Taking it one at a time
It’s a problem for most academics. Too many readings, too many writings, to many other voices within the field of study and a multiplicity of voices from without! While it’s an exciting experience to be reading and capturing these readings with a four sentence summary within an annotated bibliography, it’s also a daunting task as a novice academic. So, I’m taking it one at a time.
I’m not new to the reading part. I’ve been a voracious reader from the start. My Good Reads collection verifies and quantifies my reading interests and practice. However, I am new to the summarizing what I’ve read – taking a document and drilling down to the essential bits in order to create a snapshot of that article. As part of this process of annotating and capturing the ‘image’ of what was written, I’m also capturing key quotes, key terms, and interesting connections that come from these readings. On occasion, I draft an icon or sketch to compliment and deepen my understanding of the material.
It was with particular interest that I read and re-read the one page summary outlining the methodology and methods for ‘auto-ethnography’ in the course materials, since this has been the focus for some of my most recent reading [see ? and ? as a record of my thoughts]. I went back to my collection of auto-ethnography articles as well as those I’ve collected about ethnography. I dug into the book I’ve borrowed from the library to read Tedlock’s (2003) chapter on ethnography. This particular quote caught my attention: “Because ethnography is both a process and a product, ethnographers’ lives are embedded within their field experiences in such a way that all of their interactions involve moral choices. Experience is meaningful, and human behavior is generated from and informed by this meaningfulness. Because ethnographers traverse both territorial and semantic boundaries, fashioning cultures and cultural understandings through an intertwining of voices, they appear heroic to some and ludicrous to others” (p. 166). This will shape my understanding of my place within an ethnographic work – part hero, part fool.
I also reviewed Bonnie Stewart’s comprehensive portfolio document, as well as other articles she has published openly online. I will now need to go back to these to review the references and add items to my annotated bibliography as well as my Zotero collections. One more step to take.
While exploring, I serendipitously came across an article by Alevizou (2015) that added loads of additional links and references to my annotated bibliography in the my area of interest. Here’s my four sentence summary:
Alevizou (2015) examines the “intersections between digital and open education to explore how openness, as a value and currency, has conditioned the mediation trajectories of pedagogical knowledge domains and communicative learning spaces” (p. 203). This inquiry investigates open education “to situate the context in which digital media/cultures have been aligned with notions of open learning and re-appropriated by various actors to add potent frames that condition value and other recurring themes in terms of: content delivery policies and platforms; and teaching and learning practices” (p. 205) through the presentation of cMOOC, xMOOC, the information commons, networked communities, mediated assets, online and digital cultures. Alevizou states that “social accountability in academic or pedagogical improvement may invite more perspectives for critical analysis of how ongoing political and educational tensions are being negotiated” in order to address “the imperatives of contextual environments and cultural relevance, community resilience, sociocultural pedagogy or indeed public scholarship” (p. 218). Through this examination, Alevizou “open up the space for a critical, historically informed debate as well as research agendas that account for ongoing tensions and contradictions between openness, value and media technology, particularly as located in: advocacy and promotion within a new-media-saturated cultural politics of education; and a broader spectrum of learning varieties within spheres of alternative pedagogy and resistance” (p. 218).
So I’m keeping Alevizou on my active list of researchers to follow. I’ll continue to search for other writing by this author/scholar that may support my own work.
It’s a process of working through things, one at at time!
Reference
Alevizou, G. (2015). From OER to MOOCs: Critical perspectives on the historical mediation trajectories of open education. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, 11(2), 203-224.
Tedlock, B. (2003). Chapter 6, Ethnography and ethnographic representation. In N. Denzin & Y. Lincoln (Eds). Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publication, pp. 165 – 213.
