Alex Kendall & Helen Perkins

Reflexive research methods : content as method in the teaching of research methods in HE in FE

contextsor

Listening to old wives tales: putting practitioner stories back in to professional learning

Alex Kendall

&

Helen Perkins

Project overview

Aim: To adapt research methods models used on the EdD programme at BCU to facilitate & evaluate the use of

• auto-ethnographic methodologies• creative research methods

in professional learning in an HE in FE setting

Why we’d like to work with you

• Poised to start your research journey

• Exploring research methods

• Engaged in professional learning

• Embedded in your research fields

• Grappling with design of your own research projects

How we’d like you to participate

• ‘Play’ along with us over the next two weeks!• Tweet along with us #research stories• Allow us to record some of your discussions and

photograph your work (but crucially not to identify you – all data collected anonymously, you can choose your own pseudonym if you wish!)

• Contribute to our blog next week• Publish an academic paper with us• If you decide to adopt a method like this, let us tag

along on your research journey

What’s in it for you….

• Ideas for ‘how to’

• Springboard for your own thinking

• Opportunity to reflect on your positioning within the research process (objectivity v subjectivity)

• Opportunity to continue to work with us over the course of your research project

• Write collaboratively

• Join our discussion…

Ethnography

"social meanings and ordinary activities" of people in "naturally occurring settings“ (Brewer, 2010:10) •Qualitative•Subjective•Observing and noticing•Participatory•Immersion in a culture•Interviewee rather than interviewer is ‘expert’•Listening to the stories of others

So auto-ethnography…

“research, writing, story, and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political” Carolyn Ellis (2004:14) •Research on ourselves•We become the ‘data’ that we investigate•Connect our own lives, identities and experiences to wider conceptual frameworks and understanding

Generating your auto-ethnographies

This week – your learning story, ‘becoming an academic’

Next week – your professional story, ‘becoming a practitioner’

Kelly Clark-Keefe, 2008

Kelly Clark-Keefe, 2008

, I…believe that shapes, gestural lines, pictorial models, colors as well as moans, laughter, movements and the like can be critical companions to linguistic expression and productive sites for examining subjective experience. I believe this also to be true of verbal expressions realized through imagery and body-based knowing (metaphors, for example). Often, I can see it before I can say it. I can sense it before I can make sense of it linguistically. I believe this to be the case for others whose formative background experiences were mostly devoid of print material, and whose worth from childhood through adulthood was measured more by the presence of a labor-capable body than by their deftness with language. Visual art, for me, provides ground for a deconstructive process; a process of spotting binaries and moving critically through embodied as well as discourse-related meaning

(Clark-Keefe, 2008)

Bonnie Soroke’s zippers…

Un-Zipping lips: Artifacts and literacy

http://www.centreforliteracy.qc.ca/publications/lacmf/Vol18-1/LAC_18-1_Mar_2006.pdf

Her students shaped different sized zippers to portray their prior learning experiences, depicting their teachers variously as ‘hovering’,‘oppressive’, ‘insensitive’ or‘collaborative,’ and their own reactions as ‘knotted’, ‘silenced’ or ‘oppressed’. By talking about their sculptures, students are able to bring their past experiences into the classroom; they can interpret and reinterpret them in ways that help their tutor understand how these previous encounters have affected the way the students now learn….

Waiting to become a researcher (Soroke, 2004)

The Thesis Police Soroke (2004)

Identity Boxes - Young people’s understanding of their media worlds

• How do young people utilise the media in the shaping of their self-identities?

• How do categories such as gender and ethnicity impact upon young people’s formulations of their own identities?

• How can creative and visual research methods facilitate a greater understanding of young people’s conceptualisations of their identities and relationships with the media?

• How can creative and visual research methods make a contribution to social research which explores individuals’ identities and media audiences?

(Gauntlett and Awan 2008)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=amWYt9TxbHE

Over to you…..

Reflecting…

What were your thoughts and feelings about making your identity box?

What did you find interesting about the identity boxes stories shared across the group?

What questions has this raised for you about your identity/ies as a learner? As a teacher?

Preparing for Week 2

1. Read the article -What key issues about identity and learning/education does the article raise for you?-What do you see as the weaknesses/strengths of the arguments made?-What sorts of evidence are drawn upon?-How is the evidence used to develop the argument?-What interests you about the argument? What frustrates you?-What questions about identity does the article raise for you as a student/learner?-What questions about identity does the article raise for you as a teacher?

2. Collect 6-10 Objects