Nov 5th Research design as shape sorting

There are multiple ways of making sense of the world. There are a myriad of types of research questions. And then there are different methods and very different reasons for doing research. 

Is one way better or right? Not exactly. However it is vital that square pegs are put into square holes. Not all types of question can be answered using all methods. And some reasons for doing research and ways of making sense of the world lend themselves to certain methods and types of question. 

The moral is to know enough to avoid hammering square pegs into round holes.

Nov 4th Equality

If you want a bit of extra reading, you may want to look at the version of my doctoral thesis that is written ‘bilingually’ for readers of ‘Everyday’ and readers of ‘Academic’. It’s just one practice I use to reconcile my non-negotiable beliefs with working in the academic world. I call it the Alongsider Thesis https://research.bangor.ac.uk/portal/files/39200483/Alongsider_Thesis_online_version.pdf

All lives have equal value. That’s my non-negotiable belief even though I don’t always act on it and I haven’t fully thought through its implications. If you look at life in Wales, our mainstream discrimination suggests equality is not a mainstream belief. 

What has this to do with academic life? I believe we carry into our academic work a fundamental belief in inequality when it comes to knowledges and people as knowers, thinkers and sense-makers. 

I see it in our research practices, in our ‘business as usual’. And I have committed to doing things differently, starting with how I write. 

Nov 3rd Who’s the Boss?

My third drabble. Bit of a rant today. But I kept it to 100 words.

Designing research? 

So… 

Who decides what to study? Who decided what data are important enough to collect or co-create? Who decides who should be involved in data collection/co-creation? Who decides how to analyse the data? Who decides what is important in the data? Who decides what is important enough to write into a report? 

Please don’t call it co-design or coproduction or any of the other ‘co’s unless the answer to ‘who?’ includes those whose lives are most affected by the research, the people who know from the insider, as well as people with suitable lived experience as academics. 

Nov 2nd Research or Finding out?

Drabble 2: The difference between research and finding out

Finding out is a human activity. Some of us are more curious than others. Some specialise in searching for information, or working out ways to piece information together. 

Research is like ‘finding out plus’. So what are the pluses? 

Research is finding out that leaves a trail so we can see and show others how we did the finding out. Research needs a good reason why we did what we did. Research needs a convincing argument for how we have interpreted the information. If it’s academic research, it also needs to show how it relates to past theories and academic knowledge. 

November writing challenge

November is AcWriMo - academic writing month. I’m not formally signed up to it. However I’ve seen people talking about producing daily ‘atomic notes’. These are 250-300 word pieces with one idea. I thought I might give that a go. But I find 250-300 words is both too much and too little for many ideas. 

I’ve decided to try a daily ‘drabble’. This is a 100 word short story. I learned about these from the author Hannah Retallick. 

So, belatedly, here is yesterday’s drabble.

Knowing

By habit, I equate ‘know’ with ‘can articulate in words’. I think thoughts in words. I communicate knowledge in words. In other words, I am ‘logo-centric’. 

This is profoundly ableist. When I assume knowing requires words, I diminish people as knowers if they have no words. I falsely equate word skills with value and skill at knowing. I deny their knowledge. 

Equating words with knowing removes my ability to ever claim to ‘know’ anything. Words are fluid. Meanings shape-shift in time, culture and transfer among people. 

This drabble has fixed and shared 100 words. Its meaning is not fixed. 

Discuss! 

Peace

Peace is sitting on driftwood, gazing across the shell-encrusted sand to the far distant sea.

Peace is the free-flowing music from behind the dunes and the sound of toddlers splashing in the distant lido.

Peace is knowing that, right now, all that exists is here and now. 

For a moment, peace infuses me, silences me, requires nothing of me. 

I breathe. As words come I type, elbows on thighs, hands cupping phone, thumbs on keypad. 

I gaze without looking. I feel the breeze. I smell and taste the salty air. I hear without listening. 

I am at peace. I and peace are one.

Layers and webs

After an extended celebration for having submitted a doctoral thesis against the odds, I'm now starting my viva preparation, nobly assisted by George Julian's wonderful Viva Cards.

The 'soft ball' opening question for a viva, so I'm told, is usually something like 'Can you tell us what your thesis is about?'. I am sure it is soft ball to many, possibly even most, doctoral candidates. 

If I'm asked what my thesis is about, I'm still stumped. The story I tell about my thesis depends on who has asked. Sometimes it's a thesis about the epistemic (in)justice of public involvement in policy-making and social research. Sometimes it's a thesis about making sense of complex adaptive systems. Sometimes it's a thesis about social care policy and how for the last 50 years, in Wales at least, it has been failing people with learning disabilities by failing to achieve what it says it is designed to achieve. Sometimes it's a thesis about pushing methodological boundaries. Sometimes it's a thesis about developing a new theoretically informed method for public consultation that doubles as a new social research method. 

I couldn't even answer a question about where the thesis belongs in relation to academic disciplines, as the one that comes to the fore depends on which story I tell. 

Each story forms its own layer. Each layer is its own complex transdisciplinary web. The layers and the stories are interconnected. Working out how needs to be the focus of my viva prep. I trust myself that they do; I just need to make explicit to myself how they do so I can explain it to others. For me, quite literally, this will mean going back to the drawing board. When words fail and knowledge remains tacit, art and creativity take over and bridge the gulf between awareness of 'something' and turning that 'something' into words. 

I wish I could tie the thesis stories all up into a neat single story. 

I can't. Or, perhaps rather, I refuse to. To tie them into a neat single story would require a violent shoe-horning into a simplistic shape. There is a reason that I was so grateful for the metaphor of wrestling an octopus into a box. A thesis must fit in a box. And the image of one tentacle popping out as fast as I squeezed another in certainly resonated. In so far as my thesis has a central co-ordinating 'head', I guess it is the importance of drawing together things that are often held apart, with the intention of making sense of why 50 years of policy isn't delivering what it says it wants to deliver - and then developing a tool to do something about it. 

I can only hope that the 'hard ball' questions are less challenging than the 'soft ball' opener!