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
------------------------------------------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.
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.
Comments
I welcome the return of chocolate cake
title says it all
Helenx