Interviewing objects: including educational technologies as qualitative research participants

This article argues the importance of including significant technologies‐in‐use as key qualitative research participants when studying today’s digitally enhanced learning environments. We gather a set of eight heuristics to assist qualitative researchers in ‘interviewing’ technologies‐in‐use (or other relevant objects), drawing on concrete examples from our own qualitative research projects. Our discussion is informed by Actor‐Network Theory and hermeneutic phenomenology, as well as by the literatures of techno‐science, media ecology, and the philosophy of technology.     

The Labouring Sleepwalker: Evocation and expression as modes of qualitative educational research

This paper deals with the highly personal way an individual makes sense of the world in a way that avoids the pitfalls of the so‐called private language. For Wittgenstein following a rule can never mean just following another rule, though we do follow rules blindly. His idea of the ‘form of life’ elicits that ‘what we do’ refers to what we have learnt, to the way in which we have learnt it and to how we have grown to find it self‐evident. But the reference to the ‘bedrock’, to what was originally learnt, is the only kind of situation for which it makes sense to ask whether the meaning of a concept is correctly stated. Dialogue, conversation, and exchange of ideas are the right ways to characterize all the other situations. The challenge of Wittgensteinian philosophy is therefore that of a balance of the individual and the community, of language and the world. His insistence on the third person (or the intersubjective level) is countered by the importance he gives to each individual's personal stance: persons must speak for themselves and do what they can do. Given the growing interest for the kind of educational research where the ‘personal’ is focused on, I will try to take up the challenge to see how here as elsewhere ‘language’ works. By making clear what it does for us, it will gradually become clear how this kind of research may itself have to be reinterpreted.     

Changing knowledge regimes: Universities in a new research environment

This paper takes an apparent knowledgeparadox as its point of departure. `Knowledge'has acquired a more all encompassing meaningtoday, yet this has not strengthened thesupport for and confidence in higher educationinstitutions. On the contrary, it is oftenclaimed that they have outlived theirusefulness. In trying to understand thedevelopment behind this paradox, we deal withthree issues. We discuss first thewidening concept of knowledge and the claimthat there is emerging a new mode of knowledgeproduction. Secondly the widening concept ofknowledge is put into a social and politicalcontext, where massification and its socialimplications are discussed. Thirdly we developa theoretical framework based on the concept ofknowledge regimes. In this part wediscuss how the concept of knowledge regimesand the related concepts of knowledgeinterests and knowledge alliances may behelpful in understanding the complexities andambiguity of higher education development.Finally we discuss some implications regardingknowledge's role in social development. Wequestion the assumption that there is anecessary relationship between a wideningconcept of knowledge and a given form ofknowledge development.     

论成人高校的校园文化建设——以上海电视大学为实践案例

成人高校校园文化建设是成人高校的一项教育任务,无论是成人高校还是身在其中的学习者都需要校园文化建设。目前,由于成人学习的特点,以及一些院校本身对这项工作的忽视,成人高校的校园文化建设并未引起足够的重视。本文从成人高校校园文化建设的现状入手,分析了成人高校校园文化建设的定位、特点及存在的问题;接着进一步探讨了基于网络的成人高校校园文化建设新途径;然后以上海电视大学为实践案例,阐述了培养核心价值观、树立教与学先进典型、打造校园活动平台、营造校园校区环境、拓展网上虚拟校区等成人高校校园文化建设的现实举措。     

Poetry education research as an anchorage of thought: using poetry as interview stimulus material

Interviews in qualitative research may sometimes employ stimulus material as a means of eliciting richer data. However, scant consideration has been given to the use of poetry for this purpose, especially within the field of poetry education research. This article seeks to address the gap in the literature by illustrating how the use of poetry as interview stimulus material can help poetry education research to clarify the connection between teachers’ and students’ beliefs and practices in relation to poetry and pedagogy. Depending on the nature of their inquiry and context, poetry education researchers can choose relevant poems that have the potential to stimulate a discussion about specific beliefs and practices.     

An examination of the construct of legitimate peripheral participation as a theoretical framework in literacy research

This review critically examines the use in literacy research of Lave and Wenger's (1991) construct of legitimate peripheral participation (LPP), a view of learning as participation by which newcomers adopt a group's ways, moving from periphery to the center of a practice. From a search through 10 literacy-relevant journals from 1991 to the present, we purposively selected 20 pieces that relied centrally on LPP and analyzed these for ways in which practice and apprenticeship were instantiated. Regarding practice, we inquired about legitimacy and engagement; regarding apprenticeship, we asked about the deployment of experts' attention and the cost of newcomers' mistakes. Using the benefit of the 20+ years since the original publication, our critique offers six principles to evaluate researchers' use of LPP and community of practice as constructs to describe learners' experience, and summarizes how some of our 20 studies made felicitous use of the constructs and others less so.     

Describing individual incidents of sexual abuse: a review of research on the effects of multiple sources of information on children’s reports

Objective: For successful prosecution of child sexual abuse, children are often required to provide reports about individual, alleged incidents. Although verbally or mentally rehearsing memory of an incident can strengthen memories, children’s report of individual incidents can also be contaminated when they experience other events related to the individual incidents (e.g., informal interviews, dreams of the incident) and/or when they have similar, repeated experiences of an incident, as in cases of multiple abuse.Method: Research is reviewed on the positive and negative effects of these related experiences on the length, accuracy, and structure of children’s reports of a particular incident.Results: Children’s memories of a particular incident can be strengthened when exposed to information that does not contradict what they have experienced, thus promoting accurate recall and resistance to false, suggestive influences. When the encountered information differs from children’s experiences of the target incident, however, children can become confused between their experiences—they may remember the content but not the source of their experiences.Conclusions: We discuss the implications of this research for interviewing children in sexual abuse investigations and provide a set of research-based recommendations for investigative interviewers.     

A qualitative comparison of perceived stress and coping in adolescents with and without autistic spectrum disorders as they approach leaving school

During the research reported in this article, differences in perceived stress and coping between adolescents with and without autistic spectrum disorders (ASD) were examined by a series of interviews. Emphasis was placed on examining the issue with regard to the prospective transition at the point of leaving secondary education. Ten pupils with autism and seven without any identified disorder were interviewed. The participants with ASD indicated worry about specific objects and social relations; demonstrated a lack of external expression of their stress; and indicated a reliance on self, rather than others, for help. Those with ASD also indicated more concerns regarding items not affecting their education and were self-admittedly poor at dealing with both current and future stress. Participants without a disorder were far more concerned with their education and outlined different methods of stress management. James Browning, an Educational Psychologist in training, Dr Lisa A. Osborne, a Research Fellow in the Learning and Adaptive Behaviour Group, in the Department of Psychology at Swansea University, and Professor Phil Reed, the Director of the Learning and Adaptive Behaviour Group, in the Department of Psychology at Swansea University, suggest that these differences should be addressed and argue that the further incorporation of techniques to improve coping with stress may ease the transition from school for students with ASD.     

美国私立高等教育的发展、演变、特征与未来走势--美国盈利性高等教育的崛起

近年来在美国崛起的盈利性高等教育机构具有悠久漫长的历史。考察其发端、发展的过程,也许会使我们对美国的高等教育史有一个新的认识,也有助于我们更好地理解今天的盈利性教育机构。     

The question of quality and qualifications: Writing inferior poems as qualitative research

The reflective and interrogative processes required for developing effective qualitative research questions can give shape and direction to a study in ways that are often underestimated. Good research questions do not necessarily produce good research, but poorly conceived or constructed questions will likely create problems that affect all subsequent stages of a study. In qualitative studies, the ongoing process of questioning is an integral part of understanding the unfolding lives and perspectives of others. This article addresses both the development of initial research questions and how the processes of generating and refining questions are critical to the shaping of a qualitative study.     

Writes of passage: writing up qualitative data as a threshold concept in doctoral research

Effective writing is an essential skill for all doctoral students, yet it is one that receives relatively little attention in training and supervision. This article explores extensive feedback from participants in a series of workshops for doctoral candidates engaged with writing up qualitative data. The themes arising from the data analysis are discussed in terms of the affective domain of writing, and the main claim is that writing up qualitative data has been identified as what Meyer and Land would call a threshold concept for doctoral candidates employing qualitative analysis. Drawing on Turner's notion of liminality, the article concludes that interdisciplinary workshops can be instrumental in helping doctoral candidates understand the role of writing, and of writing up qualitative data in particular, in their development into independent, autonomous researchers.     

Valuing knowledge over action: the example of gender in educational leadership

Gender inequalities in educational administration attract calls for research internationally. The degree of concern and the urgent search for cause and cure are characterised as within an epidemic logic, evoking a managerialist ‘scientific’ reliance on evidence-driven change. Taking a poststructuralist approach, the paper uses a study of South African women school principals to position gender research as a tool for change. It considers one area of their experience that impacts on their leadership, marriage, as a vehicle to explore how research might be used. The paper challenges Western Enlightenment teleological cultural assumptions. It suggests that knowledge may be all we have to continue the negotiation of power where there is no solid ground of rightness about what views and actions disempower or the contrary and that it may, in itself, be a powerful force in the face of intractable problems.     

Building bridges: the use of reflective oral diaries as a qualitative research tool

The article is a reflection on the use of an oral diary as a qualitative research tool, the role that it played during fieldwork and the methodological issues that emerged. It draws on a small-scale empirical study into primary school teachers' use of group discussion, during which oral diaries were used to explore and document teacher reflective thinking across time. The paper considers the design of the oral diary tool in this context and how its use created both a window on the developing construction of teachers' ideas about their practice of using group discussion in science and also a space to explore emerging analytical themes. The way in which the regular routine of the oral diary entries helped to make connections between the researcher and the participant and nurture fieldwork relationships is discussed in addition to the limitations of this specific research tool.     

高校校园文化建设理念新探

高校校园文化建设是高校校园物质文化建设、精神文化建设、制度文化建设和活动文化建设的有机结合。在新的历史时期,联系高校实际,当前高校校园文化建设应着眼未来,创新理念,紧紧围绕“新时期、新文化、新青年”做文章,充分体现新时期时代特点、着力引领新文化前进方向、努力促进新青年科学发展。     

Method as a journey: a narrative dialogic partnership illuminating decision-making in qualitative educational research

Qualitative education research is an inherently complex landscape, presenting the qualitative researcher with constant ethical and reasoned decision-making. Presented as a narrative dialogic, this paper traces and juxtaposes the method stories of two qualitative researchers who focused their work around education phenomena, but in different contexts and in different ways. One researcher’s narrative study of phenomena via interviews is juxtaposed with the other’s phenomenographical investigation utilizing Facebook status updates. Seeing researcher thinking side-by-side provides a comparison that teases out the ways in which researchers might consciously grapple with thinking around method. These twin method stories offer ways for other qualitative researchers to think about their own decision-making as they address the challenges of balancing subjectivity and rigour, authenticity of reported data, and protection of participants. This dialogic partnership points to the malleability of method. It also encourages further exploration of the complexities of qualitative education research in which the researcher is often insider–outsider or outsider–insider.     

消费文化语境中的历史剧传播策略——以《恰同学少年》为例

2007年《恰同学少年》在央视播出以后,影响巨大,创造了很好的社会效益与经济效益。它的成功主要得益于该剧对消费文化背景下影视剧市场的准确把握,以及对历史剧的解读创新：即创新视角,伟人题材异质化;融入时尚元素,经典话语大众化;多渠道传播,传播效果最大化。     

Using blogs in qualitative educational research: an exploration of method

When compared with wider social research, qualitative educational research has been relatively slow to take up online research methods (ORMs). There is some very notable research in the area but, in general, ORMs have not achieved wide applicability in qualitative educational contexts apart from research that is inherently linked to the Internet, for example, research on educational technologies or students' online behaviour. This paper demonstrates how ORMs can be useful in qualitative research projects. It describes how on-going, reflective, qualitative data were collected using a popular, community-based online tool – blogs. The research project that utilized this approach aimed to trace how a group of international students in the United Kingdom responded to their new environment over six months. This article attempts to provide a new understanding on the use of blogs as a tool for data collection.     

Perspectives on knowledge management capabilities in universities: A qualitative identification of organisational factors

Prior research has had a limited approach to identifying organisational factors related to knowledge management (KM) practices of higher education institutions (HEIs), the centre for knowledge creation. This qualitative study explored such factors affecting KM capabilities from the perspectives of 30 full-time academics in public universities, and identified the dimensions of the KM capabilities framework. Results revealed that physical conditions, budget, human and technological resource management, division of labour, workload, time management, communication, bureaucracy, structural differentiation, motivation, individualism, and organisational behaviour affect KM infrastructure capabilities; bureaucracy, KM teams, institutional platforms, organisational structure, knowledge maps, vision, individual attitudes, academic collaboration, process management, budget, decision-making processes, sustainable academic KM, transparency, labour force, knowledge security, organisational culture, accessibility, and archiving affect KM process capabilities. These results contribute to identifying the organisational factors influencing KM that are critical to guiding practitioners and administrators of HEIs in developing more effective KM strategies and practices.     

德州藏书家藏书室、楼名号考

本文通过对德州历代藏书史实的梳理、钩沉，详尽地考证了德州藏书家藏书室、楼的名号，理清了过去藏书室、楼名号中存在的混乱、错讹，同时展示了德州藏书事业的兴盛及德州地方文化的发展脉络。