Month: March 2010

Jeffrey’s Twitter Updates for 2010-03-21

  • Just got onto the #Continental plane and it was so hot I thought I was in for the spa flight. Alas, no. Now it is nice and cool. #
  • At Newark Airport awaiting flight to Manchester. Will meet up with @cristinacost tomorrow before I head to #Lancaster. #
  • Spent the day doing assignments, paperwork, and packing, and am now on NJ Transit waiting for it to leave for Newark Airport. #
  • The Grackle, the Chimney, and the Vernal Equinox http://bit.ly/cOiFpt #

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Research Interests Thus Far

As I am sitting in one of the lounges in the airport, awaiting my trip to the university for the residential, I want to write a bit more about my research ideas thus far as we were asked to do for a discussion this coming week.

Let’s take the first round at this, and revise a bit more tomorrow while en route:

Interests and Context:

I am interested in issues of identity, and how people experience and process transformative (cf. Mezirow) changes in the learning. I am interested in when these things happen within the context of online communities (cf. Wenger), especially when navigating identity while engaged in adult or higher education. I am really interested in exploring threshold concepts (cf. Land). I am not  sure how I may work critical theory (cf. Brookfield, Marcuse, Gramsci) or Postmodernity / post-structuralism (cEdit Post ‹ Silence and Voice — WordPressf. Lyotard, Foucault) in, though I can envision this being the theoretical lens.

Methodology:

I know I need to firm up the above before I speak about methodological implications and possibilities, though after having enaged in case study, narrative inquiry, and ethnography over the past year in the 3 completed modules (with a heavy area of study being around autoethnography and how people experience it / reflective practice), I think the sky can be the limit (though action learning is probably not among the possiblities right now, since I am so interested in the experiences of individuals).

Oh, to have so many juicy options!

The Grackle, the Chimney, and the Vernal Equinox

grackleWhat a surprise we encountered today, the Vernal Equinox (also called the Spring Equinox or Alban Eilir), when we heard a noise in the wood stove’s chimney and eventually learned it was a stuck, though very much alive, bird. We did not want to leave it, nor try to force it to fly out by lighting a small fire (it would have flown out on its own, if it could have), so we finally closed and covered all the doors and windows in the living room except for two windows that we opened wide. We opened the unlit stove’s door, and out the bird flew into the living room and immediately out through the window to freedom and life.

The bird was a common grackle (though we were a bit divided in thinking it may have been a starling), and I have seen ones like him before outside on the bird feeder. Perhaps I will see this one again at the feeder, where I believe it will be much happier than inside.

I hope the change in the seasons brings life and prosperity to a world very much in need of renewal.