A Pause in Research, Oh so Brief!

I have had to temporarily stop the transcription for my doctoral research project due to some work and university eLearning modules I am finishing that have taken 100% of my non-full-time-job time. Will return to my research this weekend, full steam ahead!

While I have been so busy, I did smile broadly this morning when I came across an article in this morning’s New York Times, The Big Draw of a GPS Run. While the articles itself was fascinating (never considered turning on GPS and creating art with it!), I think there was a profound insight contained in a quote by Ellen Worthing, a GPS-using hiker, at the end of the article:

She likes that with a GPS device she can reimagine a landscape so imbued with history, patriotism and war. “Do we need to see what the U.S. Park Service wants us to see?” she asked. “Or can we see what we want to see?”

Creating her art as a contrast to the “established” purpose of the Fort McHenry National Monument, she exemplified freedom in a way I have not really considered before. Who are you to tell me what I see? Who are you to tell me how I should think? Who are you to tell me what this should mean? My meaning is my meaning, and how I see the world may at times be at odds with how others think it should be seen, or what it should mean. It took some time getting here, and I am thoroughly convinced that there is no such thing as a static and objective meaning, one that is the same for all people at all times.

Can there be a better example of the joys of qualitative research?

Interview Questions Based on Wenger’s CoP Framework

I begin my research interviews tomorrow, so now may be a good time to consider some of my questions, both planned as well as possible.

The purpose of the study is to examine and try to understand, in some way, if Wenger’s Community of Practice (CoP) framework makes a difference within the research or experiential lives of those who conduct autoethnographic research, especially given that many in the larger research community still see this as a contested strategy of inquiry.

While there are numerous works from Wenger that I will detail in my literature section, the two that I have in mind at this point is his

Wenger, E. (1999). Learning as social participation. Knowledge Management Review, 1(6), 30-33.

Wenger, E. (n.d.). Communities of practice: A brief introduction. Retrieved from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/communities_of_practice_intro.htm

I am being guided by Wenger’s Model (from the first article):

wenger-learning-components1

and from his defininition (from the second reference above):

Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.

where he discusses them as (also from the second reference above):

Note that this definition allows for, but does not assume, intentionality: learning can be the reason the community comes together or an incidental outcome of member’s interactions. Not everything called a community is a community of practice. A neighborhood for instance, is often called a community, but is usually not a community of practice. Three characteristics are crucial:

1. The domain: A community of practice is not merely a club of friends or a network of connections between people. It has an identity defined by a shared domain of interest. Membership therefore implies a commitment to the domain, and therefore a shared competence that distinguishes members from other people. (You could belong to the same network as someone and never know it.) The domain is not necessarily something recognized as “expertise” outside the community. A youth gang may have developed all sorts of ways of dealing with their domain: surviving on the street and maintaining some kind of identity they can live with. They value their collective competence and learn from each other, even though few people outside the group may value or even recognize their expertise.

2. The community: In pursuing their interest in their domain, members engage in joint activities and discussions, help each other, and share information. They build relationships that enable them to learn from each other. A website in itself is not a community of practice. Having the same job or the same title does not make for a community of practice unless members interact and learn together. The claims processors in a large insurance company or students in American high schools may have much in common, yet unless they interact and learn together, they do not form a community of practice. But members of a community of practice do not necessarily work together on a daily basis. The Impressionists, for instance, used to meet in cafes and studios to discuss the style of painting they were inventing together. These interactions were essential to making them a community of practice even though they often painted alone.

3. The practice: A community of practice is not merely a community of interest–people who like certain kinds of movies, for instance. Members of a community of practice are practitioners. They develop a shared repertoire of resources: experiences, stories, tools, ways of addressing recurring problems�in short a shared practice. This takes time and sustained interaction. A good conversation with a stranger on an airplane may give you all sorts of interesting insights, but it does not in itself make for a community of practice. The development of a shared practice may be more or less self-conscious. The “windshield wipers” engineers at an auto manufacturer make a concerted effort to collect and document the tricks and lessons they have learned into a knowledge base. By contrast, nurses who meet regularly for lunch in a hospital cafeteria may not realize that their lunch discussions are one of their main sources of knowledge about how to care for patients. Still, in the course of all these conversations, they have developed a set of stories and cases that have become a shared repertoire for their practice.

The interview discussion will be informal and topics may emerge as ideas are exchanged. I hope to address (2) areas of inquiry:

1. What support or encouragement do you (or did you) have when you engage(d) in your research?

2. Do you find yourself a member of any identifiable community (of practice) that plays a role with your autoethnographic research?

Interviews Scheduled!

I am quite happy that I have confirmed and scheduled interviews with at least two participants concerning my Autoethnographer Communities of Practice research project. There are 3 other people I am still working with for this research, and I am thrilled with the offers to assist with this project. Nice to know I am not the only person in some way related to academic work who is available in August!

I am planning to conduct the interviews later this week, and will also discuss the hardware I purchased to record the interview calls so I can transcribe them later. With all the testing and use I have done with this over the past week, I am very hopeful.

Participant Requests and Next Steps

I sent emails to two qualitative email discussion lists that I have found helpful before, namely the Autoethnography Yahoo Group and the Qualitative Research for the Human Sciences (QUALRS-L) listserv, to request autoethnographer participants for my research. Thankfully, several people stepped forward to offer to help. I wonder if this is something particular to autoethnographers or to qualitative researchers in general? Perhaps that may be its own study later.

Next steps include reaching out to them to tell them a little more, discussing scheduling, sending the informed consent, and then proceeding. With my paper draft due by September 7, there is no time to delay!

Autoethnography Researcher ~ Interview Request

I am working on a short research project for my PhD course of study at Lancaster University (UK), and am looking for 2 people who have engaged in autoethnographic research to be interviewed (for approximately 30 minutes via phone or Skype) to discuss their experiences or lack of experiences of being a member of or being supported by some community (broadly defined) while they engaged in their research.

The purpose of this research is to try to understand, in some way, if Wenger’s Community of Practice framework makes a difference within the research or experiential lives of those who conduct autoethnographic research, especially given that many in the larger research community still see this as a contested strategy of inquiry.

The only qualification for participation in this research is that you should have completed and published at least one autoethnographic work, with publishing used in a broad sense to mean publicly presented it to others, such as at a conference, in a journal, online, or even submitted for a degree program.

Please let me know if you know of anybody willing to participate or learn more, and I can provide further information.  There is a tight timeline for this research, and it is hoped the interviews will take place by August 15th.

As a research project at Lancaster University, ethical approval has been given for this project, and all considerations and a consent form will be thoroughly discussed and reviewed prior to any data collection.