Margaret.OCONNELL's blog

Is anyone keen to review the new book to be launched in Bribane, for the ALAR journal?

The book is by Assoc Prof Eileen Piggott-Irvine and Assoc Prof Brendan Bartlett (Eds.) and titled "Evaluating Action Research".

Crossposted from Ed(ge)ucation design...

My first views of this historic and somewhat seesawing day.

Had a wonderful discussion with Jeanette, Susan and Stephen today in preparation for the 2008 Australian conference! This will make up our conference planning team, together with the Events team here at CIT. We're working on a theme which concerns the 'Whole Person'. This from our submission:

"The whole person: sustainable futures in living, learning and working." The underpinning framework of the theme is the exploration of the encroachment of economic rationalist approaches to our work and life and its dominance in areas such as health and education particularly. This is often pursued at the expense of community development and wellbeing of individuals and families, no to mention workplaces and our educational institutions.

**crossposted from Ross' blog... I made these comments over at Ross' blog and thought I'd repost here so I can continue to reflect on our conference planning at CIT, over the next few months... Di also makes some valid points from her own conference experiences...

Your thoughts on previous
conferences, Di, remind me of my experiences in Adelaide last year. I
felt 'freer' at this conference as I had not planned to present
anything (in fact I had not planned to go until the last minute!), so
felt I could 'drift' between sessions, conversations and workshops, as
they appealed to me. However, in so doing, I was not quite as
'committed' - or perhaps invested is a better word... and thus apart
from one or two sessions that peaked my interest, I probably didn't get
out of it as much as if I was engaged in a diferent role (or
something). Still there is much power in observation I think, and it
did give me an insight into the operations of a conference.

Wow! What an amazing start to the year! Phew, there's been a lot going on - ALARA-wise and life generally :o)

I'm excited by the ALARA visioning process that has been underway for a couple of months now. I'm looking forward to the meeting coming up in March to discuss the visioning process in more detail.

The April edition of the ALAR journal is underway, with reviews to be undertaken of articles, most of which have come from our 2007 national conference (I recall that conference with great fondness too).

Day 1 plenary panel discussion: What does action learning/action research mean in different contexts? Sharing perspectives...

Joan Gibbs and Uncle George talked first and Uncle said along the lines of 'if you talk too much (or too loud) you frighten things away (he was referring to taking young kids out into the bush to learn and that you can't talk because you frighten away the animals, etc that you're there to see.

Great metaphor (and reality) for our research - stop talking and start listening! When you do you can touch things, eat things, look at and interact with things; it's a two-way (are multi-way) process. This 'listening' point carried on through the conference proper too.

Ernie and Ricky also picked this up with Ernie's point that you just keep yarnin and you listen to the people.

Mick added his cooperative research viewpoint where

• the research is what people want (a focus point)
• that it transfers into practice (accountability)
• is about capacity development (it's about US)

When we talk about things like the 'bottom line' for govt depts and business, etc, we need to also be talking about investing in commitment, where return on investment plus time amounts to the outcomes of that investment.

Aunty Coral next talked about the work she and other grannies are doing in a Grannie's Group, which is a volunteer group of women who look out for their children and their grandchildren and great grandchildren, to teach kids to steer away from drugs and alcohol. The grannies are facilitators and are investing in their future by looking after their kids. Inspirational!

I think it was Uncle George who said that we also need to acknowledge the intellectual property rights of Aboriginal peoples. To state their place and their voice in literature, reports, news, discussions, forums, conferences and other avenues where an Indigenous knowing is professed in some way.

One point I liked from Ernie was that we are research facilitators and while as academics we may have all this information in our heads, we need to do what Denzin and others call 'bracketing' where we contain our theoretical views and let others speak on their own terms. And, as Mick said, we need to get the big things down to eyeball chunks, otherwise the issues seem too big to deal with.

I've only captured some things and only the things I heard (from my place in the world) from the panel members; but it gave me a sense of the themes and talking points leading into the concurrent sessions that followed. A 'narrative arc' had been set, more than disparate conversations loosley joined (as I expect the experience of walking straight into concurrent sessions might be). I was left with a space to think, or, as another participant said, a breathing space...

...so I'll leave this here to give you some space to breath some life into these thoughts from your context and perspective...

Pre-conference workshop day 8/8/07 (2007 ALARA conference, Adelaide)

Ted Sandercock and Susan Goff co-facilitated this very interesting and reflective session exploring various forms of disciplinary viewpoints. These are my notes (which may appear disjointed, but I hope it sparks some thinking in relation to your work!)...

Ted and Susan presented a case study with which participants could develop some approaches to resolving the dilemma raised. The case was that of a bank whose CEO had determined that in order to support his idealogical standpoint for reconciliation, decided that indigenous community members be given an equitable opportunity to work in the bank's branches. One such branch sought to employ such a person only to reneg at the last minute and offer the position to a whitefella.

There's ongoing discussion following across the emails after the Adelaide conference, particularly regarding ALARA's role as a 'psedo-political' body (whatever that might mean, and is certainly up for discussion). I landed on this article on my internet travels:

Diane Watt, (2007) On Becoming a Qualitative Researcher: The Value of Reflexivity, The Qualitative Report, Vol 12 Number 1, March 2007, 82-101, from University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Watt discusses the participatory elements of qualititative research in some detail, including techniques such as participant observation.

I slipped in to Ernie and Sue's pre-conference workshop at about 11am after being held up by uncharacteristic fog and making a detour to Mildura for a short time, before finally landing in Adelaide.