Yearly Archives: 2007

Why is this interesting?

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I came to my data from the point of view of communities. How do communities learn together? Why is it valuable to learn as a member of a community? However, on closer examination, I’m not studying a community. My data comes from task-based groups (thanks for that insight, Etienne). True, they have been structured to draw on benefits of community learning and they do, in some ways, act as communities. But they’re not communities. If I want to go and study an online learning community, I should be looking at Schome, which is a far better example.

Setting community aside; what have I got? Well, as my supervisor said the other day – you’ve got talk, and that’s what’s interesting. But what I find really interesting is that that is just what I have not got. I have got no talk. No talk whatsoever. The students and tutors think they’re talking, they refer to themselves as talking, but they are not talking. Even when I interview them, they are not talking.

They’re communicating via text, and what you can do via text is very different to what you can do via speech. Yes, you can challenge opinions and defend opinions and access a range of opinions as you can in speech. But you can do that at the same time as you refer back to earlier stages of the argument. You can build on other people’s points or challenge each one separately. You can ponder what they have said for a minute, or two minutes, or half an hour.

And this is what I see throughout my work. In my data, and in my blogging data, and in my epistolary data and in my Schome data. Written conversation offers a new, and powerful, way of thinking together. But nobody’s using it for that reason. Everyone’s using it because it’s convenient and space- and time-independentor, in the case of blogging, because they enjoy it. Yes, if challenged, they may say that it supports reasoning and critical dialogue. But they don’t use it for that reason, and they don’t explain that reasoning to students, and nobody formally trains anybody in how to use textual conversation to support knowledge creation.

So why my data is interesting is because it shows that textual conversation is a powerful way of thinking together. And if that;s what is interesting about my data then that is what my research questions should be about (you knew I was going to get back to my research questions at some point, didn’t you? 🙂  )

Comfort zone

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When I was studying English, or history, I could curl up in bed with a textbook and feel relaxed and cheerful. It’s never been like that in IET. Apart from the odd easy read – like Howard Rheingold on virtual communities – it all feels like work. Interesting, but work.

I’ve just read Walter Ong’s 1982 book ‘Orality and literacy’ and reclaimed that lost sense of comfort. Yes, there are pages of references and the text swings across 4000 years and several continents. But they’re references I’m happy with. Been there, done that, struggled with that, understood that. I know why Jaynes felt that there was a significant gap between the writing of the Iliad and the Odyssey, how Robinson Crusoe relates to Tom Jones, why Anansi is important, why Ong is wrong in his references to Hebrew and why Sterne’s use of typography was significant.
I think this is why I struggle so much more with the psychological literature. I feel adrift with so few points of reference. Even my points of reference I only know sketchily. No matter how diligently I read the literature of pedagogy and education, my grasp of it never feels more than superficial when compared with my grasp of English literature.

Research questions

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One day I will achieve the ultimate research question – I will look at it and know it is right. Until then…

  • How do task-based groups of learners identify and use the resources of asynchronous conferences to support their learning?
  • What constrains their identification and utilisation of these resources?

Look, I’ve taken ‘communities’ out of my questions for the first time! Though they’re still there, really, because I’ll argue that one of the resources of an asynchronous conference can be community.

The things I really want to get in are:

  • Some affordances are illusory. Asynchronous conferences are not any time, any place, anywhere – they are constrained by real-life limitations and it can be a problem to pretend that these do not exist. Additionally, people do not make use of the permanent record to inform the debate. There are perhaps three types of affordance to look at: affordances of the technology (any time, any place, any where), affordances of the medium (history, threading, icons) and affordances of the talk (reflective, comparing perspectives etc). Analysis should show: do they recognise these affordances, do they make use of these affordances, do these affordances exist, do they act as constraints?
  • Learning in these conferences is related to education, organisation and affect. The organisational and affective issues are substantial and account for the majority of seemingly off-task behaviour. I need to read more on affect and follow up any references on organisational learning. Organisational learning relates to the previous section. Analysis should reveal which forms of organisation they have to develop in order to make use of the affordances which I have identified with the help of the literature. My pilot is useful here. What helps them with this organisation and what hinders them?
  • The affective issues are related to community. These aren’t communities for a number of reasons, but they utilise the resources of other communities, and build elements of a community together. Establishing trust is important. Again, this relates to seemingly off-task discussion. This relates to all the literature I have read on community, and I need more on the subject of trust. Analysis should show occasions when trust allows them to learn togther, when lack of trust prevents them from learning together, and how they establish trust.
  • And I want to write about the differences between conference talk, speech and written text – especially with references to fonts, point sizes and colours. I think this relates to Vygotsky’s description of speech completing the thought. Different types of speech deal with meaning in different ways. There must be some literature on this somewhere? Analysis in this section will be much more narrowly focused on two or three passages, showing how features such as colour, quoting and typeface are used to build meaning together. I could make a start on this analysis to see if it works.

Vygotsky and squirrels

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vygotsky.jpgI’m reading the Cambridge Companion to Vygotsky and trying to make sense of my notes on Boris Meshcheryakov’s chapter on Terminology in Vygotsky’s writings. Here’s my version of his explanatory chart (which I can’t persuade WordPress to render legibly) – and a worked example involving squirrels.

Natural form of behaviour. I look out of the window, see the squirrel, smile, go back to my computer.
Sign-mediated/social/primitive. I look out of the window, see the squirrel, think of a funny photo that Gill took of a squirrel, smile, go back to my computer. (There’s a mediating sign, created by another but neither of us considered using it for this purpose).
Sign-mediated/social/higher. I look out of the window, see the squirrel, think of a funny photo of a squirrel that Gill took to make me smile, smile, go back to my computer. (Gill has used signs to influence my behaviour).
Sign-mediated/individual/primitive. I look out of the window, see the squirrel, think of a funny picture of a squirrel that I took, smile and go back to my computer. (One of my signs unexpectedly mediates my behaviour.)
Sign-mediated/individual/higher/external. I look out of the window, see the squirrel, think of a funny picture of a squirrel that I took, smile and go to look for pictures of squirrels on Flickr. (I use a sign to modify my behaviour and thoughts.)
Sign-mediated/individual/higher/internal. I look out of the window, see the squirrel, think of a funny picture of a squirrel that I took, smile and start to devise in my head a funny card about a squirrel that I could create for Gill.
So that is six situations in which externally I do exactly the same thing (although my return to the computer is delayed in the final case) but my mental function is different.

Forbidden colours – is it just me?

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What I find particularly hard in reading Vygotsky is the gaps in my knowledge. It’s not just the obscure terms translated, or not translated, from the Russian. It’s not just that I haven’t read the philosophers and psychologists on whom his work builds, so there’s a yawning gap before him. It’s also that there’s a yawning gap after him.

I’m reading about the ‘forbidden colours’ experiment. Leonte’ev takes children of various ages and tells them that in the following interview they are not to mention two particular colours (eg red and blue) and that they are to mention all other colours only once. He gives them cards of each different colours, so they can use them as tools to mediate their memory (they won’t necessarily directly remember which colours they have mentioned, but their arrangement or use of the cards will jog their memory). Then he asks them a series of questions like ‘Have you ever been to the theatre’, interspersed with colour questions like ‘what colour is a tomato’, ‘what colour is the sky’. The older children get, the more likely they are to use the cards and to succeed in the task. In the accounts I am reading, Vygotsky appears to take this as evidence that you develop your ability to use mediating devices to support your memory.

But to me it doesn’t say that at all. It tells me that children develop a more sophisticated view of adults and of how adults behave. How many seven year olds, faced with a research scientist and asked what colour a tomato is are going to fail to say red? In their experience, adults who ask that sort of question get angry and think you stupid if you give them the wrong answer.

If you told them that in their computer game they couldn’t use the red or blue keys and they could use each colour key only once or they’d lose a life, they’d soon use mnemonic devices to sort that out.

So to me that experiment is profoundly flawed. Now, this may be my fault, because I haven’t understood it correctly, or because I have read incomplete accounts of it. On the other hand, it may be that everyone who has read of it thinks of it as a flawed experiment. I just don’t know. And it takes SO long to find out.

What I haven’t been doing :-)

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I usually blog what I have been doing but, in an effort to follow my supervisors’ advice and cut down on my non-PhD activity, I am now blogging what I have NOT been doing.

How come, if I have turned down at least five days of activity since my last supervision session that I still feel I ought to be working twice as fast?

What I have(n’t) done

∑ Withdrew from Open Learn reading group
∑ Decided not to join EDRU reading group
∑ Ignored the JURE 2008 call for papers
∑ Deleted all seminar invitations from CREET, IET and KMI unread
∑ Did not attend IET Board
∑ Turned down invitation to expenses-paid funding seminar in London
∑ Did not attend two days of Open Learn conference
∑ Did not sign up for OU’s postgraduate conference
∑ Turned down a morning’s paid work
∑ Cancelled two days of family holiday

Community

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I’ve just been reading an article which I think will be very important for the structure of my thesis, because it outlines the key elements of a sense of community. From what I have seen of my data, I think that where the learning goes wrong is when these elements of community go wrong.

McMillan, D. W. (1996). Sense of community. Journal of Community Psychology, 24, 4, 315-325.

‘I view Sense of Community as a spirit of belonging together, a feeling that there is an authority structure that can be trusted, an awareness that trade, and mutual benefit come from being together, and a spirit that comes from shared experiences that are shared as art.’
Two points of reference are constant in sense of community theory – the member and the community.
Spirit (membership). Us separated from them. Emotional safety that encourages self disclosure and intimacy. Sense of belonging, and confidence and acceptance, and loyalty and entitlement. Friendship, connection with others, and an audience.  The first task of a community is to make it safe to tell ‘the truth’. Can a member tell their truth, can the community accept this truth safely and can they respond with courage? People disclose more when they feel safe. Boundaries These make emotional safety possible. Boundaries have benefits for members. They allay fears about who can be trusted. They define the logistical time and place settings of the group. Boundaries also distinguish the appropriate subject matter for group discourse. Sense of belonging The member acts on faith that they belong. They bond with those whom they believe want and welcome them. The community responds to the individual’s faith with acceptance. Paying Dues Communities need to test new members. They need to know whether a member will make available the time, energy and financial commitment to be an effective member. With rights and privileges come responsibility.
Trust (influence) Trust develops through a community’s use of its power. The community must solve the problems rising from the allocation of power. People must know what they can expect from each other. This involves the development of community norms, rules or laws. A community must have a way to process information and make decisions. Decision makers must have authority. Authority should be based on principle rather than person. Group norms allow members and authority to influence each other reciprocally.
Trade Members find ways they can benefit each other and the community. Bonding begins with the discovery of similarities. Perceive homogeneity facilitates group interaction. Once differences are discovered and needs and resources inventoried, then bargains can be negotiated. The medium of exchange in a community social economy is self disclosure. The most risky and valuable self disclosures involve the sharing of feelings. They begin by sharing feelings that they have in common, they then share positive feelings about each other. Once they have a base of understanding and support, they can begin to share criticisms, suggestions and differences. A community cannot survive unless members make fair trades with each other.
Art (shared emotional connection in time and space) Spirit with respected authority becomes trust, which is the basis of creating trade. Together these elements create a share history that becomes a community’s story symbolised in art. This point links in with history and with developing a shared language. Symbols, stories and other symbolic expressions represent the part of a community that outlives its members. Art supports spirit, and thus the four elements of community are linked in a self-reinforcing circle.

Research questions revisited

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Well, I’m working on my literature review, so I’m bound to tinker with my research questions, aren’t I?

Also, an initial pass over my data showed me that if I just look at the skills and resources that people use to learn together online, I’m going to end up with a list. And not a very interesting list, at that.

I’m trying to look at what it buys me to consider the students as a network or one of various types of community Network doesn’t feel quite right, and I’m not entirely sure why. Something to do with it not being completely people centred. Community of practice isn’t right, either, because you can’t really argue that six students and two tutors make up a community of practice.

So I think I’ve either got a community of learners or a learning community. Whichever, I need to look at what I gain by looking at them as a community. I get all the elements of what a community is – reason for being a community, history, language, boundedness, members…

Today’s research questions are therefore:

How do students mobilise the resources of their online learning community in order to build knowledge?

What constrains them from mobilising these resources?

(I could use ‘affordances’ instead of ‘resources’ but then I’d have to go into the whole ‘what are affordances and what do I mean by them? debate – and I’d get saddled with a word which I think will date fairly quickly.)