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.

Posted in community of practice, voice, lace, research ideas, reflections, learning | Print | 3 Comments »

06/04/2011 by lizit.

Another #phdchat inspired posting.

Last month the UK government published a consultation document, or green paper, outlining a number of changes they are planning on making to the special education system. There are various reasons for wanting to change the system, including saving money, but the ones that interest me are about the system being too complex and too adversarial. Both of these seem to be accepted as facts without any real explanations why. So what I am doing is drawing pictures to try to understand the system and using these to find out why the system gets described as a battlefield.

As well as drawing pictures, I am talking to people who have been involved with the Special Needs system. These include parents of children on the autistic spectrum, teachers, support workers in schools, doctors and therapists. I am asking them to tell me their stories of how they have learned about the autism and about the SEN system.

Some parents tell stories of how helpful a specific teacher or doctor has been and how well their child is doing. Others talk about problems getting help for their child and some talk about their child being excluded from school and sometimes being out of school for a long time. The education and health workers talk about children they have worked with and learned from. They also talk about needs that are not met and very often have very little idea what happens in other parts of the system.

I agree with the government that the SEN system needs to be changed, but I am concerned about changes designed to fix a system if we don’t really know why it is broken to start off. I hope my research will help explain why the system is broke and will help in understanding whether the proposed changes will fix it, or may actually lead to more problems.

Posted in SEN, ASD, research ideas | Print | 12 Comments »

27/01/2011 by lizit.

Not sure how long it would take to share this, but I think I actually am finding the plot! It seems to have moved a long way from virtual worlds and learning journey though.

My research examines why the metaphors of fight and struggle are so prevalent in the stories of those involved in supporting and caring for children and young people with diagnoses of Aspergers and HFA.

In approaching the question, at a personal level I bring a range of experiences from different parts of my life. In the 1970s and 80s, I was actively involved with people with disabilities as a community worker and social work team leader. During International Year of Disabled People, 1981, I was engaged in a number of projects including developing an access guide and information pack for people with disabilities in the local authority area where I was employed. My MSc research focused on those disability organisations that could be described as specialist local intermediary bodies, and examined the practices and philosophies of those made up only of other organisations, those with an individual membership of people with disabilities and those with both organisational and individual memberships. I recognised the importance of empowerment and in my social work role, I focused on ensuring my ‘clients’ had an opportunity to express their views as to what services would be helpful to them and how these might best be delivered, an innovatory approach at the time.

During the 1990s, I became a service user rather than a provider, as it became increasingly evident that my son’s challenging behaviour was due, at least in part, to his neuro-diversity. I learned about child mental health and special educational needs systems, and suffered the mortification of my son being suspended from school. I was able to use my professional skills to navigate the system and to access the support my son needed. I also became a service user in my own right, receiving support from the community mental health services. When the opportunity presented, I took the opportunity to share the knowledge I had gained with other parents by facilitating a support group.

My son is now an adult and I have been able to reflect on my experience and to view the services I was responsible for providing and the services I have received against the backcloth of changing models and understanding of disability. Now as a researcher, I am exploring the metaphor of fight and struggle as it occurs within the narratives of parents, professionals and others involved in the care and support of children and young people with diagnoses of Aspergers and HFA, and also looking at media content generated by parents and others and found in print and electronic form. These accounts are interpreted and understood through an understanding of the systems, discourses and models which influence and structure the experience of becoming a parent of a child on the autistic spectrum, a teacher of children on the spectrum, a health professional, or any other person involved in offering care and support to these children and young people.

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23/07/2010 by lizit.

This is probably going to be one of my incoherent blogs, but may be good opportunity to play with some ideas.

Although my topic is around the learning of carers of different types within the autistic spectrum domain, a key element is the place of parents. I am exploring learning journeys as I want to understand better how the learning of lay people varies from that of professional, particularly given so much learning is on the job and the workplace of parents is the home. I am not interesting in diminishing the professional contribution, but I guess I am interested in the balance of power, knowledge, influence between the different players in the domain - and I am very conscious that the person central to the domain is all too often the one with least voice, i.e. the child.

Two thoughts are chasing around my head today:

• many of today’s major charities had their origins in the post-war period. Although the specifics of each varies, there was often a perceived need recognised by parents or others, for example see the history of Mencap  which was initiated by a parent inviting other parents to join her and grew from there. Part of the function of these organisations was to give a voice to parents and carers and to ensure the future well-being of the children with different disabilities as they grew up and the parents were less able to provide the same level of care.
• A major interest and concern of mine in the past has been that of ownership or control - the posh word for this seems to be agency. A key part of what I was observing in the early 1980s when working in the disability field was the change from primarily a care agenda for disabled people to a recognition that people with disabilities had views of their own and were capable of living full lives. My focus was on who owned disability organisations and I was seeing a change from philanthropic ventures to organisations of people with disabilities with a voice and purpose.

In the autistic spectrum domain, there continues to be a sense of struggle and fight to get needs met, with parents acting as advocates on behalf of their children. Is this part of a similar movement in the development of specialist organisations and ownership issues, or is it different, and in what way is it similar and in what way different.

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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 »

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.

Posted in feminism, empowerment, research ideas, learning | Print | No Comments »

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 »

16/11/2009 by lizit.

For several months now I have been trying to get my head around informal learning. My starting point was one of endorsing the importance of informal learning. This was based largely on my community development experience, seeing the learning engaged in by people who had been considered educational failures, and more recently on recognising the amount of independent learning engaged in by all manner of individuals through the use of web resources. My involvement in various OU networks and the Sussex Learning Network has made me aware of the importance of Web 2.0 and social learning. I took part in the Clusters project which explored the potential use of a number of Web 2.0 tools in supporting students.

In exploring the informal learning literature, I have found a complex mishmash of debate about categorisation and definitions. The term has gained different meanings in different contexts and there are those who suggest it is an unhelpful term which should be avoided. As long ago as 2003, it was suggested that there is no clear differentiation between formal and informal learning but that both include elements of the other to varying degrees.

At the end of last week, in a flash of inspiration or madness, I suggested to my DPhil supervisor that perhaps a different typology was needed and suggested as a starting point 5 categories: other directed, self directed, incidental, serendipitous, and social. Over the weekend, I spent time doing literature searches on self-directed learning and found this was an area which had attracted a lot of attention and debate in the 1980s and early 1990s but the more recent literature seemed to be focusing on the development of independent learning skills in formal contexts rather than the earlier focus on self-teaching. I was not happy with my initial 5 categories; I find it particularly unhelpful using a term which has a clearly understood meaning in a different context. This morning, I was beginning to think about just 2 categories - self and other initiated - with sub-categories of intentional, incidental and accidental. I then came across a fascinating blog post from Jane Hart, signposted by Jay Cross. Although the focus is on use of social media in organisational training contexts, the starting point is an attempt to find a more satisfactory classification tool than formal and informal learning.

Posted in social learning, informal learning, research ideas, learning | Print | 1 Comment »

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 »

15/10/2009 by lizit.

This feels like a good time to do a bit of taking stock and forward planning.

I’ve been looking at some of the DR2 modules and what comes through most clearly is the need for focus. This  came across particularly clearly in the lit review module which emphasised not getting sidetracked by interesting ideas, but was also very clear in the research methods module. This made sense to me as one of my main concerns is scoping my work so that it is actually both meaningful and doable in the allotted time.

Although I haven’t got a neat and tidy lit review, I do feel I have a good understanding of the informal learning area and some of the problematics of working in that area. I am also clear about the problems of language, especially the use of ‘informal learning’ in corporate training contexts and the changing use of ’social learning’. Looking at the informal learning literature has clarified the connections with adult education, lifelong learning, etc, and has also shown the paucity of material on children and informal learning - just one futurelab report as far as I can see. I am keeping up-to-date with Second Life and virtual worlds more generally through both literature and involvement in a number of mailing lists and attendance at various workshops and conferences. I have also explored the literature around virtual communities, including that focusing on 2D communities. Although I have revisited community development material, I have not done so as thoroughly as I originally intended to and there may be a need to look at more of this.

Other blogs and entries in my wiki focus on the reading I have been doing on motivation - Csikszentmihalyi and Deci and Ryan - and on social learning theory as propounded by Bandura. These are potentially useful theories for analysing data in the studies I am proposing.

So what am I actually proposing to do and why? I am increasingly coming to the view that my work needs to be located in relation to the recent government white paper on informal learning. The white paper makes a number of assumptions about informal learning, including about its potential role in adult education and about the need for it to be recognised in some way or other. Apart from the potential elements of cost-cutting or of formalising the informal, I feel the white paper raises a number of issues which are not properly addressed.

So where do I go from here?

Firstly, I think I need to re-read the white paper and the earlier consultative document and responses. I will be looking particularly at how informal learning is understood in those documents and how it is seen to relate to the lifelong learning and widening participation agendas.

Secondly, I need to frame my research question(s) in the context of the white paper. (Given the forthcoming general election, it would be useful to check what the position of other major political parties is on informal learning, but given there is also an EU dimension, I suspect the changes are more likely to be in relation to priorities rather than direction.)

Thirdly, I need to revisit the work I have been doing in outlining potential studies and ensuring these actually address my research question.

That sounds like enough for the moment.

Posted in methodology, informal learning, Government policy, research ideas, planning | Print | No Comments »