different worlds

Different worlds

Imagine you are 7 you love the sea, the moors and the forests, you know the names and habits of hundreds of birds and mammals, you know how to light fires, build dens, chop wood, climb trees, read maps and can walk for miles and miles in all weathers.

Your morning starts with finding mum on the sofa legs black and blue a cut above her eye, face bruised, a broken vase spread across the floor like abandoned shards of confetti, her nightie caught high and not one square inch of her legs is pink, all is mottled blue, black, purple, yellow bruises. Her pain fills every cell of your body, panic fills you with adrenaline and fear blinds your brain, at least dad is asleep. mum senses you and half wakes, "Its alright, its alright, its all right my little lammie, its just your dad sometimes" she says and drifts off again. Shaking you dress in yesterdays clothes, you can't wash as the bathroom door squeaks and the taps squeal when you turn them on, and you really don’t want to wake your dad. The smell of toast, the clink of a spoon on a cereal bowl might wake him so you don’t eat, eating is not needed on this pain. You have no money so have to walk to school - a good excuse to escape, you cant take your homework books they are buried under noisy cans and cups and bottles on the coffee table, and you really don’t want to wake your dad. On the way out you rip your trousers on the broken door frame exposing a triangle of the underwear you have been wearing for two days and nights, you creep out unwashed, unclean unhappy.

You're out and the bitter east wind cuts your face and legs, winter is not a great time to wear short trousers. A compensation is that you got through the first 30 mins unscathed today. Walking to school is a fearful activity, prior experience gives less that you a 50-50 chance of making it without incident. Today the rain soaks you icy and intimate like a harsh loving friend. There is laughter a scuffle in the playground, stepping outside of your head makes it seem it is not happening to you, watching yourself you see things happen, things said, laughter, someone is having fun and there are a few new bruises in places the teacher won't see. No big deal, it happens, maybe you deserved it for being stupid and not looking after your clothes...maybe if you had those cool trainers this would not happen to you...that is it those things are the key to love and acceptance in playgrounds.

In class you start to dry out, to steam sweatyoldclothes-stalesmell kids cover their noses, giggle, it gets worse two of them ask loudly if they can sit somewhere else. A strange teacher makes it worse telling them not to be rude dragging it out. How much stress are you coping with now? Later when you are remembering that time mum hugged you so hard it hurt and she said it will all be better one day your life and your head is down and tears are in your eyes but the teacher's voice breaks in on your world "Hello anyone in there? Come on stop daydreaming; come and fill in the missing words in the first sentence on the blackboard". The class giggles, as you walk forward you are franticlythinking what were they talking about? The floor is liquid mercury, it is difficult to walk on, the chairs around you are moving changing shape, metallic silverskyblue legs leaning twisting towering above you, faces singing mocking you. You can see one of early words on the board has an F shape at the beginning and in your hand the chalk smells of cleandustwhiteness and feels smoother than anything. The word could be Farmers, that would mean they were talking about things like crops, harvesting, animals, lambs dancing...so maybe the sentence is "Farmers harvest their crops" you can do it, the teacher will be pleased, you are going to try writing "harvest" in the first space and "crop in the second" You grip the chalk stick, you have never really been able to figure out how people make writing come out of the end of sticks, your hands are shaking the world is singing like high summer with bees and flies and love singing so hard you can’t hear anything, kaboom in your ears a heartbeat pounding but you have seen a solution and are going to have a go. You are concentrating so hard that the world fades away. There is emotion, a thudding heart somewhere else you can see your self standing there on a pool of liquid metal, the teacher's presence invokes a vague notion that the post office tower is standing next to you about to topple on top of you, remembering queuing outside of it 619 feet high other stats about the building, images of faces and powder surfaced blackened bricks and exhaust pipes flow through your head think hard think hard, think about you and the words nothing else matters this is my chance to shine like the sunshineliquidgold under a beechtree in late autumn... in front of your eyes squirrels dance up the tree, frost bites your toes sunshine more liquid gold runs through your veins....marks scrape and squeal their way across the black board.....there it is harvest is done, you can hear a burbling noise going on around you but it is all mixed up swirling in your head. Someone in the class shouts out "He cant write miss he is stupid".

You have heard laughter and the words "he is stupid" from the class. You feel alone, You turn round and look again at what you have written, you are sure it must be right but can't find it on the board, there seem to be more spaces than there were and more words too, your heart and spirit sink. A voice from the front row shouts I can't bear to write what they said but 30 years later I can still feel it. Panic starts glands pumping, the adrenaline overload turns your body to what it does best when it is on the edge of panic when the world is not right - movement fills your soul it quivers in your every atom, the teachers hand on your shoulder someone is pushed aside desks go over, things happen, noisy things then you are outside being whisked along a corridor.

Two wrong realities left behind.

Back in the classroom on the board, in a space in a sentence, are three squiggles with a horizontal line through them that was the cross bar of that very important "t" in harvest, in that very important sentence that might have read "The farmers harvest their crops".

The sentence now reads as "1. After _____(your three squiggles)_____ comes autumn and the weather turns colder. The three squiggles mean HARVEST The great 'F' letter that clued you into the meaning of the sentence was that tricky number 1 that signified this is sentence number 1. in today's lesson. If only you could see that reality....if only they could see yours.

And now dad is not only awake he is coming to school to take you home...again, caught between two perilous places you hunt for a chance to move into a better world and when it comes you slip free and run, you run like the wind, you are the wind, no one can touch the wind only the rain can touch the wind, the wind though can touch everything and all at once it connects the world it could take you round the world if you could fly you could touch everything and nothing could touch you, no one can catch the wind, you can't catch me for a penny cup of tea.....

Some running then a sight of the sea grey blue white spitting wild strip in the distance, head down pace fitting the size of the paving stones big wide slabs laid across the path now heavy to move they must be, every other one a stepping stone land in the middle not in the puddle step in the squares not on the cracks then smooth hard tarmac soft under bare feet on hot days now cold hard black dusted with sand and more sand at first bits at the edges mixed with dirt then more and more spread over until it is a carpet of yellow and piles like snow against the kerb. Down down down the long ramp the first 20 yards are fine then over the next I pick up speed and I am cruising then it gets faster and more uncomfortable toes pushing hard into the front of my shoes at first then hurting burning every impact like a hammer blow upwards on the ball of my foot the laces lashing and the front of my foot pushing against  the tongue as I try to slow and stumble taking giant steps slide and tumble onto the almost deserted beach. A different world down here it smells of stale and fresh at once the sea trying to be clean the river and us giving it more than it can cope with, down through the soft sand onto the hard flat sand by the waters edge, golden fills me and the sea piling up waves higher than I am fill me with love wash my pain and my life away I want to be the sea be its power be its love embrace everything and fill the world with love. Why didn’t God make every one loving? That was the worst of his decisions.

The only element that I had no direct evidence for was the actual writing on the board but that was reconstructed to represent a real event involving me writing 'harvest' and mirrors the level of dislocation from reality that I experienced at that age. 

I never shared with anyone at school what the darker corners of my life were like and there was some contrast as some of my life was stunningly wonderful when my mum and me escaped to the wild places. I learned to aspire, I learned to work hard to escape hardship, I worked hard because it was an anchor, I was still branded as stupid because I could not write well with writing sticks but a few teachers could see I was not stupid and that was a lifeline. In secondary school my chemistry teacher said: “You should do a degree one day.” That changed my life.  

I discovered typewriting via my wonderful girlfriend and that changed how I could communicate although it wasn’t until I was at college that I was allowed to submit typed essays. I developed good writing strategies, although in this informal piece that might not be fully evident. I went on to gain a science degree then ran my own business as a builder and landscaper while also selling sculptures and paintings in galleries in St Ives for many years. 

I was also helping out at Sennen school where my first two children attended, first driving the minibus and teaching swimming then as a TA teaching primary children digital skills via Logo and doing outdoor learning too. I started installing computer infrastructure - connected local area networks in schools in west penwith in the early 90s. Then one day the head of Sennen school Clive Cooper asked if I had a degree and suggested I do a PGCE and become a teacher. I did the OU PGSE which was partly online. During the course I started some inter school internet projects sharing weather data children were collecting so we could track the progress or low pressure systems across. Cornwall and Devon then taught year 5 and 6 pupils how to build a web site for the school to showcase their art and local studies work, I didn’t realise how unique that was in 1995/6 until several years later. My final paper for the PGCE proposed that we weren't far from being able to set up fully or partially online schools for pupils unable to cope with physical schools weather for medical or or other reasons. I got a decent mark but the feedback pretty much said that would never happen. I taught in several schools for a few years then was offered a job at The Ultralab research unit pretty much on the basis that I knew how to do email, could build web sites and had ideas about online learning.

So from TA to teacher and now i was running a project for a university research unit developing an online learning platform for Specialist Registrars in thoracic medicine to augment their on-site learning on the road to becoming consultants. I was digitising X-Rays, developing codecs for streaming video of cutting edge lung surgery, digitising case studies of patients, and working in some of ten top hospitals in London. A bit of a change from the child who struggled with writing snd was branded as a rotten waster by his father. i was diagnosed as autistic while in this role. 

Next step was working on the Talking Heads project linking headteachers across the UK in an online learning community then I was helping set up ‘notschool’ a fully online school for children for whom the mainstream system was not working. This was the school that only 4 years earlier i had been told by the OU would never happen. Some were from difficult circumstances similar to my own childhood and worse by far, others had physical health problems, many were long term excluded. We called them young researchers, let them choose and design their own learning and watched most of them flourish. Editing these notes in 2023 I am proud to say i am currently informally coaching a not school pupil who gained his masters degree last year and is setting out how he will approach the PhD he is now registered for -  online schooling clearly worked out well for many of the children. 

 When I started this post I had been working in HE for 15 years helping school leaders and aspiring teachers improve their practice and reach their goals. I still read papers about how working class parents don’t have the ability to inspire children and that the lack of socio-economic capital will always hold the children back and that makes me shudder as it helps teachers categorise children and label them in ways they do not deserve. I still occasionally meet or hear of children who have dyslexia or synaesthesia or any of a range of differences and who are not understood or diagnosed and are labelled as disruptive low attainers. Fortunately recent advances in neuroscience and imaging are helping show just how different brains can be. 

 I didn't know I had synaesthesia until I read 'In Water Melon Sugar' in my 20s and have rarely met any teachers who have heard of it. Every day has its own colour and shape, words create smells, tastes, feelings, mental images etc. that usually have no relation to the meaning of the word and can be intense. As a very young child this was often overwhelming but as time passed they became normalised and reassuring like birdsong or background traffic noise in a city. 

If you are a teacher you are a professional with a high level of responsibility for the day to day reality and for the future of children. When a child is not doing what you expect, think about the reality they might be hiding, think about what the world might be like from their perspective. Understand that, to them what they experience is normal, there is no reason for them to question life or to share it with anyone. Offer them respect and hope, you might be the only one in their life to do so and you might just change their lives.

 The impact of my father’s constant reinforcing of how useless I was went deep. For example in the late 80s I rose one morning at 4am and went surfing at the beach my house overlooked in Cornwall, I headed well along the beach where the waves were a playful 10-12ft. The finals of the British nationals were being held near the car park where the waves were maybe 4-6ft. I skirted the competitors and walked up the beach at 2pm where the guys organising the competition tried to persuade me to enter saying I would win all three categories as i was in a different league to the others. I just couldn’t do it, rotten waster rotten waster went through my head and I walked up to home. 

It took a few years of working in schools and that few sentences from the head teacher of Sennen school telling me i could become something - a teacher to transform my belief in myself but even today I struggle at times. 

As a parent or a teacher you need to look beyond what you see in a child and offer them support and empowerment to find their own way to blossom and grow. Find those words that will stick in their minds for a lifetime, words that follow phrases like: You can….   You are able to…. One day I think you could… Have you thought about doing … 

Text and speech

First notes- interviews with graduates from a fully online work-focused BA

Personalisation - All modules are designed to enable students in a wide range of employment contexts to personalise their study focus in order to identify and achieve professional development targets and demonstrate progression of academic skills.

Research - each module involves the application of research strategies in small scale projects to enhance individual professional practice and contribute to organisational learning.

Digital competence - students explore communications technologies and the effective use of technologies relevant to their current work role and to their career aspirations.

Interviews were conducted using Schutze's narrative interview method. Audio recordings were listened to then transcribed by reducing the speed by 30% to match my typing speed. Audio recordings of Skype or Phone interviews were captured using Audacity, these were saved using a participant code; P1, P2, etc. Each was listened to at normal speed then transcribed by slowing the playback to match my typing speed. Immersion in data has proved valuable in my past research, at this point I had immersed myself in the interview three times. The transcript was typed on a plain text page, in order to analyse it i reduced it to smaller chunks and pasted each into subsequent cells in the first column of a spreadsheet. This was the first stage deconstruction, the breaking down of the narrative into meaningful discrete units in oder to manage the analysis.

The next step on my spreadsheet was to add emphasis markers. Additions such as [conviction], [questioning self] or [tentative] indicate the nature of the words as indicated by tone of voice. Adding this layer involved a detailed listen to the recording, this time with lots of pausing and rewinding to check emphasis or meaning. My perception of each narrative became increasingly detailed as it was broken down into to little chunks of a few sentences.

Using a spreadsheet is a logical way of dealing with a complex narrative. Having examined the transcripts in this way I felt I had become over occupied with detail and needed to view the data in a different way.  I now wanted to be a removed and immersed listener to the whole story of the narrative. To listen to it in the same way I would a radio play. Sea kayaking from point to point on open sea can involve hours of rhythmic repetitive movement with very little distraction, in gentle sea conditions it is immensely calming and meditative and promotes a great state of mind for reflection. I transferred two interview recordings to my phone, put it in a waterproof phone case put my headphones on and set off for a gentle sea kayak trip with a GoPro mounted on deck so I could shout out any notes I wanted to make. 

Listening to students talking in this way did help me at least feel like I was more able to mentally step inside their skin and walk around in their existence as promoted by Harper Lee via Atticus. P4 opens by discussing why she chose the course, it is immediately apparent that the phrase: 'family comes first' was a high level governing factor and that when this participant was looking for a course she was looking for a 'manageable course’ in order to achieve hear family first ideal. Analysis of the whole transcript via spreadsheet shows that for this participant the underlying affective driver remained 'family first'. Listening to the whole of the narrative while kayaking it clear that in every instance P4 considers the manageability of the experience. Literature based research and use of technologies is not perceived as relavant to career needs so there was no attempt to excel in these areas but there was care to ensure an adequate pass. The participant had set clear parameters in order to fit study to life without significantly compromising the life experience for those around her. Her strategy for achieving this was to create a detailed individual learning plan and to modify it regularly to track progression. The more detail she put into the ILP the more useful it became and the more confident she felt in respect of her ability to be flexible. 

Floating Office

The 'floating office analysis' approach was developed as an element in the methods I am using to analyse recordings of narrative interviews with HE students. It is the 'Revisit audio' stage below that was carried out at sea.


Overall Process

Carry out the interview via Skype or Phone.

Listen and Transcribe.

Listen and annotate.

Break down text into small meaningful units and paste into spreadsheet rows

Develop codes using colour tags and identify themes.

Reassemble rows from individual spreadsheets onto 'theme sheets' to organise a synthesis of themes across participants.

Revisit audio, listen at whole story level to check for possible misinterpretation and any missed aspects. This is a checking stage during which I wanted to re-engage with the whole story of each narrative by listening to recordings in the same immersive way I would listen to a radio play.

Revisit spreadsheet analysis and augment with comments from this vocalised analysis.

Experience

I transferred two 1 hour interview recordings to my phone, put it in a waterproof phone case put my headphones on and set off for a gentle sea kayak trip. Recording comments on the GoPro worked reasonably well in practice, battery life is over 4 hours so it was running continuously. Wind noise was low although I had to speak loudly for my voice to register through the waterproof casing. Operating the phone with wet hands wasn't feasible so I listened without pause and rewind /replay.

Standing on the beach ready to set off I felt almost like this was skiving, that this might be an excuse to go and play rather than to study. I felt a sense of guilt despite being aware that this was a planned step on my journey and that there are many good reasons why it is important to escape the traditional office. Doctoral study is well known for being stressful, it is a high stakes process that is reliant on surviving a viva, failure can potentially mean 4-6 years of intensive effort leads to no qualification. Preserving personal well-being throughout this time is important. I feel totally at home on water, and being in or on the sea has pretty much been a lifetime addiction, I feel connected and relaxed in this environment, in calm seas it is a meditative experience, in rougher seas it gets the adrenaline flowing and is a joyful experience. This day was relatively calm and ideal for my purpose.

As I paddled along listening to my interview recordings I felt more connected to them than when I was transcribing. It was very much like listening to a radio play, it also reminded me of watching TV with people who are into watching sport. I found myself verbalising commentary in the way they do although I was not shouting at the ref or the players but I was expressing my empathy with some comments and being a little critical of others.

There were times when i would have liked to pause - rewind - re-listen to some bits but that was not particularly practical. The emphasis and the weaving of themes throughout the narrative became clearer on this listening. The extract below is the opening words of one interview with a graduate whose first language is not English. The strength of her emphasis seemed clearer, the theme of prioritising her role of being a mother to four young children was apparent on my spreadsheet but after this listening I added words like 'firm' and 'strong' to better indicate the depth of the emphasis. It felt like she had revisited the prioritising of being a mother repeatedly during the whole of the interview in order to ensure I picked it up and to convey clearly why she had made certain decisions during her study.

"For me, being that I am also a mother of children, and also part time working it was very important for me that I could do it online as opposed go into uni...[pause] That was the main reason for me to choose the course…[ 4 sec pause] for me it was ‘always mother first.’ [firm conviction] so that was the main reason at outset - it was manageable. [strong emphasis] ."

The message that rang out during this listening was that the participant had set clear parameters in order to manage her study along with life and work commitments without significantly compromising the life experience for those around her. Her strategy for achieving this was to create a detailed individual learning plan and to modify it regularly to track progression. The more detail she put into the ILP the more useful it became and the more confident she felt in respect of her ability to be flexible.

Below is an edited extract from my third cycle of inquiry into analysing audio recordings of interviews while doing one of my favourite activities. In the extract I am reflecting on the experience rather than the actual interview data. Unfortunately on the day I did not notice a splash on my camera casing - hence the blurred centre.

Notes on literature

I have only recently started to explore literature relating to the impact of stress on psychological and physiological well-being, some notes are included below:

Cells with shortened telomeres are likely to show increased cell senescence (cell ageing and loss of the ability to replicate) and/or apoptosis (programmed cell death). This increases the risk of cardiovascular disease, vascular dementia and degenerative conditions such as osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, diabetes and other lifestyle diseases with the potential to develop chronic states likely to provoke early mortality. Hezel, Bardeesy and Maser (2005) link positive states of mind to increases in telomere maintenance and the healthy functioning of eukaryotic chromosomes.

In 2013 White, Alcock, Wheeler and Depledge carried out a panel survey in an attempt to counter potential weaknesses (Wheeler et al., 2012) by analysing self-reported health from individuals who have lived at varying distances from the coast in England. This data is longitudinal in structure but still had inherent weaknesses; however, it does include people who have and have not lived at varying distances from the coast during the period of study so enables consideration of other factors such as changes in employment status. In-line with findings from Wheeler et al. (2012) this study also found that individuals reported better health in years when they lived within 5 km of the coast. The effect was marginal in the sense that beyond the 5km proximity band there was little additional impact no matter how much further from the coast individuals lived.

The authors acknowledge a potential benefit relationship and point out that further research is needed. These studies were based on self-reported perceptions of health, it would be interesting to carry out a longitudinal study based on medical health records to compare with perceived health although perceptions of benefit could be considered as relating to the well reported placebo effect in that if perceived benefit is part of a belief system it may have physiological and psychological impact regardless of the inherent properties of the source of that benefit.

Hartig et al. (2003) identified that regular access to restorative natural environments can interrupt processes that reduce health and well-being. In 2004 the Chief Medical Officer in England identified that regular exercise of a minimum of 5 periods per week has a similar impact to treating moderate depression with antidepressant drugs. The physiological processes underpinning these changes are discussed by Epel, et al. (2009) and Epel (2009) who show that telomere shortening is linked to chronic stress exposure and depression. Telomeres are protective nucleoprotein structures which are located on projections present on eukaryotic chromosomes.




Free radicals (red) and a mitochondria - these were once free living organisms that now live within our own cells in an endosymbiotic relationship.




Psychological stress causes excessive release of free radicals which leads to an imbalance against available antioxidant defences. This ‘oxidative stress’ damages telomeres.

Mitchell and Popham (2008) discuss how contact with natural environments can reduce stress and blood pressure and that people living near natural green spaces are likely to have less health problems, and to live longer, than those living in highly urbanised environments. Depledge and Bird (2009) highlight that: “less than half of all men and a third of all women are active enough to support good health, creating additional vulnerability to cancers, heart disease, stroke and, mental and physical disability.” they also point out that both coastal areas and inland water bodies are particularly effective in stimulating people to be more active and that regular contact with natural environments improves health in particular mental illness such as depression and lifestyle diseases associated with obesity. The Natural England (2011) survey generated data that indicated that visits to the coast were more effective in generating stress-reducing, positive emotions than visits to natural or man-made green spaces, this is reinforced by Ashbullby et al. (2013) who point out that a strong body of evidence is emerging that blue spaces can be particularly beneficial for psychological wellbeing.

Wheeler et al. (2012) analysed 2001 census data and reported an “apparent gradient of increasing self-reported good health with proximity to the coast in England”. They also noted the effect possibly being strong enough to mitigate negative health effects due to low socio-economic status. The sample size was large; however, they note that despite a relatively limited evidence base acknowledgement of the effect in health policies is growing. Shortcomings include the fact that the data cannot acknowledge potential effects due to migration of richer and healthier people to coastal areas; however, they point out that the coast - health association appears to be greater in deprived areas.





References

Ashbullby, K. J., Pahl, S., Webley, P. and White, M. P., 2013 The beach as a setting for families’ health promotion: A qualitative study with parents and children living in coastal regions in Southwest England, Health and Place, September 2013, Vol.23, pp.138-147

Chief Medical Officer, 2004. At Least 5 a Week: Evidence on the Impact of Physical Activity and its Relationship to Health. HMSO.

Depledge, M. and Bird, W., 2009. The blue gym: health and well-being from our coasts Marine Pollution Bulletin 58, 947–948

Hartig, T., Evans, G.W., Jamner, L.D., Davis,D.S. and Gärling, T. 2003. Tracking restoration in natural and urban field settings Journal of Environmental Psychology. Vol.23(2), pp.109-123

Epel, E.S., 2009. Psychological and metabolic stress: a recipe for accelerated cellular aging? Hormones 8: pp 7–22.

Epel E., Daubenmier J., Moskowitz, J.T., Folkman S. and Blackburn, E. Can meditation slow rate of cellular aging? Cognitive stress, mindfulness, and telomeres. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 2009;1172: pp 34-53.

Hartig, T., Evans, G.W., Jamner, L.D., Davis,D.S. and Gärling, T. 2003. Tracking restoration in natural and urban field settings Journal of Environmental Psychology. Vol.23(2), pp.109-123

Hezel, Aram F., Bardeesy, Nabeel., Maser, Richard S., 2005. Telomere Induced Senescence: End Game Signaling. Current Molecular Medicine, Volume 5, Number 2, pp. 145-152(8) Bentham Science Publishers

Mitchell, R., and Popham, F. 2008. Effect of exposure to natural environment on health inequalities: an observational population study. Lancet 372: pp 1655-1660

Natural England, 2011. Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment. Annual Report from the 2010–11 Survey. Natural England, Sheffield.

Wheeler, B. W., White, M., Stahl-Timmins, W. and Depledge W.H., 2012. Does living by the coast improve health and wellbeing? Health & Place 18 1198–1201 Elsevier

White, M. P., Alcock, I., Wheeler, B. W. and Depledge, M. H. 2013. Coastal proximity, health and well-being: Results from a longitudinal panel survey. Health & Place 23 pp. 97–103 Elsevier.

White, M. P., Smith, A., Humphryes, K., Pahl, S., Snelling, D. and Depledge, M. 2010. Blue space: The importance of water for preference, affect, and restorativeness ratings of natural and built scenes. Journal of Environmental Psychology 30 pp. 482 - 493 Elsevier

BA LTR Major Project titles

Recent major project titles implemented by BA Learning Technology and Research students

Action Inquiry 

An action inquiry into how my practice can be changed to provide more effective support for an autistic child with limited speech capabilities in social interactions. (Learning Support Assistant).

An action inquiry to determine if my practice can be enhanced by the implementation of differentiation to my Work Skills lessons. (Cover Supervisor).

An action inquiry to improve ICT support across a school federation. (ITNetwork
Manager).

An action inquiry into how to improve a middle school website. (TA).

An action inquiry into improving interventions for children with SEN in the primary school setting.

An action inquiry to improve communication in a complex needs classroom. 

An action inquiry to improve the use of email in a university department. 

An action inquiry into improving the delivery of interventions for children with SEN in a school setting.

An action inquiry into how to improve a middle school website. (IT coordinator)

An investigation into improving my time management and organisation skills. (Teaching Assistant, special school).

An action inquiry to develop lesson introductions in a primary school. (Higher Level Teaching Assistant).

Improving how I contribute to training opportunities for coaching staff within my organisation. (Football Development Officer).

An action inquiry into how the development of an online location for shared knowledge can improve the management of University accommodation. (Residence and Accommodation Officer).

An investigation into improving my time management and planning skills. (Dual role Verbal Behaviour therapist/Teaching Assistant).

How can I improve my teaching skills through improving my communication skills? (Teaching assistant - secondary school).

An Action Inquiry to Develop the use of the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) in a Primary School. (ICT leader, unqualified teacher).

Literature based studies
Literature review: outdoor play in Early Years education. 

Literature review: the effects of male teachers in a primary school setting and how this can have both a positive and negative effect on achievement in both boys and girls.

Literature review: The outdoor environment as a facilitator in expanding young children’s capacity for learning. 

Literature review: The effect of male teachers in primary schools on the achievement of boys.

  

Literature review: Traveller and Gypsy Children: education and inclusion.

Literature review: Is there a consensus as to the value of identifying learning styles in helping children learn at a special school?. (Teaching Assistant, KS3). 

Evaluative studies

A case study of the effectiveness of mobile technology to support teaching and learning. (ICT coordinator, primary school).

A case study of personal experience in Work Based Learning. (Receptionist for an accountancy firm).

A case study in music education. (Peripatetic music teacher). 

A case study of the use of technology for teaching in a secondary school. 

  

A case study of good practice in collaborative working between a teacher and support assistant within a primary school.

A review of literature on the impact of technology use on learning in the classroom.

A case study of how effectively iPads are used by staff and students to support teaching and learning in a school federation.

A case study evaluating the benefits of an organisational merger to create a single delivery unit within a central Government department. (Civil Servant).

A case study to investigate collaborative working between a teacher and a learning support worker. (HLTA).

A case study of the techniques used to devise a curriculum plan for the subject of Information and Communications Technology.

Case study: Professional Development for a Higher Level Teaching Assistants in a Special School.

A case study of Assessment for Learning within an infant school. (HLTA).

An evaluative case study of approaches to Information, Advice and Guidance in post 16 apprenticeship programmes.

An evaluative case study of the Using & Applying strand of Key Stage 1 Mathematics.

Case Study Investigation into how effectively mobile devices are used by staff in the Education Village Academy Trust to support teaching and learning.

Research into the theory of middle child syndrome and a case study of real experiences of being a middle child and how these experiences relate to issues identified in the literature. (Family-based study by a mother). 

An evaluative case study of access to online homework within a primary school. 

A case study of the techniques used to devise a curriculum plan for the subject of Information and Communications Technology.

An evaluative case study of the Using & Applying strand of Key Stage 1 Mathematics. 

An evaluative case study of assessment for learning strategies in a primary school. (Deputy Manager). 

Case study: Professional Development for Higher Level Teaching Assistants in a Special School. 

A case study of Assessment for Learning within an infant school.

A case study to evaluate staff attitudes and levels of engagement following the reorganisation of delivery functions in the DfE Academies Group (DfE civil Servant).

An evaluative study of the development of an app for PE teachers.

An evaluation of the use of visual cues in a primary school setting. 

An evaluative study of strategies to combat bullying in a school.

An Evaluative Study of IT service delivery in my department. (IT specialist, car manufacturing company).

An evaluative study of learning through play and storytelling to develop children’s literacy skills. 

An evaluative study of the design, development and use of a self-evaluation resource to promote appropriate behaviour in an Early Years setting. 

  

An evaluative study of the importance of creativity and creative learning in an Early Years setting.

An evaluative case study of approaches to Information, Advice, and Guidance in post 16 apprenticeship programmes.

An evaluative case study of access to online homework within a primary school.

An evaluative study of the advantages and practicality of server virtualisation for a modern secondary college. (ICT Co-ordinator).

An evaluative study of teaching logic skills within the computing curriculum. (IT technician, secondary school).

Uncertain journeys

Just some ramblings organising my thoughts about who I have been and where cybernetics fits into my life. 

I had heard Brian Eno via Roxy Music and Seen Robert Fripp play with King Crimson so when, on December 18th, 1973, John Peel played  the whole of  No Pussyfooting I was  both surprised and transfixed. I went out and bought the album the next day, the cover was fascinating but the music was familiarish but not what I expected. It was many years before I discovered the tape in the Peel session was an alternative version and had been played backwards, something that still feels like an entirely appropriate accident given the experimental nature of this kind of music. The structure and feeling of a sense of evolution drew me in and affected all my own music making ever since. 

Over the last decade my interest in management cybernetics has grown and has now become the focus of my EdD journey which I am two years into at the moment. I don't usually follow celebrities or music makers in Twitter but recently saw a retweet of a post by Brian that included an image of one of Stafford Beer's books, following him has been interesting, yesterday's post hit a chord with music making, gardening and storytelling. A link and an extract from the article that resonated is included below. 

http://www.moredarkthanshark.org/eno_int_edge-nov11.html

"Of course, I was also familiar with Cage and his use of randomness, and new ways of making musical decisions. Or not making them. What fascinated me about these kinds of music was that they really completely moved away from that old idea of how a composer worked. It was quite clear with these pieces, for example In C, that the composer didn't have a picture of the finished piece in his head when he started. What the composer had was a kind of menu, a packet of seeds, you might say. And those musical seeds, once planted, turned into the piece. And they turned into a different version of that piece every time.

So for me, this was really a new paradigm of composing. Changing the idea of the composer from somebody who stood at the top of a process and dictated precisely how it was carried out, to somebody who stood at the bottom of a process who carefully planted some rather well-selected seeds, hopefully, and watched them turn into something. Now, I was sort of looking for support for that idea. The term 'bottom-up' hadn't come into existence then. Chaos theory, complexity theory, so on, they didn't exist. I don't even think we had catastrophe theory then.

What we did have, though, was cybernetics. And I became very interested in the work of a cybernetician called Stafford Beer. In fact, I became friends with him, ultimately. Stafford had written a book called Brain Of The Firm: The Managerial Cybernetics Of Organisation, which came out, I think, in '72 or '73. And it was a very exciting book because it was essentially about this idea, again, unspoken at the time, of bottom-up organisation, of things growing from the bottom and turning into things of greater complexity."

What resonated was my approach to storytelling in particular bedtime stories with my children. I had two in the 80s and two more in the early 2000s. So many children's stories seem to have a predetermined plot, fairy tales  and folk stories in particular. That is to be expected when moral or risk lessons are part of the reason for the stories. The earliest bedtime story I can remember being told is one that I asked for again and again and according to my parents I usually fell asleep a few minutes into. I had been asked which story I wanted but instead of asking for a story from one of my books I asked for one about a boy and a train. It started with a boy waiting on a platform, then a resplendent green steam train appeared in the distance, eventually stopped at the station and I usually fell asleep as the boy climbed on board. In my memory i was not asleep I was heading off on all sorts of adventures. That notion of  "...the composer didn't have a picture of the finished piece in his head when he started." was right there in that story and can be traced in many aspects of my life. Long walks with neither map nor compass nor end point, kayak trips from when I was 9 that did have to end where they started but were wandering aimless journeys subject to the randomness of the sea and guided by the patterns on its surface, a refusal to learn to play songs but a love of creating sound journeys. An absolute belief from an early age that no sensible intelligent deity could have designed this world and all that is inn it and around it.

 I have always done free form stories for all of my children, I love the solo and co-constructed journey into the unknown. Some themes lasted years and most started with a "What shall we have a story about tonight?" 

Ants! said Callum, Billy ants! said Rowan and so the three billy ands gruff story started and kept going intermittently over 9 years.
A few years later a bear, a squirrel and a pizza led to stories about Luigi and his two helpers who made a fortune selling pizza in the early 1900s and moved to N. America where they bought a load of land out on the frontiers, went for a primitive life, made friends with wolves and many wild critters, brought a railroad to the nearest town, funded a hospital, an airfield and had adventures in darkest Africa and all sorts of things over the next few years.

Stories like those are of the moment, I always meant to record some live but never did. I have made a few notes to remind me of key players and landscapes but shied away from writing them down. I think the reason for that is partly that I might be tempted to 'improve' the originals and in so doing lose some of the essence. This brings me to my relationship with three key strands in my EdD.

Action Science...define 

Viable Systems Analysis, a process rooted in cybernetic principles but that assesses the distribution of variety in a system with the aim of making it more efficient. 

pattern language...define a system and catalyse future thought 

Influences on the student experience

Figure 1.  Draft conceptualisation of influences on the learning experience of work focused learners. Adapted from: Entwistle and Peterson (2004, fig. 3, p.421).

Recent graduates from the BA LTR course will firstly be interviewed via a narrative interview approach, the diagram will be developed further in the light of the analysis of that data.

Narrative interview underpinned by grounded theory.

Phase 1 open invite to: Tell me about your experience...

Phase 2 gap filling based on theory developed during phase 1.

Interpretation and Clarification – a reflexive feedback loop; checking my interpretation with each interviewee and gathering additional data. The analysis of individual interviews will be shared with the interviewee in order to provide the opportunity to comment on my interpretation and to withdraw any information should they wish to do so. This conversational feedback loop operates as a clarification progress (Northcut and McCoy, 2004, p.94) it aims to increase the reliability of my interpretation. This meeting will also be used for a short extension interview as a ‘gap filling’ activity. Prior to this meeting students will be provided with a link to the updated version of this diagram as a stimulus for participants to add supplemental thoughts.  

References

Entwistle, N. J. and Peterson E. R., 2004. Conceptions of learning and knowledge in higher education: Relationships with study behaviour and influences of learning environments. International Journal of Educational Research, vol. 41, pp.407-428. Elsevier.

Northcut and McCoy, 2004. Interactive Qualitative Analysis: A Systems Method for Qualitative Research. London. Sage Publications Ltd.

Social media and CPD

I was invited to spend a few months working on the #LTHEchat organising team early in Spring this year, if you have not yet joined one of the Wednesday evening chats you might find this information about the project useful.

Once fairly sceptical about the value of Twitter chats the experience has had an increasing impact on me during and beyond my time on the organising team. I don't really feel like I left I still feel part of the project team and I think that is partly due to the open and warm attitude of Sue and Chrissi who have been making this happen but do not take ownership in the traditional way - it is a thing that runs and runs with a different organising team every few months with minimal management by Sue and Chrissi who are keen to see it sustain but also keen to let others evolve it during their time at the helm - a great example of distributing and sharing ownership.

Some of the organising team, past and present, have been working on a short paper for the #SocMedHE16 The Empowered Learner? Conference on16th December 2016. We are due to have a Skype meeting this afternoon to discuss the peer review revisions and make some progress on revising the paper by collaborative writing in Google docs hence I woke in reflective mode this morning and need to put my thoughts down on e-paper to bring some coherence to them.

#LTHEchat has undeniably extended my professional network, one example of that is new contact between myself and Martina we were both in the 08 June LTHE chat which was on open CPD  The Storify of that chat can be found here. Martina read my latest ramblings on my blog and suggested we meet to discuss our research ideas. I had read Martina's profile and was contemplating making contact when she suggested this - we planned to meet in Skype and had a fascinating discussion about approaches to learning, in particular Deleuze and rhizomatic learning. Our  meeting prompted me to rethink about the nature of CPD - a question that is at the heart of the paper we are working on.

 I put this question to Martina in Skype this morning - 'Are we doing networking, are we doing autonomous CPD, are we disseminating and evaluating our research ideas - are we doing all three?'.

In my opinion CPD does not need to be a formal 'training', 'conference' or 'seminar' type event, it can be any opportunity to learn new information or to gain insights into others ideas that are of value to my professional practice and research activity. Twitter is currently my most important portal to CPD opportunities.

There is plenty of evidence that participants value the LTHE chat but in Twitter the limited characters are also a limit on how much info people feedback.

 Unless you use Twitter a lot the tiny micro snippets of participation can seem a bit limiting but that can also be stimulating too - gathering feedback via questionnaires is notorious for low returns, the task can be onerous whereas a quick tweet takes only moments to do.

When I first started using Twitter I was not impressed, aware of the need to immerse in, and play with, new things before value becomes clear I persevered but it was not until I had sent around 700 tweets / retweets that it really started to feel like a homey and valuable experience. Tweets do limit what can be said, OK you can link a series of Tweets to build a paragraph of contribution but it is still a set of bytes of info. The micro nature of contributions are also empowering as they force succinct and concise conversations, I now find that most times I rattle off a Tweet I am within a few characters of the limit by the time I have said what I want to say. I am looking forward to the day when Twitter start excluding links and images from the character count though as that does currently reduce some tweets to just a few words.

I had participated in a few chats, such as the #Edenchat prior to joining the LTHE organising team  but mostly as what Wenger called a 'lurker' or legitimate peripheral participant'. The micro contributions tend to prompt a rapid fire discussion, can be hard to keep up with and often require an intuitive interpretation of input in a way that sometimes feels not unlike when I was learning Spanish and to gain the fuller meaning had to fill in beyond the few words of each sentence that I could decode in a f2f conversation. If I pause to think about and write a contribution 30 or more posts can be added by time my two-penneth makes it to the chat but the Storify is always available afterwards so I can catch up later.

 I can see how it could be difficult convincing a peer reviewer who is not a Tweeter that such comments as the one from David above are sufficient endorsement of the value of what we do but to a Twitter user that kind of post is a strong endorsement.

This post has focused mostly on Twitter but my reason for writing it was also to help me understand why I blog - who am I writing for? My first attempt at blogging was way back when WordPress was first released when Stephen Powell and Pete Bradshaw and I had a little play with the new thing that was interesting but did not go far. My second and third blogs were about my transition to living in Galicia and that made more sense to me - it was a record of a period in my family's history.

This blog was started as a reflective research journal, I had attempted to create an offline private to me research journal long ago but never managed to sustain it. Myself as audience did not seem of much value, after all research has little value unless shared. Some of my posts have been directly addressed to my students so its purpose evolved but they were still also me articulating things I had found out through inquiry based practice. I have not looked too far into my audience but do notice spikes where usually around 60-120 hits across America or Europe or the far East happen in maybe 30 minutes which suggests people somewhere are pointing students at it. That initially tempted me to develop it for an audience but I decided to keep it as a research journal so I would not lose sight of my aims. As such I feel free to ramble my thoughts as I am doing in this post, that helps me consolidate them without feeling I need to formalise structure as for a journal article.

The first online community I belonged to was the OU PGCE course back in 1996 which was a closed community, then I joined Leonie Ramondt's 'Online Learning Network' community which was her MPhil research focus. That led to an invite to join the Ultralab where most of my first forays into designing and facilitating online community work was in closed communities. The diagram below is from a recent presentation about the Talking Heads / NPQH project run by The Ultralab for the National College of School Leadership. A double click on the next two images should open them in original and sharp size.

CPD for existing and new headteachers was at the heart of that project which was way back 2001/2 when open social media was not a big thing. The importance of knowing the audience was felt to be high at that time partly to give users confidence to contribute and also as protection when potentially sensitive info might be discussed. The CPD communities were carefully structured and facilitated.

That was so different to the open CPD that social media provides via blogs, Tweets, video talks, live streams etc. One of the threads in the LTHEchat on open CPD shows the value of closed is still appreciated. A few posts are shown below the whole can be seen in the Storify linked earlier on this page. There were more than a few posts about the positive aspects of open although only one is shown here.

The last one by Martina is exactly what we found in the Talking heads project and in several other Ultralab projects such as the British Thoracic society SpRIte project, the notschool project and the Ultraversity project although the latter does draw on both closed and open communities of practice. 

So back to what to do to respond to the peer review on our paper proposal. IMO we need a more systematic approach such as an analysis with an a priori coding being applied to understand the chat process and what participants get out of it or we could use a process where chat organisers reflect on their own experiences and then we systematically analyse those reflections. In both approaches the use of theoretical deduction to understand empirical data and derive some themes that could be illustrated by tweet chat extracts in the paper would add rigour to out proposal. I also suggest an extract of a video screen capture of a live chat as a means of conveying the experience to the conference audience.

Time to stop rambling, I have to get on with teaching. Even though there is no conclusion to pull this together yet I feel I am more prepared for inputting ideas into the paper proposal.