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Hi All,
Thank you very much for this interesting discussion !!It made me think in my situation and the developing of reflective skills with pregraduated students using Facebook. This is  a second opportunity because blogs did not worked the first time. Their reflections are short and emergent themes relate to feeelings and values from our classes. However ,I have to complement their facebook  posted ideas with interviews in order to get more from them. The Language students are always better on previous skills while Physical Education and Natural Sciences students struggle with the writting of reflections.Hence , from my point of view I have to deal with each one in particular because  it is difficult to generalize reflections  in groups.
Greetings, g.

Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2013 05:34:56 +0800
From: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Researching Our Own Practice
To: [log in to unmask]

Hi all

I have been reviewing a programme recently in which reflection and group process is part of the work. One person suggested, in my interview with her, that rather than each person always writing their own reflections, perhaps the group could commit to one person being the "raconteur" for the group's discussion on a specific day. That person's reflection could then be sent around the group, and if people had different reflections than what the raconteur had written, they could include these in their next individual reflection. This struck me as a useful process. It both reduced the (large) number of individual reflections that needed to be written and assessed,a d also encouraged raconteurs to listen with "group-wide" ears,knowing that others might want to reflect i. Turn.

Hope this idea might be helpful, Margaret.

Warm regards

Pip

On 26/06/2013, at 5:15 AM, Margaret Riel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Nick, Pip,  and others,

I appreciate your thoughtful reflection.  I often struggle with the tension between the action researcher  and the collaborators.  In some cases it is other action researchers and in other cases it is critical friends.  I still think that progressive problem solving is the path to adaptable and flexible expertise.  So I would not want to throw out the iterative process of cycles.  I also think that self-reflection is very powerful and a good practice.  But in addition to this, not instead of, I like the idea of challenging the group to write their group narrative or reflections. Blogs might be a way to do this, but wikis could also help.  It is hard to get people to write together.  I have struggled with this in our university program.  But I will have to rethink it. I definitely see the value and I am grateful for those of you who have raised it. 

Margaret


On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 12:20 PM, Nick Bowskill <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Bonnie/Everyone,
Thank you for sharing your ideas and your thoughts. I think its really interesting to look at individual stories as a group. I'd also be interested to hear more about the nature of the emerging themes if you were willing. Were they things you expected?

I'm also interested in asking what do we say collectively through these stories. We've been trying to organise sessions in which the participants co-author their group story. In that way, we as facilitators avoid becoming the people who 'write the group.' 

There is also some history of this in the literature. We're certainly not the first to think this way. Some of you may know of Gannon & Davies. They have talked about 'Collective Biography.' They have a book on Amazon about it if you want to read more. They locate this work in a Feminist tradition based on the idea of equity of participation, social solidarity etc. They did however note that the methods were problematic in maintaining their principles. Typically, their approach involved sharing texts after an event. Then one person would take on the responsibility of authoring on the group's behalf. The text would then be re-circulated for approval or further work.

We follow that idea in many ways. The key difference is that we support co-authoring and production in a single session. We are also interested in the use of our 'social biographies' both in isolation and in relation to other similar artifacts. In other words, there is considerable work to do around the production and the re-use of these group stories.

For me, the challenge for any concept of 'collaborative action research' has been not to find ways of working together but also ways of producing together. I've also sought to get away from thinking about reflective practice in terms of all these loops, spirals and cycles. Having found ways of doing this we are seeking to develop the practice and the group-narratives for different applications & audiences. That's how my doctoral research turned into a consultancy called Shared Thinking.

Sorry for another long message. I'll make way now. Bonnie, thanks for your interest either way. 

Best Wishes,
Nick

--------------------------------------
Nicholas Bowskill,
SharedThinking
The Social Identity Practice for Learning


Nicholas Bowskill is a Kelvin-Smith Scholar at University of Glasgow. He is lead tutor for SEDA online workshop on Introduction to Educational Change and an online tutor (Education) at University of Derby. SharedThinking is an independent consultancy.



On 25 June 2013 10:42, Bonnie Kaplan <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Dear Nick,

 

I am very interested to hear more about your doctoral research on ‘social biographies’ and thinking about the group story. I have been writing biographical stories for the past few months about the people that I work with who are in the process of creating their own economic independence. I am beginning to see something emerging which is a bit mushy in my mind and I have not yet been able to articulate. The individual stories belong to a group, but remain unique. The critical reflection about this is only beginning (or maybe the reflection is only coming into my conscious mind now but was embedded deeper down).

 

Warm Regards

Bonnie

 

From: Practitioner-Researcher [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Nick Bowskill
Sent: Sunday, June 23, 2013 2:43 PM
To: [log in to unmask]


Subject: Re: Researching Our Own Practice

 

Hi Margaret,

Thank you for sharing those resources about Learning Circles. Your work was one of my original inspirations for thinking collaboratively in online settings. Great to hear its still going and indeed thriving.. Long may that continue.

 

I was also inspired, more recently, by a couple of other projects/initiatives. They have a similar idealogy (to my mind at least).. I wondered if you'd considered them at all? One is Reggio Emilia and the work of Loris Malaguzzi. Another is the Making Learning Visible project at Harvard (Ron Richhart). 

 

All three of those projects have a similar theme of collaboration and public learning. One of the things I've been exploring from my doctoral research is 'social biographies.' By this, I mean thinking about the group-story. We so often hear about narratives and their centrality in development and culture. We seem to hear less about the group-story. 

 

So, my question to you and to everyone on this list, is collaborative action research missing the key element of group-narrative inquiry? That's where our work is right now (as one of several places). I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of you Margaret, and of others here.

 


Best Wishes,

Nick

 

--------------------------------------
Nicholas Bowskill,
SharedThinking

The Social Identity Practice for Learning

 

 

Nicholas Bowskill is a Kelvin-Smith Scholar at University of Glasgow. He is lead tutor for SEDA online workshop on Introduction to Educational Change and an online tutor (Education) at University of Derby. SharedThinking is an independent consultancy.

 

 

On 23 June 2013 00:00, Margaret Riel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Jack,

 

I know you have most of these  url's I have but I will list them here to make it easy for you to collect them

 

Pepperdine Action Research with Technology 2013 Conference  http://bit.ly/arconference

Center for Collaborative Action Research  cadres.pepperdine.edu/ccar  

AERA Action Research SIG   sites.google.com/site/aeraarsig  

Action Research Network of the Americas  (ARNA)    sites.google.com/site/arnaconnect  

Online Learning Circles with Action Research http://bit.ly/2013malt

 

On Fri, Jun 21, 2013 at 8:43 AM, Nick Bowskill <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi Jack,

Interesting topic and a wonderful place to discuss it.. Good luck with that. 

 

As to URLs that may be of interest to your audience, how about our 'Student-Generated Induction' using a social identity approach? It's student induction and transition made into a social and participative process of inquiry. We have developed a repertoire of different variants using classroom technologies. We've also just published a trainers guide on Amazon at http://amzn.to/1a3rxFF 

 

We call this practice SharedThinking ( http://sharedthinking.info ) and it has already gone into several institutions around the UK. It's induction organised as collaborative action research. We've also used it for a variety of different applications - too many to mention here. We've also used a variety of classroom technologies to achieve particular aims. 

 

Interestingly, we have also developed theory as well as practice for this approach. Social Identity theory (Tajfel) - from social psychology - has been appropriated for our applications of classroom technologies. So, all in all, we feel this is innovation in both theory and practice!

 

I hope you think it might be worthy of mention. Good luck with your keynote either way and don't forget the sun cream when you travel. ;-)

 


Best Wishes,

Nick

 

--------------------------------------
Nicholas Bowskill,
SharedThinking

The Social Identity Practice for Learning

 

 

Nicholas Bowskill is a Kelvin-Smith Scholar at University of Glasgow. He is lead tutor for SEDA online workshop on Introduction to Educational Change and an online tutor (Education) at University of Derby. SharedThinking is an independent consultancy.

 

 

On 21 June 2013 08:58, Jack Whitehead <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

Hi - I'm giving a keynote tomorrow (Saturday 22 June) in Mauritius in a seminar on 'ICT in the Classrooms from an action-research perspective'.

 

The keynote is on:

 

 'Action Research and living-educational-theories for enhancing the use of ICT in schools: How do I improve what I am doing?'.  

 

The seminar is organised by 'Helping Our People Association (HOPE) in collaboration with Microsoft Indian Ocean and French Pacific'.

 

If you have any urls that you would like me to reference please send them on. 

 

 

Love Jack.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
When Martin Dobson, a colleague, died in 2002 the last thing he said to me
was 'Give my Love to the Department'. In the 20 years I'd worked with
Martin it was his loving warmth of humanity that I recall with great life
affirming pleasure and I'm hoping that in Love Jack we can share this
value of common humanity.

Jack Whitehead , Adjunct Professor, Liverpool Hope University, UK.    
        
Visiting Professor at the University of Cumbria

Life-time member of OMNIBUS (All Bath University Staff).

 

Secretary of Bath and West Co-operative Party.

web-site http://www.actionresearch.net with email address. 

 

 



 

--

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Margaret Riel <[log in to unmask]>
C0-chair M. A in Learning Technologies
Pepperdine University
   Phone: (760) 618-1314 
   http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/mriel/office
   BLOG: http://mindmaps.typepad.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 



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--

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Margaret Riel <[log in to unmask]>
C0-chair M. A in Learning Technologies
Pepperdine University
   Phone: (760) 618-1314 
   http://faculty.pepperdine.edu/mriel/office
   BLOG: http://mindmaps.typepad.com/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~