50% and Progressing

So, it has been quite a while since I have written.  That's because I've been so busy at school I haven't really had time for blogging.  At any rate after this semester which ends in a few days, I am officially 50% finished with my doctoral program.  Time flies and I have decided the cohort program was the right thing to do.  I have met so many amazing, smart people.  I hope to keep in touch with them when this is all over.  I love the ride so far. 

Here is my introduction to my dissertation so far...
There is a significant body of research regarding online collaborative tools and communities of practice. Online collaboration refers to using technology tools that employ the World Wide Web as a medium for communication and collaboration. Muirhead and Juwah (2004) more specifically define online interaction as “a dialogue or discourse or event between two or more participants and objects which occur synchronously and/or asynchronously mediated by response or feedback and interfaced by technology. (p. 12)” Communities of practice are defined by Wenger (2004) as “groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.” This research is two-fold. First, it examines the effectiveness and impact of using online collaboration tools to foster the development of a community of practice. This developing community consists of teaching professionals focused on educational technology. Second, it seeks to measure how the instructional practices of the members of the community as related to educational technology will be impacted. Online collaboration tools can be a powerful mechanism for learning, collaborating and creating relationships. However, research indicates that the effectiveness of these tools for learning and relationship building are contingent on existing relationships between the members of the community, the definition or discovery of a clear purpose and context for the tools being used, and the scaffolding that is employed to encourage their use (Barab et al. 2001, Schweier 2002, Daniel, Schwier, and McCalla (2003).

Goals For This Week

This week I'm going to send my paper to a second professor for feedback. I have my initial survey data in a spreadsheet, but I need to transcribe my interviews. Transcribing is very time consuming so I am going to try and commit only to that and actually finish it.

Happy Hour Week 5

HAPPY HOUR, WEEK 5
Review of the Literature


A thorough, sophisticated literature review is the foundation and inspiration for
substantial, useful research.
Boote & Beile, 2005


HAPPY HOUR DISCUSSION:
1. Take a few moments to discuss and record in your blog how you conducted your literature review last semester. What terms did you use to perform your search? How did you locate refereed literature? What criteria did you use to determine what articles to include? What criteria did you use to determine what articles to omit? How did you organize your review? How did you write it up? What skills did you need?

2. Labaree (2003) notes that doctoral students who write literature reviews often face difficulties because their identities clash between daily school life and university culture. His ideas include having to shift from:
· a normative to an analytic way of thinking
· a personal to an intellectual relationship with educational phenomena
· a particular to a universal perspective
· an experimental to a theoretical disposition

In your Blog explain: Explain how these ideas resonate with you. How might they influence, or even hamper, your ability to conduct a good literature review? How does literature relate to your study or your work in general? What areas of literature will inform your study? (make a list of topics, authors, key words, etc)

3. Extension: As you read articles for your own literature review consider if the literature cited was relevant, peer reviewed, timely, meaningful, appropriately connected to the study.

References

Boote, D.N.,& Beile, P. (2005). Scholars before researchers: On the centrality of the dissertation literature review in research preparation. Educational Researcher, 34(6), 3-15.

Last semester I felt like I found more articles directly related to my research. I had a technology component and it was a much narrower focus. I depended on ERIC a great deal and Google Scholar. I realize now however that I probably worked a bit too hard to find references and the like because I was not really using the library tools very efficiently. I tried to stick to academic journals and I avoided news type sources. I realize peer reviewed is ideal, but I'm not always sure how to determine if a journal meets that criteria or not.

When I read the Labree (2003) article I could relate to many of the ideas he was expressing and I could totally understand how that would impact particularly a classroom teacher. I say that because their scope of focus is extremely narrow and focused on their class. I feel like in my position I am often looking more at the global view as I have to worry about state issues as well as precendence within the entire district. The same challenge applies however in that I am still embedded into the day to day work. That rarely involves studying theory behind a decision or the writing of a lit review from a theoretical perspective. Typically the focus is on the practice and the experiential design.

Based on that, now that I find myself back in school looking at my environment from an academic perspective, the literature review can prove to be somewhat challenging. I think the bulk of the issue is that I don't always have the clarity or background knowledge of the theory to know where to begin to search. I also try and focus too much on one area as opposed to recognizing that my research may involve mulitple areas. In that case each may have to be studied individually and tied together as it fits my particular project.

Is My Innovation Valid??

So, I'm trying to research how expectations and processes can be used to improve communication and collaboration in a dysfunctional community of practice. In my project from last semester, my innovation was to implement Google Talk as a way to encourage communication and collaboration among this dysfunctional CoP. Well my findings indicated that trust came through as a major issue and lack of structure around this new form of communication. In other words, one challenge around Google Talk was that it was difficult to keep track of an ongoing thread to ensure all parties kept track for follow through etc. They also felt unsure about when to use the tool: for what types of incidents???, quick questions???, only when email was down???, etc. etc. They indicated that they felt rules and/or guidelines around the use of this new tool would have been helpful.

One of the biggest problems this group has is keeping with protocol. They themselves came to this at a recent meeting. Again the issue of rules and procedures came up. They wanted to reinvent their interactions for lack of a better term. I suggested they come up with rules around communication for the most problematic areas. We now have edited and invented new protocol for the communication chain surrounding major incidents, email versus chat, when to do a large group communication and when not to, etc. So, my innovation was going to be the implementation and follow through with the group regarding these now written down procedures/"rules"/guidelines and whether they have helped to improve communication and collaboration among this team. I have thought about this question many times as maybe that is the problem. Maybe my question should be how are these procedures/"rules"/guidelines helping to minimize conflict among the CoP. Now as I work on my lit review, I'm panicked--Is this even a valid innovation and worthy of research? I am finding very little direct literature on this subject. I have a large bibliography but I'm not finding any research studies that look even remotely like mine. Mostly everything that is addressed is theory and generalities. I mean shouldn't someone be doing research on my topic?? I feel like there must be something and that possibly I'm just really bad with the key word searches ????? Any ideas, input, assistance would be much appreciated.

Happy Hour 2/5/09

I wasn't here for the initial activity as I was at work involved in a long, drawn out and painful budget reduction meeting. We did an exercise where you have a list of all significant and important positions and programs and you have to rate them in cut order from 1-40something. It is infuriating to thing that those cuts are literally taking the progress of the district back almost 6-7 years. I question the motivation of politicians that feel that education is being overindulged in some way and in need of trimming when something as simple as raising taxes could aleviate the burden on state agencies at least somewhat. That is probably over simplified but all I can see is years of past work done for the good of kids being placed on a cut list because there truly is no other funding.

Now on to the second issue. The community of practice that I am using for my research is truly involved in day to day learning and sharing in order to do their job. They document processes and create departmental procedures ongoing as issues and needs arise. There is a constant communication link that exists between them and among the members a strong alliance is present. I think the alliance is tied to their shared knowledge and common interests around technology and learning. An underlying problem however is that distrust has grown among two factions of the group that has generated some feelings of resentment and anger. It seems that although the groups continue to work well together, they are hypersensitive to each other's reactions, comments, and general demeanor. With regard to these two factions, they have begun to break out into two separate groups so that anytime a big technical type incident occurs, the two groups begin to ban together in defense against the other. Where I have tried less formal interventions to encourage the group to interact more, my efforts have not proven to be very effective. My intervention was to have the community create an expectation and procedure around how they will communicate in light of big incidents. They did do this. I also created an expectation that the group would meet face to face at least once a month to monitor the intervention and interact with each other. This scheduling proved to be a challenge, but everyone committed to working within their schedules to make it happen. So, I'm hoping the affect of the intervention will be positive as a first step to stop some of the negative communication patterns that have become so prevalent.

HAPPY HOUR WEEK 2 Change Dysfunction and Action Research

1. Use Wenger’s dimensions of practice of a community (Figure 2.1 on page 72) to analyze your Workplace CoP. When it comes to mutual engagement is it functional or dysfunctional? Who may be contributing to this?
When it comes to creating a joint enterprise is it functional or dysfunctional? Who may be contributing to this?
When it comes to developing a shared repertoire is it functional or dysfunctional? Who may be contributing to this?

With regard to mutual engagement, the CoP I'm engaged with is somewhat dysfunctional. They are all involved in the community and seem to be engaged in an effort to creat greater understanding and a better work flow within the environment. However when tensions occur, the mutual engagment falls apart. The normal flows of communication come to an end and chaos around the issues are created by members breaking off into different subsets that work different factions of the CoP against others. As a result, joint enterprise is somewhat dysfunctional as well. Boundaries become less clear in light of stressful situations and people cease to react outside the realm of the usual norms within the group. I think shared repertoire is functional more than dysfunctional in that all members do seem to have the same good intentions and goals with regard to their jobs and professional interests. They have a cohesive cause and all relate to similar demands and issues as these relate to their work day. Being this is the case, they do bond and team up when outside sources threaten to dismantle the team in spite of the inner dysfunctions that surface in light of other pressures.

2. Connect to action research. Stringer notes that action research can be used to resolve problems and crises by:
· defining the problem
· exploring its context
· analyzing its components
· developing strategies for its resolution
He also promotes community-based action research as a way to “build positive working relationships and productive communicative style” (p. 20). This, in support of the CoP theory, provides the most potential for meeting the action researcher’s goal of allowing inquiry to “provide effective solutions to significant problems in their work lives.”

Think about how your action research this semester might be empowered by involving one or more workplace CoPs How might your role within the CoP, or on the periphery, be managed to maximize the potential of your innovation so that your workplace can benefit from real, sustainable, and innovative change?

I think that my action research this semeseter is pretty specific to only one CoP. I think that the effects of the innovation would effect more than one CoP on the periphery. However I don't think that more than one CoP is appropriate for this particular project. I do feel that my role within the CoP, where peripheral, is critical to sustain change. Where the CoP is responsible for the eventual success or failure of the innovation, I feel that I have to be careful to provide appropriate support as a leader and peripheral member without turning the innovation into a demand or expectation. This is delicate because often people want to give up change before it has been given an opportunity to be tested. At the same time sometimes change is imposed and it really doesn't work, but it is forced on people due to mandates. So, as an action researcher I think it is my job to facilitate and innovation and report on the data allowing the CoP room to flex and institutionalize it within the group and the practice. I think this is the only way change is sustainable.

Thinking about yourself as the action researcher and the practitioner. What factors may hamper your abilities to become engaged in a collaborative action research environment based on these TWO roles?

I think it is sometimes difficult to engage in these two roles because as the practitioner you are in a position to create change in an environment that is often sometimes heavily laden by culture, resistance to change, and leadership that may not be in agreement with a particular innovation. As an action researcher you are almost removing yourself and looking at situation and proposing change. I think that often you can see the need for an innovation and you want to impose the change immediatley. This is where the practioner role can stop us and remind us that we have to implement with careful deliberation and in a delicate manner. It has to integrate and flow within the current system at the same time that it imposes change. This can cause frustration that may impede a project from working within the original intent. I think we have to be very careful with regard to identity and how it releates to our project and the culture of the environment where we are conducing the research. We have to take an ethnographer approach and try and impose change from the inside as an active member and not as an overzealous change agent. I had this concern last semester as I felt like sometimes I was imposing change as a supervisor and forcing my innovation. I had to constantly remind myself that while I could take an active role, I also had to accept the human element of my experiment and realize all outcomes are data regardless of my original intent.

Identity

I am fascinated by the way identity plays such an integral part of our professional and personal lives. I relate it to all the learning about ethnography during my MA and how your research depends on if you can become a legitimate member of the community you are studying. With respect to this, I think it is important for survival within professional CoPs to recognize the need to understand your identity within that group in order maintain your position and the respect of the other members. So, for my work CoPs I waiver between an administrative role and a less formal, technician type role. With regard to the Cohort group, my identity is less formal and I feel like I have greater latitude as well. It is not a threatening environment and allows for more experimentation and flexibility. However, that being said, it is still somewhat formalized due to the context of schooling and the respect for the professionalism among the group. As we are mostly within the education environment, it is important to maintain a certain level of integrity among peers. On this continuum, there is a marked difference between the informal communities, such as other horse enthusiasts that I spend time with. That is a completely informal identity that is highly forgiving. In think in all these contexts, I remain the same person with essentially the same traits and identity within the groups is not really an altercation of my personality, rather it is a filter with regard to what types of behavior, dress, etc. are appropriate as I move between CoPs. So, overall I feel like identity can be a very strong word. I would like to think it is more about appropriate behavior within a given context. I think the shifts in our identity or behavior happen almost seamlessly as we feel out the overall attitudes, expectations, and needs of a given group and then establish ourselves among a group. However, even as we condition our behavior and learn other group norms, strengths and weaknesses within out personality remain. That, in the end is what allows us to feel an integral part of a group or allows us to recognize when we need to exit a group.

I'm working...really working

Ok, well it may be a good thing that I got the bronchitis thing. It has forced me to lay in bed. Being the Direct TV is currently down in here, that means I'm on the computer and working on my assignment. It is a good thing. I completed part one and am busily reading up for part two. Yes I have been messing around a little, blogging, Face Book, and updating my website. However, for the most part I feel like I've been very productive.

Holiday Homework

I was just perusing my emails for this class. It looks like I better start my holiday homework. I realize the doctorate thing is serious, but I admittedly was in the mood for a break. Now I'm feeling very unmotivated to get going. It is quite a bit of reading and then a few reflections. It isn't difficult. I guess I'm just feeling like I wanted a few days of no stress. Since that isn't going to happen, I've decided to start on Sunday. I've worked out having my husband watch the kids for a few hours so that should get me started. Sigh...