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.

Posted in lace, ASD, empowerment, research ideas, concepts, learning, reflections, creativity, planning | Print | 1 Comment »

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.

Posted in Government policy, education, concepts, community, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

24/12/2009 by lizit.

I’ve been struck by the number of articles I seem to be encountering which are discussing workplace learning as informal learning. Very few writers apart from possibly Billett (2002) seem to suggest learning at work can be seen as formal learning. Given the range of learning and training that is undertaken within the workplace this seems odd, and again suggests that the formal and informal labels are less than helpful. Seeing learning in the workplace as a mixture of intentional, incidental and serendipitous seems to make more sense (to me at least).

As an aside, I have been struggling a bit with how to differentiate incidental and serendipitous as I sense they are different. It seems to me that incidental learning is where something is learned while engaged in an activity, so undertaking a word processing task may include discovering how to change default font styles for a particular document. This is not intentional in the sense of being engaged in a learning task and it is not serendipitous in the sense of being stumbled across by chance, but it is a by-product of engagement in a task.

In thinking about workplace learning, I have been thinking about what is meant by workplace. Virtually everything I have read appears to envisage the workplace as a place of paid employment. I have not encountered any articles which recognise the home as the workplace - though this is self-evidently the case for some many parents and for others who are not in paid employment for whatever reason. For some reason, the workplace is seen as somewhere separate from the other environments people engage with during their daily lives.

Some of the work concerned with biography of learners appears to acknowledge the importance of other environments. For example, Hodkinson, et al, (2004) engage in a somewhat complex philosophical discussion about the relationship between the person and their social world, before identifying 4 principles (the comments in italics are mine):

• Workers/learners bring prior knowledge, understanding and skills with them, which can contribute to their future work and learning; (this reminded me of the illustration I often use in training contexts of having a ruc-sac of knowledge, skills and experience garnered from the totality of our life experience which we take with us from place to place and add to and adapt as we go)
• The habitus of workers, including their dispositions towards work, career and learning, influence the ways in which they construct and take advantage of opportunities for learning at work; (why just at work - surely the same applies in other environments people engage in)
• The values and dispositions of individual workers contribute to the co-production and reproduction of the communities of practice and/or organisational cultures and/or activity systems where they work; (again this could apply in other communities and environments people are part of)
• Working and belonging to a workplace community contributes to the developing habitus and sense of identity of the workers themselves. (ditto)

Although workplaces are easily identifiable environments from the perspective of study of learning, the observations drawn from workplace learning appear to be transferable in many circumstances to other environments where people learn, communities of interest being a fairly obvious example. One of the areas I need to consider as I read these various articles on workplace learning is the extent to which the findings are only relevant within the workplace or are equally relevant in other contexts where people learn. Given that people spend much of their time learning in one way or another, this could mean virtually any context.

On the surface at least, it appears that by favouring some forms of learning and some contexts above others, there is a danger that we fail to notice what different forms of learning have in common.

Billett, S. (2002). Critiquing workplace learning discourses: Participation and continuity at work. Studies in the Education of Adults, 34(1), 56-67.
Hodkinson, P., Hodkinson, H., Evans, K., Kersh, N., Fuller, A., Unwin, L., et al. (2004). The significance of individual biography in workplacelearning. Studies in the Education of Adults, 36(1), 6-24.

Posted in informal learning, concepts, community, bibliography, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

21/11/2009 by lizit.

This will no doubt need more work, but is an attempt to capture something of the bigger picture and context against which thinking about adult learning is happening.

Posted in social learning, self-directed learning, informal learning, education, concepts, learning | Print | No Comments »

16/10/2009 by lizit.

Trying to catch some of the ideas from this morning’s supervision.

Discussion about whether my DPhil is actually social policy or whether it does rightly belong in informatics.  My last blog had given the impression of moving away from technology, and we examined whether or not this is actually the case or not.

Some key areas I identified a week or two ago are:

• informal learning in virtual communities
• motivation for learning in virtual communities
• understanding motivation for informal learning
• what motivates informal learning

One of my concerns is the real world relevance of what I want to do. I am dis-satisfied for various reasons with the material I have read about informal learning. Much of this dis-satisfaction is related to the problem of what informal learning is and and the way it is measured. All too often, it seems to be more about informal adult education than informal learning - the consultation document produced by the UK government in 2008 is a good example of this. It starts by saying it is about “structured and unstructured adult learning for enjoyment, personal fulfillment and intellectual, creative and physical stimulation” but the focus is more on reducing inequalities and opening new pathways into learning and much of the discussion is about adult learning in general. It is recognised much informal learning is self-directed, but asks, expecting an affirmative, whether the government has a key role in maximising and sustaining current arrangements (arrangements which the government has had no part in establishing or nurturing).

Virtual environments have been used as a petri dish for much research over the past 25 years. Although none of what I have read is specifically about informal learning (and apart from the specifically education based research, little is about learning), informal learning is implicit in most of the accounts of virtual worlds.

Virtual worlds are also interesting in the role they cast the user in when they first enter a virtual world.  Although an analogy can be made with a speeded up version of human development, it doesn’t hold together well, but entering a virtual world, as opposed to an interactive game, does present a rapid learning curve. It is necessary to learn how to walk and talk, how to move to new locations, how to alter appearance and a myriad other things before being able to function in the virtual world. Many of these actions are not intuitive. Inadequate technology, eg a low spec graphics card, can compound the difficulties. What is is that keeps the newcomer to the virtual world continuing to learn to use the environment when they have stuck a box on their head 3 times and still don’t know how to extract the hair?

So where does this leave me? I am still wanting to focus on what and how people learn in virtual worlds.  I think this will tell us something about how people learn in real life and about what motivates such learning. It is possible it will assist in refining the definition of informal learning and differentiating this from informal education.

The question remains whether virtual world experiences are transferable to virtual worlds and vice versa.

Technology provides the virtual environment, whether it is one of the early MUD or USENET based communities or the 3-D worlds we are more familiar with now. But virtual communities do not exist in a vacuum - behind  every avatar or nickname is a person who is living in a physical world environment.

Posted in informal learning, research ideas, concepts, community, motivation | Print | 1 Comment »

09/05/2009 by lizit.

I’ve got just over a week now to get this report written and if anything I am getting more, rather than less, confused about what I am doing, or trying to do.  Try as I might to focus in, I am finding myself focusing out and looking at big pictures rather than little details - maybe the result of too many OU systems thinking courses.

I am hoping that putting down some of my thinking may help me to make some sense out of the muddle and to come up with something credible to discuss with my thesis committee.  Guess my main concern is not to look too foolish!

My starting point about this time last year was whether Second Life was providing any added value to learners in formal learning situations.  I had read Maggi Savin-Baden’s paper which had addressed troublesome learning and was struck by the language being used being reminiscent of the language used in counselling and therapy - the suggestion that working through a learning disjunction leading to a complete change of thought patterns (maybe I exaggerate!)

During the past months, I have done a lot of learning and thinking and become aware of lots of different ideas which can contribute to thinking about virtual worlds and education. I have also found myself re-visiting my own personal history and ideology and looking at how my own thinking has developed against a background of big ideas and socio-economic-political change over the past half century. In looking at academic papers in particular, I am increasingly aware of the narrowing of focus of so much I read which makes little attempt to engage in joined up thinking across disciplines or ideologies. At times it feels as though wheels are constantly being re-invented or origins of ideas are being ignored as knowledge is developed incrementally rather than holistically.

At the same time, in my own thinking, I am finding I am looking more at big ideas, influences and trends.  For example, when I began work in community development in the early 70’s, there was a strong awareness of the roots of community development being in the philanthropic movements of the 19th century, the university settlements of the inter-war period and post-war socialism, all tinged with the emerging rights movements (at that time women and black, but later others), and counteracting the individuality of the 60’s.  Though there was a recognition of links between community development in the UK and community action in the States, there was little attempt to look for common methodology with community development elsewhere (I can’t even remember what the terms used to describe the third world or developing nations was back then).

Community development in the UK effectively disappeared in the early 80’s - no funding - and the volunteer movement had to re-assess itself because of changes in political ideology.  It is possible to trace the language used by Margaret Thatcher in various key speeches through that period which signalled a change from community being important to the rise and fall of voluntarism to emphasis being placed on the individual with the famous words ‘there is no such thing as society’. Behind these changes seemed to be a growing awareness than community development, voluntary organisations and even volunteers cost money.  By the end of the 1980’s the notion of voluntary organisations being contracted to undertake specific tasks by public bodies was firmly rooted and much social care is provided today on this type of contractual basis.  At the same time, the lottery was born and grant giving to charitable bodies gave a new lease of life to more innovative organisations.

Other major changes during the past 4o years have been in communications and globalisation - each feeding the other.  We have become familiar with seeing news as it happens.  Film of famine in Africa no longer has quite the shocking quality it had when we saw the first pictures of the Ethiopian droughts, but perhaps we are still shocked by the effects of natural disasters in New Orleans or Italy - at least briefly. In recent months we are being reminded again of community, this time in the form of the global village as we are told that it is only through collaboration and working together that the credit crunch can be overcome.  Again in recent days, the risk of global pandemic has raised its head, and with it a realisation of what a small place the world is now that so many people are involved in travel to so many different places.

Returning to virtual worlds, my starting point was very simplistic - what does Second Life offer to education by way of added value.  Over the past months, I have become much more aware of the existence of other virtual worlds and have visited some, albeit briefly.  More importantly, I have realised that any thinking about Second Life has to recognise previous thinking about virtual worlds  - and the scope gets quite scary.  At the very least this needs to acknowledge Usenet and bulletin boards, the 2-D web, gaming, virtual reality and social networking.  In considering education and virtuality, there is a need also to be aware of changing trends in elearning and open access learning materials such as the MIT and OU repositories. Second Life was not developed as a learning environment, although parts of it have been colonised by educational institutions. There is a lot of informal learning happening in Second Life, just as there is throughout Web 2.0, and much of this reflects community initiatives of one sort and another.

My journeying over the past months has also led me into an awareness of some motivational theories, principally Flow and Self-determination theory.  SDT is of particular interest with its emphasis on autonomy and relatedness (both important themes to any community development professional).

Looking even more specifically at Second Life, apart from reading a lot of stuff about things going on in the virtual world and attending several workshops and conferences with a virtual world focus, I have been involved informal educational experiences with both OU and Sussex students. There is no doubt that the virtual world does offer an opportunity to develop learning experiences using the specific affordances of the virtual world, but I am beginning to question whether this is actually what I am interested in. However, I am still interested in Second Life as a learning environment and I am finding myself thinking again about some of the tenets of community development and self help and how they apply within the virtual world.  Linked to this is the recent government white paper with its emphasis on informal learning.

This blog is getting even more disjointed now!

Informal learning has always interested me as so much of what happens in community is experiential, informal learning involving a transfer of skills and knowledge. It fits in with various personal growth philosophies. Self-help fed the development of the WEA.  Early years education in the UK has formalised the work initiated by parents in the development of pre-school playgroups. Although APL and APEL have been around for some years, there is very little accreditation of informal learning - it is so varied, it is difficult to see how this can happen and even if it is a good thing.  Does formally recognising the informal change or restructure it?  Some would say the early years curriculum with it’s emphasis on assessment runs totally counter to the objectives of playgroups.

So where is this leading?  I am interested in the potential of Second Life as a learning community and I am interested in informal learning.  I am also interested in how people own their own learning and how they support each other through self-help and exchange of skills.  I am interested in what makes people want to learn when there is no formal recognition or validation of that learning.  I am interested in drawing connections between the developing community in Second Life and the trends which are observable in the bigger world picture. I am interested in joined up thinking rather than disconnected nuggets.

Now how do I turn any of this into anything that will make sense for my DPhil annual review meeting?!

Posted in community, concepts, research ideas, motivation, flow, ownership, questions, learning | Print | 2 Comments »

02/04/2009 by lizit.

Using Wordle to identify some key concepts in  my thinking over the past months.

I’m not srue where it takes me, but it looks pretty!

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