Digitally-mediated Doctoral Agency

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Andy Coverdale School of Education | University of Nottingham Digitally-mediated Doctoral Agency: How PhD students are using social media to negotiate academic practices and identities ________________________________________________________ Losing Momentum? Current Challenges in Learning and Technology Department of Education | Oxford University 14 June 2012

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Presentation for Losing Momentum? Doctoral students conference at the School of Education, University of Oxford. Hosted by the Learning and New Technologies Research Group.

Transcript of Digitally-mediated Doctoral Agency

Page 1: Digitally-mediated Doctoral Agency

Andy CoverdaleSchool of Education | University of Nottingham

Digitally-mediated Doctoral Agency: How PhD students are using social media to negotiate academic practices and identities________________________________________________________

Losing Momentum? Current Challenges in Learning and TechnologyDepartment of Education | Oxford University14 June 2012

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Doctoral Agency________________________________________________________  Human Agency

“The power of people to act purposively and reflectively, in more or less complex interrelationships with one another, to reiterate and remake the world in which they live.”(Inden, 1990: 23)

Human agency “happens daily and mundanely” (Holland et al, 1998)

A ‘cultural view’ of learning (Bruner, 1996)

• Construction of a conceptual system that ‘organises’ a record of agentic encounters• Performed through knowledge and skills acquisition in specific settings• Interrelated with identity development

Doctoral Contexts

• Socialisation and enculturation into specific fields of academic enquiry • Transformation of identity• Positionality – locating oneself in the ‘field’• Doctoral research cultures – (inter)disciplinary, supervisory, departmental, peer group

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Key Motivations for Research________________________________________________________

What is ‘doing a PhD’?

• Holistic and authentic models of doctoral practice• Key phases in doctoral study across multiple practice contexts

Ecological perspective of social media

• Contextualised and situated approach• The multiplicity, interrelatedness and transiency of social media practice• PLE as an idealised and consensual conceptual model

Profiling and sampling participants

• The reality of low adoption rates and lack of widespread use • Inclusive approach to social media users and user contexts

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Research Design________________________________________________________

Participants

Six PhD students:

• Different stages of PhD• Humanities, Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary• Based in ‘traditional’ Faculty and Doctoral Training Centres (DTCs)

Data Collection

15-month data collection period:

• Logging all digital artefacts (blog posts, tweets etc.)• Field notes• Participant-reported accounts• Three interviews with each participant (90-120 mins. per interview)

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Analytical Framework________________________________________________________

Activity Theory

• Social, cultural and historical perspective of doctoral practices• Culturally-mediated, object-oriented activity systems• Objects are emergent and partly shared, fragmented and contested

Data Analysis

• Used as a descriptive analytical framework• Multiple and interrelated activity systems• Open coding and ‘thick description’

Agency in Activity Systems

• Object-oriented ‘interagency’• Development of cultural artefacts• Figured worlds and genre knowledge

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Activity Systems Development________________________________________________________

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Cultural Artefact Development________________________________________________________

Genre Studies

• Socio-cultural fork of Genre Studies (e.g. Berkenkotter & Huckin, 1993)• Traditions of using tools rather than artefact categorisation• Development of ‘genre knowledge’ as cultural tools

Figured Worlds (Holland et al., 1998)

• Historical, socially enacted and culturally constructed in recognised frames of social life• Space of authoring’ (Bakhtin) – mutual shaping of figured worlds

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Key Findings________________________________________________________

Developing Cultural Artefacts as Agentic Tools

• Purposes , contexts and stages of the PhD

Agentic Contexts

• Agency exists within and across multiple and interrelated practice contexts • Boundary crossing and interdisciplinary activities• Peripheral and thesis-oriented work

Loci of Agency

• Networked individualism vs. community development• Relational agency (Edwards, 2008); Collective competency (Hakkarainen et al. 2004)

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Key Findings________________________________________________________

“Privileged Insight”

• Social media practices within and across figured worlds increase authenticity of agency

Partiality of Participatory Contexts

• Social media practices within and across figured worlds increase authenticity of agency• Agency may be partially realised in figured worlds with limited social media adoption• Greater reliability when integrated with other doctoral practices• Dominant parties, discourses and cultural practices

Ambiguity of Participatory Contexts

• Interactive vs. broadcast metaphors of social media engagement• Identifiable and ‘imagined’ audiences

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Thanks

Andy CoverdaleBlog: http://www.phdblog.netTwitter: @andycoverdale

Supervisors: Gordon Joyes & Charles Crook