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 »

03/03/2011 by lizit.

Let’s get this clear to start with. I enjoy presenting. From the response I get when I present, it would seem people enjoy my presentations, and sometimes even are challenged by them.

However, on the 3 occasions when I have presented since starting my DPhil, I have found myself getting nervous and generally just not doing as good a job as I know I can. The first time, I gave a presentation, I dried. OK, in the informal context of the lab meeting it didn’t really matter, and in some ways it was helpful finding out that I could recover and carry on and not lose face, but I do not suffer stage fright, so what was that all about.

The second presentation I gave was as part of a course focusing on communication skills. We used blogs, designed posters, wrote abstracts and gave a short presentation. That time, I didn’t dry but I was aware of being very nervous and not really saying things as clearly as I wanted to.

The third time was yesterday. I wasn’t as nervous, but I had over-prepared and had far too much material so I ended up rushing and missing out important aspects of what I had to say.

During the same period, I have given other presentations in other contexts and I have not had the same difficulties - in fact in other situations, I have enjoyed the experience and made a good job of the task. So what is it that affects me adversely in those situations when I am presenting to peers and colleagues as a research student?

I think part of the answer is what I wrote on my facebook page prior to yesterday:

I usually quite enjoy presenting, but get much more nervous doing stuff at Sussex than I do anywhere else - maybe I think they are more likely to blow my cover, or think I’ve got to be clever instead of just being me….

It’s that old enemy known as “imposter syndrome” - there is something about having to prove myself, so I over-prepare, include too much content, trip over my words, and almost turn into a gibbering wreck, only managing to perform at all because I have done so many successful presentations in the past and know the drill.

Another part of it, which was very evident yesterday, and is related, is losing confidence in my belief that I know what I am doing, and taking too much notice of the advice I am given without weighing up whether it will actually fit. What I should have done yesterday, given it was a research in progress presentation to my colleagues, was to focus on what I was doing, what my preliminary findings were, and why these were relevant. I had plenty to say and could easily have put together a tight, but challenging presentation. Instead, I not only put my presentation in context - it did need some kind of brief contextualisation, but not 6 slides worth - but I also threw in a summary of the tension between the medical and social models of disability to give what I was saying theoretical credibility. Some of the extraneous stuff was there because I chose to include it, but some of it was there because I had been through the slides with my supervisors and they had suggested how I might ‘improve’ the presentation. Their comments were valid and well meant, but rather than weighing them up and deciding what I had room for, I took all their ideas on board - after all, they are the experts - and did not use my own judgment or knowledge of timing.

To make matters worse, having got an acceptable presentation worked out, instead of pruning it to fit the time available, I added additional slides and re-ordered the sequence so that those slides which didn’t really fit had a proper place.

So I had too much material and inappropriate material. Combined with my nervousness which meant I took longer than necessary to settle into the presentation, which made the early part even more clunky than it might otherwise have been, no wonder I ran out of time, had to rush through stuff and omit the most interesting elements.

People are nice and forgiving. There was enough there to satisfy those present. But I know I can do better - and if I am going to do better I need to believe in myself and sort out my own priorities and be willing to prune in order to communicate what matters effectively.

At least, I know that I have enough material for about 3 different presentations if I slice it up appropriately, so I guess it wasn’t a complete loss!

Posted in imposter syndrome, presenting, ownership, learning | Print | 3 Comments »

07/12/2010 by lizit.

Every so often I read something and suddenly begin to realise that not only do I understand some at least of what I’m reading but I can actually apply it to my own work! Today was one of those days!

Through a message and link in CPsquare - an online community exploring communities of practice - I came across a couple of pieces written by Martin Packer. I hadn’t come across him before, but he had worked with Jean Lave around 1990 and had taught a course ‘Everyday Learning and Life’ with her. The pieces I was looking at were a conference paper presented at an AERA meeting in Montreal in 1999 and an article co-written with Jessie Goicoechea and published in Education Psychologist in 2000. Both explored the ontology of learning, though, as might be anticipated, the journal article had a more in-depth theoretical base.

The first thing I got from this reading was actually beginning to understand what the terms ontology and epistemology mean. I’ve encountered them enough times in various publications and I’ve looked them up in dictionaries, but never really felt confident that I understood what either term actually meant. In the context of these two pieces, both of which were concerned with learning, it became clear that epistemology had to do with knowing and to describe a learning theory as epistemological meant that it had to do with the process of gaining knowledge that could be tested - OK, it’s probably more complex than that, but that will do for me for the moment. Ontology is not about knowing but about being and becoming and learning approaches that can be described as ontological have to do with who a person is becoming through the learning experience. This in turn opens up the notion of learning being about personal change and finding an identity.

As this was dawning, I began to get excited. The initial focus of my research was exploring the learning journeys of those who care for and support children and young people with diagnoses of Aspergers or HFA. From the data I already have, I know that parents undergo a transformation from being a parent to becoming the parent of a child with an ASC to being the parent of a child with an ASC and that part of that transformation is about identity and part of it is about acquiring knowledge about the condition and support infrastructure. Similarly, teachers choosing to specialise in this area move from being a teacher to becoming a specialist teacher. The routes taken may be different, but there is a change. I would expect to see a similar move in other specialists and carers involved with young people on the spectrum. Obviously, not everybody will undergo that identity change. Some may acquire knowledge without any kind of transformative learning or change.

There have been a number of research studies examining the coping strategies of parents of children with Aspergers. Many of these have focused on parents’ perceived needs after receiving a diagnosis and principle amongst these is generally a need for information. Some have also looked at parents’ coping styles and identified different ways in which parents have coped physically, emotionally and spiritually with having a child who is different. One of my interests is the use of the metaphor of struggle within the literature and discourses and I have been tentatively wondering if there is a connection between struggle and coping. I can now see that both are in some ways connected with the process of becoming the parent of a child on the spectrum.

I’ve got a lot more thinking to do, but I have a sense of having got hold of a piece of the jigsaw and found where it fits.

Posted in coping, struggle, concepts, learning | Print | No Comments »

22/11/2010 by lizit.

Last Thursday I was sitting, talking to a woman at the drop-in centre I facilitate for parents with children with SENs. Her son, aged 14 and currently out of school, was playing with duplo on the floor nearby. He hasn’t been labelled as a school refuser, but hasn’t been in school this term, and previously he was refusing to co-operate with teachers or absconding from the school site. He has diagnoses of Aspergers and Dyslexia and currently has a reading age of 6 according to the psychological assessment done recently as part of his statutory assessment of SEN.

I first met this woman, I’ll call her Pam, a couple of months ago. She arrived at the drop-in very concerned about her son and adamant that he was not going to go to the school she understood the local authority were going to recommend for him. She knew he was being assessed for a statement, but she had very little understanding of the process, or what actions she could take to help him get an appropriate placement. Over the weeks, we have seen Pam become less angry and defensive and more prepared to listen to suggestions as to how she can build a case for placement at a school she thinks would be appropriate for her son. She has visited a number of schools and seen the range of options - and also found a school which her son would be happy to attend.

On Thursday, Pam arrived at the drop-in with the proposed statement. It could have been better written, but she had spoken to the SENCO at her son’s school and they had agreed it was probably OK. She had also spoken to the two schools, she did not want her son to attend, but she felt the local authority would be recommending. One had been very clear that it was not a good idea to admit a new pupil to an established group of students with special needs in the middle of Year 9. The other was clear that they could not offer the boy anything more than his current school had been able to. Both schools agreed to email the local authority saying they would not be an appropriate placement. She had also obtained a letter from her son’s psychiatrist to say that he needed to be in a specialist setting with staff who understood his conditions and his needs.

I suggested to Pam that she phone the local authority to check if they had received the emails. They said they had had no communication, but there was a panel meeting that afternoon when the boy’s placement would be discussed.

There was little else we could practically do, but Pam agreed to email me on Friday when she heard the results of the panel meeting. We also agreed that it would be appropriate for her to ask for a meeting to discuss school placement, if the local authority were still adamant about which school the boy should attend. It was while talking about the possible meeting, that Pam showed her concern. “I’m only a parent. They are all officials and I don’t know how to talk to them.” Pam had articulated the very reason why the drop-in had been set up. As another parent, and as somebody who has been through the whole SEN process, I understand how she feels and how much she needs support, and how much she feels wrong decisions are being made for her son. I want to step in and accompany her to meetings and tell the local authority how ridiculous they are being. At the same time, I want to enable and equip her to make her own case to the officials and realise that she can do it and that she is far more than “only a parent”, but a woman who can use newly developing skills to present her son’s needs.

In the end, I assisted her to write a letter - she is perfectly capable of writing letters, but needed the right turn of phrase to address the officials. At least she is using email now - when I asked her to email something to me a couple of weeks ago, she looked terrified. On Friday, Pam emailed me to say the local authority are still wanting to send her son to the school she regards as totally inappropriate. She had asked for a meeting and was waiting to hear when that might be.Next Thursday, I will see her again and we will talk about her preparation for the meeting and who she might take with her, either to help her to present her case or simply to take notes and support her. How much more than “only a parent” Pam is having to be as she learns knew skills and sets about supporting her son to get the education he needs and deserves.

Posted in SEN, parenting, struggle, Aspergers/HFA, education, learning | Print | No Comments »

18/11/2010 by lizit.

For some months, one of my concerns has been what to do with my interview data. I have read lots of material on qualitative data analysis and many different articles, and even books, which have used qualitative approaches of one sort or another.  Some of what I read resonated, but a great deal didn’t and I think I am only now beginning to understand where my personal sticking point is.

Some months back, I found the section on analysis in Merrill and West (2009) helpful. They pointed to a holistic approach and identified the danger in the use of computer-based analysis of fragmenting data. The tension between letting participants’ voices be heard and the abstraction necessary for theory building was clearly stated. Although they include a clear outline of their own approaches to analysis - and the two writers differ - I found what they were saying difficult to relate to relate to my own work. Perhaps there was a sense that I had to develop a coding structure and learn to use the available computer packages, or perhaps because I am ‘a techie’ there was a sense of there being another program here to play with - and I am never one to be defeated by technology.

Over the past few months I have attended training courses on using a much recommended computer package. I have installed it on my computer and worked through some of my interview data using it. I can understand the program. I can appreciate it is a very powerful program with lots of potentially interesting and possibly useful features. But I’ve found I am just not happy using it. The whole approach seemed to be moving me further away from the people who have shared their stories with me and from the real life impact having a child with Aspergers.

A few days ago, I came across an article which resonated with me. Savin-Baden (2004) discusses the problem of situating ourselves in relation to our data. She suggests that it can be easier to distance ourselves from the data through complex coding systems rather than engaging with the messiness inherent in people’s lived-in lives and goes on to say that using a computer package can “result in deconstruction rather than reconstruction of the data”. This was ringing bells for me.

In the course of her article, Savin-Baden mentioned that she encouraged her students to write a short biography of each participant following an interview. This could later be turned into an interpretative biographical account which could be shared with participants. One of the things I have been doing is writing summaries of each interview with a few biographical details of each participant. Was there perhaps a clue to a possible solution to my impasse in what I was reading?

Over the past couple of days, I have worked through one of my interviews. First, I read the summary and visualised the person and the setting in which we had met. I then listened to the interview while looking at the transcript on the screen. During this process, I was able to make some minor corrections to the transcript, but more importantly, I became aware of  key phrases in the narrative and was able to highlight these. I was developing a sense of this person’s expressed feelings and concerns and understanding why she had done some of the things she had done out of a real concern for her son. She had come to life again rather than being reduced to coded fragments. With that sense of the person who was speaking, I then returned to the transcript and copied (by hand in a notebook) the words which I had highlighted, grouping them under broad headings. Finally, I returned to my original summary and reworked that by writing a series of short sections each focusing on a theme which had emerged from the interview. The resultant document is a mixture of description, summary, the participant’s expressed opinions, my observations and some personal reflection of my own.

Although the document is very rough round the edges at the moment, I can see the possibility of working with it further, linking some of the ideas emerging in it to theoretical perspectives. I can also see that taking a similar approach to other interviews will give me a collection of documents which I can use not only to identify commonalities and differences, but to do so in the context of the life and experience of the storytellers. I can also see that this kind of document is more likely to lead to further dialogue with participants than the transcripts I have been sending them. As a reconstruction which includes some interpretation, it provides scope for participants to correct and offer new insights in ways a transcript, as raw data, does not.

I’ve still got to see how this will all work out in practice and I’ve still got to see what my supervisors make of this approach, but I feel much more OK in myself about this approach at the moment.

It would be interesting to hear how others have approached data analysis in contexts where the person as well as the content is important.

Merrill, B., & West, L. (2009). Using Biographical Methods in Social Research. London: Sage.
Savin-Baden, M. (2004). Achieving Reflexivity: Moving Researchers from Analysis to Interpretation in Collaborative Inquiry. Journal of Social Work Practice, 18(3), 365-378.

Posted in data analysis, qualitative research, methodology, narratives, learning | Print | 4 Comments »

02/11/2010 by lizit.

Just occasionally in my reading, I come across a book or article which really makes sense to me. I’ve just had such an experience!

Susan Snell and Karen Rosen’s article focuses on the experiences of 5 families, each with a child with special needs. The families are described as ‘veteran families’ with the implication of experience but also having passed through a number of struggles. The purpose of their study was to gain an understanding of “how parents master the job of parenting children with special needs”. The nature of the special needs within the families are not clearly defined - and are largely irrelevant to the article - but they do make it clear that the parents in each family have found their own solutions to the challenges they confront: “Each family found unique solutions to their own problems and challenges but the larger theme was one of a learning process where parents’ experiences, perceptions, behaviors and beliefs interacted to provide the context for healthy adaptation.”

The idea of a “learning process” resonates with my investigating “learning journeys”.

The major part of the article focuses on coping themes and processes, some of which relate to specific events and some are more generalised.

An initial event is that of finding out the child is different. Even though this was a very small sample, some of the parents had made a sudden discovery - at birth or following a serious accident - while others went through a process of gradual realisation. For one family, the process is described as having included much ambiguity, which mirrors the experience of some parents of children on the autistic spectrum who may initially receive an alternative diagnosis or be told their child is going through a developmental phase and will grow out of it.

It is suggested that an important part of the process is moving from a stance of protecting the child to one of accepting the child and giving them life skills to enable them to cope.

Four coping themes are identified: family congruence, cognitive coping, defining boundaries and external management styles. The latter two resonated strongly.

In looking at the autistic spectrum domain, one of my foci has been boundary issues. Here the family is described as a system. For some families the boundary will be tightly drawn around the nuclear family, while others extend the boundary to include members of the extended family and others. This is largely determined by whether others are experienced as an additional burden or genuinely supportive. This resonates both personally and with what I have heard from other parents with children on the autistic spectrum.The effort involved in convincing grandparents, aunts and uncles, etc, that a child is neuro-diverse and not naughtly, ill-disciplined or whatever, can be just too great alongside everything else!

In relation to external agencies, three styles are identified: confrontive questioner, compliant consumer and managing partner. As one of my questions relates to the extent parents can be participants in a community of practice with professionals, this is highly relevant. The suggestion made here is that in the early stages of diagnosis and treatment, the first two styles are prominent, but as parents become more confident and expert in managing their child’s needs, their stance changes so that: “Managing partners seemed interested in working with professionals and forming a partnership that allowed them to make final decisions, yet gave them frequent access to the expertise of the professional”.

One final point which resonated was the recognition that the article had focused almost entirely on the parents. As with most studies of children with special needs the voice of the child is absent, though unusually both parents were included in but one family, which was a single parent household. All too often, the only parent recognised is the mother.

So lots of themes. It will be interesting to see which of these match with what I am finding and what additional themes emerge.

Snell, S. A., & Rosen, K. H. (1997). Parents of special needs children mastering the job of parenting. Contemporary Family Therapy, 19(3), 425-442.

Posted in coping, SEN, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

18/07/2010 by lizit.

Like many research students, one of my concerns is the need for some kind of originality in the work I am undertaking. I am still unsure exactly what that means - and how much originality is necessary - but it seems to relate to various different things.

It could be originality of method - not so much inventing a new methodology as using existing methodologies in different ways.

It could be exploring an area which hasn’t been explored before.

It could be exploring an area which has been explored before but from a different perspective.

It could be bringing a range of ideas from different areas together and looking at how they interconnect and may provide a different way of looking at an area.

The more I read about my area of interest - the learning journeys of those involved in caring for and supporting children and young people on the autistic spectrum - the more work I realise has already been done. I also realise that much of this work has been done from very specific perspectives: the support needs of parents following diagnosis; the parent as advocate; the continued professional development of teachers or doctors or social workers; the role of electronic media in informing patients. Although partnership is a theme - partnership between parents and professionals in various settings - it is unclear how much this is a reality most of the time, although there is a fair bit about the advocacy role of parents.

One of the possible areas of interest is the contrast between the formal processes and the informal processes, for example what the code of practice says should happen and what happens in practice - and why don’t the two match up. Another area is the whole question of whether there is an autistic spectrum community of practice. If it exists, where does it exist and in what form? Or is it a number of discrete areas of expertise in which some participants are able to act as gatekeepers giving access to their area of expertise, or infiltrators gaining knowledge of another area.

Looking at learning journeys is about the various ways in which people learn about the spectrum. Knowing that there is a mix of formal, informal and serendipitous probably doesn’t tell us much of itself, but when this is applied to the outputs of the domain, i.e. the services, resources, support, etc, and the decision making processes, life gets very interesting.

Posted in decision making, resources, systems, community of practice, learning, reflections, planning | Print | 1 Comment »

31/05/2010 by lizit.

I’ve managed to plough through Liz Stanley’s “The auto/biographical I” and to read far more quickly Goodson, et al’s “Narrative Learning”. I want to capture some of the main ideas for me from the two books.

First and foremost is Stanley’s argument that there is no real divide between autobiography and biography - they are both part of the same and are constructed accounts of a life or part of a life.

The idea of a constructed account is evident in both books. Stanley uses a number of biographical accounts to demonstrate how the author has present a construction which omits essential and important aspects of the life being presented. She also shows how different authors can and do present very different interpretations of the same life. Such constructions often say as much, or more, about the author and their presuppositions than they do about the person. Goodson, et al, also make it clear that personally narrated life stories should not be considered as objective accounts, but rather they are the interpretation of the past that makes sense in that time and place and are liable to change as a result of further life experiences; in essence a life story narrative is a construction of one’s life and how it is currently understood.

Another common thread in both books is that our stories are part of other’s stories. When I hear somebody else’s story, it becomes part of my story. Whether or not I reference my own story, in telling the story of another in some senses I am telling my own story. This relates to the construction of stories described in the last paragraph, but it also relates to the inter-relatedness of humanity.

Goodson, et al, focus on learning, and recognise that learning takes place in a wide range of different settings and that often learning experiences, that are recognised as such, are triggered by specific events or critical incidents. In considering stories, they looked for learning potential (evidence of learning from the story) and action potential (what the story teller does with the learning). Whereas learning is frequently defined as involving some kind of change in the learner, Goodson, et al, appear to recognise that much of the learning implicit in people’s life stories has much more a tacit dimension and is not recognised by the story teller.

What are the implications for me and my research? Firstly, there is a clear recognition that when I hear the stories of others learning in relation to the autistic spectrum domain, my own experiences and understanding of those experiences influence what I hear and how I hear it. My reactions and responses may well say more about me than the person I am talking to. How do I guard against denying the voice of others because I am listening too much to my own voice?

Secondly, and perhaps less importantly, I am predetermining to some extent the nature and structure of the story by the initial question I ask. Clearly I do not want a question as open as “Can you tell me about your life?”, but maybe I need a question which invites people to tell me about the autistic spectrum domain from their perspective without suggesting a starting point. On the other hand, maybe for my purposes the semi-structured account is more efficacious if I can ensure that I leave room for people to include the stuff I may not ask about and may not realise that I want to know about.

Goodson, I., Biesta, G., Tedder, M., & Adair, N. (2010). Narrative Learning. Abingdon: Routledge.
Stanley, L. (1992). The Auto/Biographical I. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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11/05/2010 by lizit.

Silence doesn’t mean there is no thinking or doing - just that I haven’t got round to pulling my ideas together in any coherent way!

One of the ideas I have been playing with is the autistic spectrum domain as a community of practice. In some ways it fits the model, but in other ways it is more an amalgam of several communities of practice, not all of which share identical goals, values, etc. That has taken me into thinking about tribes and whether the autistic domain is made up of a number of tribal groupings rather than CoPs.  Either way, it makes mapping the domain tricky. I’ve got some diagrams, but somehow they don’t tell the whole story.

I’m increasingly aware that I am looking at, and talking about, a domain, a system (or interlocking of subsystems which may not form a system) and there is a very real danger of forgetting that there is a child at the centre.

What are the processes of the different subsystems and what are they acting on - the person or something/someone else?

A whole series of metaphors come to mind - battlefield, maze, jungle, snakes and ladders …

Also thinking about autistic domain in context - it doesn’t exist in isolation. Apart from current debates about diagnosis and inclusion, there is a whole back history of attitudes to learning disabilities and impairment and another history of attitudes to how children should behave and behaviour disturbances. Just what did we do with children who didn’t behave as it was thought they should in the past?

Against this reading again some of Griff Foley’s and Rachel Gouin’s ideas about learning in the context of social struggle and their emphasis on lived experience. Is there a link between social struggle in a socio-political context and struggle getting the needs met of a child on the autistic spectrum?

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