Challenging Methods for Literacy Research
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Research into the ‘Digital University’ necessitates decidedly digital methodologies. However, much of the recent discussion surrounding digital methods in education, including Higher Education, places more emphasis on quantitative approaches and the affordances of learning analytics (e.g. Sclater et al., 2016). There therefore remains a need to theorise and problematise the use and usability of new and digital methods to augment qualitative and ethnographic approaches to research. I argue that this is particularly pertinent for research on writing activities. In this paper I discuss how my research team approached the study of the writing and knowledge producing work of academics. I reflect upon how we conducted in situ observations of the writing practices of our participants as part of a broader ethnographic and multi-method study. I argue that our theoretical and methodological ideas have the potential to open up new possibilities and opportunities for writing research in the contemporary university environment.
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Challenging Methods for Literacy Research
- 1. SRHE Dec 7-9th 2016 Challenging methods for Literacy research: reflections from a project on academics’ writing Ibrar Bhatt @ibrar_bhatt #acadswriting
- 2. Dynamics of Knowledge Creation: Academics writing in the contemporary university workplace Project team: Karin Tusting (PI), David Barton, Ibrar Bhatt, Mary Hamilton, Sharon McCulloch Literacy Research Centre, Lancaster University Departments of Linguistics and of Educational Research Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council UK
- 3. 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.
- 4. 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)
- 5. Phase 1: working with individuals • 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 processes • 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
- 6. 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).
- 7. 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.
- 8. 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.
- 9. 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’?
- 10. 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.
- 11. 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)
- 12. Discussion
- 13. We are currently collecting data for Phase 3. To follow the project’s progress: Blog at http://wp.lancs. ac.uk/acadswriting/
- 14. References Barton, 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
Editor's Notes
- Abstract We report on our ESRC-funded project entitled ‘Dynamics of Knowledge Creation: Academics’ writing practices in the contemporary university workplace’. We are mapping how knowledge is produced and distributed through writing practices across disciplines and types of universities in England, and how these are shaped by recent changes, such as the new relationships with students and pressure to marketise teaching, associated with the introduction of higher fees; managerialist approaches to research writing associated with research evaluation; and the shift to diverse forms of digital communication and self-presentation. We explore the diversity of academics’ workplace writing practices associated with teaching, service, and administration, as well as research. Our mixed methods project first examined the professional lives of academics using various types of focused interviews. This has been complemented with close up in situ recordings of writing processes. We are now engaging with managerial and administrative staff, to locate individual experiences in the broader university context.
- The project is called the “Dynamics of Knowledge Creation: Academics writing in the contemporary university workplace”. The field that has come to be known as “academic writing” has largely focussed on student learning and support. We are taking a different (workplace) approach, exploring the writing that staff in a range of HE institutions do as part of their work, interviewing and observing people from different disciplinary and career backgrounds. We signal this in the “s” at the end of “academics” – it’s the activities in which people engage on a day-to-day basis, including the teaching, admin and service-related writing tasks they choose to do or which are (increasingly) demanded of them. While the research-based book or journal article is the “gold standard” for success as an academic in HE once you begin talking to people about the way they spend their time, it quickly becomes obvious that they need to be skilled and knowledgeable about a large variety of other kinds of writing, equally essential to carrying out their role successfully Our research questions are: How are academics’ writing practices shaped by socio-material aspects of the situation? How are digital communications technologies shaping these processes? How are managerial practices shaping and co-ordinating writing work? How are academic scholarly and professional identities produced and shaped by these socio-material aspects of writing practices? .
- These initial slides can be glossed over quickly for those who attended our other seminar which highlighted the project’s background in more detail. These changes in the demands and resources of the academic workplace lead to tensions and pressures to publish in strategic ways which can conflict with disciplinary norms and established practices to be accountable to standards which change the nature of academic work to respond to new demands around impact, public engagement, open access to engage in social media and maintain public online persona to use new technological platforms eg VLEs which take time to learn
- The project draws on a number of theoretical resources all of which lead back to the idea of embodied practice.
- Since the emergence and the significance of ‘the digital’ in contemporary social life, researchers have attempted to understand the diversity of practices that the Internet-using population engage in. As this Internet-using and device-using population has increased and diversified, our ambitions as researchers when it comes to capturing that kind of social life becomes a bit of a methodological challenge. We approach this problem, this challenge, from the perspective of researching writing practices in higher education. New digital practices to aid and facilitate writing pose a new set of demands on research methods. And this necessitates the need for some kind of methodological innovation. But this is not so easily achieved. Innovation Researchers in academia are often encouraged to be innovative in their methodological approaches. This is considered to be of benefit in environments where research funding is won through competition, and a novel or innovative methodology can be argued to offer new ways of carrying out research and contribute substantially to the generation of knowledge. Indeed, academic reputation can depend on research having ‘impact’ (refs) and research funders increasingly view methodological innovation as a way for research to yield new forms of impact (refs). BUT, we should resist the temptation of being dazzled by new technologies, however exciting, if superficial innovations distract attention from engagement with the key issues. Erving Goffman warned against taking the ‘making the familiar strange’ concept too far. So my using the term innovative methods here necessitates … What does it mean to be ‘innovative’? If ‘good’ research methods, according to Martyn Hammersley (2008), can be understood as methods that are able to address important social research questions in ethical ways, then ‘innovative’ research can be about: 1. Adaptations to existing methods, or the adaptation of methods from other disciplines (Phillips and Shaw, 2011; Wiles et al., 2011; Xenitidou & Gilbert 2012) 2. Studying a new area of social life, providing insight into that social life which are difficult to access by traditional methods. Therefore filling what Hesse-Biber and Leavy (2008: 4) refer to as ‘methods gaps’. Like others trying to capture elements of a new social world, like those who use data analytics, we felt that ‘traditional’ methods were not giving us access to the ecological processes of writing as it’s happening. The actors - meaning not just the human participants of the research who knock on the doors or send emails to distract the writer as they write, but the software, the google searches, the documents and policies that all in other ways shape a certain choreography of writing practice in the work of academics.
- Like others trying to capture elements of a new social world, like those who use data analytics, we felt that ‘traditional’ methods were not giving us access to the ecological processes of writing as it’s happening. The actors - meaning not just the human participants of the research who knock on the doors or send emails to distract the writer as they write, but the software, the google searches, the documents and policies that all in other ways shape a certain choreography of writing practice in the work of academics.
- An ecological data collection method KSLing logs and time stamps keystroke activity to reconstruct and describe text production processes, indications of the fluency and flow. How time is managed in a writing work. Eg., pause times are seen as indexical of cognitive effort; pause length between letters within a word are shorter than those preceding a word; pauses between sentences are shorter than those between paragraphs. With sometimes a lot of time dedicated to emails. Can generate “a temporally ordered graphical representation of what writers looked at and what keys are pressed during the writing process” (Johansson, Wengelin, Johansson, & Holmqvist, 2010, p. 839). Reading during writing in collaborative work, and when are where ‘bursts’ of writing occur. complementarity of the keystroke logging program Inputlog with other observational techniques: videography
- Do we need specific ethical guidelines for Internet-mediated, online research methods? Would the methods I have outlined fit into that category (Internet-based, online)? Are there fewer precedents to draw upon in the regulatory guidance for traditional methods? Claire Hewson writes about this and some of these questions are addressed by her in her work. These questions are important as in the research as we encountered a number of issues: Other people brought into writing tasks through the screen recordings, I think that there is something to be said about the notion of the ‘digital university’ and the kind of research … In terms of Methods this new digitality has lead to various forms of distributed working, now commonplace. The contemporary academic workforce includes many people who move between different sites during the course of a working day or week, and who switch between offline working and diverse forms of online work and mediated communication. Virtual teams coordinate writing work across geographic locations, using multiple channels of communication to organize their work and to build identity as a team (disciplinary). Organizationally-sanctioned online communications and digital repositories are used alongside extra-organizational resources such as social media and informal face-to-face conversations. Professional and personal activities share communication channels, and boundaries between work and non-work can become blurred. Work is thus both spatially and temporally complex. This complexity provides many challenges for the researcher aiming to capture and understand these practices, tracking activities - and their meanings for participants - across multiple formats connected in an unpredictable fashion. This paper therefore focused on a key question for studies of contemporary work across on writing: how can we combine methods or devise new methods to capitalise on diverse forms of data to build rich and theoretically-fruitful understandings of how writing occurs? what methods can we use to explore how, when and why people switch between online and offline? experiences of fluid, unpredictable work: how can we employ observational and diary-based techniques effectively under such circumstances? how can we build approaches that exploit the richness of data provided by individual media but also recognise the complexity of transitions between media? Where are analytics helpful? what new methods for understanding what is happening when a worker engages with a screen have become available? formal work-spaces and personal online interactions? what challenges and opportunities emerge when we attempt to combine different methods for capturing the experience of work?
- The ESRC is a powerful UK government funding body for social science; innovation is part of its agenda as evidenced by its investment in the National Centre for Research Methods with its brief to identify and foster methodological innovation. If innovation in qualitative research is about risk and experimentation, then ethical decision-making is about cultivating a sense of pragmatism and sustained attention to ethical dilemmas, the kind that are encountered in qualitative research. We are not engaged in a full-on institutional ethnography, but part of our research is to understand and to some extent contribute to a critique of institutional processes, so we have to be analytically authentic about what we capture, but also respect individual ‘privacy’. Because Universities operate in the public domain, there’s a Democratic requirement for us to reveal what we see. Critical reflection is necessary in order to establish these tools as viable, rigorous and effective parts of any methodology. Methods are not innocent, they can mirror broader societal and political shifts (surveillance, big data, privacy, and Governments hankering after certain kinds of social experiments). Innovative methods can cause ruptures in fields and change how social realities are represented. IMs therefore require critical reflection, if we are to push the boundaries of qualitative methodological practice, and keep qual research inventive. CR what does this tell us? Or not tell us? What challenges need to be resolved? How does this shape what we know about writing?
- Environment: Not seen as salient in the writing process, highlights the physicality of the resources, the material, the mundane. Some refused to be recorded: so we relied on a kind of TAP method instead. Interruptions. Unexpected things always happen in research, but dig methds have a different set of issues
- In conclusion, our research challenges longstanding myths about academics writing (e.g. that it is solitary, all about research). It makes visible the sheer volume of workplace writing that has to be managed and the new forms of inscriptions that have to be informally learned and prioritised by academics. It shows the role of these in producing new forms of knowledge. It shows how setting boundaries around times and spaces for writing are important ways of managing tensions for many people but are increasingly hard to maintain. New strategies are being developed for managing different kinds of digital boundaries which offer new possibilities for mobility, collaboration and flexibility but can also be felt as chaotic and overwhelming. Not everyone is doing this boundary work; some are simply extending writing work in time and space as far as possible.