Personal Blogs

going through the interviews i can see different needs and readinesses of the fellows. Reasons for wanting an alumni scheme seem to depend on the fellows' progress on their personal trajectory:

• skills acquisition, motivation, access to expertise

• desire to share forward, multiply what they have experienced, sharing forward leadership training, writing training and mentoring younger fellows in instituttions , sensitiszing men, reaching out to girls in schools
• desire to engage with external environment, set agendas, influence policy, lead relevant research

Frameworks to help understand this or locate individuals are:

Mayoux four powers framework that we use in AWARD

• power from within (confidence, motivation, networking for inspiration)
• power to do (skills acquistion, networking for personal career development)
• power over (resource generation, networking for visibility)
• power with (setting agendas, influencing policy, networking for concerted action)

What i feel doesn't fit exactly and maybe this extends that framework a bit, is the desire many of them have to act as a multiplier of the AWARD effect. Maybe the empowerment framework is seen principally as a personal thing and doesn't cater for this kind of altruistic power to in the sense of giving it to... What other preposition could we use to render this idea?

Power from? Power through? Power beyond? Power across?

Waddell typology of networks

societal learning. Networks can be seen as a typology of increasing societal impact where the last is generative network in which the network is outward looking and aims to create societal change.

Appreciative systems

Using the term 'readinesses' made me think of Vicker's appreciative systems.  I wonder if there is anything there which could be helpful in this analysis. TIme to go back and reread.

Kitchener's three levels of cognition

AWARD helps the fellows solve problems better, then they get meta prepared, reflexive, self aware to step out of their scientific cloud and see the bigger purpose (as Sheila Ommeh said). A third level can be seen as trying rather than being good at adapting to the envrionment, as trying to shape the environment.

Of course the framework i haven't mentioned is the actual CoP framework that guided my research. I hope that is not going to matter....

p453... Patterns are descriptive findings. Lots of respondents found this

Themes are more abstract than this, there is an element of interpretation. Lots of respondents found this... and I will label that group as this abstract theme.

Inductive analysis is about discovering patterns

Deductive analysis is when the data are analysed according to an existing framework.

Can i be inductive within the boundaries of a framework? Recognising that the questions and slant of interviews were influenced by a framework of prior knowledge and reading, but within that, attempting to let the story in the data emerge for themselves?

Grounded theory emphasises being immersed in the data - grounded - so that embedded meanings and relationships can emerge.

p454

Once patterns, themes and/or categories have been established thorugh inductive analysis, you can move to deductive analysis  in testing and affirming the authenticity and appropriateness of the inductive content analysis. So, you can move from one to the other. I guess it is a form of triangulation. Looking at what you think you see from other perspectives

An "interplay of making inductions (deriving concepts, their properties and dimensions from data) and deductions (hypothesizing about the relationships between concepts) (Strauss and Corbin 1998, in Patton 2002)

HOWEVER

Analytic induction begins with an analyst's deduced propositions or theory-derived hypotheses and is a procedure for verifying theories and propositions based on qualitative data".

Nope, that's not what I'm doing. I'm using those propositions and hypotheses as a tool for exploring qualitative data, the conceptual model is a way of making a boundary so that there is an acceptably small amount of data to handle and already organised in some way, but not then verifying. Verifying to me means truth-checking and I am not doing that.

Later in the same paragraph however, it does seem more to describe what i want to do:

Sometimes [...] qualitative analysis is first deductive or quasi-deductive and then inductive as when, for example, the analyst begins by examining the data in terms of theory- derived sensitizing concepts or applying a theoretical framework developed by someone else [...] After or alongside this deductive phase of analysis, the researcher strives to look at the data afresh for undiscovered patterns and emergent undertandings (inductive analysis).

Inductive analysis is one of the primary characteristics of qualitative inquiry, so we need strategies for thinking and working inductively.  Here are two:

1. identify, define and elucidate the categories developed by they people studied (emic)

2. seeing patterns that he people studied do not describe in their own terms, so the analyst develops them (etic)

OK... steps

1. get organized. do an inventory. is everything complete? holes in data? is everything labeled? Dates, places, ways of identifying sources

2. read through the lot

3. read through the lot again

4. Now what about Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Management and Analysis? Helpful or a distraction? Will the time invested in understanding it be more than offset by its power in helping understand patterns in the data? As a further output of this course familiarity with a CAQDMA could be useful. p444 Patton gives some examples of software programs

5. I can glimpse already patterns and systems coming forth out of the data i have so far. I think certain ways of seeing the purpose will be linked to certain other ways of seeing the alumni program. Is that something a CAQDMA can help me see? Is there any difference by country and batch and academic level? (Obviously not statistical but question-raising differences?)

p 445 The 4 fundamental types of information that contribute to the construction of a finding of "answer" in qualitative analysis are:

1. characteristics of the sources where information is sought
2. primary information or objects collected from the sources
3. secondary information or objects created to aid in th interpretation of primary objects, and
4. characteristics of the coders who construct the secondary objects (MacQueen and Milstein 1993:31, in Patton)

I think what this is saying is that you have information about the source, then the info itself, your interpretation of that, and your framework that you are operating in.

So then you segment and create metadata. Segments are bits of text, metadata are categories, codes, comments, annotations, graphical representations

p434. Purpose guides analysis. So what is my purpose:

Applied qualitative research? If audience is scholars, then judged by "rigor and contribution to theory". If policy makers, relevance, clarity, utility and applicability of the findings willl become most important.

In TMA02, I called my approach "pragmatic, constructivist, critical" so let's keep that to the forefront of our minds when thinking about the purpose. I said it is for action and improvement and aimed at usefulness.

This is a kind of action research, kind of testing CoP theory? Well Yes in the sense that I expect the people involved to "share the analysis process" with me (p436), and that is by the way one form of triangulation. If my 'findings' make sense or make no sense to them.

But, there is also the purpose of the End of Module Assessment - the thesis as it were, which needs to follow the rules set down in the instructions and not 100% compatible with the way i do things.

Bear in mind, Arwen, that this research was born from an interest in social learning systems... it would be useful and satisfying if I could link back to that elegantly at the end.

So i have decided to follow my instinct and not the advice i have been given. Living dangerously. I reread the interviews I have transcribed so far and that has - maybe - helped me write questions that will give me the info I want. And i have put the Purpose questions right up front. The advice i received said start with the easy factual questions (Like "are you in any other fellowship alumni schemes?") but what i don't like about that is I think it makes your mind start thinking in a certain way. And I want to start with the Big Picture - WHAT IS THIS ALUMNI THING FOR? Not whether or not it will have face-to-face meetings or a blog roll? Starting the questionnaire with reference to other programs, closes down the options. Same thing about multichoice questions. One pilot fellow asked whether it wouldn't be easier if i had multi choice questions (seminars, website, etc.) but what i don't like about that is that if someone says do you want these things you are likely to say "oh yes, that would be great! I'll take the lot" Whereas i want to see what the fellows envisage themselves. When it comes to analysis, it will be more onerous but there are only 30 or them not 3000 so it is doable. (Famous last words?)

I was surprised how little my pilots wrote. it could have been for loads of reasons, but looking at my questionnaire I realized that in order not to make the questionnaire look too long and scary, I had made wee text boxes. Now i have made them adult-sized and hope it will make a difference. I am DYING to send it out. But want the last two pilots (with the Big Picture questions first and the larger text boxes) - or at least one of them - to come back to me first to make sure that the questions do to some extent work.

Must stop piloting now or I will run out of fellows before i send the final version!!

As i am interviewing, I am perhaps doing a bit too much discourse analysis - noting the language used. For example the fellow whose interview i am transcribing at the moment uses a lot of language, for the if-there-is-no-alumni-program scenario, around death and dying "it will die", "stagnation". I suspect this will probably be outside the scope of my research, but the thought is there now, can't unthink it, so let's see what happens next.

The more interviews I do, the more I realize the unconscious assumptions i had about what the fellows would tell me. I never expected the huge focus on actually wanting to network for advancing their research for helping rural women and other poor farmers. Silly me really, as that is one of the selection criteria. But I guess sitting here in Rome, that hadn't quite hit me.

Each interview that goes by, i have to concentrate more and more so i don't get distracted, asking the same questions again and again. And I have only done 7 interviews!! Imagine if it were 20 or 30! Jees, Louise! I also have to fight myself to really listen to the answers and not be influenced by the previous fellows' responses so i kind of feel like i know what they are going to say. I have to treat each interviewee as though she is the only one. My English language teaching training is useful here, doing oral interviews where half your mind is on the response and registering the content so you can build on it in a semi-natural conversation way, and half your mind is on your next question and how you can best phrase it to get the kind of information you want. In English teaching that was questions to stimulate certain fields of vocab, or certain grammar structures ("if you won the lottery,...?"), here it is trying to stimulate responses that answer my research questions. Without leading of course!

I shared my first assignment with all the fellows who volunteered for an interview. It seemed to me like a courtesy to involve them, and then also as i mentioned in an earlier post, i prefer to see them as fellow travelers, co-researchers. We are talking about amazing, clever women here. They know i am doing research and they know it is about an alumni thing, so they may as well know the whole lot. No? I don't feel like there is any benefit to hiding the research point.

Which maybe brings me to Chris Blackmore's suggestion that i mention the ethnographic tradition in much CoP research. Interesting point. While I can't exactly go and be a participant observer, I am inside the situtation (system) with the fellows and from that perspective it is a bit ethnographic.

Oh, another thing with interviews, is that my least comfortable mode is audio. I am very kinesthetic and visual (and olfactory!!) but listening for me is really tedious. I am fidgeting like mad while listening and talking. Wish i was there. Like the human contact.

After four interviews (non transcribed just impressions)

the purpose (domain) is mainly very cohesive - to help poor farmers

the practice too is pretty cohesive - networking for project proposal development, discipline interactions, information about calls for grants, conferences, information about who is where when, helping younger women scientists, best practices regarding getting to women and farmers on the ground. conferences and f2f feature less.

It is not what i expected. I expected there to be more on the women's leadership and capacity building bit but this seems pretty secondary. I want to read again the networks book which identifies suitable network types for different needs. one reason i chose CoP is because CoP are good for capacity building. If the practice is not capacity building maybe another typology would be more helpful. Mind you, another reason for choosing CoP is because CoPs are about learning and learning seems to be very much part of practice

Community - quite a wide difference in boundaries of community suggested- from AWARD alumni only to the World. It may be linked to how they see community. Thinking about the types identified in lit review, one fellow seems to see it as an alumi community, the others more of a best practice, ideological or task based community. I need to read that again.

Competence - everyone is familar with email and they are in touch with others through email, facebook, linked in. My feeling but i don't know if it comes from them or my own bias is that they need to have the technology part as part of their daily interactions, not a place to visit.

Phase: varies - from non existent community to small existing active communities

Institutional form - of course it is between institutes  the fellows work in different institutes and different countries. What surprises me is the amount of support from institutes that interviewees so far claim to have. So participation in this kind of community would be integrated in work day not extra.

I made certain decisions about how to sample the people who have volunteered to be involved in my research. I decided to select a group that would be like this:

• 1 mentor and 8 fellows
• 3 at BSc level, 3 at MSc level and 3 at PhD level;
• 3 from the 2008 round, 3 from 2009 and 3 from 2010

Seems so easy. There are 29 volunteers from a variety of countries, rounds, academic levels and academic disciplines.

So i made some criteria:

• ignore academic discipline
• favour enthusiasm over representativeness. Some fellows have responded to my email and started to engage in dialogue, so who better than these women for the first round of semi-structured interviews?
• favour diversity over patterns. With such a small sample, any commonalities between fellows of a certain country or round are circumspect. So, i prefer to actively seek the widest possible views by choosing different countries.

Problems

1. Of the women who have responded, only one is from 2009. So do I stay true to my first set of criteria or the second set?
2. If i select the one mentor (and I will), then which of the levels will have only 2 participants to make a total of 9? Or should I say 10? Will i have time to transcribe 10 interviews?
3. BSc level - i chose the first to respond who then engaged in dialogue. This left me with two women from Kenya. so i changed one to the second person.
4. the one mentor who has volunteered, also the corresponding fellow has volunteered so I should take advantage of that and include them both.
5. in the end I favored the first list over the second.

An interaction with Chris Blackmore got me thinking. I had listed elements I saw in my project purpose. My third point was this:

3. Systems Concepts. Seeing AWARD and alumnae entity as two systems and the implications of that. How to move fellows from being within an AWARD system to the environment where they can influence and be influenced by AWARD?

And Chris commented:

Could you draw a diagram of this?  Remember that systems thinking is about going up a level of abstraction so if you are perceiving two systems, what does the next level up look like?

In my third assignment in the course on Managing Systemic Change (TU812) I wrote the following:

Self-organisation: For long term sustainability, Bawden asserts that "we need to facilitate the transformation of communities into learning systems which are sufficiently self-referential that they will be able to learn about their own learning" (Bawden 1999, p.43). If we consider fellows and ex-fellows as a system of African women in agricultural research and development with the dual purpose of developing each other and contributing to African agriculture, it is apparent that at the moment the AWARD programme is inside the boundaries of such a system (Figure 3, left). To ensure sustainability, the fellows need to be a self-organised system with AWARD moved to the environment (Figure 3, right). From this position of structural coupling with environment, the African women scientist system can co-evolve with AWARD while it exists and continue to adapt after AWARD finishes.

Figure 3. Creating sustainability. Moving AWARD from the core of the system (left) to the environment (right)

I still think this diagram is relevant and useful. But Chris' question remains unanswered: What does the next level up look like?

As Ray Ison (and Senge I think, anyway other authors too) has said: If that is the answer, what is the question?

I have the WHAT, what is the WHY?

I guess it must be the wider system of developing critical advances and innovations in agricultural development for Africa. The 'empowering women' bit is one subsystem which (we believe) can contribute to that higher level aim. Thoughts?

Finally coming up with something that feels manageable, relevant and useful. Please do comment. Don't hold your punches. What feels wrong or incomplete or underdeveloped here?

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Aim: to explore design principles that have the potential to support an alumni initiative in the context of AWARD by identifying relevant elements of COP and social learning system theory and developing systemic metaphors and heuristics.

Project Methodology:

1. identify elements of COP theory with potential to support Alumnae initiative
2. identify elements of social learning systems theory with potential to support Alumnae initiative
3. identify critical success and risk factors for design from other alumni entitities
4. Develop metaphoric and visual models and design principles from systems literature
5. Identify first list of systemically desirable high potential design principles
6. Discuss models and design principles with AWARD fellows, mentors, staff and other key stakeholders in order to identify culturally feasible principles of design

Briefly reflect upon how your personal politics (i.e. values and beliefs) may influence - or already has influenced - your thinking on:

• ideas you have for research projects
• how you may want to carry out your research.

Conclude this activity by actively considering how you would explain and justify to potential stakeholders your answers to the above.

You should keep notes of your conclusions for later use.

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The course is written in the context of organizations, which is not really relevant to me but probably i can find some parallels with my situation.

My personal politics

Handy thinks of politics in terms of power and influence- my commodity of power is relational as i have no formal influence. In fact this project will probably contribute to my power as a commodity related to expertise.

The course materials frame individual politics as 'values and beliefs'. Well, I guess i have an egalitarian view of the world, and believe that interventions can and should help those who have fewer options to have more options. I am quite a feminist too and believe that women are largely cut out of most decision making positions even though they do much of the work (i am talking about the context of rural livelihoods).

The third framing of politics is the wheeling and dealing that goes on in organizations.I am pretty naive and bad at this. I am pretty straight forward and transparent and lack that strategic capacity to choose the right timing for certain communications, or the right person for certain information. Where i am strong - and this goes back to power and influence above - is building networks of good feeling relationships.

So how do these affect my research?

1. Subject matter. The situation I would like to research is about empowerment and changing the balance of power at an institutional and societal level.

2. I am drawn to participatory methodologies, sharing ideas in a group. Casting the net as wide as possible, using CSH to make sure as much as possible that those affected but involved are not harmed, aiming to do good not harm. Also I believe objectivity is impossible, and prefer the call to be responsible, by triangulating, by surfacing underlying assumptions and by keeping a record so that research is transparent and can be challenged.

How would I explain these to stakeholders

Generally when i talk about my research I frame it in an instrumental way as I believe that most people can't see the benefit of an equity (right thing to do) argument:There is a body of research that indicates that where women have access to more assets, societies do better. There is also a commonsense argument that excluding half the population from problem solving is going to give you half the possible solutions to your problems.

About how to do the research... I actually work within a research organization with agronomists, economists and so on conducting research, which generally speaking I see as in a different tradition to my own (theirs is positivist), so i would expect challenges to the rigour and robustness of my research. However, the programme i work for is truly embedded in an adaptive, contingent, complexity-based view of research and development. So there I could present it easily and the challenges will make it stronger.