25/06/2011 by lizit.

When I set up this blog, it was to support my DPhil studies. I knew that the process I was engaging with would be a journey. What I didn’t know was what the nature of the journey would turn out to be, but I knew the destination I had in mind was what my husband refers to as a “Big D”. I still have some way to go - all being well, I will submit my thesis towards the middle of next academic year - but a tweet has led me to reflect a little on the journey so far, with its various twists and turns. Rather than being a reflective essay, this had turned into more a narrative description of the this happened, then this, but so be it.

Jeffrey Keefer simply asked: “No CoP space in your research? Wonder why that may be the case….” Given that at one point, I had expected CoP, or communities of practice to be fairly centre stage, I also wondered why.

The seeds of my DPhil journey were almost certainly planted over a period of time and without my conscious awareness. If I think back about 6 years, my focus was probably on retirement preparation. Apart from a small tutoring contract with the Open University, I had given up my paid employment to sort out appropriate support for my son’s special educational needs. I was not really thinking of returning to work in any real sense, when the OU advertised consultancy posts with the Information, Advice and Guidance team of the Sussex Learning Network. Although I hadn’t worked directly in that area, I had relevant experience and the pay was attractive, so I put in an application and somewhat to my surprise was appointed. A few months later, consultancies also became available on the Sussex Learning Network e-learning team, and it was suggested I apply. This was a difficult decision, as it would mean moving to a situation of being in virtually full-time employment, but I grasped the nettle and again was appointed.

Becoming an elearning consultant was a turning point. Whereas, I was content to stay with the technology I had learned over the previous ten years, I was now introduced to the world of blogs and wikis and 3-D virtual worlds and social media more generally and found myself relating to people who were engaged in research in this area and had colleagues who were talking of doctoral study. I gently encouraged them, got involved in various projects, but was very clear that a research degree was not for me - it was for younger people. I got further OU contracts involving me in various research projects and found I was enjoying myself. In particular, I was enjoying being able to use skills from years ago, which I had considered I would never have the opportunity to use other than in voluntary capacities, but which I was using and which were being recognised by colleagues - perhaps retirement, endless cups of tea and making lace was not my only potential destination.

I still don’t really know how it happened! One of the areas I began to work in through the elearning consultancy was 3-D virtual worlds. I initiated a project with a colleague at the University of Sussex and one day found myself asking her whether there might be a doctorate in the work we were doing. At that point, my doctoral journey started as she responded positively to my query and a few months later, I found myself a registered student with the intention of doing some comparative work around learning in 3-D virtual environments and learning in the physical world. I can honestly say that doing a PhD was never part of my life plan, and was very surprised to find myself in that place, and although I am now very comfortable with what I am doing, I am still more than a little surprised to find how good the fit is.

Despite best intentions, the planned research didn’t quite work out, but my focus at the end of my first year as a research student was still firmly on learning in 3-D worlds. I was beginning to explore aspects of informal learning and the development of a sense of community. This fitted very much with my experience as a community development worker nearly forty years ago and an ongoing interest in how communities form and develop and how people learn in community. As the research design developed, it was clearly moving well beyond the bounds of Informatics, and my supervisor invited a colleague in the Sociology faculty to a consultation to assist in enabling me to determine the way forward. That meeting proved another turning point. Essentially, the message I took away was that the ideas I was exploring were interesting, but I was looking at a broad area and such work was best undertaken through the narrow lens of a domain I knew well.

Following that meeting, I rapidly re-scoped my research objectives. 3-D virtual worlds were no longer an appropriate domain, for what I wanted to explore as there was an area I knew far better, was much closer to my heart and where the ideas I was interested in were far more relevant. The focus of my research shifted to learning amongst professionals and other carers in the autistic spectrum domain. The central issue focused on learning and why it was that the learning of some professionals was privileged over that of parents and other carers. Policy in this area emphasised partnership, but the system was acknowledged to be adversarial. Was there any evidence of a community of practice embracing professionals from different disciplines? Why were parents included or excluded from this CoP?

So, to return to Jeffrey’s question, my research at that point did have CoP as a central theme.

However, as I began to interview people and to think about the theoretical context, and to refine further my research question, I was forced to accept that no matter how interesting CoPs were, there was a more fundamental question, which was why was the SEN system so adversarial anyway. Rather than looking for examples of co-operative practice, and there are many, it seemed that much of what I read and much of what participants told me used militaristic language to describe relationships within the system. Somewhat surprisingly, I could find little in the literature by way of explanation for why this might be the case. There appeared to be tacit acceptance that the system was adversarial. Even the Green Paper on SEN published 3 months ago, presents the adversarial nature of the system as a reason for change, but does not offer any suggestions as to how the proposed changes will alter this.

So thus far, my journey as taken me from positioning myself outside academic research, to tentative first steps in exploring learning in 3-D virtual worlds, to debates about the nature of learning and informal learning, to communities of practice, to why the SEN system is broke. On the way, I have learned about theories I had never heard of before, I have begun to understand things I would previously dismissed, I have questioned myself and my presuppositions, and I have begun to understand the relevance of theory to practical situations and the interplay of research and policy development. I have met and engaged with lots of interesting people and have begun to realise that what I have to say is probably no less worthy that what anybody else has to contribute to various debates.

Communities of practice are central to my thinking, and being part of a community of practice supports my research, but I have somewhat reluctantly had to accept that communities of practice, at this point in time, are not central to my research interests.

The journey continues.

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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 »

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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29/10/2009 by lizit.

I’m aware that informal learning has been an issue for me for quite a long time and it seems appropriate to do another of those memory lane trips and think about my own informal learning - or at least some snapshots.

As I keep saying I must get back to lace making, my experience of learning to make lace seems a reasonable place to start. I have wanted to know how to make bobbin lace since I was a teenager.  I was always quite proficient with my hands - bodged needlework in sense of making garments, but enjoyed fine counted thread cross-stitch and tapestry, lots of different knitting (used to make Aran sweaters for friends because they were so quick to do), taught myself to crochet from a book and taught myself to tat having had the principles explained to me by a shop keeper. But teaching myself lace-making defeated me - I couldn’t make head or tail of the instructions in the various craft books given me as a girl - it might have helped if I had realised a lace pillow was not the same as the one I put my head on at night - but it was something I wanted to know how to do. About 6 years ago, I saw my first ever demonstration of bobbin lace being made at a exhibition and bought the kit that the demonstrator was selling.  I managed to follow the patterns in the kit, but the strips of fabric I produced looked more like badly woven cloth than lace. Then I got given a lace making weekend as a Christmas present. I suspect I would never have progressed without that formal instruction. I was taught how to set up a lace pillow and work a simple pattern - and I acquired a book on how to do it.  A passing comment had been made about the patterns being based on a grid and that there were computer programs available to aid lace design.  When I got home, I looked at the book and quickly saw how the patterns for that type of lace were indeed based on a grid.  I also started doing some web searches and found some lace software and plotted the first pattern in the book onto the grid, printed it and worked out how to work the pattern.  I quickly acquired some other books and realised that although there were different styles of lace, they all used the same basic stitches worked in different ways.  I then started using the program to design my own patterns by adapting patterns in the books, rather than just working them as printed. In the process, I learned a lot about types of threads, types of bobbins, history of lace (making and wearing), modern textile arts. The learning came from a mix of reading, talking to other lace makers, web searches and attending occasional weekend workshops. There was formal instruction, but most of what I learned was self-taught, and all was unaccredited.

Another skill area acquired a number of years ago was bicycle mechanics. I learned to strip down and rebuild a bicycle from a mixture of observation, reading and trial and error. Although self-taught, I got a number of free holidays in return for my mechanical skills, even if I rarely did more than mend the occasional puncture and replace the occasional cable.

Currently, I am learning a lot about using herbs and spices in cooking.  My teacher is my son who has developed an interest in cooking. He goes out and buys herbs and spices and experiments with them. From his experiments, I am beginning to recognise the flavour and effect of different herbs and spices and to experiment myself. This is not a case of following recipes but learning by observation and doing - and teaching each other by the comments we make on the results.

I could go on, but much of what I do, including what I am doing in my studies, is a mix of observation, reading and application. Some of my learning is assessed and accredited, but much/most of what I do is purely out of interest and may not even be known to others.

Would the things I have learned informally be any better or any different if I learned them formally, or if the skills acquired informally were formally assessed in some way? Would I gain more satisfaction from making lace if I knew I was getting a certificate for my efforts than from the pleasure of friends who have received a piece of lace I have made?

When and why are informal skills insufficient and formal recognition and accreditation needed?

Posted in lace, informal learning, creativity | Print | 1 Comment »

21/07/2009 by lizit.

In supervision yesterday, Judith suggested I write an abstract of my thesis as though I had already undertaken the research.  I could see the practical value of this as I have been mulling over what I might actually do, rather than think about doing. Although I am working on a draft abstract, there are a couple of issues that are concerning me, both of which I now think I can see a way round or through.

The first is the so what question - and here again yesterday was helpful.  I can now see that what I want to show is very much related to why people engage in informal learning.  Although the government white paper is suggesting that informal learning should be recognised and supported, my position is that this is unnecessary and possibly counter-productive - and not just for the reasons propounded elsewhere in this blog of possibly repeating the errors of the 80s in relation to voluntary action and community care.

The second concern relates to justifying the use of Second Life for my studies.  One clear argument is that there are no inbuilt extrinsic rewards in SL.  Today it struck me that there are elements of SL learning which are not dissimilar to that happening in some of the physical world communities I am part of. For example, if I am monitoring SL mailing lists for evidence of informal learning (probably SLED and one other), I could also monitor arachne.  At about this point my imagination takes off and I have to remind myself that I haven’t got unlimited time and resources…. But if the SL can be shown to be not dissimilar from other communities which engage in informal learning…

Time for a cuppa.

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