5 comments so far
Hi there fellow doctoral traveller who is at the beginning of your doctoral journey,
Are you by chance a La Trobe uni. student masquerading under a .com? I ask this because I have read a little of your work and you quoted Grant, presumably Audrey (one of my supervisors). Sadly it is too late in the night to go delve much further into your tale or mine for that matter. I was looking for an update on narrative inquiry and up you popped! I am at the end of my doctoral journey at long, long last. It was a journey that started in 1999 although I dreamed of getting a doctorate a lot earlier. How time drags on. Anyway, welcome to the world of typing, typing and more bloody typing. My thesis is interesting to only me I suspect. I dream (a lot of dreaming occurs in doctoral land) of it being the seminal piece of research in the field of transformative learning. Off to sleep
Bye for now
J.
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It’s great following your progress and seeing ideas develop and thriving. Right now I am at a point – thanks to Robb Willer at UC Berkeley – where I wonder whether reflexivity is a positive approach per se. It has become so dominant, being celebrated as the one step towards less bias and more objectivity that I wonder what we loose by focusing so much on introspection and reflection. Automaciticity is something very valuable – are we wandering off into the opposite direction rather than trying to strike a balance?
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@Jenny Ryder
Thank you for the words of encouragement. Knowing I am not working in isolation on this is worth some of these efforts alone! Have you finished?
No, I am not at LaTrobe–I am studying at Lancaster University in the UK toward a PhD in eResearch and Technology Enhanced Learning, though I still live and work in New York.
Interested to hear about some of your work with transformative learning.
Jeffrey
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@Britta Bohlinger
You raised some really interesting points; can you elaborate? I am not familar with Robb Willer’s work, so some context will be appreciated.
Interestingly, I am not sure I really see reflexivity being more objective–I am considering life and the world and how I make meaning out of all of it. This seems to be more authentically subjective and honest with my perspective, rather than going with the flow.
I will certainly speak more on this as I have a Shon article to read tomorrow.
Now I think I need to hear more about your changing work . . .
Jeffrey
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The link to Robb Willer and the UC Berkeley podcasts on social psychology including automaticity are here:
http://britbohlinger.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/soundbites-trust-the-unknown/
The debate around reflexivity as device to enhance objectivity is indeed a very interesting one. Perhaps reflexivity is much closer to auto-ethnography than to an approach based on distancing and objectivity. One aspect I am still puzzled about is the degree of awareness gained by practices of reflexivity. Awareness is not a positive state of mind per se – but it has gained highly positive status, especially in the social sciences. I haven’t come across any material which discussed these issues but I feel there is more to it than just a few methodological considerations.
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[...] Posted by: Jeffrey Keefer in Academia, Autoethnography & Reflective Practice, Lancaster PhD, Research Add Comment I am gathering ideas for my next research paper that I have to write in the next month and a half for my doctoral program, and have come up with these ideas after trying to flesh out the initial ones I discussed. [...]