From clarity to chaos and back: some reflections on the research process

Straker, Alison; Hall, Elaine

doi:10.1080/09650799900200094

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…Many students still expressed intermittent insecurities and a sense of chaos as to how they would cope 'on their own' after the end of the course. Initially, I had attributed this sense of chaos to the fact that action research is, by nature, an anarchic practice (Straker & Hall, 1999) and that anarchy is, in fact, a desirable state for action researchers to be in (Green, 2002). I soon learned that, whereas previous experience with postgraduate students and in-service teachers had taught me that instances of 'anarchy' are interpreted as potentially conducive to new understandings, undergraduate students express disturbance and disorientation.…”

Section: Towards a Practical Orientation: Year Twomentioning

confidence: 99%

What have i learned from all this? four years of teaching an action research course: insights of a ‘second order’

Orland‐Barak

2004

Educational Action Research

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The author examines the development of her thinking in regard to the value, the purposes, the process and the outcomes of teaching an undergraduate course in action research for the past 4 years. The emergent understandings were informed by recurrent hermeneutic cycles of interpretative readings of the formal written and oral feedback conducted with the students at the end of each year, the students' final action research projects submitted at the end of each course and personal field notes kept in journal writing. These sources have yielded rich longitudinal data that sheds light on the impact of a course for the learning of both its participants and the course professor. The article focuses on the actions that the author has undertaken in the design and implementation of the course as a result of her learning or on how action research 'of a second order' has informed the structure of 'first order' action research. The exploration has led the author to important insights regarding her role as course professor, issues of pedagogy, reflection, process and products of learning as they play out in an action research course at undergraduate level.As I prepare for my fifth year of teaching a university action research course for undergraduate students of education, I find myself once again, as in previous years, cutting, pasting, deleting and adding to the content and structure of the course syllabus that I had planned a year earlier. True, such an activity should desirably become a well-known routine in any university professor's teaching career, evidence of ongoing reflection on his/her practice. Yet, the 'cuts', 'pastes' 'deletions' and 'insertions' to the action research course over the years do not entail solely structural alterations (adding more updated bibliography, changes in the sequence of the content or a different division of the final grade). Rather, they pertain to

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Section: Towards a Practical Orientation: Year Twomentioning

confidence: 99%

What have i learned from all this? four years of teaching an action research course: insights of a ‘second order’

Orland‐Barak

2004

Educational Action Research

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Virtuous mess and wicked clarity: struggle in higher education research

McArthur¹

2012

Higher Education Research & Development

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This article considers the value of clarity -of theory, method and purposes -in educational research. It draws upon the work of early critical theorist, Theodor Adorno, and particularly his notion of negative dialectics and his challenge to the traditional dichotomy of theory and practice. Using the notions of virtuous mess and wicked clarity, I argue that we need to accept the messy, contingent nature of the social world we research. I further suggest that it then follows that such research can and should influence and change that world. The researcher is necessarily part of the world she researches and, once one accepts that, it is hard to sustain ethical or political isolation; it is hard to ignore the struggle.

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Farting Jellyfish and Synergistic Opportunities: The Story and Evaluation of Newcastle Science Comic

Wysocki

2018

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The three Newcastle Science Comic anthologies-Science FACTion , Asteroid Belter, and Spineless-contain 63 pages of original comics by 84 contributors, as collaborations between science researchers and comics creators. They form a total of 30,000 printed copies and three digital editions, all free to read. This article in comics form (1) tells the story of the Newcastle Science Comic project with insights into the process of making these collaborative comics, which included not only institutional support from Newcastle University 2012-2016 but also individual and collective interest in researchcomics collaborations; (2) explores what it means to meaningfully evaluate a science comic, and presents qualitative and quantitative evidence for the success of these anthologies with a focus on readers' responses to the comics; (3) uses the Generic Learning Outcomes (GLOs) framework (Research Centre for Museums and Galleries 2003) to provide a shared language for comics readers, comics creators, and research/heritage institutions to evaluate the success of this applied comics project. Findings are presented in two stages: first an ad-hoc evaluation of Asteroid Belter as a practice-led project, then main findings from a qualitative questionnaire (n = 77) using GLOs to ask readers what they remembered, liked about, and learned from Spineless. Responses show readers' interest in the science content and/or the comics form, and in the combination of content and form as science comics. Although other frameworks and other data collection methods might gather richer data, this use of GLOs supported an initial exploration of readers' feedback on science comics using shared and accessible language. This is in keeping with our editorial team's progression from making science comics to see if we could, to a more systematic approach to planning, delivering, and meaningfully evaluating large-scale comics projects for public engagement with science research and in museum contexts.

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From clarity to chaos and back: some reflections on the research process

Cited by 3 publications

References 5 publications

What have i learned from all this? four years of teaching an action research course: insights of a ‘second order’

What have i learned from all this? four years of teaching an action research course: insights of a ‘second order’

Virtuous mess and wicked clarity: struggle in higher education research

Farting Jellyfish and Synergistic Opportunities: The Story and Evaluation of Newcastle Science Comic

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