02/03/2010 by lizit.

I seem to be keeping a lot of different balls in the air at the moment.

I have begun to recruit research participants and that is proving almost too easy. Both the schools are very happy to co-operate and one has around 7 staff happy to talk to me and the other is approaching parents on my behalf as well as giving access to a number of staff. I am amazed how generous people are with their time and knowledge. I now need to start setting up some interviews and beginning that part of the data gathering process.

I am also doing a fair bit of reading around qualitative research and the use of narrative as a research methodology. That is proving useful in understanding better what I am trying to do, but is also highlighting the complexities of the methodology. One thing I have been struggling with is the extent to which my own experience will simply inform my work and how far I can use it as a source of data. Looking at methodology has clarified that autoethnography is a legitimate approach and that there is a strong link between this and narratology (my story and the stories of others). Patton (2002) identifies around 15 different categories/theoretical stances for qualitative research and several are immediately relevant - autoethnography, phenomenology, social construction and constructivism, phenomenology, narratology and systems theory. He offers very useful guidance on choice of methods, research design, sampling and interviewing.

My immediate next tasks seem to be to tweak the documentation I have prepared for participants, to put together outlines for the interviews - I will be using a mixture of standardised questions and probes, interview guide and informal conversational techniques and the outline will vary according to the category of participant.

This is starting to get scary…

Patton, M. Q. (2002). Qualitative research and evaluation methods (Third ed.): Sage Publications.

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10/02/2010 by lizit.

I had a lengthy conversation yesterday with Amy Scatliff. We had been put in touch by another colleague who had met Amy at a conference last autumn. Amy and I are both interested in learning in other than classroom situations, which means we have a lot of common territory though arriving there via different routes.

During our discussion, we found ourselves discussing the way different types of learning are valued. Although the distinction in the value afforded to formal and informal learning can be traced back to the Greek philosophers (Hager, 1998) who regarded theoretical knowledge as having greater meaning and importance than knowledge derived from doing or creating, we did wonder if the non-accredited, and often unrecognised, learning of adults in the community has diminished in status in recent decades.  The emphasis on accredited qualifications is probably greater now than ever before the expectation that  pre-defined achievement levels will be met from early years education and throughout schooling and on into further and higher education. Amy commented on the way people often devalue their skills and are sometimes surprised - and even shocked - to find they have skills which others value and want to learn.

We also commented on the changing nature of society and societal values in both the US and UK over the past 30 years, with an increasing emphasis on financial rewards and the changing role of women in the economy. There is a sense that the type of skill sharing around a family gathering described by Foley (1999) is less likely now than in the past, but that one of the positive effects of the credit crunch might be a recognition of the need to reacquire some basic skills. We laughed about the current series on UK TV where people are being encouraged to share their grandmothers’ recipes and wondered whether this might signal the beginning of a change in the way different types of knowledge and skills are valued.

Reflecting on our conversation - and we covered much more territory than that outlined here - I am reminded of the law of unintended consequences: so often when we make a change (or when change occurs) although some problems may be alleviated or there may be positive growth in some ways, there is all too often a flip side which has not been anticipated. Sometimes it may be the silver lining of the dark cloud, but all too often the unintended consequences are negative rather than positive.

Foley, G. (1999). Learning in social action: A contribution to understanding informal education. London: Zed Books Ltd.
Hager, P. (1998). Recognition of Informal Learning: Challenges and Issues. Journal of Vocational Education and Training: The Vocational Aspect of Education, 50(4), 521-535.

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08/02/2010 by lizit.

Wynne’s (1988) study on people with MS raises some interesting thoughts for me. As I understand it, the study was essentially about how people with MS understood their diagnosis, the process leading up to the diagnosis, and the possibility of science being able to provide ‘a cure’ at some time in the future.

Although some parallels can be drawn between MS and autism in terms of how far it is/was understood what the causatory factors are/were and the varying symptoms which are not common to all ’sufferers’ in the same ways, I am less interested in this than in the methodology and some of the observations.

Firstly, methodology.  The study was based on 12 interviews with people who had diagnosis of MS (in two cases, this was still in the process of being confirmed).  The interviews themselves were unstructured, and the researcher describes them as more of a conversation. Her aim was “to explore what having MS meant to individuals and to allow them to tell their stories in their own ways rather than in terms assumed relevant beforehand by the researcher.” Wynne acknowledges that it was inevitable that the researcher approached each interview, not as a blank canvas, but with an awareness of what had been said in the course of previous interviews and that this meant that in the ‘conversation’ some of these extraneous factors were introduced.  From my perspective, it also suggests that the interview itself became a reflective learning experience for both the participant and the researcher. One of the aspects I have been discussing with my supervisor is how many participants I need to recruit and it is useful to find a study where the number of participants is given.

The chapter is in a book about reflexivity and the importance of reflecting on what we write, how data is used, etc. One of Wynne’s observations concerns the use of quotations from interview data. She observes that the meaning of such quotations can easily be distorted by removing them from their original context. For example, in talking about why people approached their GP, she quotes examples of people seeking an explanation for their symptoms, but she chooses not to use a quotation about somebody looking for a repeat prescription for medication they had found helpful in relieving symptoms.

There are some interesting ideas about the relative expertise of the doctor and the patient, especially in relation to diagnosis. Although many of the participants initially received different diagnoses, and were sometimes treated initially for different ailments, this was regarded as acceptable by patients on the basis that the doctor at that time was not aware of all the information necessary for a correct diagnosis. On the other hand, when the patients began to wonder whether they actually had MS, perhaps as the result of seeing a TV programme or meeting somebody already diagnosed and recognising the similarity of their symptoms with those being portrayed or described, they were hesitant to raise this possibility with medical professionals, sometimes only mentioning their thoughts retrospectively or some considerable time after first suspecting the condition. From the text, it would appear this was not due to the seriousness of a diagnosis of MS, as the same patients were also wondering whether they might be suffering from other, more serious illnesses or conditions. There was a firm belief held by patients that diagnosis had to be confirmed by an expert, a consultant who had greater medical knowledge and expertise than the GP who had been initially consulted. In terms of autism, I recall many times being asked by different professionals who had diagnosed my son - the diagnosis by the NHS consultant in consultation with an NHS clinical psychologist carried far more weight than an earlier diagnosis by a consultant in private practice.

One of my foci is how far the expertise of ‘experts’ and ‘others’ is similar. Wynne notes that “The axiomatic distinction between expertise and non-expertise enabled the maintenance of faith in a medical science disembodied as it were from both practitioners and its subjects. Their scepticism was confined to their own abilities to be expert, either about themselves or about what science could do.” It will be interesting to see whether 20 years on in a different domain there is the same confidence in the medical profession and other experts.

Wynne, A. (1988). Accounting for accounts of the diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis. In S. Woolgar (Ed.), Knowledge and Reflexivity (pp. 101-122). London: Sage.

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25/01/2010 by lizit.

Thought it was about time I posted a catch up on what I am actually doing!

The focus of my DPhil is now the learning journeys of the various participants involved in the support and care of children and young people on the autistic spectrum. There are many different people involved from parents and carers to support staff in schools and residential establishments to education, health and social service professionals - and probably a few others as well. Although there is a notion of partnership in the provision of care and support, this partnership can be uneven because of the different levels and types of expertise different partners bring to the table, the way this expertise is or is not valued by other partners and the relative power of the different partners in providing access to resources.

I am planning to focus specifically on learning - which in practice means how people develop knowledge and expertise about autistic spectrum conditions/disorders (the terminology is currently in flux).

I have written an outline of what I hope to cover in my study and am in the process of re-drafting and getting this into a format appropriate for applying for the appropriate ethical clearances.

Another strand I am working on at the moment is trying to clarify what I understand by learning and which learning theories and ideas inform my understanding. This exploration has taken me through formal and informal learning, situated learning, communities of practice and currently metaphors of learning, as well as along a number of interesting side turnings.  I have read lots of interesting stuff and am slowly learning to sift out the things that have less relevance to my proposed study, however interesting they may be. Other posts in this blog summarise some of those explorations.

The other area I am beginning to explore is that of how disability is seen by society and the effect of disability on a family. This is not a major focus for me, but there is a fair bit of evidence showing that families with a disabled member are disadvantaged in lots of different ways and there is other evidence pointing to people with disabilities forming an underclass. If it can be shown that parents caring for children and young people on the spectrum have a great deal of knowledge and expertise in a number of different areas, this might challenge the power structure and also empower parents.

At the moment it feels as though there are a lot of different threads in something of a disarray and my task is to try to identify them and put them in some sort of order so that I can progress. A bit like sorting out lace bobbins and threads after the cat has knocked the lace pillow on the floor yet again. I’ll be more than happy if I can get these threads organised and begin to make something of them.

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24/01/2010 by lizit.

I’ve been looking at an interesting article (Solomon, et al, 2006) on everyday learning taking place in the spaces between work activities in a workplace context. Following on from previous thoughts about the home as the workplace for some parents with a child with SEN, it made me start thinking about where the in-between spaces are there.

The idea of  in-between spaces relates to third places as described by Oldenburg and Brissett (1982), where they reflect on societal changes which have led to a tendency for modern lifestyles to polarise between home and work with very few areas of neutral territory for discourse. Some more recent articles (Steinkuhler, 2006, Peachey, 2008) have suggested that such third places may now be found in various virtual environments. The nature of third places is the provision of neutral territory where identity and status are irrelevant, but ideas can be shared and debated within a social context. It may well be that some online groups fit this description.

Solomon, et al, focus on workplace learning. The description of hybrid spaces stems from a larger organisational study where it was observed people frequently referred to non-work spaces where dialogue and discourse happened. These included spaces in the workplace which were not designated as working spaces such as a coffee room, and spaces outside the workplace where colleagues regularly conversed such as in a car share arrangement for commuting. No doubt the space around a water cooler also fits. They found that although people were resistant to labelling their experience in these spaces as learning, it was often clear from the content of the descriptions or observations that these spaces were learning spaces.

The initial thought was whether the hybrid spaces could be used to enhance the workplace learning of the organisation, but this was resisted and they conclude by examining some of the pros and cons of formalising the informal and unintended. Reference is made to Colley, et al, (2002) and the impossibility of separating formal and informal learning in any satisfactory way. In the same way, other binaries such as work/non-work, on-the-job/off-the-job, worker/social being, worker/learner, working/playing may not be as clear cut as first appears. It is suggested that “It is in the in-between space that interesting things happen.”

Although not discussed in detail, another thread running through the article is identity in hybrid spaces. In a work context, hierarchies remain but it becomes possible to speak about things which it is not possible to in the the work place itself. To what extent do online forums also facilitate an opportunity to clear the air or let off steam by different participants involved in SEN - or any other domain?

Oldenburg, R., & Brissett, D. (1982). The Third Place. [Article]. Qualitative Sociology, 5(4), 265-284.

Peachey, A. (2008). First reflections, Second Life, third place: community building in virtual worlds. Paper presented at the ReLIVE08, Open University, Milton Keynes, UK.

Solomon, N., Boud, D., & Rooney, D. (2006). The in-between: exposing everyday learning at work. International Journal of Lifelong Education, 25(1), 3 - 13.

Steinkuehler, C. A., & Williams, D. (2006). Where everybody knows your (screen) name: online games as third places. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(4), 885-909.

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22/01/2010 by lizit.

It never ceases to surprise me how easy it is to forget the things which are so obvious and so well known.

The presentation I did at the recent OpenCetl conference started by acknowledging the previous learning of OU students. My notes read:

Open University students, not surprisingly, are not blank canvases when they commence their OU studies. They bring with them a wide range of learning experiences from previous educational settings as well as a lifetime’s experience of informal learning in a wide variety of different contexts. The challenge confronting educators is how to enable students to maximise their use of existing learning skills while encouraging the development of new learning skills and strategies which are useful not only for study, but for life.

Further on in my notes, on the same theme, I wrote:

OU students are not a blank canvas. On their journey to becoming a student, they have engaged in formal education at school and possibly at college or university. From that experience they bring a range of expectations of what education offers and how learning is done. Alongside the positive experiences, they bring skeletons in the cupboard of poor teachers, badly prepared materials and negative feedback.

Many OU students bring with them experiences of workplace learning and training courses. Again, a mix of the good, the ugly and the indifferent, but again colouring expectations both of the learning experience and of contact with fellow students.

Almost all OU students will have engaged in a hobby or developed other specialised interests. Many will have learned the skills necessary to manage a home and care for a family. Some will have specialist knowledge of the care needs of people with disabilities or increasing frailty. Others have learned to cope with the challenge of a learning disability.

Increasingly, students will be familiar with the use of technology to obtain information or to manage aspects of daily living.

OU students like other adults are informal learners. They bring their informal learning skills with them into the formality of a structured academic course. How do we enable students to evaluate their informal learning toolkit, refine it and incorporate it into a new toolkit alongside the formal learning skills they will acquire during their OU study.

This morning, in the lab meeting, the focus was on learning and knowledge transfer and acquisition. I was reminded of Hager and Hodkinson’s (2009) comments about a person entering a new workplace - they bring with them knowledge, skills and experience, but the knowledge and skills will be changed and adapted and modified  and expanded through the experience of the new work place and belonging to a different community of practice.

Quinn makes a similar point in speaking about making connections with prior knowledge.

During the discussion this morning, the fairly obvious point was made that in any class of adult learners, or university students, everybody will be starting from a different point because of what they already know, their interests beyond study, etc.

Reflecting on this, I think of the number of times I have been involved in facilitating training of different sorts  or have been engaged with a member of staff in discussion about possible career progression. So often, my starting point has been talking about considering the ruc-sac of skills, abilities, experience, knowledge, ideas that we all carry with us and trying to move from the idea of compartmentalising what we know into discrete domains, into connecting the contents of the ruc-sac to whatever domain we happen to be occupying at the time. It strikes me that connectivity is an important part of any examination of adult learning - and connectivity is more than transfer.

Hager, P., & Hodkinson, P. (2009). Moving beyond the metaphor of transfer of learning. British Educational Research Journal, 35(4), 619 - 638.

Quinn, C. N. (2009). Social Networking: Bridging formal and informal learning. Learning Solutions Magazine.

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10/01/2010 by lizit.

Although I am aware that most of the parents I know in the various ASD networks I am part of are women, I haven’t really given any attention to the potential significance of this. Having read a report of a study of learning in social action organisations in Canada (English, 2005). English interviewed 16 women who were either directors or board members of women’s organisations and analysed their narratives using Focault’s analysis of power grid.

One of her observations was that the work of the organisations studied was often underfunded. Subjects reported that in general the funding deficit was made up for with voluntary work by members - people tended to be made to feel guilty if they didn’t participate, but at the same time were angry at having to pick up the tab. English suggests that there is an underlying assumption by government organisations that women will fill the gaps. One of the threads that runs through many ASD mail groups is the failure of the public services to respond to the needs of children and young people and their families in a timely manner. Although there are no doubt many different reasons for this, I do wonder of one of them is the assumption that women will somehow continue to provide whatever is needed however difficult it is to do so. Very often men appear to absent themselves from discussions about the care of their children with ASDs, yet it seems that when they are actively involved, sometimes things move more quickly.

I don’t think this is something I want to make a big thing of, but it may be that I need to keep in mind a possible feminist dimension when I come to look at data analysis.

English also makes the same observation that I have come across with many authors now of formal education being privileged over learning outside the institution, with an emphasis on accredited learning. She suggests that educators need to “attend to societal and cultural factors influencing learning” and points out that actual learning is “often non-formal and not infrequently spurred on by a disorienting dilemma or difficult situation.”  This supports my intention to use critical incident vignettes in my research.

English, L. (2005). Narrative Research and Feminist Knowing: A poststructural reading of women’s learning in community organizations. McGill Journal of Education, 40(1), 143-155.

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06/01/2010 by lizit.

These notes are based on Jean Lave’s 1996 article “Teaching, as learning, in practice”.

It is an interesting article as it clearly identifies the focus of most learning research is not research on learning but “research on instruction, on depersonalised guidelines for the teaching of specific lesson-like things in school settings in order to improve learning.” Lave draws on her research of the apprenticeship practices of Liberian tailors and on Timothy Mitchell’s observations of the training of Egyptian lawyers, to come to the conclusion that learning rather than teaching is the core concept.

Starting with Scribner and Cole’s (1973) paper drawing a clear distinction between learning in formal settings and in informal settings, Lave shows that a polarity has developed which values formal schooling. This, combined with a psychological model of learning, has led to an increasing marginalisation of those who do not succeed in the school system. Putting this into the 21st century UK context it could be hypothesised that the emphasis on achieving government set targets in schools and the emphasis on increasing the number of young people entering higher education could have had the unintended consequence of reinforcing the development of an underclass amongst those young people who do not meet the targets, leading to the development of the gang culture and criminal behaviours which are increasingly in the public eye.

Lave is clear that learning is about far more than knowledge transfer. In both her examples, the apprentices, or learners, did not only learn a skill or set of concepts, but were enculterated in a multi-layered system of cultural values with their implications. Particularly in the case of the Liberian tailors, the apprenticeship and its completion was accompanied by a strong sense of worth and self-respect in stark contrast to the poverty of the society the tailors were part of.

Lave’s work led her to three changes in perspective from those espoused in traditional education models:

1. a reversal of the polarisation that school and institutional learning is positive and other forms of learning are negative
2. a focus on learners and learning rather than the transmitters of knowledge - teachers, care givers, etc
3. learning is not individual but is socially situated

In her work with Martin Packer, a tentative model to underpin learning theories was developed:

1. Telos or the idea that learning involves some kind of change or movement
2. Subject-world or the relationship between the individual or self and the social world
3. Learning mechanism which focuses on how learning happens

Lave concludes by saying: “The conditions for the transformation of persons are the same whether the telos of learning is movement towards growing up from babyhood, or adolescence, becoming a craftsperson or a philosopher, and/or becoming a marginal person in a world where participation in and thus learning divisions of race, ethnicity, social class, gender, and sexual preference, determine strongly who is consigned to the advantaged cores and disadvantaged margins of society.”

I found some the article resonated strongly with me. I have already given some thought to the marginalisation and dis-empowerment of parents of children and young people with autistic spectrum disorders and it may be that part of this stems from the fact that their knowledge of their children’s condition is situated rather than as a result of teaching. Empowerment implies a polarity as for somebody to be empowered somebody else has to be dis-empowered. In the current model, professionals hold the power (and the budgets). Would a recognition of parental learning and knowledge lead to empowerment, partnership and possibly more shared decision making?

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04/01/2010 by lizit.

Finding lots of interesting ideas in papers written some years back. Getting the background seems to involve a constant moving backwards. I can’t possibly read everything ever written, but I can read a lot of stuff and get a sense of big picture.

Brown, Collins & Duguid (1989) present some useful contrasts between different types and contexts of learning in developing their ideas about situated cognition.I find their description of the learning of ‘just plain folk’ (JPF) relates to the questions I am asking about the learning of parents of children and young people with ASDs and how they learn to provide appropriate support and care for their children.

Brown, et al, start from the “distinction between mere acquisition of inert concepts and the development of useful, robust knowledge” citing Whitehead’s 1929 treatise on the aims of education. The implication is that it is possible to possess a tool, or knowledge, and not have a clue how to use it. Similarly it is possible to have good working knowledge of the use of a tool without knowing why it works as it does. In the real world, we learn how to use tools from others and through practice. The same tool may be used differently by different communities of users - example is given of chisel which is used differently by carpenters and cabinet makers, Just as we need to learn how to use physical tools, the same is necessary with conceptual tools. As with physical tools, the conceptual tools only really make sense in the context of practice. It is suggested that learners learn through enculturation or socialisation into a community of practice.

As tools are used in authentic context they gain meaning & relevance. Brown, et al, comment that “the process may appear informal, but it is nonetheless full-blooded, authentic activity that can be deeply informative - in a way that textbook examples and declarative examples are not.” This is illustrated using Lave’s example of the apprenticeship of tailors.

Brown, et al, then consider the learning of JPFs, students and practitioners. When a JPF wants to learn something they can become an apprentice or a student. As the former, they enculturate into the community of practice. As the latter they go to school where “the general strategies for intuitive reasoning, resolving issues, and negotiating meaning (…) are superseded by the precise, well-defined problems, formal definitions, and symbol manipulation of much school activity.” Brown, et al, suggest the JPF is closer to the practitioner in learning & practice than students whose learning & practice is abstracted from real life, implying that contextualisation is vital for learning to be meaningful.

The discussion can be related to the current educational policy debates where politicians are demanding more focus on vocational education in higher education. Brown, et al, suggest that it is only in post graduate study that students begin to become practitioners through an apprenticeship process embedded in the supervisory relationship with an experienced researcher. However, there is no discussion of the thinking and analytical skills developed through the education system.

They suggest more work is needed on understanding the “relationship between explicit knowledge and implicit understanding”.
Brown, J. S., Collins, A., & Duguid, P. (1989). Situated Cognition and the Culture of Learning. Educational Researcher, 18 (1), 32-42.

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02/01/2010 by lizit.

I’m feeling really positive about where my DPhil is going as I move into the new year. Psychologically, I feel a sense of ownership both of what I am doing and how I am doing it.  I have a sense of purpose and direction and feel I am standing on solid ground rather than wading through a swamp. There is a lot of work to be done and I will need to be clear about what is possible and what isn’t  but the whole task feels much less daunting at this point in time. Whether I will feel the same in afew months time is another matter altogether!

If I look back 18 months to the earliest posts in this blog, I thought I knew what my DPhil would be about. What I did not expect was the experience of the past months, which has not only caused me to re-examine my assumptions, but has given me the time and space to read and think and to begin to formulate some of my own idea.

Some months ago, I wrote some notes which likened the DPhil process to making a piece of lace. When starting out, the pattern may not be at all clear, but it needs to be interpreted. Decisions have to be taken about where to start. It may even be that the pattern can be worked in more than one way. Past experience will be used in analysing the problem and it may well be necessary to seek the ideas of other lacemakers with greater or different experience. There may be new stitches to be learned through working samples. Decisions have to be made about threads - type and thickness - and more samples may be needed. Equipment needs to be assembled -  pillow, bobbins, cover cloths, pins, threads, scissors, etc. Even after all the preparation, the pattern needs to be set - a process that can involve a number of false starts. The first pattern repeat is inevitably challenging - working out which threads to introduce when and identifying the track they will take, where stitches can be worked in more than one way ensuring consistency in the number of twists. However, once the pattern is set and a few inches have been worked, it becomes much easier to see what needs to be done next - the pattern may even include repeats. To the non-lace maker, the pile of bobbins and mass of pins may look complex but the lacemaker can see what they are doing and trying to achieve. That does not mean there are no challenges - threads may break, errors may be made resulting in too many bobbins in the wrong place - and there may be near disasters if the pillow is knocked off its stand by an errant cat - but a process has been set in motion. That is until the point where thought has to be given to finishing the work and what to do with all the bobbins and threads so as to achieve a neat and tidy completion.

I feel as though I have done much of the preparation and am now gathering my equipment and tools together ready to start making lace. As with lace, this is a fairly solitary occupation, but there are opportunities for sharing, working together, and admiring other people’s work as the lace grows.

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