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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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?

Posted in ASD, empowerment, social learning, informal learning, community, education, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

08/12/2009 by lizit.

Over the last couple of weeks or so, my thoughts about my DPhil research have taken some quite dramatic and unexpected turns but in a way which is making me feel rather excited and very grounded.

A couple of weeks ago, I had a planned meeting with my supervisor and a consultant from Social Sciences. The plan had been to look at methodology and data gathering for the studies I was planning of informal learning in Second Life. But in the time between arranging the meeting and it taking place, my thinking about informal learning had moved considerably as recorded in earlier blogs! We ended up talking about where I currently was, and recognising that I was talking about a very broad area, but one which could be examined in a narrow domain.  The advice accompanying that was that such a domain should ideally be one which I knew well.

It was one of those transforming moments when suddenly things which had not been coming together suddenly made sense. With no difficulty at all, Second Life and other virtual worlds were no longer part of the picture. Instead the very obvious domain which I know best was staring me in the face - people caring for children with an ASD. The whole range of learning styles is covered with the possibility of looking at learning journeys and the mix of learning types involved in a learning journey. Not only that, but I have access to so many potential study subjects - the parent support group I run, online groups, contact with schools and medical specialists…. Not only that but my supervisor has links and an interest in the area… The only question is why did it take so long to see the obvious!

So many of the themes that have been important through my professional life come together with this focus. My anger at the failure to recognise the skills and knowledge of people without appropriate qualifications. Questions about empowerment and change management, who are the experts. Ownership and change agency.  The creation of underclasses where people are stigmatised and disempowered …. Empowerment.

In the fortnight since that meeting, I have begun to think about what my research might involve, I have met another DPhil student who is looking at issues around stigmatisation, a colleague has given me links to references on expert patients, I am being given contacts with senior paediatricians, I have been given a contact with the person leading a major course on ASDs in Birmingham and had a useful formative discussion and the possibility of access to students on the course, I have met somebody working on the problems associated with labelling, I have come across the idea of using critical incident vignettes as a way of examining learning experiences, I have been encouraged to look again at Wenger’s work around boundaries …  I could go on and on, it seems so much has happened and come together in such a short time.

I’m very aware that I have a lot of work to do, not least scoping my studies, but I am feeling absurdly excited by the thought of doing work in an area I both understand and have a long term commitment to. I also know that I would not be where I am now if I had not spent the hours reading around lots of stuff and beginning to appreciate some of the complexity of things which on the surface seemed so simple and straightforward.

Posted in methodology, ASD, narratives, informal learning, community, research ideas, change agents | Print | 1 Comment »