PhD Blog (dot) Net

Last Friday, I presented at the Challenging the Binaries conference hosted by the Centre for the Study of Literacies at the School of Education, University of Sheffield. It was friendly and engaging, with some excellent keynote presentations and subsequent debate facilitated by Neil Selwyn. Discussions focussed a lot on how the ‘new’ and the ‘digital’ are conceptualised within literacies studies, and – coming from outside this field – I found some of the approaches to researching digital technologies both refreshing and challenging. There is, I think, potential for greater dialogue between the literacies and educational technology fields around social media and digital practices. Thanks again to those who came to my session and contributed to the discussion. Here are the presentation and notes.

1. Introduction

Drawing on my own research into how PhD students are using social and participatory media.

Research question related to identity production and agency within doctoral education.

• Theoretical aspects of identity – key themes from postmodernist and sociocultural perspectives
• Methodological and analytical aspects of my research
• Some key findings

2. Theorising / Conceptualising Digital Identity

The concept of digital identity is primarily a socio­technical construct that has evolved through a number of theoretical perspectives.

Digital or online identity generally understood as the representation of a persona that an individual presents across the digital environments in which he or she participates.

General Westernised notion of identity as a coherent, unified subject – maturation is conceptualised as establishing a consistent identity.

Digital identity is seen as multiphrenic (Gergan, 2000) – identity created through multiple subjectivities, but also performed and presented across multiple media / formats / genres.

Emergent contributions from the sociological and sociocultural literature – combining personal subjectivities with cultural forms and social relations.

3. Doctoral Contexts

Consensus that doing a PhD is not just acquiring specialised knowledge and skills, and making an original contribution to knowledge.

But constitutes a critical and transformation of identity – often the most transformative period of an academic’s professional life.

Kamler and Thomson (2006) – writing constitutes principal role of performativity in establishing scholarly identity – literature review reconceptualised as a key site of identity work.

Proposing social media as increasingly important sites for doctoral identity work.

Requires holistic approaches to develop authentic representations of ‘doing a PhD’:

• Include academic practices beyond those related purely to thesis-development.
• Challenge models of socialisation and enculturation exclusively within localised or disciplinary settings.

4. Usher Framework

Identity represents a hugely complex theoretical field – from psychology, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies.

Usher, Bryant and Johnson – Postmodernist educational perspective.

Schema of experiential learning – distinct social practices in the context of lifelong learning.

5. Confessional and Critical Practice

Two generally opposing social practices:

Confessional practice

Draws on Foucault’s notion of the ‘confession’ – as rituals in power relationships.

The learner is:

• Disempowered in accepting the dominant (often solitary) model of learning.
• Required to align her subjectivities with formal educational discourses.

Within digital environment:

• Pedagogies are based on rhetoric of the ‘self’ – manifest in professional profiling, portfolio development, self-branding.
• Reinforces educational binaries of formal and informal, and professional binaries of work-based and recreational activities.

Critical practice

• The learner is a politically constituted agent able to shape her own learning.
• Resonates with critical pedagogy – politics of self-representation.
• Rather than adapting to specific learning contexts – these are challenged and potentially changed through discursive practices.
• Partly played out in the digital environment.

6. Sociocultural Perspectives

Reified forms of perfomativity – social production, interaction and participation.

Identity development as a competency.

Provisional Selves – external feedback and internal beliefs – prioritise and value different activities and roles

Students assess their capacity to enact the behaviours associated with them before taking on the identity associated with that role. In effect, envisioning imagined possible or ‘provisional selves.’

Implications for socialisation and enculturation within norms and values.

Situated learning perspective – identity development is constitutive to the increased capacity to participate in multiple communities of practice

7. Figured World

Socioculturalist / postmodernist theoretical view of identity as distributed, constantly forming multiple, sometimes contradictory, selves.

Holland et al reconceptualise this as active participation in specific environments they call ‘figured worlds.’

8. Research Design

Highly qualitative, mixed-method design

Open coding and ‘thick description’

Consecutive interviews spaced at 3/4-monthly intervals – interpreting and refining participants’ perspectives.

Chose NOT to use Activity Theory notation (i.e. triangular model) – so not to compromise ‘authenticity’ of participants’ own terminology and meaning making processes.

9. Analytical Framework

Activity Theory

• Social, cultural and historical perspective of doctoral practices
• Culturally-mediated, object-oriented activity systems
• Objects are emergent and partly shared, fragmented and contested

Activity Systems

• Development of cultural artefacts
• Figured worlds and genre knowledge

Analytical framework of interrelated activity systems – to describe shifting patterns of digitally mediated doctoral practices across multiple practice contexts and through key transitional phases of doctoral study

At operational level – objects as ‘problem spaces’ equate to interrelated doctoral practices.

Focus on development of contradictions and cultural artefacts.

10. Genres

Socio-cultural fork of Genre Studies (e.g. Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1993).

Traditions of using tools rather than artefact categorisation.

Conceptual fit with activity theory.

Development of ‘genre knowledge’ – social and dialogical process.

11. Figured Worlds

Identities are improvised:

• within specific social / cultural situations
• based on past experiences (history-in-person)
• using the cultural resources available
• in response to the subject positions

In appropriating these improvisations as heuristics they can become tools of agency and identity construction.

Figured worlds enable cultural artefact development by providing the social and cultural contexts.

12/13. Some Findings

The PhD student is characterised as negotiating multiple, wide-ranging, and potentially conflicting practice contexts.

Developing strategies across multiple contexts and sites of identity production provides PhD students with opportunities for effectively positioning themselves in sites of knowledge, resources, opportunities and influence.

Sophisticated negotiation of identity and roles – “playing the game.”

Doctoral identity construction and agency:

• Within and across multiple practice contexts
• Within and outside of formal institutional and disciplinary boundaries

Social media practices within and across figured worlds increase ‘authenticity.’

Diverse interrelated doctoral research cultures – (inter)disciplinary, supervisory, departmental, peer group, entrepreneurial, industry and third sector relations.

Use of social media provides spaces of authorship (Bahktin) provide opportunities for empowering and potentially disempowering this process.

14. Digital Literacies

Implications to digital literacies.

Digital literacies – highly contested term.

Beyond cognitive / functional use of digital technologies and related skills / competencies.

Towards holistic understanding of creative and critical uses of digital technologies, and social and cultural settings.

Digital identity equates to ‘ways of being’ in the digital environment

Navigating increasingly complex interdisciplinary and interrelated practice contexts.

Genre knowledge – compare with multimodal literacy (Gunther Kress etc.).

Contribution to a deeper and more nuance understanding of digital literacies – within the contexts of research practices and doctoral education.

I mentioned Scrivener in a recent post. It would appear that this word-processing and file management desktop programme – specifically developed by Literature and Latte for writers – is becoming increasingly adopted by academics. There are other, more comprehensive accounts of using Scrivener on the web, such as here. But as a relatively new Scrivener user, here are some thoughts on my ongoing experience of using it in drafting my thesis.

Getting Started

Using Scrivener effectively requires a shift in thinking from traditional word processing programmes and practices. I tend to find the best way to learn new software is to dive straight in with a ‘real-life’ project. I found undertaking a 5,000-words conference paper ideal to familiarise myself with key Scrivener features and to start developing my own quirks. I’ve continued to use it for similar small-scale writing projects.

Scalability

Subsequently, in transferring my working thesis texts to Scrivener, I considered creating a separate project file for each individual chapter, and there are probably clever ways of linking / coordinating across projects that I have yet to explore. But I’ve found it more effective to develop the whole thesis within one project file, despite its obvious size. This enables easy transference or cross-referencing of texts across chapters and sections when required. Usefully, expandable / collapsible folders in the Binder (Scrivener’s side menu) allows quick viewing and access to all texts.

Chunkification

For me, the best way to go about using Scrivener is to think of texts in the form of ‘chunks.’ I think the most powerful feature of Scrivener is how it supports granularity in the writing process. It allows you to create, organise, aggregate and separate multiple texts of any size quickly and effectively within larger composite files and folders.

Files and Folders

The ability to change a file into a folder (and vice versa) is one of those features you don’t really ‘get’ at first. But after a while, I found it an instinctive process as texts are collated, merged and expanded as described above. For example, it may be useful to keep several text files in a folder during the editing process. Once you are happy with the arrangement of the collective texts, the folder can be changed into a single, more easily manageable file.

Formatting

I have to admit I’m a bit of a control freak when it comes to formatting. On the one hand, I love the minimalist look and feel of an unformatted writing environment – I often use Notepad or TextEdit for quick writing tasks. Then, on the other hand, when I require formatting, I want to be able to set up and apply my own style preferences easily and efficiently. Scrivener appears to satisfy both these needs fairly well.

Viewing Options

In the main document view, all the files within a folder can be viewed sequentially, as a composite text. I’ve therefore found it useful to insert the title (appropriately formatted in the style I want) at the top of each folder / file to distinguish them. I also use the split screen feature quite often now. It enables two texts files to be viewed alongside each other (vertically or horizontally). This is particularly useful for cross-referencing texts, or when transferring bits of text from one to the other. The in-built full-screen option (Compose) provides an uncluttered view of the document view. Though it’s not something I’ve really used much, I can see how some will be attracted to this Zen-like writing environment.

Note Taking

I’m still a bit ‘old skool’ when it comes to annotating texts – colour coding and highlighting texts directly to indicate different notations of work-in-progress – but Scrivener supports a number of note taking and tagging features that I may adopt in the future. I’ve also yet to use the ‘Corkboard’ view for indexing specific files and folders.

Supplementary Material

The Scrivener set-up encourages the inclusion of ‘supplementary’ material, such as other imported texts, PDFs and images etc. within project files (it has a default Binder folder called ‘Research’). I’ve found this a useful approach when writing papers, but I’ve decided to keep all support material separate for my thesis to keep it reasonably lightweight.

Summary

It is of course quite possible to write a thesis without Scrivener (as many do), and some of the ‘best practices’ I have discussed here can also be undertaken (to an extent) using more traditional word-processing platforms. Scrivener is not free but is relatively inexpensive, and, as a free trial version is available, I’d recommend at least taking a look. Though it was initially developed for a Mac (which I am using), a PC version is now also available.

There’s much more to Scrivener than the basics I’ve outlined here, and I may be blogging further thoughts once I become more familiar with it. I know of other users (particularly in #phdchat land) who could probably provide greater insight into its more advanced features and how they have adopted Scrivener in their own writing practices. The Scrivener website also provides a comprehensive set of tutorials.

I’ve just got back from the Losing Momentum doctoral students conference at the School of Education, University of Oxford. There was a good mix of student presentations alongside excellent keynotes from Neil Selwyn, Martin Oliver and Avril Loveless. Thanks to everyone at the Learning and New Technologies Research Group for hosting this event. This was my contribution:

Drawing particularly on Homo Academicus, Holland et al. (1998: 59) highlight the limitations of applying Bourdieu’s concept of ‘field’ to the analysis of day-to-day socio-cultural relations in academic practice, in comparison to their proposed ‘figured worlds’ as a heuristic for identity development:

“Had Bourdieu mediated his understanding through “figured world” instead of “field,” he would have told us more about the discourses of academia and the cultural constructions that constituted the familiar aspects of academic life: the taken-for-granted generic figures (professors, graduate students, undergraduates, provosts, secretaries) and their generic acts—both such formal tasks as giving tutorials, administering tests, firing, hiring, and granting degrees, and the less formal stories of tenure granted, tenure denied, and teaching responsibilities juggled against writing and scholarly research—as situated in a particular institution. He would have more closely detailed the terms of academic discourse—such as “quality,” “originality,” and “brilliance”—as ways in which academics come to evaluate their efforts, understand themselves, and interpret the positions they hold in the academy.”

Reference

Holland, D., Lachicotte, W. Jr., Skinner, D., & Cain, C. (1998). Identity and agency in cultural worlds. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

An interesting blog post by Jane Davis on self-esteem got me thinking. Drawing on William James’s assertion that “self-esteem is a function of both our achievements and our aspirations” (Burke & Stets, 2009: 24), Jane proposes that the loose ties of an online community can provide more effective means of supporting self-esteem. I find a lot of the post-Granovetter literature on weak / strong ties tend to focus on social capital. What Jane is discussing here is probably more interesting:

“I consider two Twitter communities to which I contribute (#rheumchat and #phdchat) and also participants in my own research. Both communities share the facility to support the understanding of achievements and aspirations within and across the community and thus provide supportive social structures through ‘patterns of action.’ Such structures do not resolve the immediate dilemma or circumstance of the participant but work to support esteem through the modulation, understanding and recognition of stages of achievement – however small or large.”

I’m not familiar with #rheumchat, but I would suggest the type of Twitter ‘communities’ she mentions here facilitate relatively shallow engagement between participants. This is not being derogatory, but merely recognises the limitations of the socio-technological relationships that such platforms can reasonably support. I suggested in a previous post that the most important aspect of peer support in these types of hashtag communities might be found in the phatic, empathic and socio-affective forms of conversation.

Jane does not indicate in her post how she might be assessing self-esteem in her research, but language is clearly important here. In any Twitter community such as #phdchat, the genre of conversation is reduced to the level of the ‘soundbite,’ requiring that participants employ largely generic academic / professional cultural references, which when discussing achievements and aspirations can be seen as serving an important role in supporting (or potentially damaging) self-esteem.

That said, the relationship between any given individual participants in this type of community / network needs to seen as dynamic – in that the nature of familiarisation and trust can change over time – and potentially multi-contextual – i.e. also existing outside that particular environment. Even within the 140-characters limit of a tweet, these factors can have considerable influence on the type of language employed. Think about how familiar, honest, polite or critical we choose to be when addressing each other on Twitter.

Jane points to the potential vulnerability of relying solely on close ties, suggesting, “such closely aligned supporters may not see the bigger picture.” To me, these ‘closely-aligned supporters’ (which I take to include partners, supervisors, immediate colleagues, ‘critical friends’ etc.) have a more invested relationship with the individual and her/his work. That’s not to say they shouldn’t be sensitive to the needs of supporting self-esteem, but in the routine ‘mechanics’ of their working relationship, these can easily get overlooked.

For me, writing papers and thesis chapters has become routinized in the interchange between screen and print. The digital environment is great for building and developing structures – I’ve found Scrivener particularly useful for this. But I often find reading printouts and correcting with a pen a more effective process for assessing and refining overall narratives, as well as spotting grammatical errors. One doesn’t necessarily follow the other: it’s rather a reciprocal process between the two media.

“…the learning technology community has raided other disciplines’ ‘toolboxes’ without always recognising the values and assumptions from which those tools have been developed.” (22)

Reference

Oliver, M., Roberts, G., Beetham, H., Ingraham, B., Dyke, M., & Levy, P. (2007). Knowledge, society and perspectives on learning technology. In G. Conole & M. Oliver (Eds.), Contemporary perspectives in e-learning research. London: Routledge. 21-37.

I’ve had my abstract accepted for Challenging the Binaries, the Centre for the Study of Literacies International Conference at the University of Sheffield on the 29th and 30th of June. The paper will expand on ideas I discussed in a previous blog post. My abstract is as follows:

Drawing on my research into how PhD students are using social and participatory media, I problematize binaries associated with online identity by adopting two generally opposing social practices from lifelong learning studies: the ‘confessional’ and the ‘critical’ (Usher et al., 1996).

In a confessional practice, the learner is disempowered in accepting the dominant (often solitary) model of learning, aligning her subjectivities with formal educational discourses to articulate her own learning needs. Corresponding pedagogies are based on rhetoric of the ‘self,’ and manifest in professional profiling and portfolio development (Tennant, 2009). Identity is seen as stable, developmental and coherent across spaces of productivity, reinforcing binaries of formal and informal, and work and recreation.

In a critical practice, identity is multiple, fluid and fragmentary. Rather than adapting to specific learning contexts, empowerment is authenticated through questioning, challenging and potentially changing them through discursive practices. The literature on critical pedagogies locates the politics of self-representation within the cultural processes of education, and sees the learner as a socially and politically constituted agent able to shape her identity construction.

Through developing authentic representations of ‘doing a PhD,’ framed within the transformative nature of the doctoral learning experience, I argue identity construction extends beyond activities associated with thesis development and models of socialisation, to incorporate student agency within and across multiple practice contexts, ranging from entrepreneurialism to student activism.

References

Tennant, M. (2009). Lifelong learning as a technology of the self. In K. Illeris, Contemporary theories of learning (pp. 147-158). London: Routledge.

Usher, R., Bryant, I., & Johnston, R. (1996). Adult education and the postmodern challenge: Learning beyond the limits. London: Routledge.

On Tuesday, I attended the funeral of Richard Laight, an ex-colleague from the University of Nottingham who became a close and valued friend. Given his sudden and unexpected death, it was a very sad occasion, but one which also celebrated a life that had blessed many. I was asked to read this fitting epitaph. Richard will be greatly missed.

An honest man here lies at rest …
The friend of man, the friend of truth;
The friend of Age, and guide of Youth:
Few hearts like his with virtue warm’d,
Few heads with knowledge so inform’d:
If there’s another world, he lives in bliss;
If there is none, he made the best of this.

Robert Burns | Epitaph on my own friend, and my father’s friend, William Muir in Tarbolton (1784)

I’m just off to the Engineering and Science Graduate Centre to run a social media training session for the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (Midlands and Oxford). Here’s the slides: