Personal Blogs

If you still have your TMAs and notes from modules you studied prior to T847, get them out and take some time to scan through them to remind yourself of particular topics you found of interest. Briefly review the T847 study materials as well. Again, look for particular ideas, concepts, theories, arguments, propositions, techniques, tools, case studies – in fact any material – that you found particularly interesting. Now spend some time thinking through whether any of this material could be used as the basis for research.

An alternative approach which reverses the above process is to start with a real problem, issue or phenomenon that interests you and then find an appropriate theory

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I did look through all my TMAs and EMAs - right the way back to the beginning of the MSc 3 years ago (a great time waster!). And i have begun to tease out the recurrent themes in a mind map.

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social learning theory - i have read Social Learning by Arjen Wals (ed) and i need to write those thoughts up. The reason why i want to look at social learning is this: AWARD works to make a difference at a societal level. Change implies doing things differently, and that to me implies that learning has happened. So in a sense my image of a Social Learning System is a de facto purposive system of elements that produce a certain result (like Stafford Beer's concept that a system's purpose is what it does). And can be tweaked. or in the language of TU872 it can be steered.

Community of Practice theory - so attractive this theory. But risk of the chocolate cake scenario. Ingredients don't make a cake. In fact that reflexively is the problem - reifying CoPs and not participating in them.

institutions and institutionalizing - Engberg Pederson called institutions "systems of meaning". I think there is something important there for the way we try to institutionalize new patterns of behaviour through AWARD to change the African ARD landscape. It links in to Wenger's considerations on 'Meaning' too. TU872 also had the idea of institutions as intervention or as history. Which is like blueprint or emergent.

Transformative change. There is - i believe - literature out there on transformative change. i have noted Grove, Kibble and Haas as one reference and Debebe as another.

Sustainability. This is why institutions are relevant. How to ensure that Fellows keep on their trajectory even when they lose the context of AWARD? Ison found that team members lost momentum once taken out of successful context, Woodhill found that SL could only go so far before change faced institutional barriers.

Leadership. The Debebe article looks at transformative change in the area of women's leadership. Bawden's work in Hawkesbury too looked at Leadership. Both - i think - with Leadership as an emergent property of a purposeful system.

Empowerment. Leadership and empowerment are linked. In AWARD we use a framework of looking a power in terms of power to, power with, power over, and power (can't remember ). Linda Mayoux.

Systems . Being Engaging Managing and Contextualizing. I am thinking about Use SSM(p) for planning and
CSH for considering stakeholders, boundary tensions, politics and ethics. Re Being, i must remember to be guided by Bakewell and Garbutt: "hold the theory lightly".Regarding research, it means responsibility not objectivity. ie traceability, replicability, triangulation. Second order cybernetics. Researcher as engager or filter.

Complexity. What we aim to do with AWARD is create a destabilizing event to bring about a new dissipative structure. We can see CoPs as dissipative structures, or Complex Adaptive Systems, with their own direction, and members joining and leaving but the form staying more or less the same. Stacey says the trick is to find the balance of control - let go but not so much it fragments, hold on but not so much you stunt self organization.

Ethics. Is this what African women scientists want or what we want or what our donors want?

Design. how to design for systemic research or inquiry? (p). How to draw on the above to make recommendations for AWARD's design (c)?