Lost in text: the importance of organising ideas

LEWIS, C. & FABOS, B. 2005. Instant messaging, literacies & social identities. 

Reading Research Quarterly, 40, 470-501

There are so many strands of thought to pursue and writing ‘papers’ with a view to publication is quite different to writing a thesis with a view to understanding a particular terrain. The papers feel like smaller chunks of information and so I think there is a sense in which have an overall project would help. Finance is good but potentially another source of distraction, yet – if I am successful in securing funds, then this would be an incredible source of focus and in depth development.


In this paper the writers interview only 7 participants but seem to have generated a great deal of analysis on the basis of only a few informants. They do not speak in general terms and when they seek to make generalised statements about use of technology – they then reference wider studies. In this context 40 is not representations but begins to lean in that direction which a study of 7 cannot do.

The organisation of the text is worthy of note and something that of some papers I will drawn inspiration from:

i             Start with an illustrative quote that sets the framework and focus for the piece. That allows you a way into talking about the themes you want to explore.

ii              Theoretical Framework

iii             More direct exposition of these explored: lit review        a) b) & c)

iv             Methods – research participants and sites; data sources & procedures (interview protocol); researchers positions; data analysis

v              Research findings:                                A)            i.              ii.             B)            i.              ii.             C) etc

vi             Discussion and implications                a) b) & c)

This style is quite alien to me but I think it will help shape my ideas and offer focus. To be fair this is a standard structure for writing up a research project. Much of what I write has not directly centred around research in this way. 

Instant messaging, literacies, and social identities – comments & dis/connections

Note that she suggest that fear of literacy practices of young people akin to fears that older generation have in relation to the young – decline, disintegration, standards, ‘risk’, multiculturalism, nostalgic hankering for world that was  – a contemporary trope

Luke and Luke (2004):

The perception of crisis [over perceived loss of print literacy] is an artefact of a particular generational anxiety over new forms of adolescent and childhood identity and life pathways: fundamental ontological and teleological changes in childhood traceable to global economies, cultures, and technologies. (p. 105 )

Anxieties that lead to valorisation and reification of print literature. This in terms of defining literacy is not unlike the shifts that Gee points to in his account of Plato reaction to text. That it made people stupid; that it meant those who were not worthy might have access to ideas that they were not naturally equipped to manage.

Interesting that she notes a connection between IM & off-line identities that they merge and compliment rather than exist in tension. The virtual and embodies are part of a singly defined self; to be someone is to be online.

Also note that the panic of IM and literacy standards is misplaced here – this would seem to connect to Crystal, that correct spelling was valued and played with: abbreviations seen as childish.

Also note that resistance to seeing this as a high value /status  literacy: what I value is boo reading and reflection. Intense, dense chunks of text with words that require pages of clarification.

i)                     An exploration of social media use amongst adult professionals  ie twitter

Over the course of the next 2 years, could I explore how my trainees engage with social media – not as an action research project – but as an exploration of their literacy? Trainees are significant only that they represent a group of adults I have a connection to and rapport with: an easy target group & captive audience

I am smiling here: how we are compelled to write about something, how we are compelled to seek funds has the capacity to change how we then think and feel about what we do.

ii)                   Literacies of trainee literacy and language teachers

There is a suggestion here that I could use the blog as a data source and analyse all contributions. I still don’t have a title for my UnDip Lit project, but Module 3 involves some meta analysis: the trainees talking through their writing process; my concern is that they will not explore things in the way I want. My instructions may have been coo complex – but I am aware of several opportunities to gather data. But this might include some indication of their writing process and engagement with multimodal literacies. 

Call for Papers

December 2011 English Teaching

http://edlinked.soe.waikato.ac.nz/research/journal/view.php?id=63&p=1%3Cscrip

English Teaching: practice and critique, Volume 11, Number 1 (May 2012):

Focus: Research methodologies as framing the study of English/literacy teaching and learning

Abstracts should be sent to the editors before December 1, 2011 and full articles by March 1, 2012 at the very latest to ensure an effective review process. 

March   2012: 1-4 Mar

ESREA Life History and Biography Conference Expanding connections: Learning, the body and the environment; Perspectives from life history and auto/biographical narrative research

Venue: University of Southern Denmark, Institute of Philosophy, Education and the Study of Religions

Conference URL: http://www.esrea.org/conferences_and_seminars?l=en

Organisers: European Society for Research on the Education of Adults Address: Marianne Horsdal, University of Southern Denmark URL: http://www.esrea.org/?l=en  Enquiries: horsdal@ifpr.sdu.dk

Notes: ESREA will be offering 3 bursaries (300 Euro each) for doctoral students. All abstracts for paper or other suggested presentations must be submitted by Monday 7th November2011; Final versions of papers (no more than 5000 words including references) must be submitted by Monday 6th February 2012

Themes: Adult learning; Embodied learning

April   2012: 2-4 Apr

Discourse-Power-Resistance 12 Conference

Venue: Plymouth College of Art, Tavistock Place, Plymouth PL4 8AT 

Conference URL: http://www.dprconference.com/home; Organisers: Jerome Satterthwaite; Enquiries: enquiries@dprconference.com

Notes: Further details of speakers, abstract and events will be added to website in the near future

Themes: Social sciences, arts, humanities, education and the creative arts are under attack; Poetics: Practice as Learning, Learning in Practice; Research, learning, teaching: impact; Sustainable impact

April   2012: 24-25 Apr

Discourses of Inclusion in Neo-Liberal Higher Education Venue: Milton Keynes

Conference URL: http://www8.open.ac.uk/about/wideningparticipation/research/conference-2012

Organisers: Centre for Inclusion and Curriculum, Open University Address: Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA URL: http://www8.open.ac.uk/about/wideningparticipation/

Themes: Widening Participation and Access, Lifelong Learning, Equity, Equality and Diversity

SCUTREA CONFERENCE 2012 (Leicester, 3rd – 5^th July 2012)

Call for Papers: Theme: Adult Education and Well-Being

 It’s usually assumed that learning throughout adult life is ‘good for you’. Whether undertaken in leisure time for intellectual stimulus or for social reasons, or within or beyond a job for skills acquisition and career development, the learner is clear that there will be personal benefits. But what is the evidence for all of this? Much work has been undertaken in recent years on the theme of ‘well-being’. But how is that research to be critiqued? How is well-being to be measured? How does well-being relate to ‘happiness’, to ‘personal’ or ‘spiritual’ development, or to ‘social capital’? To what extent is ‘well-being’ to do with the cultivation of an ‘inner life’, with a sense of social well-being, or with the fact of gaining confidence and skills to get a (better) job? What happens to patterns of learning when communities decline and decay? How is learning part of re-generation? How are all of these addressed at a time when distance and on-line learning is on the increase? What other concepts come into play? What understandings of ‘self’ are at work? Can on-line learning facilitate personal and social development as much as face-to-face study? How, if at all, are aspects of personal development assessed in adult education today? In an age of attention to skills and competencies, to what extent do professional studies programmes attend to personal development issues? What has the requirement for formal academic validation of programmes across professions affected the personal developmental aspects of learning? How do recent economic and political factors and decisions impinge upon all these areas?

rhizome

SPARKES, A. C. 2007. Embodiment, academics, and the audit culture: a story seeking consideration. Qualitative Research, 7, 521.

why: #embodiment

because          this locates and bounds social life; it establishes the requirement to be rigorous in determining the nature of dis/connections: within and between material objects

social life happens within and between bodies – ideas, experiences, metaphors, transformations, sedimentations, echoes and shards of meanings happen within, to, between and surrounding bodies

it is part of an explorations of the socio-material – that bodies are part of the world, part of a social / material continuum

bodies have a racial and a gendered identity – this may not be explicitly brought into the discussion, but they are always and already there – lurking (invisibilised or ignored)

bodies refuse Cartesian dualities – the mind is in / part of the body; knowing can be articulated through the senses: the physicality of ideas

Sparkes (2007) narrates a story about REF that offers no analysis, a story and a series of reactions: with embodiment we notice the physicality  – that attends anger, fear & disappointment

it seems I have chanced upon a sensorial turn in anthropology – one in which ‘Doing Sensory Ethnography investigates the possibilities afforded by attending to the senses in ethnographic research and representation. An acknowledgement that sensoriality is fundamental to how we learn about, understand and represent other people’s lives is increasingly central to academic and applied practice in the social sciences and humanities.’

 “ethnography is a process of creating and representing knowledge (about society, culture and individuals) that is based on ethnographers’ own experiences.”

PINK, S. 2009. Rethinking ethnography through the senses. Doing sensory ethnography. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

it locates literacy within other semiotic means of communication, such as visual and gestural ‘modes’, thereby focussing on ‘multi modality’ or on ‘multi literacies’ rather than on just ‘literacy’ which they see as  less central to the communicative needs of a globalising world (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001; Cope and Kalanztis, 2000).

I have elsewhere made a distinction between ‘quality-as-embodied’ and ‘quality-as-an abstraction’ and now wish to explore this further.

The distinction I made was between a notion of quality that had significant material representation – websites, spiral bound booklets, policy papers but seemed to have no direct lived dimension. This was in contrast to the experiences of practitioners that had clearly articulated and embodied dimensions beyond a written or policy sanctioned frame located within professional motivations and aspirations

it's the environment

Notes on interview with MS

I ask him about his approach to teaching his group. The question perhaps reflects my desire to get him talking about literacy in general terms, or at least his literacy pedagogy. To articulate his ideas about what he doing –as a teacher. We take a few tries to get to what I want to explore with him.

At first he turns to the assignment. But I want him to talk in general terms first and then relate his ideas about teaching to the task.

He then turns to the composition of the group. He describes his teaching as ‘fluid’. By this he means he has students who come in and out because of all sorts of problem. Despite the closed coercive environment he teaches in. This is an enclosed community.

Something strikes me listening to this teacher. He is an experienced teacher who has taught for 10 years. He has worked in a difficult situation – a harsh environment for all of that time. He expresses a degree of disappointment and anxiety about aging. He is in his late 40s early 50s. He refers to his clock ticking. At his age I feel younger. I am at the start of a career and feel that this was the right time (in terms of my personal biography) to make the shift.

He feels otherwise.

There is no sense of what drives him. I do not ask the question and he does not hint at any commitment to equity and social justice as his motivation for teaching. He started teaching with skills for life. And I am interested in the extent to which he is able to critique the associated pedagogic approach.

I listen to my interview style. It is not really an interview. Part tutorial in which I question him.

So, in analysing his overall approach to his teaching – he describes:

Unfortunately the main theme is getting them through the exams. That’s the focus that they’re putting on us.  It doesn’t sound right, but teaching them to pass the exams almost like a sausage factory. And that’s the, eh – that’s ....not that I like it, that’s the environment .... cos the funding is gonna ... I think what they’re doing, the funding is gonna change ... they’ll only get funding for good passes.  So the main focus is on trying to get them to exam level as soon as possible. And focussing on only what they don’t know. It’s not right. And it’s not what good teaching is necessarily about.

He then starts to talk about the assignment – mainly his critique of assessment tools.

Two things strike me.

The first was the fear expressed by some that once the SfL as policy infrastructure has taken hold, newer teachers who had not experienced alternative pedagogic paradigms would not have the resources to draw upon to critique the regime and would accept it as normal and legitimate. While MS has no radical agenda, he is able to identify the short comings of the regime he adheres to and the implications for his teaching.

The other thing that strikes me, is the change in his speech as we move towards some form of critique.

When he starts to talk about the environment he works in – by his he means the demands placed upon him by his employers to get students through the exam -  he falters. He pauses. Thinks about what he has to say, repeats himself and stops and starts different sentences with some thoughts remaining unfinished. This is noticeably different to his style of speech so far. .

I ask MS about how his approach squares with the discussions we have had in training sessions.  My questions are long, rambling and complicated.

It doesn’t always fit in. It’s great theory and it’s good. You know, we’ve talked about how to contextualise it and the wheel, all of that.  It was very refreshing. But my mentor, all she’s interested in is, oh, he failed, can we get him back in. Not, ‘Can we develop this individual?’ Can we get him back in? What do you think he failed on? And that’s the environment we’re in. And with the contracts coming up for renewal.

AS methodology – I am struck by my presence in the encounter. Struck by the how much – as tutorial and interviewer – I fill in gaps in his speech, we overlap and I complete partial thoughts.  At times I want to suggest I should be quiet and let him speak more. That actually eh would find his focus and his ideas would be more fully expressed if I allowed the conversation to role.

I think I need to explore the nature of this data more carefully. I am comfortable in accepting that it is what it is. 

Literacy as the space between thought and text

With this, I suggest a view of literacy that is seen in different ways by different people. Partly because they have different desires, aspirations, projects that they wish to pursue and literacy becomes part of that endeavour.

So – when teachers talk about language and about literacy, they are familiar with different ideas about literacy

·         literacy as a series of individually possessed skills – grammar, punctuation, spelling – that is either correct or incorrect and to learn it – writers need to acquire through practice the rules

·         literacy as one resources amongst a whole series of communicative repertoires shared within communities – so – graphically (here I echo an idea about learning)  

There is possibly a third construction. (to be fair there are several (Rassool, 2009)

·         literacy as a pedagogic subject – a subject that is taught – that leans towards skills but is perhaps something distinct

This is now descending into my own blur and it is time for me to pause and come back to this tomorrow:

teachers of literacy may view literacy as a slightly different entity depending on where this literacy is located. They nay view it in their class in own way. They may view it in the lives of learners outside of their class in another way, they may view it in their own person lives in a different way altogether that may not connect to any of these other views of literacy.

This may sound confusing because I am confused and not sure of my ground or what (if anything) I’m trying to say.

But I’m pushing towards a stronger distinction then  perspective.

This is more than being daughter, wife, teacher, sister, friend or on-line participant in different places but a central narrated self – that the space between thought and text – has a different being in these places. Being is the wrong word because in hints at consciousness.

The perceptions of literacy – what it means to be literate – is fundamentally different in these places. More – literacy has a different set of boundaries in these places. The connections between thought and text are different in these places. Again – literacy is embedded in a different set of relationship sand what is required changes. One construction is able to accommodate variance; the other aspires to monolithic status.

If literacy is ‘space’ then it is what happens within that space that defines it. It is how this ‘space’ connects to other ‘spaces’ that needs to be explored. Including how it is experienced, perceived, constructed in its various spaces.  

The idea I am grasping for – of course I echo my literacy heroines – is ‘affect’ the idea of literacy in these different places as an ‘affect’ and outcome of a series of ‘socio-material relationships’ the produce a specific outcome. This of course – is too much hand-holding – and so I push it – how do teachers produce these different affects in their pedagogy, in their practice and their engagements with policy.

Well – I think I have a question.

RASSOOL, N. 2009. Chapter 1, Literacy: In search of a paradigm. In: SOLER, J., FLETCHER-CAMPBELL, F. & REID, G. (eds.) Understanding Difficulties in Literacy Development: Issues and Concepts. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Meme #1 #WResearcher 1 ‘What do people talk about when they talk about literacy?’

The Meme

Thinking about either a small segment of a current research project or the overall scope of a current research project, your invitation here is to

• write in plain English, let the academese lapse for a while – maybe novel words, stronger verbs, sassy sentences will find their way in,
• write to develop a single idea or concept, or to convey a novel insight, or to describe the project overall.
• write for an audience who would not ordinarily encounter this idea – an interdisciplinary colleague, your cousin or gran, a friend since primary school who took another path, or a person in government, industry, community organizing who you want to be in conversation with about a shared concern, or write (in turn, not all at once) for multiple audiences,
• write no more than two pages, ideally about one page (250 words/page),
• write before looking at samples: Research in Plain English,
• write generatively – this is about pushing, finding, exploring an idea.

And post – click on the hyperlinked How here or go to the How tab to learn the details on joining in part of the process.

‘What people talk about when they talk about literacy?’

This was the title of my MA thesis. It echoes the title of a collection of short stories, by Raymond Carver, that at the time I was reading and loved: ‘What do people  talk about when they talk about love?’

 My area of research is adult literacy.  I completed my Doctorate while worked in FE am now working in HE (holding on by my fingertips). I am acutely aware of my minority status as one of the 1.2 BMEworking in HE. And – because I am a woman - determined to open my own doors.

I am now getting started with a research project with my students at University of Hull registered on a University Diploma course. I want to explore their ideas about teaching language and literacy.  

I am curious about ‘What people talk about when they talk about literacy’. Depending on who is speaking they may talk about

·         illiteracy or lack of (functional) literacy – politicians and policy makers are keen on this

·         falling standards in reading and writing – they never define precisely when standards started falling and from what to what – politicians and policy makers and the press like this

·         the rogue apostrophe, to which my response is always http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lm2OzAX86JU (one of the things I like about literacy is subverting it - this is a popular one that educated people talk about and Linda Truss)

·         the desire to be educated, good parents or to see their children do well (students often talk about this)

·         the frustration they feel at having to reconcile the irreconcilable  - what students want, what they as teachers feel their students need and what they are required to do (teachers often talk about this)

·         the space between thought and text (me! But not mine I just think it a beautiful definition and share it with other researchers – it should be more quoted)

All writing is derivative. It prefer ‘holding hands’ to ‘standing on shoulders’. I am conscious of ideas and voices woven so completely into my own that I can at times no longer discern where my own voice starts and stops. 

#WResearcher 0

This is exciting.  I am excited. 

This is precisely what I have been looking for (without realising it). 

I’ve probably misunderstood aspects of what the project invites: but that doesn’t matter.  

It may have happened or I may have imagined it, but a friend of mine who I am no longer in touch with – once suggested that the idea of harmony emerged from vocalists who were unable to sing the same note as others. (She studied music at Twickenham).  It was their mismatched pitching of a note that developed into the idea that voices could sing in harmony rather than unison.

Intuitively I have a preference for writing alongside images. I'm not fussy about the images, nor are they required to relate to the text. Though somehow, a connection - by virtue of being placed alongside - is implied. The images are not illustrative  but are what images can legitimately be - decorative.

This image I like - by my husband and artist Papa Essel - because it is called 'breaking new ground'.

Of course the fear is - if I write everyday - a great deal of it will be rubbish - but the Australian professor has already covered that ground - vomit 'write everyday and at the end of it - look back at what you have written and it will be like searching through the vomit - you will find (and I know this to be true) some beautiful themses, ideas words and phrases that will shine and make you feel proud, boastful, surprised and secure.