Thursday 30 December 2010

‘...a creative line of escape that says nothing other than what it is....’

These notes are scrappy – they are the shards of thought, my rambling wandering through whatever I manage to focus on for a few minutes. The reading is by invitation only and usually by way of an introduction: this is who I am and this is what I am interested in.

But this is a post-traumatic recovery. In the face of ontological uncertainty a redefinition of the terrain I traverse, a reinvention of self and re-narration o possible biographies, re-defining and remapping of imaginary futures.

Barnet, R. (2007) A will to learn: being a student in an Age of Uncertainty, Series, Buckingham: Open University Press

I think the book struggles with the personal dimensions of learning; what it means to be a student and as such draws on Heidegger to explore notions in being and becoming.  This is a terrain most often traversed by self-help pop psychologist and while the only connection between this text and that genre the broad area of study, the book none-the-less has a slight therapeutic feel. And with it I think possibly can be accused of slipping into theories of the ‘diminished’ self . But this is a slight and subtextual possibility. Barnet is scathing of this genre (by implication) and dismisses ideas of ‘knowing one-self’ as facile while at the same time arguing in robust, muscular terms about authenticity, voice, courage, confidence, determination – these are words that whatever argument surrounds them, positions the reader and the text in very specific place: self-help.

But this is the beginning and end of any critique. And it is not critique as such – more of a confession of the possibility of being disarmed by this text.

And so my reading, fragmented, ad hoc & sensational – that is based on my sense – I collect phrases, tones and textures that resonate a day after dipping in and out – full reading of some chapters and re-reading of others.  Coupled with an inability to concentrate fully – other books whisper while I read & the slight embarrassment at what the text reminds me of.

Becoming is a verb with a consistency of its own; ... it is ... a creative line of escape that says nothing other than what it is. Deluze and Guattari, quoted in Guttari 2005: 75

Learning always takes place in and through the unconscious, Deluze 2001: 165

Our present age is one of ineradicable ontological uncertainty. In a situation in which there are no stable descriptions of the world, we cannot know with security who we are any more.    Barnett, 2007: 58                                                                                         

Passion is the way in which the will declares itself.

I think it’s Barnett’s declarations of becoming oneself anew and for the first time in this place that bothers me & I think it is the extent to which it seems to rely on the idea of the self as singular and central. It almost appeals to the Maslovian idea of self-actualisation: an ultimate and desirable state of being.  The achievement of this full authenticity – I suspect may equally involve not ‘self’ as an epiphanous becoming, but also loss and displacement, to drawn n post colonial theories – unhomeliness, luminality and transculturation.  That success may involve a claiming of a so far only imagined but wholly desirable self while simultaneously requiring the negation of a self that you know (or fear) to be unwelcome in the academy.

Wednesday 29 December 2010

Academic Research and Researchers

Brew and Lucas (2009) Academic Research and Researchers
  
Discussions around 'The End of Knowledge' and 'Death of the University' have been around for some time. And what the coalition government have achieved in their first few months was a process started by Thatcher, furthered by Blair and consummated by Cameron. It is hard to imagine what shape and form the University will take post-Coalition. 

There is so much that needs to be re-written.  What it means to be an academic and who can even think of pursuing this ambition – has changed. There is in this policy moment, even in the middle England Tory suburban press, the Daily Mail, a clear sense that if weighing up the cost of a University Education vs. a house to live in – many will question the affordability of a degree. If this small minded ‘vote Tory even if it’s a donkey’ rag is questioning this policy in this way; if they are appointing a Lib Dem to ‘sell’ the policy – then I think this might well still become the Poll Tax moment. It is one to watch.

In chapter 4, Brew and Lucas (2010) explore the tensions and contradictions of a middle manager in HE. A role that may be described as 'agent of control', 'corporate bureaucrat' or 'transmitter of core strategic values'.

I note here there are struggles to define what ‘research’ and ‘research active’ means.  The discussion is caught up with ideas of culture – a clash between academic and management cultures – and of course power.  There is a clash between meanings and value, what counts as ‘symbolic capital’. The social world is not a benign social space in which where common values are shared.

The chapter explore research cultures – in UK and Australia based universities. It draws on 4 aspects of research management:  research management, research nurturing, research indicators and research priorities. It makes extensive use of a template derived by Tierney (2008).  A framework for organisational cultures – to help analyse research cultures; the constituent parts include: mission, environment, leadership, strategy, information and socialisation. A nuanced understanding of these requires a clear power dimension. Here power is understand not as exertion, the capacity to enforce one will against and above another will, but power in its constitutive sense, the sense not of what it prohibits but what it produces: the construction of selves in a context that enables particular selves to be negotiated.


             This form of power applies itself to immediate everyday life categories of the individual, marks him [sic] by his own individuality, attaches him to his own identity, imposes a law of truth [...] it is a form of power that makes individual subjects: subject to someone else by control and dependence [...] that subjugates and makes subject to.’                                             Foucault, 1994 p331


How do departments constitute the research subject? 

Tuesday 21 December 2010

Most recent publication

Dennis, C.A (2010) Is the Professionalisation of Adult Basic Skills Teaching Possible, Desirable or Inevitable? Literacy and Numeracy Studies Vol 18 (2) p 26 - 42




http://www.education.uts.edu.au/lns/current.html

Live Web Chat reminder

Live Web Chat reminder

http://www.lluk.org/advice/interact/online-chat/


Sunday 12 December 2010

Google Groups Hull Post 16 teachers


Google Groups

Post 16 teachers at University of Hull

Visit this group

formalised curiosity



Tweet from Gary Younge: 

"Research is formalized curiosity. 

It is poking and prying with purpose" 

Zora Neale Hurston

Gary Younge

Saturday 27 November 2010

The problem with the White Paper is that it claims evidence informed its conclusions, but a close reading of the paper suggests the evidence is merely being used to post-justify ready-made political decisions. Free Schools & the pupil premium were already decided, so the recommendations for these are detailed and well-explained, even though the evidence-base is sketchy.  There is no doubt these policies will be thoroughly implemented.  The fact that the paper is called  the “Importance of Teaching” would suggest that more would be written about teacher development; it is a shame that this has been missed.  Unless further flesh is put on the bones of teacher development this White Paper will do little more than push through school accountability and funding changes based on Gove's selective hearing.


http://www.lkmconsulting.co.uk/article/gove-selective-evidence-used-education-white-paper-26112010

This is hardly surprising since the policy process can not be understood as a rational response to the challenges of government. Rather what evidence does is provide a lever or source of justification for policy. This government is so terrifying not because of the flagrant misuse of evidence but because the ideological positions they assume is at odds with everything I believe in. 

Sunday 21 November 2010

What next

All I can do is think of 101 things to do to survive in the absence of a clearly focussed and desirable future: 


  1. Write - if I am unemployed I will have time to write
  2. I will have not money for excess and unnecessary food - I shall eat less
  3. I will rent out two rooms and that will pay my mortgage
  4. I can get part time work - hours here and there
  5. I may well get a job in a college: HE in FE (a manager)
  6. This government will not last for more than 5 years and when Labour is back in - I will still be an academic
  7. I might leave the country - with my husband - Ghana or how knows somewhere else
  8. I can let Papa work - while I stay home & write
  9. I am saving my money so have a little bit of a cushion - I need to save more
  10. save save save save
  11. I can learn about phonics and teach phonics in a University
  12. I can join an on-line community - change the place and space of the University - Join in and retina my sense of identity
  13. I am an academic but like slime mould - that might mean taking whatever shape allows me to survive
  14. Do I have marketable skills? ( next list starts from 15)

Wednesday 10 November 2010

no comment - just need to notice the moment

Students and slogans: Student or drug dealer placard outside Parliament



The coalition has achieved what it took even Thatcher years to achieve: protest riots on the streets

no comment - just like the image

Monday 1 November 2010

Thursday 28 October 2010

continuity and change












Chris Husbands
Organisation and governance in Post 14 education


Offered much needed inspiration amidst the devastation of CSR. The sense that arts in HE has just had the rug pulled from underneath it at the moment normally excluded communities have just entered the room. 


So using the image of the hinge to what extent does skills for sustainability represent significant change & to what extent continuity. 


Are skills still superhero designed to pierce the heart of economic decline?  What's the same and what is unexpectedly different? 

Wednesday 27 October 2010

slime mould and survival


Organisation and governance of post 14

I love the idea. Metaphors - Images are so strong and so powerful and somehow they seem to nest themselves to easily in my mind.


  • the skunk and the chameleon. 
  • and today - organisation and governance in post 14
the metaphors of a marine biologist: 

  • the spinning top
  • the sponge 
  • or slime mould











the first two retain their shape despite the impact of their environment. The top spins on a single axis. There is the sense of dynamism, of activity, you pull the string and away it goes, its almost exciting - it's centrifugal force is what keeps it going, going around a pre-defined point. 

The sponge - may be passed through a sieve. May apparently disintegrate - but at the end of it - will reform in exactly the same form it was before. 

Only the slime mould actually changes shape and form. It remains slime mould but its form - is different. 

And so members of the audience laughed - you have got us to admit that we want to become slime mould. Since this is the survivalist strategy.  

Monday 25 October 2010

Complicating the Complex - Purcell-Gates (Ed) Ch 1

Trainee tutors may come to their CPD programme with a focussed desire to develop strategies fir teaching literacy more effectively and as such may experience a wider discussion of what literacy is to be a time wasting indulgence. Yet there has been significant shift over the past 20 years in conceptualizing literacy. This has profound implications: what literacy is must inevitably lead to theoretical and pedagogical debate over how people become literate. 


Dominant discourses are perpetuated and reproduced through official institutions of schooling which control access to cultural and social capital (Bourdieu 2001). This double discourse / power loop - denies marginalized groups access to privileged discourses, while convincing those same groups that these are the only legitimate discourses. The discourse associated with marginalized groups are denied legitimacy and capital.


So this is an exploration of how these two ideas co-exist. A theoretical investigation. 



  • two circles  - few inches apart - completely different - the shift between them is based on space & time
  • two overlapping circles - as in the Venn diagram
  • two circles - inches apart with the circle overlay - third space
  • two concentric circles skills at bottom with practices on top (representing a small aspect of skills)
  • two concentric circles with practices at bottom with Skills in top - representing a shell that prohibits the emergence of fully functional literacy
  • Venn diagram but with multiple literacies - literacy within each distinct domain - with the area of overlap representing skills
  • a triangle - on its side - lines pointing in a single direction: the point represents skills but this is fractured by a multiplicity once 
  • the ladder
  • the straight line as a continuum
These ideas need referencing and image.

Friday 22 October 2010

my busy week

When

Monday, November 01, 2010 from 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM (PT)

Add to my calendar Add to my calendar

Where

NCVO
Regents Wharf
8 All Saints Street
N1 9RL London
United Kingdom 

Via Michelin | Google

Hosted By

Lifelong Learning UK

Hello and welcome to Lifelong Learning UK.  We are the Sector Skills Council for over 57,000 UK employers in the lifelong learning sector. We have an ambitious vision and mission and are passionate about achieving our strategic goals on behalf of our lifelong learning employers.

Tuesday 12 October 2010

Writing and Being Written - Burgess & Ivanic



Burgess,  Amy and Ivanic, Roz (2010) Writing and Being Written: Issues of Identity Across Timescales, Written Communication  27: 228 

I see myself as aiming at more in this writing then a response to what I have read – but the truth is – there is no escape from the intertextual and I need to engage with others to feel ‘confident’ that my ideas are properly grounded.

This was a slowly read and to some extent savoured article with several interruptions. I have also changed to some extent my approach to reading and annotating – one that reminds me of how i started with the EdD. Throughout I have the sense of wanting to draw on these ideas to create something different and keep ‘Sculpting’ a literacy practice to the foreground.
So – where does this leave me / bring me – what possibilities / potentialities can I explore for myself as a reader / writer – wrighter. What possibilities / potentialities can I explore for my students?

·          constructing an aspired to self, a desired self through text – a more confident, witty, sophisticated self, assertive ... those sorts of things

·          metaphors for writing – the diver poised waiting to take the plunge; the motley mass that needs sorting – slowly combing through, oiling and plaiting; the well equipped but encumbered vs. the unclad but vulnerable deep sea diver (one that is at odds completely with the www surfer). How would you describe the writing process – this may take a bit of thinking – but can you offer a metaphor?

·          asking my ‘Sculpting a literacy practice trainees – some general opening questions – what do you think about writing, do you enjoy it? Are you a good writer? What do I mean when I say ‘good writer’ – what do you mean?

The addition of timescales allows a chance to explore a identification instead of identity – an active process of construction rather than a thing – but has the feel of being squeezed in. My reading seemed to require constant referral back to the image that I was not able to do – didn’t fit my preferred approach.  But this is a very enjoyable text. I feel like I have eaten a sumptuous meal. I also learn from it. The writers are tow people who – their approach – seems to create possibilities for this writer. A self I aspire to. One that seems tangible and possible and part of the process of social change that they refer to and I believe in.

·          Tell me about writing for this assignment – I suspect they place greatest attention on the content rather than the approach. Writing what we know, not how we write what we know.

RaPAL – write up of workshop
·          Start with binary (and of course the momentary sticking with this position)
·          Explore more complex constructions – but focus here for now (why)
·          My question revolves around how they coexists as ideas in practice

Thursday 7 October 2010

Cultural Practices of Literacy

Cultural Practices of Literacy: Case Studies of Language, Literacy, Social Practice, and Power

Victoria Purcell-Gates 

  • Complicating the complex: comprehending the complex. 

Through the looking glass darkly

Amanda French - 0024
BERA conference paper


effective student writing requires certain kinds of 'situated' writing practices. How and why particular writing practices reflect and shape the world view of individuals and their place in any given discourse community. 


What are the values and attitudes that underpin discourses around writing in higher education. And how do these inform and shape lecturer's expectations and perceptions of students' writing. 


Her question mirrors the question I have asked - although the terrain within which it is located is different. 


The desire is to deconstruct and interrogate these assumptions. (They - the assumptions, beliefs -  must first of all be made visible). The point then of research is to disrupt, de-familiarise and problematise the 'discourse of transparency'. 


I also want to identify the tensions and trace the contours along which these tension are manifest. To arrive at a new set of metaphors for how these two notions of literacy co-exist. 


Saturated discourses - rendered invisible by their very situatedness.  Often writing is treated as the finished product. 


I remain interested and deeply curious about Bereiter and Scaramalia (1987) the role that writing plays in the learning process - which would fling me back to the position that views it as thoroughly embedded - writing what we know is thoroughly entwined in the process of what we know. 


I note in this thinking that one of the attitudes that literacy teachers often have about writing an literacy is that language is either right or it is wrong. I suspect they treat my attempts to dislodge the ultimate correctness of language - its thorough mutability as idiosyncratic. 


For some this absoluteness of language is an anchor. Like the belief in intelligence. 


My desire is to explore teachers perceptions of language, their own experience of language and theory constructions of language as a pedagogic resource with the intention of understanding how they embody or reflect particular epistemological or political world views. 


Methodology - I am here drawn to situational analysis - grounded theory pushed around the postmodern turn & Institutional ethnography. 


I am at data that has 'depth' & thickness rather than breadth. 

Friday 1 October 2010

what next: explicit criteria sometimes lack depth

We are dealing with judgements that are not regulated by categories. I judge. But if I am asked by what criteria do I judge, I will have no answer to give. (Lyotard, 1985: 14)

Activity

Some good and constructive ground covered


1) Paper proposed to 'The Learner' Conference in Mauritius in July - Quality and Worthwhile Professional Knowledge


2) Another conference identified in Canada - and possible paper idea well formulated


3) Still waiting from Literacy & Numeracy Studies


4) Mid way through Framing Quality: what do we know? I think an American Journal as a try out or Discourse studies as option #2


5) Looking actively for collaborations - RaPAL ... any other ideas


This is beginning to feel like activity and becoming a researcher. It will all land in good time. 


Sam Duncan's - what are we doing when we read was enjoyable. 


Next I think I need an email to my UnDips to see how many feel they can participate. All that is different now - the photographs. 

Thursday 30 September 2010

Canada International Conference on Education (CICE-2011)

http://www.ciceducation.org/Home.html


View Sculpting a Literacy Practice as a starting point - an opening up of the area. Look again and redraft the paper you have sent to Derek and work it into a proposal for this conference. 

Sunday 26 September 2010

Student Writing - Lillis

The aspect of desire she explored was other than what I had imagined. 


What we want is closely aligned to what we feel are the possibilities and potentialities afforded by the context of our lives. 


Desire for educational often deferred, it is shaped in terms of other desires. The dream of salvation through romance becomes transformed into the dream of salvation through education. 


Feminist critique of essayist literacy - coded as binary
  • logic over emotion
  • academic truth over personal experience
  • linearity of circularity
  • explicitness over evocation
  • closing down of possible meanings as opposed to opening up
  • certainty over uncertainty
  • formality over informality


Writing viewed from an either/or perspective. Unmarked form - the norm. 

addressivity - who am I writing to and is there anybody in this text. Essay as more then merely 'rat-trapping' what the lecturere has said: ventriloquating. 

Suggests 4 types of dialogue, to meet the demands and desires of 

  • tutor-directive dialogue aimed at talking the student-writer into essayist literacy practice
  • collaborative dialogue aimed at populating the student-writers text with her own intentions
  • tutor-directive dialogue aimed at making language visible
  • dialogue which facilitates student talkback as part of a long conversation

I must say that I don't find Lillis style of writing easy. I don't find the text engaging or compelling though I like what she writes about and what she has to say - how she writes about it in terms of content (it is her style that seems to jar) 

I like the way she reference's text. She seems to have a reader in mind - so often she quotes names, year as is standard - but she also quotes the chapter. 

The discussion really opens up the extent to which it is almost impossible to separate content from construct in essay writing. The dangers of an abstract approach. What I write is caught up with how I write. The cultural style of different disciplines, but also the connection between self, action, text - meaning. 

I am nervous and excited about research - postDoc. 

Table 7.1 on page 165 is also very interesting. 

  • Dominant       è  resistant   

  • Skills  è creative expression  è socialisation (teaching as implicit induction) è socialisation (teaching as explicit induction)  è academic literacies

  • HE as homogeneous: reproduce dominant discourses  è HE as heterogeneous make visible, challenge, play with (& subvert) dominant discourses 

Wednesday 22 September 2010

A Dream Deferred, 
by Langston Hughes

Here I think of educational desire. here I mean secret longings, private ambition, unrealistic aspirations. 


What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up 
like a raisin in the sun?
 
Or fester like a sore--
 
And then run?
 
Does it stink like rotten meat?
 
Or crust and sugar over--
 
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags 
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?