26/11/2011 by lizit.

In September, I had a first, very rough draft of my thesis. One of the issues was the number of words in the drafts (approaching 100,000), which somewhat exceeded the permitted word limit of 80,000. My task was to try to edit and organise my material more concisely without losing the most relevant content. In an earlier post, “Getting excited about my thesis,” I described how I came to see the draft as a number of containers, or buckets, each with mixture of content.

The first thing I did was to think again about what the underlying argument of my thesis is. What is it I am actually addressing. Over the past three years, I have read and gathered a lot of information and learned a lot. Although much of it is interesting, by no means all of it is relevant to my thesis. In order to decide what is and is not relevant, I had to know what it is I am trying to say and what contributes to that argument.

Having sorted out what I am saying, I then looked at the material again and how I had structured the first draft. I had followed a fairly standard model of introduction, lit review, methodology, findings… but I realised that this might not be the best structure to support my methodology and argument. I was using three distinctly different approaches to the problem I was addressing, which meant I was looking at different bodies of theory and different methodologies. I decided to divide the thesis into three sections, which would enable me to address each approach separately, and draw connections between them.

During October, I focused on the first two sections, which were the best developed of the original drafts. By the end of October, I had my revised drafts (currently awaiting supervisor comments), but the original word count had swelled to 110k.

Radical measures were needed. I first focused on the essential content - the literature and methodology - and the word count increased a little more! I needed to do something more drastic. I printed out the remainder of the content, reminded myself again what the focus of my thesis is, and started working through the material with a blue pencil, putting lines through everything not directly relevant to my argument.  I still have a way to go, but over the past fortnight, I have reduced the word count by about 25k and I am beginning to see how I can bring ideas together which were previously hidden in the undergrowth. The material being removed is not uninteresting, in fact some is very interesting and may well form the basis of articles or conference papers, but it is not part of the argument I am making in my thesis and therefore has no place there - much the same as some garden weeds may look quite pretty in meadowland, but in a garden may hide or choke the plants that are meant to be there.

Hopefully, having cleared the weeds, I can begin to construct a more coherent argument, and lose more words in the process. Who knows, I might even reduce the word count enough to include the still missing discussion chapter.

No doubt careful editing can deal with small numbers of excess words, but dense undergrowth needs a chainsaw and flamethrower!

Posted in editing, writing | Print | 2 Comments »

03/11/2011 by lizit.

This morning I read a blogpost from Martin Eve labelled a dissenting voice on#AcBoMoWri. As I understand it, AcBoMoWri has been initiated as a response to #NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). Whereas, Martin suggests that the aim of AcBoMoWri is to “bash out words to get as close as possible to writing a book”, I see it more as one of a number of recent initiatives to encourage academics to get writing. Others include pomodoras, #shutupandwrite, creative writing workshops and 750 words. Lying behind each of these initiatives seems to be a search for ways of breaking through procrastination and writing avoidance and getting our research findings down on paper and out into the public domain. Given that one of the reasons we engage in research is to share our findings and out thoughts, what are we to make of these initiatives?

Martin quite rightly raises concerns about the risks of churning out material without the necessary thinking and evaluation that makes our writing meaningful. The debate that has emerged on Twitter also recognises the very real problems of short-termism and the need to produce and be counted. A culture of short term grants and a requirement for outputs, can lead to a multitude of books and articles that say very little and which fail to consider the bigger picture. This is something we all need to be concerned about. Research, whatever the field, is about so much more than inputs and outputs.

At the same time, we can be resistant to put pen to paper. Discussions in #phdchat week after week reveal the anxieties of graduate researchers as we seek to find ways to express our ideas, always questioning whether we have any kind of conceptual or theoretical framework, whether what we are wanting to say has any real meaning, and, in any case, is what we want to say good enough, not only for sharing but to gain the accolade of a doctorate.

It seems to me that incentives to write are positive. Not all will resonate. I have not been able to see the point of 750 words and writing every day - some days, I have nothing to write, apart from a short note to myself about what to think about and read next, or a shopping list. On the other hand, shutupandwrite can work for me, as long as I plan what I will focus on in the writing session. There is something energising about writing when others are too - but then I get the same from knowing that colleagues in the #phdchat network are working alongside me, albeit each in our own space, at times when most sane people are engaged in leisure activities or doing stuff with the family.

So what of AcBoWriMo? My initial response was one of how crazy - why put pressure on myself to deliver a given product in a specific time? Then I looked at it again and realised it resonated with where I currently am with my own thesis writing. I know what I want to write and I know what the structure will look like. The chapters are sketched out, but the writing task needs to be done. I have been working to a fairly loose aim of completing the next draft by the end of term, but actually, with a bit of effort, there is no real reason why it shouldn’t be done by the end of this month, and if adopting the hashtag #AcBoMoWri will keep me focused and remind me I have a commitment not only to myself but to others, well and good. What I write will not be polished or fit for publication, or even submission as thesis, but will be the next step on that journey.

For me AcBoWriMo has come at an opportune time. At a different time, it would be no incentive or value whatsoever. It is not about writing a given number of words in a day, but writing what is already well-digested material and doing so in a timely manner.

But the concerns raised by Martin about the more general nature of academic writing remain.

Posted in writing | Print | No Comments »

23/10/2011 by lizit.

A fortnight ago I wrote of a new sense of direction with my thesis writing. That has continued.

On a practical level, the buckets have been moved around, some have had their contents split into smaller buckets and some buckets have had their contents mixed in the same container. That represents more than just moving jigsaw pieces. It has led me into thinking more deeply about what it is I am saying and, perhaps more importantly, how I am saying it. I am also a lot happier about my theoretical positioning. For months now I have been trying to get my head around the various theoretical standpoints open to me, half the time not understanding them and the the rest of the time not seeing how they applied to me either. Through thinking about how to organise the various material in my thesis, I have recognised that I am not coming from a single theoretical standpoint - or if I am, I don’t know what it is and at the moment it is fairly irrelevant. What I am doing is embracing a systems approach. It always was there in the small print of one of the chapters, but I’ve now realised it is what is holding the whole together.

A systems approach does not only permit, but insists on looking at things from many different viewpoints or perspectives. It may involve soaring high over the system and taking an overview - looking at the pieces and how they connect - or it may involve getting into the nitty gritty of bits of the system and how they work in the day-to-day. It may involve looking at the roles of the different stakeholders in the system and how they function together and separately. It may involve acknowledging the differences between formal and informal power structures - the importance of the person with the key to the stationery cupboard…

Bit by bit I am making sense of the story I am telling and seeing more and more connections. I am having to be far more organised than I have ever been about noting the insights as they occur - some will find their way into my thesis and others will no doubt be useful in other contexts. I am beginning to write and edit and review and understand and write some more. There is a subtle shift which means I’m engaging with my work in a new way.

So far so good! But why oh why is the technology, which should operating transparently in the background, so difficult to tame? Three times in the last fortnight, I have spent time sorting out broken references. The first time happened when splitting the whole into its constituent parts. Everything seemed to be OK, and then I noticed some of my references were simply not right - they had somehow moved down the document, all still in the correct order but in the wrong places. Then, last weekend, editing a shorter document and noticing again references were not where they belonged. An hour spent cutting and pasting unformatted references sorted that! Then yesterday, a carefully crafted paragraph half-way through the document, and moved on to make further edits, forgetting to hit the save button first. As I made the next edits, a sudden awareness that the reference I was editing had disappeared to be replaced by the page number I was inserting - and then adding insult to injury, it replaced the following reference and all the subsequent references shifted too. This is specialist software provided by large companies and supposedly designed for the kind of task I am engaged in. Why on earth doesn’t it do what it says on the tin? There is more than enough to think about without having to worry about whether my document has edited itself!

So we win some, we lose some. If only the technology worked as it should, I would be a very happy bunny at the moment!

Posted in thesis, personal rant, systems, bibliography | Print | 2 Comments »

09/10/2011 by lizit.

I’ve woken up this morning feeling quite excited about my thesis and wanting to get on with writing it!

During the summer, I did a lot of work on pulling together the content of my thesis and putting ideas into what I have thought of as buckets or containers. These buckets have had fairly standard titles like lit review, methodology, findings, discussion, etc, but I have been aware that in most cases the contents were ill-formed and often disconnected. While knowing what my thesis was about, I was very unclear what I was actually saying, and more importantly how I was going to say it. It was like having a jigsaw where I had sorted out the pieces into piles, the sky, some of the bigger objects, the corner pieces and some of the side pieces, but I had no idea what the final picture might be, or how I might join the pieces together to create that picture.

The picture is still not created - doing that is almost certainly some months away. What has changed is I have a clear sense in my own mind of how that picture might look and I can begin to take action to move some of the jigsaw pieces around and begin the task of creating the picture. Instead of wondering how to present my argument without really being clear what the argument was, I now have a sense of both what my argument is and how it can be presented.

Today’s task is to make a rough sketch of the outline of the picture and begin moving some of the pieces into place. Over the coming weeks, the task will be to join the pieces together, first in sections and then in a whole, in order to create a thesis which says what I want to say clearly and cogently and which links together the various different perspectives contained within it.

This morning I am feeling excited, and a little scared, because I sense I actually do know what I need to do, and I do know how to begin to do it. I am standing on a viewpoint, looking at the landscape laid out before me. No doubt as I move into that landscape and get caught up in some of the detail, I will find myself confused and wondering in what direction to go, but for the moment at least, I am feeling excited and have a road map in my hands.

Posted in thesis, voice, writing, ownership | Print | 2 Comments »

17/09/2011 by lizit.

I spent 3 days last week at Med Soc 2011, the annual conference of the medical sociology group within the British Sociological Association. Before moving on to all the other stuff which fills the life of a DPhil student, I want to take time to reflect on the experience, including both my preparation for the event and the experience of the conference itself.

Med Soc 2011 was not the first conference I have attended. I have attended, and presented at, a number of postgraduate conferences and conferences focusing on learning and technology. In days gone by, I have also attended and presented at professional gatherings and led a fair number of training courses as well as being a OU teacher for over ten years. However, I was very anxious in the lead up to Med Soc. My anxiety had a variety of roots. Firstly, I was concerned about whether my research interests were really a match for the conference - the rational response was that my abstract had been selected for presentation, so it should be OK, but I was unsure how far I identified with medical sociology. Secondly, I was unsure if I would pass muster academically. Although I have a general background in social policy and practice, I do not consider myself a sociologist. Would my cover get blown? Would I understand what people were talking about and would what I had to say be relevant to others? Thirdly, a much more personal concern was about being in a place I didn’t know with people I had not met before. Would I cope with getting about the campus - I have some mobility problems - and would I achieve one of the objectives of attending a conference, networking?

Addressing my third concern first, I need not have worried. The needs I had stated on the conference registration had been noted and catered for making it possible for me to relax. People were friendly and helpful and the organisers had gone the second mile.

Returning to my first two concerns, I over prepared because I was anxious to hit the right note. In the end, I think my presentation was OK, but the earlier versions may well have been equally OK. A major lesson for me was the very wide variety of presentation styles and methodologies evident in the work being presented - everything from very scholarly - and sometimes verging on inaccessible (to me at least) accounts, to story telling with little or no academic references or specialist vocabulary. I also learned that there were people with a wide range of backgrounds present at the conference, presenting on many and various themes. Apart from the presentations in the autism stream, I heard presentations on stem cell research, knee pain and ageing, dyslexia, elder abuse, diabetic teenagers, contraception, midwifery practices, and health care commissioning, to name but a few.

Having attended various training sessions on how to present, I was interested in the different presentation approaches. As might be anticipated, most people used media of some sort - but not all. Most people talked to presentation slides, but some read their papers. Some slides were dense with text while others used images and few words - and I saw one presentation using prezi and cartoon strip dialogues. Among the most impressive were those using mixed media, where the voice of the participants were heard through audio or video clips. But at the end of the day, it was those presentations which told a story and where the presenter gave a personal account of their research that stayed with me.

What have I learned? Firstly, not to worry if my work is going to be acceptable - if it is a reputable conference and my submission has been accepted, then the subject matter is acceptable. Secondly, not to be so worried about meeting expectations in the way I present - it is far more important to communicate something meaningful and memorable than to worry about whether I am being academic enough or whether I have stated my conceptual and theoretical framework - in a 20 minute presentation everything and anything superfluous to the story needs to be filtered out. Thirdly, even if I am hearing a presentation about a subject I know nothing about, I can learn as much from how the subject matter is presented as from what has been said. Fourthly, people are genuinely interested in a wide range of different topics and in different approaches to those topics.

I’ve returned home energised by the experience and on the look out for another conference or two to submit abstracts to and to put into practice what I’ve learned this past week.

Posted in conferences, imposter syndrome, presenting | Print | 1 Comment »

01/09/2011 by lizit.

No, I’m not being rude, but drawing attention to a strategy that is helping many researchers overcome writing block. You know how it is. You sit down at your desk, switch computer on and have loads of good intentions about what you are going to write. But first, check the email, Facebook, Twitter, Yammer, Google+ and whatever other social networks are an essential part of life. Then recheck, just in case anything essential has appeared while you were checking all the others. Time for a coffee, perhaps re-check the social media, and half the morning has gone.

Or alternatively, you start off well. Actually write a couple of paragraphs, and then the thought occurs that you need an essential reference, so a happy hour or two is spent in the digital library, by which time you have forgotten both why you needed the reference and what you were writing about in the first place.

“Shut up and write” is an antidote to procrastination. @thesiswhisperer and @researchwhisper have both blogged their experience of the process. Essentially you arrange to meet up with a few colleagues, preferably where there is some decent coffee available, chat briefly and then end conversation and write for a predetermined period of time. It sounds weird, but those who have used it, advocate the approach and continue to do it, so there probably is something in it.

Sarah R-H and I were bemoaning the difficulty of writing during an exchange of tweets, when we wondered whether it would be possible to adapt this to the online world. We agreed that one of us would take responsibility for initiating and timing a 30 minute writing session and that we would both switch off all online contact for that period of time. A text message signalled the end. You can read Sarah’s experience below, but suffice it to say, it worked well enough for us to do it again.

To start with, I wasn’t sure about ‘Shut up and Write’ – I had doubts that I could keep my bum in the chair and my mouth shut for any sensible length of time. And the idea of turning off social networks left me feeling nervous, but I was ready to try anything. I’d had a couple of not-so-good days, was slipping on my deadline, and the anxiety was leading me into bad habits: checking #phdchat on Twitter, tinkering with the TOC, searching for the ‘perfect’ reading app for my phone… procrastination hell. And as all procrastinators know, it’s a self-perpetuating situation: anxiety feeds procrastination, feeds anxiety.

Liz suggested Shut up and Write, and the thought of having to leave the house stirred up a rising panic. So we went digital. It worked. Firstly, it meant I was making a commitment to 30 minutes of purposefully distraction-free work. Secondly, and I think more importantly, I was making a pact with someone else, and a friend at that. Thirty minutes was long enough for me to get focussed on one piece of writing, yet short enough that I felt I could mentally put aside faffing / Twitter / digital library tasks – postpone them whilst I got it done. We did two sessions, and after the second I felt unblocked and a great deal more relaxed. And I have learned that I can live perfectly adequately without having social media minimised and at-the-ready. Who knew? This tactic is definitely a keeper.

So next time you find yourself procrastinating, team up with a colleague or two. If you can meet, all the better, you get the incentive of seeing somebody else working to encourage you, but if you can’t meet, find a willing online friend and support each other in getting past the writer’s block and procrastination hurdle. It worked for us!

Posted in peer support, writing | Print | No Comments »

25/07/2011 by lizit.

I am an insider in my research domain.

Reading an article recommended by a colleague on insider research (Hellawell, 2006) raises the possibility of there being different dimensions to insider research, and that my position might vary in different aspects of my research and in relation to different participants.

My research focuses on the Special Educational Needs (SEN) system and uses the lens of the experiences of parents and practitioners involved with children and young people with diagnoses of Aspergers or high functioning autism (HFA).

I am an insider in that I have a son with Aspergers and I have had involvement  with the SEN system in negotiating to get his needs met. I am also an insider as I have an ongoing relationship with other parents who have children on the autism spectrum, or who are going through the diagnostic process. I share a lot in common with other parents both in terms of understanding and navigating the SEN system and in terms of coping with the effect of having a child with Aspergers on daily living and dealing with the many and varied effects on family life and on me personally as a mother.

However, I am also interested in the perspectives of practitioners in the domain. In a sense, I am a practitioner as I facilitate a support group, but my experience in that role is very different from those practitioners who are responsible for diagnosing the condition, recommending interventions or providing support. At the same time, I have nearly 20 years experience of working in social care organisations, so I have experience of making decisions and recommendations that affect the lives of other. Although I may be seen as an ‘outsider’ by the practitioners I interview in professional terms, I do have some understanding of the pressures and influences they work under, and that does influence my approach.

There is also the question of the extent to which both practitioners and parents form a community of practice within the domain. Although this is not the focus of my research, it is clear that there is much shared knowledge and language between people coming from different places in the domain.

A useful article in enabling me to see that doing insider researcher is more complex than simply questions of making assumptions about common understanding or giving access that might not otherwise be so readily available.

Hellawell, D. 2006. Inside–Out: Analysis of the Insider–Outsider Concept as a Heuristic Device to Develop Reflexivity in Students Doing Qualitative Research. Teaching in Higher Education, 11, 483-494.

Posted in community of practice, Aspergers/HFA, methodology, reflections | Print | No Comments »

28/06/2011 by lizit.

Time spent over the last couple of days reviewing my thesis outline, plus a supervision session and reading a couple of Inger Mewburn’s thesiswhisperer blog posts (PhD Grief and 5 ways to kill your darlings) has got me thinking.

It must be a couple of years now since my supervisor suggested I draft an abstract for my thesis, written as though it was done and dusted and I had achieved what I wanted to achieve. Having a tendency to do as I’m told, I followed the advice and I found it a useful exercise, not only in enabling me to sort out my focus, but also as a document which I could review and revise as my ideas developed. While reviewing my thesis outline over the past couple of days, I realised that I needed to revise the abstract yet again. Having done so, I then looked back over the last year and realised that ideas which were central to the abstract a few months ago, are no longer there, but other ideas which either were not present, or were peripheral are taking centre stage. I am seriously beginning to wonder if rather than me owning my thesis, whether it actually has somehow acquired a life of its own.

In some ways, this follows on from my previous blog where I responded to Jeffrey Keefer’s question about there being no space for communities of practice in my research. It can only be 3 months ago that I was arguing that communities of practice were central to my research and my thesis. Where has all that thinking and work gone? It is clear my thesis is rejecting it as part of itself - I’m sure it wasn’t my decision to put that whole chunk on one side.

Not only does my thesis seem to have decided that things that are meaningful to me have no place in it, but it also seems to have replaced them with things which are more theoretically complex, though possibly ultimately more interesting. And I’m sure it has done this without any assistance on my part!

What I have realised is that the areas that getting chopped are not being chopped because they are not of interest, or are not important, but because they are not central to my research question. They are currently in suspended animation, waiting to be revived and acquire their own lives. The areas that remain and are taking over, are not triffids, but are emerging as I allow myself to look into some of the deeper reaches of the iceberg. They are challenging because they are forcing me to think in ways that don’t come naturally to me. I’m a pragmatist and problem-solver - what am I doing getting caught up in theoretical concepts and philosophy? Come to think of it, why on earth am I doing a DPhil - no let’s not go there today!

I think perhaps it is time for me to take thesis in hand and threaten it with the pruning sheers if it doesn’t stop growing and developing interesting side shoots. Hang it all surely I should be in charge of my thesis and not vice versa!

Posted in experience, personal rant, empowerment, reflections, ownership, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

25/06/2011 by lizit.

When I set up this blog, it was to support my DPhil studies. I knew that the process I was engaging with would be a journey. What I didn’t know was what the nature of the journey would turn out to be, but I knew the destination I had in mind was what my husband refers to as a “Big D”. I still have some way to go - all being well, I will submit my thesis towards the middle of next academic year - but a tweet has led me to reflect a little on the journey so far, with its various twists and turns. Rather than being a reflective essay, this had turned into more a narrative description of the this happened, then this, but so be it.

Jeffrey Keefer simply asked: “No CoP space in your research? Wonder why that may be the case….” Given that at one point, I had expected CoP, or communities of practice to be fairly centre stage, I also wondered why.

The seeds of my DPhil journey were almost certainly planted over a period of time and without my conscious awareness. If I think back about 6 years, my focus was probably on retirement preparation. Apart from a small tutoring contract with the Open University, I had given up my paid employment to sort out appropriate support for my son’s special educational needs. I was not really thinking of returning to work in any real sense, when the OU advertised consultancy posts with the Information, Advice and Guidance team of the Sussex Learning Network. Although I hadn’t worked directly in that area, I had relevant experience and the pay was attractive, so I put in an application and somewhat to my surprise was appointed. A few months later, consultancies also became available on the Sussex Learning Network e-learning team, and it was suggested I apply. This was a difficult decision, as it would mean moving to a situation of being in virtually full-time employment, but I grasped the nettle and again was appointed.

Becoming an elearning consultant was a turning point. Whereas, I was content to stay with the technology I had learned over the previous ten years, I was now introduced to the world of blogs and wikis and 3-D virtual worlds and social media more generally and found myself relating to people who were engaged in research in this area and had colleagues who were talking of doctoral study. I gently encouraged them, got involved in various projects, but was very clear that a research degree was not for me - it was for younger people. I got further OU contracts involving me in various research projects and found I was enjoying myself. In particular, I was enjoying being able to use skills from years ago, which I had considered I would never have the opportunity to use other than in voluntary capacities, but which I was using and which were being recognised by colleagues - perhaps retirement, endless cups of tea and making lace was not my only potential destination.

I still don’t really know how it happened! One of the areas I began to work in through the elearning consultancy was 3-D virtual worlds. I initiated a project with a colleague at the University of Sussex and one day found myself asking her whether there might be a doctorate in the work we were doing. At that point, my doctoral journey started as she responded positively to my query and a few months later, I found myself a registered student with the intention of doing some comparative work around learning in 3-D virtual environments and learning in the physical world. I can honestly say that doing a PhD was never part of my life plan, and was very surprised to find myself in that place, and although I am now very comfortable with what I am doing, I am still more than a little surprised to find how good the fit is.

Despite best intentions, the planned research didn’t quite work out, but my focus at the end of my first year as a research student was still firmly on learning in 3-D worlds. I was beginning to explore aspects of informal learning and the development of a sense of community. This fitted very much with my experience as a community development worker nearly forty years ago and an ongoing interest in how communities form and develop and how people learn in community. As the research design developed, it was clearly moving well beyond the bounds of Informatics, and my supervisor invited a colleague in the Sociology faculty to a consultation to assist in enabling me to determine the way forward. That meeting proved another turning point. Essentially, the message I took away was that the ideas I was exploring were interesting, but I was looking at a broad area and such work was best undertaken through the narrow lens of a domain I knew well.

Following that meeting, I rapidly re-scoped my research objectives. 3-D virtual worlds were no longer an appropriate domain, for what I wanted to explore as there was an area I knew far better, was much closer to my heart and where the ideas I was interested in were far more relevant. The focus of my research shifted to learning amongst professionals and other carers in the autistic spectrum domain. The central issue focused on learning and why it was that the learning of some professionals was privileged over that of parents and other carers. Policy in this area emphasised partnership, but the system was acknowledged to be adversarial. Was there any evidence of a community of practice embracing professionals from different disciplines? Why were parents included or excluded from this CoP?

So, to return to Jeffrey’s question, my research at that point did have CoP as a central theme.

However, as I began to interview people and to think about the theoretical context, and to refine further my research question, I was forced to accept that no matter how interesting CoPs were, there was a more fundamental question, which was why was the SEN system so adversarial anyway. Rather than looking for examples of co-operative practice, and there are many, it seemed that much of what I read and much of what participants told me used militaristic language to describe relationships within the system. Somewhat surprisingly, I could find little in the literature by way of explanation for why this might be the case. There appeared to be tacit acceptance that the system was adversarial. Even the Green Paper on SEN published 3 months ago, presents the adversarial nature of the system as a reason for change, but does not offer any suggestions as to how the proposed changes will alter this.

So thus far, my journey as taken me from positioning myself outside academic research, to tentative first steps in exploring learning in 3-D virtual worlds, to debates about the nature of learning and informal learning, to communities of practice, to why the SEN system is broke. On the way, I have learned about theories I had never heard of before, I have begun to understand things I would previously dismissed, I have questioned myself and my presuppositions, and I have begun to understand the relevance of theory to practical situations and the interplay of research and policy development. I have met and engaged with lots of interesting people and have begun to realise that what I have to say is probably no less worthy that what anybody else has to contribute to various debates.

Communities of practice are central to my thinking, and being part of a community of practice supports my research, but I have somewhat reluctantly had to accept that communities of practice, at this point in time, are not central to my research interests.

The journey continues.

Posted in community of practice, voice, lace, research ideas, reflections, learning | Print | 3 Comments »

29/04/2011 by lizit.

I facilitate a drop-in group for parents of children with SENs. Most of the parents who attend have children who have high functioning autism or Aspergers amongst their diagnoses.

Even though my research focuses on those who care for and support children and young people with diagnoses of Aspergers and HFA, I decided that it would be inappropriate to include this group in my research, apart from making personal requests to some specific individuals to interview them. My role in the group is to offer support and share from my own experiences and there was a clear conflict of interests between hearing confidential information in a support role and using such information in my research role. Further, if I had asked the consent of group users to use knowledge gained in the setting in my research, it may well at best influenced the operation of the group and at worst led to some parents deciding not to use the group because they could not rely on their circumstances being kept cinfidential.

However, from time to time I find myself in a conversation when I just wish I hadn’t made that decision. One such was a conversation this week. There were two parents with primary age sons, both with diagnoses of Aspergers and ADHD, and the discussion was about their concerns about aspects of their sons’ behaviours which were a cause for concern. As they spoke of some of their young sons’ aggressive acts, fascination with their bodies, and threats of violence to the point of murder, I was so reminded of my experiences with my son when he was much younger. Like them, I had been concerned by the cold and calculating way he had spoken of killing, and, like them, I was terrified that I might have a psychopathic killer as a son. I had forgotten those thoughts and feelings, but as I participated in this conversation, I remembered some of those dark times, and was so thankful that my son, now adult, is so different from what I feared he might be. Although nobody can guarantee how any child will develop, it brought some reassurance to these women that my son was now OK. But for me there was the dilemma of how do I include some of this content in my discussion of the struggles parents face in raising young people with ASDs.

Posted in boundaries, Aspergers/HFA, ethics | Print | 1 Comment »