SRHEDec 7-9th 2016

Challenging methods for Literacy research:

reflections from a project on academics’ writing

Ibrar Bhatt@ibrar_bhatt

#acadswriting

Dynamics of Knowledge Creation: Academics writing in the contemporary university

workplaceProject team: Karin Tusting (PI), David Barton, Ibrar Bhatt, Mary Hamilton, Sharon McCulloch

Literacy Research Centre, Lancaster UniversityDepartments of Linguistics and of Educational ResearchFunded by the Economic and Social Research Council UK

The work of academics is changing Writing is at the heart of academic labour Transformations in HE have lead to changes in

the work, responsibilities and identities of academics.

International & competitive knowledge-based economy creates new, competing versions of “knowledge”.

Managerial practices, accountability and audit, digitisation, new collaborations.

Changing nature of scholarship. = Can be tracked through a study of

writing practices.

Theoretical perspectives A literacy practices approach: researching

what people are doing, not what they ‘should’ be doing or what skills they should have (Barton 2007; Hamilton 2012; Tusting 2012).

A sociomaterial perspective: researching how people’s writing practices are shaped by social and material tools and contexts, resources including the digital (Fenwick et al. 2011)

Phase 1:

working with individ

uals•Focussed interviews (currently 63) with staff about their work practices, technobiographies, and typical days’ practices.•3 different Unis•3 different disciplines

Phase 2:

detailed study of writing process

es

•In situ recordings of the writing processes using a screen-in-screen method. •Taking specific writing tasks (e.g. examiner reports, writing papers)•Digital pens for note taking.

Phase 3:

understanding the community

•Interviews with managers, administrative staff, colleagues and collaborators

Research design

Innovative methods Researchers are often encouraged to be

innovative in their methods (Travers 2009). A novel or innovative methodology can yield

new ways of addressing problems and generating knowledge, BUT must be purposeful.

‘Innovative’ research can be: Adapted from existing methods (e.g.

Wiles et al., 2011) Study a new area of social life, ‘methods

gaps’ (Hesse-Biber and Leavy 2008: 4).

Innovative methods For us, this was about providing insight into

an aspect of academic professional life that is difficult to access via other (‘traditional’) methods.

Videography as method Screen-in-screen method (see Bhatt, forthcoming;

Bhatt et al. 2015)

A screen shot of an academic working at his desk, taken from the screen-in-screen recording of his writing session. Recording then rendered into logs.

Ethical & practical issues Questions posed by the institutional process of

ethical review were not specific enough to address what we faced.

Can ethical challenges be resolved through generic principles? (Hewson et al. 2016)

Other people brought into writing tasks: co-writers, emails, diary entries, raises issues about the core ethical issues of consent, confidentiality and anonymity.

What are the key issues we need to engage in order to research the ‘Digital University’?

The problem with being innovative There are often tensions between research

ethics and research innovation (Nind et al. 2012.

Tensions apply to Qual and Quan approaches.

Do ethical regulatory procedures limit research innovation?

Innovative methods require critical reflection, for Qual research to remain inventive and authoritative.

What we found Some refused to be recorded. People set up their environments in different

ways (rooms, screen, food, etc.). Interruptions – human and non-human (e.g.

notifications) The amount of time ‘searching’, including

through email as a kind of repository The rapid and cyclical nature of texts = the ‘underlife’ of academics writing

(Goffman 1961)

Discussion

We are currently collecting data for Phase 3. To follow the project’s progress:

Blog at http://wp.lancs.ac.uk/acadswriting/

ReferencesBarton, D. (2007) Literacy: An Introduction to the Ecology of Written Language.

Oxford: Blackwell, Second edition. Bhatt, I. (forthcoming, 2016) Classroom digital literacies as interactional

accomplishments, In ‘Researching New Literacies: Design, Theory, and Data in Sociocultural Investigation’, Knobel, M. and Lankshear, C. (eds.), New York: Peter Lang.

Bhatt, I, de Roock, R & Adams, J. (2015) Diving deep into digital literacy: emerging methods for research, Language and Education, Vol 29 (6) 477-492

Fenwick, T., Edwards, R. & Sawchuk, P. (2011) Emerging approaches to educational research: Tracing the sociomaterial. London: Routledge.

Goffman E. (1961) Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates. Doubleday

Hamilton, M. (2012) Literacy and the Politics of Representation. London: Routledge Hesse-Biber SN and Leavy P (2008) Pushing on the methodological boundaries: the

growing need for emergent methods within and across the discipline. In: Hesse-Biber SN and Leavy P (eds) Handbook of Emergent Methods. New York: Guilford Press, 1–15.

Travers M (2009) New methods, old problems: a sceptical view of methodological innovation in qualitative research. Qualitative Research 9(2): 161–179.

Tusting, K. (2012) Learning accountability literacies in educational workplaces: situated learning and processes of commodification. Language and Education, 26 (2), 121-138.

Wiles R, Crow G and Pain H (2011) Innovation in qualitative research methods: a narrative review. Qualitative Research 11(5): 587–604.