, it's a busy academic job and large family. I have found that if I am 'prepared' - for example, by carrying around the book I'm reading, or having a notebook to hand then I can use those minutes I spend waiting for a student to turn up to my tutorial, or the bus journey. Add those minutes up, I guarantee they are valuable.

6. Use technology intelligently. I don't mean spending ages on that unproductive Facebook group, but it might mean using a great app like Evernote, or getting to know the #phdchat crew in Twitter. Develop expertise in getting the right resources or support at the right time. Make sure the documents you need are accessible when you need them, be able to ask that question or share a reflection when you get it.

7. Laugh at yourself. Get your priorities right over time. I know that a PhD skews our perception of reality, but don't get so caught up in what you are doing that you over-estimate your contribution or how fascinating you are. Relationships are important. Be thankful for friends or your partner. Don't neglect your children. Be silly at least once per day.

8. Communicate your thinking. Writing - for yourself, your blog audience (hello, you two), twitter followers, the academic community via journals or peers pushes your thinking on. You are only as motivated and as insightful as your current narrative of your research, so learn to explain and challenge your thinking in everyday language. This challenges ambiguity and forces you to be clear and relevant.

Reflexivity in analysis

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Thu, 14 Feb 2013 19:54:00 +0000

The last time I blogged, I was expressing some reluctance at the prospect of engaging in the next stage of my PhD analysis. If I was honest (actually, I think you will find I was) then I'd be saying the work ahead of me didn't seem as interesting as the previous phase: the last set of conversations with participants, where we talked about cartoons and 'maps' I had created based on the first phase of analysis of their talk about professional identity and social interactions. Since then, I've got on with that next block of work and I've also pulled together some thinking about what's getting me 'stuck'. Before I share some of those insights, I'd like to say that I'd never 'got there' without the pig headed determination to just persist. I realise some PhD researchers 'give up' at several points in their journey - I understand why this might happen - but I'm convinced at the value of just putting the work in. Thanks to my wife, without whom I couldn't do this; we have four children and I have a busy job. Right, that said, on to my recent insight into my own research journey.

Put simply, I've realised that what felt frustrating was the sheer...impossibility of the task ahead of me. I don't mean the analysis, I don't even mean the writing of the thesis; but the sort of questions I was asking. I have realised that what 'worked' for me up to this point were not 'researchable' questions, but were philosophical wonderings. Ironically, I spend a lot of my time advising my students about forming research questions...which I think I'm good at! What I had were a sort of general 'place markers' which talked about the sort of focus I had, but talked in general terms about 'relationships' between things. However, I was asking questions that great philosophers and sociologists spent their lives asking!

I'm not bitter. It's all part of the research journey. We all are living with our 'best' articulation of our research questions. In a flexible research design, it's no problem, but it calls for researcher reflexivity - our ability to think about our thinking, to be conscious about how we are positioned in the research process and how we interact with it. I try to do that through blogging, journaling and talking - in person and through my twitter network (as @ianrobsons).

So; I was living with research questions that had done their job in directing and sensitising my inquiry - they had taken me as far as they could. I wasn't about to throw them out, but they needed re-articulating. This had contributed in my sense of 'stuckness'. I only realised this because I had pushed on with the analysis. This is a lesson in the value of persisting (to a point) when you are not 100% sure. As I immersed myself in what I sometimes thought of as boring (let's be honest) raw data, I felt the distance between those very real narratives and the rather abstract 'questions' that were directing my studies...or rather, had become less useful in directing my studies.

I have realised what may seem quite obvious, which is that there is a reciprocal relationship between the questions and the process of analysis. Analysis benefits from the focus and direction good questions gives, but questions are re-shaped in the light of the demands of the process of analysis (if analysis begins to get unfocused or not productive in some way). The key seems to be aware of the 'balance' between the two. If things are 'working' then I'm usually OK, but if I'm stuck then a re-assessment of one of the two is usually needed. Either questions need refining, or the process of analysis isn't informing the question. I'm sure that's a simplification, but let's be honest, this is a blog post not a thesis so short is good.

So, I've written a note to myself that will direct a re-drafting of the research question. I'm thinking of practices, representations, transformations and all sorts of more specific things I can actually ask my data about. I've realised that the job of my thesis is to move forward what 'we' know about the topic not reinvest or define the world. In my case, it's about the narrative construction of professional selfhood for leaders in early childhood services, and I'm a little bit more equipped to examine my data on that now, thank you very much.

Are we there yet? (more narrative data analysis)

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 17:14:00 +0000

Completing a PhD as a part time student involves more than a little self motivation and management of expectations. You become very aware of what motivates you, and what is most likely to slow you down. Following my last post, I have completed (insert massive relief here) all of the transcription of the audio data from my study. Amazingly, I have also written, edited and had accepted the first article in an international journal using some of the data, on a subject which is not the 'central' question of the thesis. I should be really pleased with myself. Perhaps the fact everyone in my house is recovering from chest infections, then flu, then another set of chest infections is taking the edge off things. The article is a big confidence boost, though.

Perhaps it's a good thing I can bask in the glow of the article and post transcription relief: I am facing up with the last stages of my analysis-interpretation. This has involved going back to 'the plan' established last summer, which I've followed so far. In summary, this has involved:

Coding all of the narrative data into one of my two main categories: 'self talk' and 'interactional context'.
Coding within each of these categories for each participant.
Creating two different 'maps' (previously discussed) - one relating all the themes of the 'self talk' (what I call 'how the story hangs together') and the other identifying 'patterns' of connections between codes in each category.
Creating cartoon images to complement this whole process, including a cartoon 'telling' of how I see each participants overall identity narrative.

Of course, this list doesn't give you all the detail you need to clearly understand this whole process...the point is that I have already begun an awful lot of 'analysis', and have involved participants in that. I have produced some nice images, and had some wonderful conversations...except I have not 'answered' the questions I set out to answer. Yet. Are we not there yet?

Perhaps I am just at another of those points where it is possible to flag, to give up, to feel tired of it all. I understand from friends and colleagues that this is common enough. The last two days have seen me 'going back in' to the data and it has certainly felt the opposite of glamorous. I think I've just come from a very intense phase of creating and talking about the data at quite an abstract level - patterns, connections, reflections. I am now creating a set of memos of all of my data artifacts - transcripts, maps, cartoons, session photographs. This is legwork - legwork that will help me compare and link, annotate and begin to theorise, but the experience of going through the transcripts and summarising them felt...like starting again.

I take encouragement from my understanding of the process. Thankfully, I have been keeping a research journal and writing a draft analysis chapter for the thesis. In fact, I had forgotten I'd written some of that, so it was good to read these when I sat down; before the depression set in. In short, the process I am following is heavily influenced by Paul Ricoeur's approach to hermeneutics - the interpretation of texts. I won't go into details, other than to say it is a process that involves moving from explanation to understanding and back. To get to 'understanding' you need to explain, and explain better. Understanding starts with a structural understanding, of sorts, and then moves through the process of interpretation (reflecting, comparing, immersing and so on). Of course, I'm going to write a lengthy section of my thesis saying a lot more than that, but suffice to say that I'm back with the explanation. Can you hear the sound of me stamping my feet?

I guess I forget the detail at my peril. Like many people, I like the big picture, but those insights into creative transformations between action and talk will come from building up layers of insight - and those need gathering from each of those transcripts, cartoons, maps and session photographs I have in front of me. What I am learning is that I have to ignore the quiet voice that says 'there's nothing amazing here' - because it is from the very 'ordinary' accounts of participants that I will begin to identify some amazing patterns. Eventually.

making a hermeneutic method

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 21:42:00 +0000

I have found that the process of working on a PhD challenges me to really say what I mean. In other words, I cannot hide behind interesting metaphors or general discussion that form so much of 'academic' conversation. This is often frustrating, because it's comforting to get to those places in study where an 'argument' (of sorts) can be put together, but challenging to find ways to make that argument explicit and to discuss it in clear terms.

I am at the start of a new phase of my PhD: I have all my data and am now getting into detailed analysis and the 'pulling together' of theoretical resources. I enjoy the sitting back and seeing what has been achieved, but as I look forward, I don't relish the hard work I have ahead of me. I know that future insights will come from unseen hard work such as the final hours of transcription I have to do, analysing data and writing draft chapters of my thesis...but I'm hovering on the edge.

I do have a plan, but as you will know, plans need detail and hard work so they can grow into things that actually happen. I have reflected over the last few weeks that it what we do with our thoughts that matters. Not that thinking is not work, but there is something about implementing and working that thinking out.

I feel I am at one of the most complex points in my study. The illustration in this post is an attempt to convey the idea of having to weave multiple and diverse threads together. I wonder if I can live up to the idea of how great it will be. I have many threads to weave: the narrative hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur, the American Pragmatism of GH Mead and others, large amounts of audio and visual data, my reflections and so on. All of these things are in creative dialogue with my questions in my study. It is at this point that inertia can kick in, faced with the prospect of how to start: how to start the next phase.

My study examines the nature of narrative identity and its relationship with what I am calling the 'interactional contexts' in which it happens. I am looking at how experience becomes story, and how stories are used in professional action. I am interested in the relationships, transformations and forms of narrative identity 'work' that go on for my study participants. In general terms, I am seeing the process not about identifying 'causal relationships' between the things I've mentioned, but as a hermeneutic process: about interpretation and understanding. I am working with texts - transcripts and notes of extended conversations and my work is to look at ways in which these texts relate to interactional contexts. Ricoeur's hermeneutics encourage me to start with description and an examination of structural relationships, but to move beyond those towards a deeper understanding of the text. What is implied is movement back and forth across Ricoeur's mimetic arc and it's three phrases of prefiguration, configuration and refiguration. (Ricoeur, 1984: 54)

Back to my original point: I want to move from describing what I read towards understanding. I want to understand the different forms that narrative can take in the mimetic arc. I want to be more specific about what is going on in that relationship between narratives of professional identity and interactional contexts. I can talk about 'relationships' 'transformations' 'forms' and so on, but my study is driving towards greater depth of understanding.

At the minute, the 'raw materials' feel like a ridiculously complex jigsaw puzzle. I know I will enjoy looking at it and talking about it once done, but gathering and placing the raw materials will be hard enough. Saying this, I already have done plenty of coding within categories of data - I have narrative 'maps' which I have thought about with participants. My biggest barrier is fear itself (perhaps fear is too great a word) - what if the relationships and transformations I see are somehow 'obvious'? I remind myself: the PhD process often leads us to put lots of pressure on ourselves, after all, the PhD thesis is the start of a research agenda, not the master work!

What will get me to jump in? I will make a list, that's a good start. The list will combine the obvious (dreaded final set of transcription) and the puzzling (like how I will 'trace back' relational lines on the narrative maps I've produced). Oh for goodness sake, just get on with it.

Reading patterns and relating layers: hermeneutic experiences with narrative.

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 18:14:00 +0000

In between the many 'other' things of life, I've been continuing to analyse / interpret the narrative data in my PhD study. I previously reflected that a key moment for me was thinking about the status of the maps I had been producing (see previous post). These 'maps', I argue, are part 'data' and part hermeneutic tool, in that they will be used with participants to reconfigure their narratives again in the cycle of sense making I have related to Paul Ricoeur's take on the hermeneutic or mimetic arc.

I am now at a point where I have produced what I called 'semantic maps' of each participant's narrative. The hope here was to begin with looking at the structure of narratives of professional identity - how they 'hang together'. When I take these back to participants, I will ask them about the patterns and connections they see. I hope that the 'maps' will provide rich opportunities for further reflection, justification or refiguration of narratives. I suppose they represent some form of objectification of narratives and another mirror for participants to see their stories in.

Talking about the 'semantic maps' forms the first stage only of analysis. This past week, I have begun to relate these maps to another 'level' of data available to us. In addition to first order (talk about me) and second order (reflection on this talk) narrative data, I have a whole set of data which richly describes the social context for the creation and use of these narratives. The central point of interest for me is to relate the social context to the narratives - in other words, as I've previously said, how narratives come from experience and how - in turn - they are refigured to direct and shape ongoing action. I have begun to maps lines of connection from the narrative to the social context. The results are starting to look like an intruiging cats cradle of connections to explore together.

I'm aware that presenting participants with 'maps' could be a confusing and disorientating experience. it is important that participants see this is re-engaging with their stories and sense making, and not with some 'impressive' process. I think good methodology can often (and should often) be as invisible as it can be. Of course, researchers tend to get caught up with how great what they are doing is, and it ends up a distraction. I hope my methodology, whilst not invisible (I must locate and recognise myself in the process) will focus on the meaning making and reflection that is so critical in my study. Because of this, in addition to the maps, I will start with presenting participants with cartoons.

You can see in my sketchbook, I want to talk with people about how their narratives can be looked at in their own right - as per the 'semantic maps' in my last post - and taken (to a degree) 'at face value' or can also be related to their social contexts.

In a discussion with my second supervisor I used the term surface and deep structure of the narrative, but I'm not sure that I meant to say the social 'roots' of narrative were more true as such, but just a different picture. However, it is this different picture I am focusing on, and it is this different picture - the connections or relationships between what we say and the social contexts of creation and use - that is not recognised or examined in professional practice, or very often in academia.

Understanding stories as maps: more than pretty pictures

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Sun, 19 Aug 2012 09:31:00 +0000

I am in a rewarding, but fairly labour intensive part of my PhD research at the moment. I'm looking at narratives from leaders of early childhood services, and thinking about their connection to the social contexts for their creation and use. The project involves people as active participants, so we create and think about these issues together to some extent. I'm at the 'analysis / interpretation' stage (or at least the first stages of it) which has involved putting all the narratives into categories: references to social interaction, talking about myself (what I call 'first order' narrative) and reflection (what I've called 'second order narrative').

Within the first and second order narrative, I've used NVivo to create about thirty 'themes' from the narratives configured by each participant. This has been carefully and painstakingly done, as I try to remain true to what people have said and my understanding of their meanings. I've got a fairly good idea of this, as we've worked together over four extended sessions each so far, and circled around a set of subjects to do with professional identity.

My interest all along has been to reflect the theory and methodology in how I analyse / interpret. Part of my methodology is to work with visual elements (in this case, cartoons I have created) to interpret and to facilitate further shared thinking. When it came to understanding how these narratives were structured - which would form the foundation of further analysis - I wanted to focus on relationships between the 'parts' and the 'parts and the whole'. This is prompted in part by my use of Ricoeur's approach to hermeneutic analysis, which I've talked about previously. In this particular case, doing this has required patient work, but has also been exciting and rewarding. This week, I've created 'semantic structure maps' (sounds fancy, I know) which illustrate the connections between themes in each narrative. As connections are drawn from each theme to all other related themes, a 'web' of relationships is shown. Looking at it, I'm already thinking about many different ways this 'map' will be useful when I take it back to participants to think about together. For example, we can think about those aspects of their story that seem to be most 'interconnected' or we can pick out particular relationships and discuss or annotate these.

I've just written a research journal note to myself about the next stage (which came to me whilst in the bath, as all good PhD reflections do). This has to do with forming the next set of 'connections': between aspects of participants' narratives and references to social interaction. The reason I'm doing this - as I briefly noted above - is because after understanding the narratives 'in themselves' I want to ask questions about their 'social' origins and applications. This again links to Ricoeur and his mimetic arc.

I've realised that my analysis, as with the methodology generally, has been about establishing patterns and connections, then seeking to understand them. When I have produced these 'semantic maps' I've been challenged to reflect upon their status as analytic / interpretive tools. I'm very aware the basis on which I have 'drawn lines' between one narrative theme and another has been based on intimate knowledge of these texts, and the intentions of the participants. As I've done this, I did experience doubt as I thought about whether I should have created the themes based on the frequency of their mention, or drawn connectors between them based upon some kind of 'scientific' measure. As I have reflected, I remain clear that what I am doing is not some 'objective' analysis in the traditional sense, but the very act of analysis is in itself more interpretation. I am 'seeing' relationships, some I have chosen not to draw because although on the face of it, two terms could be connected but for that person they were not. Although the process of analysis can lead to 'cutting up' narratives into tiny units, I am aware that I don't want to dissolve narratives into simply 'words' which can be made to say anything. So, the process of creating semantic maps has been intensive and has involved careful reflection on the intended meaning of the participant. Still, the maps will still be my reading (or 'configuration') and they will return to participants for verification and further work together.

Any insight generated by production of these 'semantic maps' is only partial. As I have produced them, I have realised that their status needs thinking about because they are also a sort of heuristic tool. Rather than being 'answers' to what the narratives are about (even though the connections do reflect things about the semantic structure of the narratives) they are tools to ask questions with participants, to reflect on patterns and move from a basic structural understanding to a deeper hermeneutic understanding (back to Ricoeur's mimetic arc again). Reflecting has helped me articulate why I am doing things in this way. No one has yet accused me of simply producing 'pretty pictures', but if they do, I am clear about their value as a tool in the hermeneutic arc.

Why practitioners need a better model of reflective practice, and what I'm doing about it.

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Mon, 06 Aug 2012 18:51:00 +0000

Working with the detail of a project like a PhD forces you to look at things in detail, which is fair enough. From time to time, though, I find any project requires me to step back from that and ask 'so what'. Not enough people ask 'so what?', in my opinion. A career of community work and work with children keeps me focused on issues of relevance and application.

In my own case, I'm engrossed in the detail of asking questions about how narratives of professional identity relate to the contexts for their 'telling'. In other words, I'm looking at how experiences turn into stories, and how stories are used in action. I'm working with a small sample of leaders of Early Childhood services in the North East of England, thinking about these issues over several extended conversations, involving talk and work with cartoon images. The question applies to this study: so what? Is this another self indulgent PhD?

Asking why on earth this study is important is not a question I can, or should, dodge. Firstly, because I am working with participants in this study, I need to present something that makes sense and is worthwhile. Secondly, because I know the research will have a 'life' post-doc (as I work in a University as an academic), I anticipate a professional as well as an academic audience for different outputs of my research. I've begun to explain my reasoning to supervisors, academic panels, participants and colleagues, but it's good to clarify it here. Who knows, perhaps it will get you thinking about why you are doing what you are doing?

For my own professional audience, those working with young children and their families, the idea of narrative is at one both familiar - we talk to, and with people, people have things to say; and not so obvious, in that too often the 'talk' is incidental to processes or activities. If pressed, many of us say we value people, and that involves talking to and with people. We also realise, sadly, that we can 'learn' a form of practice that involves telling and not listening, ticking boxes and not understanding. We don't particularly like falling into that sort of practice, but workloads, policy initiatives and management busyness don't help us avoid the pitfall. I know when I've been in that mode, I'm less aware of myself and others, what is important and why. That's key to effective practice.

Thinking about who we are and how we work when we are in this kind of mode seems like navel gazing and unproductive. Sometimes, though, we see that how we are and how we talk is related to what we achieve with others. That's what I'm pointing my own research at, the idea, somewhere down the line, that we can get some insight into how we come to talk and think about ourselves. Do these things matter? I would argue that they do. Do narratives pop out 'of thin air'? I would argue that they do not, but we still don't know enough about that.

In my previous field of work in Children's Services much was (and continues to be) made of the idea of 'reflective practice', but it seems to me that when it comes to thinking about reflective practice, it remains a bit of a 'black box', or something we just don't understand. At best, we work with models and ideas of reflective practice, influenced by Schon (1987, 1991) Argyris (1978, 1993) and others which, whilst good, have been over simplified and fossilised. At any rate, these ideas certainly have not translated themselves into the praxis of many Early Childhood practitioners. I think that this needs to change, because I believe in the power of practice that is purposeful, reflective and confident. I would argue that ultimately, that sort of practice is better for children and their families, which is what matters most. The is the larger context for my study, but ultimately is something that will be addressed most directly post-doc, once I get the 'nuts and bolts' looked at in my PhD.

In my own study, I have realised that, just like good practice with children, some creative theoretical work is needed. I've looked at what the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur and the pragmatics of GH Mead, Dewey, James et al have to offer as I look at relationships between action and meaning making (in narratives). The first thing that hit me was that, on one level, there are complex and interesting relationships between action and narratives not currently captured by our 'over simplification' of reflective practice in much of the early childhood sector. I'm not satisfied to leave the mechanisms of meaning making under-explored, because I feel we may miss out on some new ways to think about praxis. Praxis, put very simply, addresses the interplay between thinking and doing. This transcends the idea of 'thinking' and 'doing' being separate, and moves towards the idea of deliberative and moral (in the broadest sense) action. This is about engagement with the situation at hand, not habit or procedure. I love this idea, and remain convinced that unpacking and 'making real' the practice of praxis (if we can say that!) has much more to give to those working with young children, which is a profession where women (and it is mainly women) are not encouraged to think and act in ways that could be called 'wise'. Unfortunately, the current UK discussion of qualifications and skills in early childhood (Tickell, 2012) can leave some practitioners thinking that the 'answer' to being professional is solely about accumulating knowledge, instead of developing praxis or practical wisdom. An alternative, which helps practitioners see how thinking and action are related is needed. As I develop my own research, I feel sure that one key to insight involves understanding the mechanisms of narration, with a view of narrative as something that reflects, reshapes and guides action.

Reading, writing, drawing, talking and thinking: done in the moments 'in between'

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 21:53:00 +0000

The last time I put together a blog post was quite some time ago. I've been getting on with reading, note making and data collection which I have enjoyed and struggled with. I think most worthwhile reading and writing for me seems to be both - sometimes that's about the process of reading / writing, and that mainly relates to it's disjoined nature. I envy people who have lots of uninterrupted time, but rather than wish I had that, I have developed strategies to work with my patterns of activity. Amazingly, I have been able to use grabbed moments of time to be systematic about my reading. I've discovered what works for me is making notes on / alongside books (I own), writing these up in Evernote, then reflecting on and using them in writing. I have pressed into reading my key authors (GH Mead and Paul Ricoeur) and have realised that it's OK to 'live' with texts I don't fully understand for a while. I guess it's a bit of Jerome Bruner's idea of learning being something that we return to. Returning to words, concepts and metaphors in texts - particularly Ricoeur's - requires the ability to live with not grasping things fully, but approaching things several times, each time catching new aspects and insights, making new connections. I hate moving at slow speeds, however, so have to use notes to help me not slip back.

On the data collection front, I have continued to have an amazing time. It's amazing for me because it's a culmination and development of over fifteen years worth of narrative and visual arts practice. I have the pleasure of working with a small number of leaders of early childhood services in the North East of England. Sessions have been about building and reflecting on narratives of professional identity and selfhood - how these are constructed and used, specifically, how they relate to action with others. Individuals have been prepared to share important and intimate insights, and have put up with my endless questions and interruptions. They are conversations with pictures, not 'interviews'. Recently, nearly all participants noted to me - unprompted - that the sessions had really impacted them and allowed them to think about themselves in ways they had never done before. What a privilege.

I love being able to step back and review the cartoons I produce summarising (initially) what I think may be significant moments in participants' narratives. We move, arrange, reject and add to images whilst building narrative data. I am looking forward to writing about how this narrative data (all painfully being transcribed by me several words at a time) illustrates and resonates with hermeneutic and pragmatic themes in my reading.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be continuing to transcribe audio recordings of sessions, reading and note making and thinking about analysis. This last one is needed because I need to engage in another level of analysis (recognising this has already begun in my own work and with participants as per the methodology) before I arrange the final set of sessions with participants, to reflect on these ideas together.

Next week, I attend a two day North East doctoral training course on visual methodologies at Newcastle University. I go with ideas and also to learn and meet others. I usually don't like conferences, as I'm quite reserved, but when it's something I think I will be able to connect with others about, I am excited. I'm taking samples of my own research visuals, and going with an open mind.

Visual research 'conversations' with Ricoeur's narrative arc

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 19:23:00 +0000

It's about time I caught myself up methodologically. You see, I've been getting on with data collection for my part time PhD which has basically involved at least fifteen years of transcribing sessions. Well, perhaps slightly less that that. For newcomers, my study - in a nutshell - is about how narratives of professional identity and selfhood are constructed and used in the lives of a number of leaders of Sure Start Children's Centres in the UK. The study adopts the use of pragmatic philosophy and the hermeneutics of Paul Ricoeur. I've previously posted about the journey I'm on in using both of these perspectives together, but suffice to say that both emphasise the importance of the social process. As I say to participants, it's not like their narratives just 'pop out of thin air'. So I'm interested in what participants have to say about how their narratives relate to action in the real world.

I've seen the same wonderful group of individuals three times now since September 2011, with each 'conversation' lasting a couple of hours, which has been intense but wonderfully insightful. I say 'conversations' because the research design emphasises the nature of participation for these individuals. I'm looking at their narratives of identity, action and the 'sensemaking' narratives, those reflections on the process. I support their reflexivity firstly through the nature of conversations I'm having, but also partly through visual methods, specifically, the use of summary cartoons, which 'play back' key statements they have previously made. The thing is, after three sessions - six hours - of talking about quite a specific subject, participants were starting to say things like 'well, like I said last time'. I had no problems coming at issues from different angles, because we often benefit from returning to issues, but a grounded theorist might suggest some aspects of the data were becoming 'saturated'. As per the research design (who knew!), it's time to shift the visual methods up a notch as we jointly reflect on the 'raw material' we have constructed so far.

There's perhaps a 'right' way and a 'wrong' way to do participatory research into narratives of professional identity. Option one is to say 'well, how did this lot come out of your interactions and symbolic worlds?'. I guess you will realise this won't get me far, unless I want a study of blank faces. These are clever people, but option two is to 'scaffold' the sensemaking process. This is the option that gets me excited, as I'm absolutely passionate about visual, interactive methods and the potential they have to engage and support complex and reflexive thinking.

So what's the plan? Well, it involves reviewing, selecting and adapting both the 'cartoons' from previous sessions, as well as graphical elements that relate to the 'big stories' (meta narratives) and contexts of those narratives. That in itself I think will be really useful, as I focus on the talk around the process - what gets selected, adapted and so on. Participants will have the opportunity to move elements around in ways meaningful to them. As you might expect, there's a little more to it than that. A second half to the session gets us thinking about how narratives relate to the social worlds and lived experience of participants. The table (see picture) is split into two, with narrative elements on the top and contexts / springboards for these on the bottom. This allows me - in a jargon free way - to superimpose that arc you see in the picture, which represents the three stages of Ricoeur's hermeneutic arc:

prefiguration (in brief, how lived experience and communities of relations 'prefigure' narratives in that they provide us with shared symbolic meaning, patterns and so on).
configuration (the act of consciously constructing a narrative - for example, by the act of enplotment).
refiguration (the act of using narratives to direct or influence new action).

This is where it could become unhinged, but a good pilot session with my second supervisor and a couple of friendly colleagues has refined how I plan to reflect on each stage of the hermeneutic arc operates, with specific attention to the social mechanisms which I argue drive the process (that's for another post). I have learnt over the years of community arts work with adults and children that the most complex questions and issues can be considered if we use meaningful tools. In this case, I've ended up (after some hard work, which is usually needed to make things simple) with a set of 'question cards' which participants can pick and talk about as they feel interested. They do this whilst handling the visual elements and being able to make visual connections. The hope is that this gear shift in the visual methods, which looks deceptively simple, will support some pretty interesting reflective narratives about how narratives relate to action in a dynamic way.

I think research should be fun, as well as hard work.

visual sensemaking and carving out questions

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 21:44:00 +0000

After a marathon transcription month in January and lots of 'work' (marking undergraduate assignments) I needed to 'pull together' some thinking I've been doing about the interpretative framework I am working with and a few lines of enquiry for my next set of research conversations. Both were characterised by a degree of either playfulness or vulnerability, depending on how I felt on a particular day. From the start of my (part time) PhD, I have been determined to enjoy the process of playing with ideas. I love the idea of pushing my thinking in new directions, and also finding an interpretive perspective which reflects what I am about. In doing this, I have had to educate myself about social (and other kinds of) theory, building on many years of practical experience. Often, I have realised I have needed to be open to challenges of naivety or the desire to 'over reach'. I am keeping one eye on the fact that a PhD is a process and that insights I get to in a couple of years need to come from asking stupid questions or even aiming too high. In fact, with a day job as a Senior Lecturer, I think it's really healthy, as I choose to put myself in the place where my own students are in terms of the process of learning. I'd rather be a learner than to call myself an 'expert' and to fossilise my knowledge.

Back to the process. One of the things I have tried to do over the last couple of weeks is to more clearly my desire to bring together two apparently contradictory approaches to knowledge. In short, this is the world of pragmatic philosophy and symbolic interactionsim on one hand, and Paul Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutics on the other. I know, it even sounds mad. See below for a crass generalisation of both:

Pragmatic Philosophy (with bits of the tradition it inspired, symbolic interactionism):

Draws on the work of authors such as William James, GH Mead, CS Peirce and John Dewey (with modern day academics such as Hans Joas who work with pragmatism in new ways).
In terms of the formation of the self (which is relevant to my study), pragmatism locates the development of conciousness and identity in the social process - in other words, we need others to develop those capacities that make us 'human'.
This intersubjective process of communication gives rise to significant signs, which in turn become symbols. Symbol use enables shared meaning and action and amongst other things gives us the capacity to reflect, remember and imagine.
Things like reflection are examples of action towards the 'self'. Pragmatists see that individuals are able to do these things because the self is pictured as an object itself.
Many individuals have adapted pragmatic thought, including (famously) Herbert Blumer, who coined the term symbolic interactionism. This large body of work (which more or less claims to be tied to original pragmatic principles) present human activity as a stream of action, in which individuals define, name objects, orientate around goals and use general and specific references.

Whilst parts of Paul Ricoeur's phenomenological hermeneutics look a bit like this:

Narrative and 'the text' play a central role in selfhood, identity and meaning making. In many way, this 'grounds' selfhood and reflects Ricoeur's 'non idealistic' view of the self.
Narrative is an 'attestation' of the self to the 'other'. In fact, conciousness and meaning seem to depend very much on the outside world.
This focus and connection to the other allows Ricoeur to discuss matters of imagination, intentionality and metaphor - often matters discussed in entirley subjective terms - in ways which find points of connection to lived experience in the world.
One key concept developed by Ricoeur is that of the narrative or mimetic arc, talking to the nature of narrative and the temporal experience - consisting of three phases: prefuguration (experienec that calls for a narrative - a world with shared symbolic meaning), configuration (the act of narration, distancing itself from experience and allowing for enplotment) and finally refiguration (new readings of experience are enabled allowing for new ways of being - experience is reshaped by the narrative).

Now both the pragmatists and Ricoeur himself can turn in their graves. My apologies. However, moving quickly along, I have been purposefully playing with these two perspectives, initially because both depicted the process of formation of self as a social process. My study - about narratives of professional identity in multi professional children's services environments - was about this practical social process. I wanted Ricoeur as well, despite some apparent contradictions, this was also about issues of interpretation of narrative. Without going into the details which I'm writing up elsewhere for my supervision team I'm now looking to see if there is a basis under which I can combine pragmatism and a form of phenomenology. You may have already thought that one is very much based in a naturalistic epistemology, looking at matters of causation in the social process. Pure phenomenology, by contrast, brakets out reference to this material world. This is only the begining of issues that need unwraveling. I am unwraveling, because I am learning and thinking through. I may not be able to create a hybrid interpretetive frame but the journey is enlightening.

For me, one of the things that has really helped has been by visual methodology. Originally, I saw my use of visual images as a way of - literally - mapping out situations as participants' defined them. I also have begun to see them as a central tool in the 'co-construction' of narratives as I have summarised narratives as cartoon frames which are used in reflection and reshaping of metanarratives. What I am now seeing is that visual elements are proving central in both my methodology and the interpretative framework. In my purposeful playing with theory (see above) sketching out concepts has proved powerful and a way of breaking into new lines of thought. This for me is fitting as both Pragmatism and Ricoeur's work places the symbol in a central place. Ricoeur's work in particular and his discussion of the metaphor means that the visual is not decoration or illustration, but holds in tension the reference and meaningI am looking to achieve in my research here.

Here's Ricoeur's mimetic arc depicted over time, with those three elements of prefiguration, configurationa nd refiguration. This presently forms a basis for an interpretative framework - but needs more to reflect the mechanisms of the social process.

Here, the mimetic arc moves through various sites of action, each with their own named objects and reference points. Still not there.

Here, the mimetic arc is represented as a large circle, cutting through one of many 'sites of action' with dotted lines representing the tradjectories of other actors and crosses mental objects or reference points of various sorts. All of these are helpful in that they depict some aspects of the hybrid I'm looking for, but also are useful as they pose questions and frustrations because they don't prove satisfying yet!

Whose view of the brain? - applying Mead's social view of self

noreply@blogger.com (Ian Robson) — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 20:33:00 +0000

Like most part time PhD students, I'm juggling things and wishing I had more time. Recently, I've started data collection - conversations with research participants, which has led to the dreaded transcribing. I'm also reading and loving both de Silva (2007) "G H Mead - a critical introduction", Cambridge: Polity Press and Joas, H. (2001) "The Genesis of Values", Cambridge: Polity Press. All of this is good - the books, especially are 'bringing together' for me strands of thinking and feel like the right territory as someone who has read around a bit now in pragmatism and symbolic interactionsim.

The down side has been that, what with the academic 'day job' and four children there hasn't been much writing. A few journal notes, of course, but no real work on the draft article I'm supposed to be working on with social work colleagues about social work relationships and constructing meaningful shared action in assessment. People do ask 'how many words have you written', perhaps imagining that my PhD thesis is simply in my head and all I need to do is get it out directly.

So, the nearest I've got to that this last couple of weeks has been thinking about the radio. When I'm not cycling to work, I have the car - which has just had its radio fixed. Today, I listened to a part of a programme on BBC Radio 4 - about neuroscience and behaviour change, actually. It proved to be useful food for thought, unexpectedly for thinking about G.H. Mead's (social) view of self and, well, how it wasn't represented at all in a very 'scientific' view of not just the brain but, by inference, wider assumptions about the nature of the 'self'.

A series of very authoritative people were involved in this programme, most quite interesting, with valid things to say - however - what struck me was the overwhelming view of consciousness (and to some extent the inference of 'self') as a purely cerebral (in the literal sense) process, contained in the skull.

I thought of G H Mead's (radical) alternative to both this view of consciousness as biology or as Cartesian mind / body spilt. Mead proposed a view of consciousness as a fundamentally social process - requiring interaction with others for its genesis and development. His views on the four stages of the act illustrates this well (see the link to Mead in this post:

Impulse: a response to novel situations.
Perception: definition of a 'problem'.
Manipulation: action taken on the basis of the second phase.
Consummation: where the act is resolved.

Forgetting the detail, G.H. Mead's theory links the individual mind to the actions of others and so 'thinking' becomes fundamentally social. Listening to this particular programme, however, you would think that anything of significance happens only in the brain, misleadingly 'underselling' the interactive relationships that are actually reflected in brain activity.

My point? If you don't have lots of time to write - and we need to make time - it's also good to think critically and analytically about material uncritically 'presented' to us in everyday life, seeing it from a particular theorists perspective. This does not mean I don't need to adapt Mead's view, or I buy in to all its ontological basis but I do extend my understanding of the thing by using it. A good pragmatic perspective, perhaps?