Facts can always be otherwise, down a rabbit hole.

Science is made, it does not exist outside of our making.

This is not to say that the world, the universe, the salad in my fridge...does not exist. However, our knowledge of such things, our science of what is/is not,  is a communicated one, a negotiated one, a shared one.  Or as stated by Latour,  in an interview reported in Science magazine,  "To have common facts, you need a common reality." (de Vrieze, 2017).
Expanding on this Latour goes on to explain that, "Science has never been immune to political bias. On issues with huge policy implications, you cannot produce unbiased data. That does not mean you cannot produce good science, but scientists should explicitly state their interests, their values, and what sort of proof will make them change their mind."
Oddly, we forget this. We have an amnesiac tendency to blackbox our accepted knowledges, that is-we forget how we come to our beliefs. Oftentimes we no longer have access to how our thinking even occurs... but knowledge is something constructed, it doesn’t exist in some ready-made jar to be consumed, it doesn’t occur in a vacuum sealed pack. It doesnt occur in some individual...
"there is no sense for an isolated scientists to exclaim "cogito!" or "eureka!". Laboratories think, communities discover, disciplines progress, instruments see, not individual minds." (Latour, 1996).  What's accepted as fact or as an alternative fact, requires not only our own thinking but that our thoughts (and those of others) hit up alongside previously held thoughts. Current and past. A gathering of garlands in time as Serres is described as having said . This may seem a very esoteric or even ephemeral approach to an understanding of knowledge, but our thoughts, our cognitions, evolve and when espoused, verbally or in writing,  our views may then become aligned with those of others, allies if you will, or which also oftentimes, engage resistance. A 'science war' ensues. A tussle perhaps, or even a merger,  a resistance maybe, or outright denial and a rallying of others or their thoughts to negate such facts being accepted by oneself or by others. And so science is made, though not commonly thought of as a making.
And in these times of truths, counter truths, inconvenient truths, through to alternative facts, that might assume we ever had facts that were insurmountable then we enter a space of post modernism.  This could lead to the postmodern quagmire of anything goes, however, not just anything is ok. We have as Latour rightly points out responsibility in science to win back and to earn respect,  and to do so, he argues that there is need to present science as science in action.
This is a risky undertaking because when we make the uncertainties and controversies explicit, such acknowledgement provides fodder for everyone from creationists, to anti climate changers,  anti-vaxxers, believers in a flat earth, Santa Clause, fairies,  unicorns, or the need for a wall... etc etc.

Our 'facts' are made and they are political.
Socrates drank poison as punishment for asking unpopular questions.
Freud changed his beliefs with the Venice circle accepting that women telling of incest must be hysterical.
British PM Disraeli claiming "There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics."
Currently  USA President Trump claiming alternative facts.

This is then open acknowledgement of our world-making potential and of ontological politics at play. As Donna Haraway has said, "This is not some kind of blissed-out techno- bunny joy in information. It is a statement that we had better get it – this is a worlding operation."

Facts/knowledge/statistics/stuff is always elusive. That it devlops substance, becoming seemingly immobile, occurs as alignments hold it in place. To not acknowledge this, to not enter into open dialogue of how such stuff comes to be known, to be indifferent to alternatives as  Katherine Behar writes, is a “newfound inhospitability” giving face to “Botox ethics”: an ethic that seeks not to articulate connections but to inhibit them; to create not unbounded subjects but enclosed objects; it recommends not outward-directed networking and changeability but inward-directed unexpressivity and singularity.
It is the very reason for why science as a subject exists, and why studies of science and technology have to continue.

Refs
de Vrieze, J. (2017). Bruno Latour, a veteran of the Science Wars, has a new mission. Interview with Bruno Latour. Retrieved from https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/10/bruno-latour-veteran-science-wars-has-new-mission

Gane, N. (2006). When we have never been human, what is to be done? Interview with Donna Haraway. Theory, Culture and Society, 23, 135-158.

Latour, B. (1996). Cogito Ergo Sumus! Or psychology swept inside out by the fresh air of the upper deck. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 3, 54-63.

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Sheldon, R. (2017).You can't have me: Feminist infiltrations in Object-Oriented Ontology. Retrieved from https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/you-cant-have-me-feminist-infiltrations-in-object-oriented-ontology/#!


 Worth noting what generated this blog:
 I was invited to do a blind review. It wasn’t very blind. The opening sentence referred to  to the author’s xxxx book xxxx (he was responding to a critical review). I started reading the manuscript. I was out of my depth - I instantly regretted not being as immersed in ANT as I had been during my PhD studies and I was missing this. 
Not having been immersed in said book, or  said critique- how to attest to the value of the article or its accuracy- I was going to have to do some further investigating. Reviewing can be truly exhilarating and rewarding and it’s great when it is (like today).
So, down an enticing bunny hole inside of which  my fluffy white tail got a tad grubby... (a ref to Stephen Fry and QI repeats) and I found myself (as much as I ever can)  back in the foundations of how knowledge is made. Part of the enticement is that this is area I have been mulling for a while, ever since a friend Ibrar Bhatt piqued my curiousity with a call for papers on 'Lies, Bullshit and Fake News Online: Should We Be Worried?'
In looking for a Donna Haraway reference to blissed out bunnies and the need to be aware of world making ontologies,  I fluked across the article by Sheldon. And regretted that the current day job is a sad distraction on what I might otherwise do.  The article by Sheldon is well worth the read, a story of bunnies of the less reputable kind that led to a deliberate defeminized portrayal.  Visual ethnography is no less susceptible to HIStory making than any other form of science.
Triggered also is the mullings of recent times on how reflexivity does not give wings (a bon mot of Chris Bigum's, my very excellent phd supervisor.. 

From the FB ANT group, I had also been thinking about how reflective writing is asked for /demanded by some methodologies, some PhD supervisions, as an add on. to tick a box which would in some way make the research more hygienic. It doesn’t. And Steve Wright referred me to the useful article by Passoth and Rowland (2013). Beware of Allies! Qualitative Sociology 36(4).

We are through and through implicated. As Latour has said in a lightly veiled response to Haraway's critical feminism: To explicate the implicit, unfolding  comes with refoldings and  the creation of further opaqueness...there is no enlightenment vs darkness. The light only exists because we also have shadow, and the reverse is also true. Such a position is encapsulated in Latour's calling for a science of the science, or more prosaically,  a technology of the technology.

Nonetheless, crude and flawed as they are, reflexivity and referencing are utilised in tracing how this argument is or isnt informed, it shows the allies drawn upon as well as those refuted if not neglected.

Going to need some of these...after all, I didnt reference Lewis Caroll...the first chapter book i ever read :-)
https://www.amazon.com/Alice-in-Wonderland-Writing-Gloves/dp/B01FRJZEAE

writing has always been a mobile art

While listening to my alarm/radio this morning I heard some 54% of workers commuting in the UK are working; they are answering emails while travelling to and from work. The spin put on this was a suggestion that a working day should incliude the travel time.
Then when browsing my email alerts before even leaving my bed, i follow a link to an article on how writers have always been mobile. The mobility of writing having studied text messaging as an emergent means of counselling prompted my curiouslity as to how come the  mobility of writing is newsworthy.  The shape of things in current times seems to have altered our thinking about things so much that we do not recognise the romantic past as also being one of commuting and writing?
So now this is news?

Surely it shouldn't be news - people stopped writing on cave walls and carving into rock some time ago.
The very purpose of our writing would seem for word to travel - it provides movement through both space and time - at least with bringing whats now to future spaces.
So how come it's now news?
I recall one of the oddities of antiquity my brother has is of a writing box. A sloped box on which to write - an addition to any flat table for the houses of the time without purpose built writing desks. It had a lifting lid for pens, paper, ink bottles. And the top surface also with its now quaint inkwell.
We had plastic pocket liners for our shirts so we could travel with pens. Indeed, we had shirts with bockets that seemed soley designed for the purpose of holding a pen or two and not much else. We had the invention of the roller ball pen so it coud literally write in the different spaces required of modern times. 
Now we have shirts without pockets- the type of pocket not being substantive enough for the tools of modernliteracy- a mobile ph isnt in that pocket. And the pen also becomes less evident.
I'm writing, but there's no ink, no paper -  the physicality of writing changes.
Though i may write of abstract things, writing itself never occurs in the abstract,  but occurs by means of objects—as well as by the involvement of experiences, memory, nostalgia, hopes, and more. Always it is an interaction of things. An internetting of things.

Acknowledgement to Laura R. Micciche  associate professor of English at the University of Cincinnati for prompting this little wander into  things we think with.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/08/writers-have-always-loved-mobile-devices/567637/

On critique

I've been ruminating on my use of critique, and hence this reminder from Foucault.

The purpose is not to close something down, but to provide a catalyst.

Critique is too often done as a means of showmanship; too often done for closing things down. What if instead it was undertaken to light fires... a catalyst invoking thoughts and possibilities?

Dream of criticism that does not judge but brings ideas to life.

It would light fires,

watch the grass grow,

listen to the wind

and catch the sea foam in the breeze and scatter it...

A criticism of scintillating leaps of the imagination….

It would bear the lightening of possible storms.

(paraphrased, Foucault, 1994)

Foucault, M. 1994. The masked philosopher. In: Rabinow, P. (ed.) Ethics: Subjectivity and truth. (Essential works of Foucault, 1954-1984, Vol.1). London, England: The New Press.

In pursuit of what makes a difference in higher ed, and chasing rainbows....

The first thing to make visible:
"the minimum goal of education, when rightly expressed, should be for all students to make at least one year’s progress for one year’s input, no matter where they start" (Hattie, 2015)

The second concern Hattie argues is that unless an impact passes the 0.4 level, grounds for support are seriously dubious.
He makes this highly visible in the visual guide on what does or doesnt have impact  and its worth then considering what translates across to a higher ed sector.

The teacher having credibility, clarity and opportunity of discussion all score highly.
Providing timely and specific feedback scores well.
The size of a class, does not. Class size has a 0.21 impact.
Pre term birth weight is a more reliable indicator!
Often argued is that it is what the teacher does as makes the difference. Notably, this is not John Hattie's argument. He points out there is so much more going on; its the lecturers and the structures or wrap around services, the 'culture' of the learning environment, where learners (and teaching staff) are nourished and supported by the system as a whole.
In a PhD study by Molly Neville, it came down to feeling like I (the student) matters.

How come then, we get so distracted by quality measures that bear little resemblance to what makes a difference?

Informed by Hattie's meta-analysis, this is where we might be better focussed:
Instead of predetermined student outcomes, might we focus on what are the student's needs?
From this, what then are the lecturer needs in relation to the student needs.
Identify the required actions or behaviours for implementing.
Evaluate the impact, and
then do it all again, continuously...

Starting from know thy impact- what is it we do, that we would want to keep doing, and is there an evidence base for this in terms of desired impact on student learning?
Is it good enough, and is there evidence that this is 'good enough'?

THEN, we might consider what progress in this area might look like.

Actor-Networking with dead people.

Invoking a dead language I draw on the past to give meaning to where we are now,  nanos gigantum humeris insidentes.  While  attributed to Bernard of Chartres of the 12th century, the more familiar expression provided in English comes from a 1676 letter of Isaac Newton:

If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.

Acknowledgement is then given to those on whose shoulders we have stood ; those who inform our gaze, and through whose learning, we might begin to learn even more.

Channelling knowledge drawn from a past, from those spatially and temporally challenged, is not new. Stevenson (2007) argues:

[in] the postmodern period....Traditional literature has been found to have been written by "dead white males" to serve the ideological aims of a conservative and repressive Anglo hegemony....disguised in literature and other discourses as positive ideals and objective truths – but they slant our sense of reality in favor of power and privilege. (pp. 9-10)

Accepting new research is situated on a body of knowledge that informs it is one aspect of this. Informing futures from current times is not a new phenomenon and despite the disparagement evident, in the  example above, a Euro-centric wisdom of patriachs is not the only wisdom that might be accessed.

There are alternate realities that might be explored:
http://strangeremains.com/2014/08/23/the-cult-of-the-dead-at-the-ossuary-of-santa-maria-delle-anime-del-purgatorio-ad-arco/
 Literally a paving one's path to heaven by looking after the dead.
A reminder then that we live in differing realities.

Another example is the very recently passed legislation that has positioned the Whanganui river in New Zealand as having personhood status.
An ingenious approach consistent with the people of this place to grant legal rights to a living ancestor. This spiritual ancestor is not to be insulted by being placed under human control. Instead there is open acknowledgement of the one with the other.:
 "I am the river, and the river is me"

In actor-network theorizing,  the literature reviewed is not only providing a body of knowledge that provides a space on which to stand, or to speak from, enhancing perhaps on a current body of knowledge by "filling a gap" the literature is an actor that is also open to interrogation. Worth considering is how the literature maintains a status quo.

In the telling of an actor-networked account, the actors are human and otherwise,  and the human ones might be dead or alive. In addition there is no necessary seperation of what was that informs what is, the writer is implicated through and through.
As said by Mulcahy(1999),
Over the course of these accounts, I came to understand that the tale I was telling of my network was complicit with the tale it was telling of itself.

Where 'I' am in a study as Latour describes it, is situated and positioned.
" I insert my gesture in a ‘garland of time’ as Michel Serres (1995) has put it, which allows me to insert myself in a variety of temporalities or time differentials." (Latour, 2002).

The"gathering garlands in time"  metaphor used by Latour and attributed to Serres, relates to how networking is not just about geographically, spatially positioned networks. We have tendency to attend to what is geographically and spatially close. However, networks have no top nor bottom, left or right, no close or distant, big or small, but that thinking makes it so.
A network study needs then to be recognised as a moment, or clotting in time as Helen Verran has suggested:

'Given spacetime framed context' and 'clotted/clotting context' are metaphysically distinct, juxtaposing them recognises that the seemingly innocuous and helpful work of contextualising is a form of ontic politics. My aim here is not to promote one form over the other; the claim is that the stories express alternative forms of empiricism and that we need both forms to be explicitly held in tension.

Time; a necessary consideration then.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four-dimensional_space

It is all too easy to criticise with the wisdom of hindsight, but what if instead we look at something in terms of how it was in its time,  when an idea is in its moment, the hopes inspired... a

"Always assume people are right, even if you have to stretch the point a bit. A simple rule, my dear pupil when you're studying a project. You put yourself at the peak of enthusiasm, at the apex, the point when the thing is irresistible. " ( Latour, 1996, p. 36).




References
Latour, Bruno. (1996). Aramis: Or the love of technology (C. Porter, Trans.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Latour, Bruno. (2002). Morality and technology. The end of the means. Theory, Culture and Society, 19(5/6), 247–260. doi: 10.1177/026327602761899246
Mulcahy, D. (1999). (Actor-Net) Working bodies and representations: Tales from a training field. Science, Technology and Human Values, 24(1), 80-104. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/690240
Stevenson, J. (2007) The complete idiot's guide to english literature. Alpha Books

Verran, H. (2007). Telling a story of a tender bids hearing and considering researcher responsibility. Paper presented at the Lancaster University STS Students-University of Melbourne Education ANT group. Video-conference 

Please dont get picky about the fonts, the grammar, the incomplete thoughts. Its a blog; a space for raw thoughts and playful writing.

Bean counting in academia; a position informed by leaders in education and some management wisdom.

Changes in the fiscal envelope, for reasons beyond local control* have created a need to get acutely cost efficient in academia. 
*unexpected high dollar, a drop in full fee paying overseas students, changing immigration patterns,  government changes to funding study... changing government approaches on super-annuation /pension eligibility has impact on international student choices... through to building purchases, construction costs... and an election year when promises to cut taxes get made but which always comes at a cost to services such as education...

This blog post addresses fiscal prudence in education as a factor care and thoughtfulness. 

Drawing on the wisdom of leaders in education,  I begin with an invocation for thoughtfulness and a refusal to accept the all too easy approach being that of a sinking lid.
When you know you work with complexity, then you know (or should know) a single solution is unlikely to address complex concerns.

1. Get a moral compass

There's no app for that!
As Simone de Beauvoir said of ethics, it doesn't lend itself to recipes.
Work out your core business, and what's bottom line.
If you took everything out and then were thinking about what needs to be in, knowing you had a limited budget, what would you put in?
Then consider what can be kept, and what might be dropped?
Differentiate between what's essential and what's nice to have.
What's really at work here is to have a pedagologically driven curriculum, albeit an efficient one.
What's not ok is a fiscally driven curriculum where the pedagogy is secondary.

2. Value added, rather than value substraction, and the problem with bean counting*

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sorarium
*Bean counting is the consequence of a view of the world as consisting of “things” to be counted and then manipulated, rather than accepting that those involved are people to be interacted with and conversed with and responded to.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevedenning/2011/02/18/whats-wrong-with-bean-counting/#6245935911a5

Small erosions over time eventually add up and accumulate, as was the goal on the one hand, but on the other there will be an accumulative erosion in brand, a loss in quality, a subtraction from something that took years to add up.
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2017/03/counting-beans.html

If I was in the business of coffee making and made coffee with a little less coffee in it everyday, in the short term this could be ok, but do it with the number of rivets holding a plane together and a serious irreversible condition evolves.

Any subtractive method needs to be mindful of the longer term aim for enduring greatness (Fullan). And as expressed by Hargreaves,  depletion should not occur in the value base.

Not replacing staff when a position becomes vacant (sinking lid) is an easy option, but can be destructive. It's an uneven redistribution of work and can risk profound gaps as well as being a recipe for lowering staff morale.
The alternative is to nurture relationships.
If relationships improve, schools get better. If relationships remain the same or get worse, ground is lost (Fullan).

3. On how to get from here to there

Consider the trajectory, the leverage required, and the pace 
The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion John HagleyIII, John Seely Browne

Informed by one and two above:
Revisit what's wanted and needed: the shared vision
Brainstorm
Prioritise
Map out the steps required.

Value adding is also about improving on underperforming staff.
Other alternatives to sinking lids include offering options for leave without pay.

4. Gain control over the miscellaneous
aka shuffling the deckchairs on the titanic...

This is am extension on the concept of bean counting where the activities are ultimately less than needed to address a much more systemic problem.
I once worked in a hospital that took out every second fluorescent tube AND gave the dimwit a hundred dollars for this less than bright idea. 'Snuff said?
In regard to admonishments to cut the catering budget, its probably unwise to cancel the end of year function, the cost to morale is not worth it.

Photocopying:
Nov-Dec at a time when where my workplace has no students,  photocopying was in excess of $2500... 0.05c per black and white; 0.25c per colour
We could go paperless really fast.
BTW One ream of paper (500 sheets) uses the equivalent of 6 percent of a trees It takes approximately 4 tons of wood to  make one ton of paper (there's a lot of water in trees) and a single mature tree can release enough oxygen to support  2 human beings. Green Facts

Time:
In an educational setting, time is money - people's time is bought and paid for and therefore saving time, saves money.

The cost in my workplace of hourly paid teaching assistants, comes in at about 1.5 fulltime salaried staff. BUT these people are employed just as and when needed...they collectively mark something like 7000 (!) pieces of work a year. No full-time equivalent staff member can do that. Cutting this already fiscally prudent measure is not easy. Any tweaks might be restricted to being really clear with time spent on marking or the pre/mid/post marking meetings.

On the subject of meetings:
Are they needed for as long as they are? Do they need all those present?
Imagine a meeting of about 16 exceptionally well paid people. discussing cost savings, They discuss for 2.5 hours the need for the organisation to save money.
16 people x $45.00 an hour = $720
AND they do it all again a week later... $1450...
What I know is that's not working.

Exploring resistance to the needed changes:
An ANT informed analysis
For change to occur, an appreciating doe what's maintaining the current systems is needed.
While ANT can inform this aspect, it does not provide directions; a network is never fully known and there are always going to be unintended consequences. (The example from Edwards and Siddharta in the opening paragraph points to the perverse that can occur when we think we are designing for other ends. See also Latour on Design Cornwall).
First, design is not ex nihilo, there is always something already in existence, and that existence has multiple activities sustaining its current shape.
Bruno Latour: "we are enveloped, entangled, surrounded; we are never outside without having recreated another more artificial, more fragile, more engineered envelope. We move from envelopes to envelopes, from folds to folds"
When we bring our best intentions we do not come empty headed or handed.

There are 'settled controversies' 'black-boxed' as it were that  have a tendency to not be questioned, they are instead treated as standard and not noticed.

But of the settled controversies that we might pull apart, we might also consider that nothing is good or bad but that thinking makes it so. 

Untangling others from what they do may require untangling thoughts and emotions and relationships  (with things both human and otherwise)  that are maintaining what currently is.
It takes work to keep things in the shape they are, just as it takes work to change such  shapes and what is shaping.

Things done:
Value adding:
We mapped a paper that had gone from 3hours a week face to face to four hours a week face to face to five hours a week face to face.
What was shown was no increase in student success on the paper, if anything there was a small downwards trend: Doing more of the same when there's a sense that what is currently being done is not enough didn't lead to the anticipated outcome. We are cutting the course back to four hours, but also doing a content review- what do we really want and what's the best way of getting there. This saved 20% of salaries, implemented through non replacement of a staff member being on leave (saving anticipated of $120,000 in form of salary saving as well as alteration in course components).

We are going paper minimalist:
We wont be printing paper booklets, these are accessible online (saving anticipated $12,000 annually).
The mapping of grades over time will continue, in appreciation of the best intentions in design can sometimes have perverse consequences.

Attending to pull rather than push:
Sharing the dilemma and inviting solutions but with a focus on what it is we collectively aim for,  shared approach in how to  implement this with concern for prudence and care, and with concern for pace. The changes made are done in our smaller semester.

Improving communications and workplace culture with a five finger meme. Rules of engagement.

Rules of engagement in a workplace renowned for herding cats...Simple rules.


Some simple rules for engagement based on an easy 5 finger mantra:

1. Thumbs up:
Bring your positivity

Engage with shared purpose: we are all in this for a shared reason, improving on what is, or will be otherwise.

Be respectful, polite, assume the best of others.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hngBzDDyFE

And give attribution where it is due >^^<


2. The index, pointing finger, or trigger finger.
Don't point at others.
Dont. Point. Fullstop.


 Make "I" statements rather than "you" statements.
Practice assertiveness skills:
The Desc script:
Describe with concrete data not with judgements
Express your concern regarding this
Suggest alternatives, seeking agreement
Convey the consensual consequences of such an approach.

3. The middle finger
Don't be rude.

image via http://charmcitywire.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/cat2.jpg

4. The ring finger
Engagement and commitment

Be on time
Use other's time respectfully
Follow through, accountability and responsibility matters.


Image by luv2laff(2014)

5. Small things matter:
Everyone plays more nicely when fed, watered, and get toilet breaks.
Treat people well, relationships are the only way we have to collectively move forward.
And remember other lives outside of a work-place also matters.

The last 5 minutes of a lecture

Do i spend the last 5 minutes of a lecture going backwards? Recovering the learning objectives, pointing out the route taken?
 Ive always cnsidered this the worst part of an essay to revisit the signposts instead of the takeaway points.
But its even worse when there is a rush to be heard above the sounds of of people packing up and leaving.
And its also ineffective use of time to be telling students about the assessments due at such points, this just creates a sense of panic if not doom.
On reading James Lang's article in  The Chronicles of Higher Ed on the last 5 minutes I'm amused by the story telling, my experience of reading Lord of the Rings was just as described. It had finished, but wait, there's more. And its a let down for the next umpteen pages as every loose end unravelled in the previous thousands of pages gets tightly tied off. No finish on a high, no curiousity left. Its all been sucked out.So how to put the curiousity back in to the closing spaces?

My preferance is to prompt a question.
I might have prompted an answer, but  possibilities need to be opened up.
Closure on thinking is such a horrid thing.
And, I would have thought an obvious thing in an educative setting where at least one of the challenges is to teach thinking. Albeit, this is a contested outcome of education- some would think our goal is to assist in the acquisition of content. 

Unfortunately in being eclectic magpies where we pick what works from other sectors such as selling and marketing, we conflate  education with buying and selling products. It is so much easier to say at the end of the day that I now know this and this and this, and it is also so much easier to measure such acquisitions. So we come to a Dale Carnegie way of thinking- tell them what your going to tell them, tell them, then tell them what youve told them. A process surely for treating a person as a content repository rather than someone with thoughtfulness.

Avoiding closure I take heart instead from philosophers of education such as
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Rancière, with provocation to thoughtfulness, to emancipation rather than dead ends.

The last 5 minutes then I dedicate to thouughtfulness, curiousity, piquing wonder...

Reference
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Rancière, J. 1991. The ignorant schoolmaster: Five lessons in intellectual emancipation, Stanford; CA, Stanford University Press.

The first five minutes of a lecture

I'm writing this because of the article in Times Higher Ed about the
the first five minutes
 Its a great attention seeker, but IMHO article does not deliver.

Nonetheless,  its a great provocation. So just what do you do in the first 5 minutes?
Do you, as this article suggests, return to the last session?
Personally, that does little for me.
I would rather have my attention grabbed and run with it. Given alarge part of my teaching has been about human growth and development  I am more inclined to think about what wa slife like for you when you were  5..6...7 etc
And from such imaginings just what do you 'imagine' the theories say of such times. Are they right? wrong Somewhere in between?

Up until now Ive tried to set a scene using music that relates to what is typical af the age  group discussed;
 for example
Barney and the I love you, you love me etc song for early childhood,
You have a fast car with Tracey Chapman   for early adulthood...
24 by Taylor Swift for early adulthood...
Ed Sheeran lego house for later stages of early adulthood
etc etc

 but this has tended to produce a mellow start to the session. I think the provocation to thoughtfulness may be better.

Interprofessional education; some research in progress

Building a Safer Health System (2000) documents risks associated with adverse events in hospitals in the USA. Such adverse events are not new. In 1976 Illich named such adverse events as iatrogenesis, the preventable harm that people experience in association with health practitioners. In a New Zealand study, Davis, Lay-Yee, Bryant, Scott, Johnson, and Bingley, (2002) reported an iatrogeneic rate 12.9% for those hospitalised. This involved a retrospective study of documented incidences across 13 NZ hospitals. The undocumented adverse event rate can be presumed to be much higher.

Evans (2007) reified the staggering size of these preventable events by providing the following provocative illustration: These 1500 deaths are equivalent to four Boeing 747’s crashing in New Zealand every year, a rate that is three times the road traffic death rate, and double the deaths from both homicide and suicide (Evans 2007, p. 16).[Computer generated photo of the collision. Photo/wikipedia.org]
This study set out to investigate the concerns raised with regard to communications being implicated in the preventable harm caused by health practitioners in New Zealand in current times. The safe provision of health and disability services in New Zealand is overseen by the Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner(HDC).


Miscommunication is a significant contributor to iatrogenesis in healthcare practice in New Zealand.

In studying this, our analysis of complaints made to the HDC (100 complaints lodged with the HDC between February 2012 and May 2014) we found miscommunications implicated in 99 out of 100 case notes reviewed. Of particular note expanding on earlier research into communications related iatrogenesis is the multi-model nature of health related communications in current times. One third of the cases analysed involved technologically mediated communications, these included telephone calls, text messaging, faxed communications, and computer mediated communications such as emails.
However, while the technology is recognised as having influence, miscommunications do not occur in any of the reported discussions and case notes without there also being human involvement. While media representation tends to conflate what is new with also being causative, this is an attribution error.

Our findings provide irrefutable evidence of the need for healthcare practitioners to have well-developed interpersonal communication skills. The analysis also identified the need for health practitioners working with emergent technologies to understand how these technologies enhance or hinder practice. Of further significance is the amount of error that occurs involving communications between health practitioners.


Conclusions: As has been previously reported in the literature, the incidence of miscommunication within the health sector remains a serious and critical concern, one implicated in preventable deaths, as well as in the development of significant and ongoing disability, delays to treatment and the development of needless distress.
What is reported on here is an uncomfortable truth. However, there is scope to alter how communications are taught and learned by health professionals. Shifting the acquisition of communication skills from mastery of content to instead sharing a common skill set and practicing these inside of processes where we as health professionals learn to talk with each other,is but one step forward on this much needed path. This argument supports providing greater opportunities for interprofessional education, of having diverse groups of health professionals learning with and from each other rather than within siloed curricula.


References

Davis, P., Lay-Yee, R., Briant, R., Ali, W., Scott, A. J., & Schug, S. (2002). Adverse events in New Zealand public hospitals I: Occurrence and impact. The New Zealand Medical Journal, 115(1167).
Evans, S. (2007). Silence kills--challenging unsafe practice. Kai Tiaki: Nursing New Zealand, 13(3), 16-19.
Illich, I. (1976). Limits to medicine; Medical nemesis: The expropriation of health. London, England: Marion Boyars.

Interfering in Hinterlands of Discontent: Making a difference, differently

Given youth work is frequently entered into with the intention of making a difference in young people's lives, this article has been undertaken with the intention of making a difference differently. Drawing on actor-network theory, and the concept of hinterlands, influences shaping the practice of text counselling at a youth oriented helpline are discussed. This is however a contested space. There is no evidence base for such practice; but for new practices there never is. How then does novel practice come into being and become accepted? And how does this occur for people whose ways of engaging involves being neither seen nor heard? In presenting stories of practice as it is shaped there is opportunity to consider whose stories are heard and perhaps whose should be. In uncovering relations that would hold this particular practice more and less stable, scope is also provided for considering how making a difference might also be done differently.

Introduction
Realities get made for better, or for worse, in practice. That some people’s realities might be made better or worse through the provision of a helpline service draws attention to the practices provided. Taking Law’s stance that practices always demand effort (Law, 2009) and therefore that such effort might be channeled otherwise, I argue for making a difference differently in the lives of young people.


Haxell, A. (2015). Interfering in Hinterlands of Discontent: Making a Difference Differently. International Journal of Actor-Network Theory and Technological Innovation (IJANTTI), 7(2), 30-40. doi:10.4018/IJANTTI.2015040103 New Zealand (hereafter referred to as Youthline), provides a 24/7 crisis helpline for young people, and has done so since 1976. With recent changes in mobile telephony their helpline hardly rings anymore; young people still have problems, and Youthline continues to provide help through this helpline, however, to a large extent, this now occurs silently. Mobile telephony provides us with more options than making a phone call, and as with any technology, those who would make use of a technology as well as the work that would be undertaken, are simultaneously being reconfigured. That work predicated on talking therapies would shift to a near silent medium, and one that places extreme limits of brevity on each interaction, was not an anticipated outcome in the provision of a text messaging service. The expectation that was described in the launch of this service by Youthline, was that this service would be a portal to the telephone helpline or to the face to face counselling services Youthline offers (Simpson Grierson, 2004).

There was no planned roll out of this innovative practice such as diffusion of innovation studies might suggest (see for example Rogers, 2003). Nor was it the result of reflective practitioners actively seeking a solution to named and framed problems (see for example Argyris, 1997; Argyris, 2004; Schön, 1990; Schön & Rein, 1994). And while a community of young people could be described as having influence on the changes that occurred and which continue to occur, this was not the outcome of a group of people coming together to effect change; the young people making use of this helpline never met to share ideas on the shape of the service. For these reasons it would also be wrong to name this as a user-initiated consumer innovation (see for example van Oost, Verhaegh, & Oudshoorn, 2009). The use of text messaging was initiated by Youthline, albeit, with an expectation that texting might provide a means for young people to contact the service when they might not otherwise. Texting for young people, at least in New Zealand and at least in these times, is very much the commonest way of reaching out when at a distance (Office of Film and Literature Classification and UMR Research, 2010). Youthline’s provision of a text service at least in the form of texting being a portal to other services, was a considered response to the ways in which young people were relating. To attribute such changes to a disruptive technology (see for example Bower & Christensen, 1995) would, therefore, also be wrong. While this change has occurred for Youthline, the technology has not resulted in texting being widespread in similar services, not even by other helpline services that this organization helps to staff. Attempts to explain this in terms of contextual determinants (see for example Schatzki, 2002), are similarly flawed. With the context of same staff and same building, and even same-target population, the unique phenomenon of a silent helpline is accordingly worthy of further exploration.

However, more than curiosity is at stake here; the practice of providing a texting service is one for which there is no evidence base for practice (EBP). How then does an organization justify new practice? How might it be known as to whether new practice is “doing good” or at least that it does no harm? And if a practice is to make a positive difference for people, what might be needed to support such difference making? While there is no evidence base for this particular practice it is also worth noting that for new practice there never is. This provides a conundrum: how can practices evolve when tied to measures developed in a past? In wanting to be responsive to current demands how is this space of past and present to be traversed? The current article explores these concerns through use of the metaphorical construct of hinterlands.


This article is available at

Haxell, A. (2015). Interfering in Hinterlands of Discontent: Making a Difference Differently. International Journal of Actor-Network Theory and Technological Innovation (IJANTTI), 7(2), 30-40. doi:10.4018/IJANTTI.2015040103

actor-network theory and blogging

I found myself at Patter (Pat Thompson's blog on a post on blogging, and while smarting from a hopeless #acwrimo month where promises made did not get adhered to I found myself writing a response about writng on blogs. Next year I think i will promise to blog in #acwrimo, it might free me from guilt beceause on the blog I write without 'overworking the paint', as it were.

My response to Pat Thompson's account was:

Blogging is not 'one thing'. It's writing and as with any writing, it can serve many purposes.
It may be scholarly, or not. It may be the testing the waters of interest, exemplifying academic literature with local examples.... For myself its a playful space where i do not sweat the small stuff, or if i do, i sweat it less. Writing in a less confining space (than an academic journal or a book chapter) my blogging is a bit like art- its not been overworked. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes not.
But i find myself wanting to write here such a long response....i am now going off to my own blog to construct a more fullsome response...
In my doctoral writing it was the thoughtful space somewhere between my data and the word.doc called the thesis, and also somewhere between my exploring how others in my field write and my finding my own voice. In my academic life, it again serves multi purposes: it's the space I can q-code to for conference posters, it's also the space i go to for inspiration and engagement with self and with others.

In noting that for me the blogging intent is about engagement and not habitus I begin to differentiate a theoretical underpinning in how I blog in contrast to Pat Thompson's Bordieu inspired understanding of a Blog.
A space then for a Latourian analysis, because the blogging space has me writing differently than the journal or chapter writing spaces. It also has me writing differently than i would in a notebook. The blog becomes an actor of influence, and when in 'her' presence my writing is engaged with differently.
In the blog space I can try out a new idea (Latour and blogs).
I can connect other actors; and refer the reader to Austin Kleon's book titled "steal like an artist".
(Freeing myself from conventions of propriety, I segue from what Pat has identified with Bourdieu and blogs and align instead my analysis to my own preferred theoretical underpinnings)
Actor-network theory and blogging would have me looking at the social life of the text, how its shaped as well as shaping others; and with my engaging with the medium, how the medium engages with me. The push and the pull of it. And inside of this is the push and pull of identity work- i write differently here than there...I am a different Ailsa here than the one who authors academic journals. (And so the network deepens and broadens, a passing reference to Lucy Suchman (2007), Karen Barad, Judith Butler, and into a more distant past to Simone de Beauvoir - for what I am is made in association). And in referring to these other authors I feel like an alchemist, drawing in the threads both of time and of spaces (networking garlands in time as Latour once beautifully described citing Serres). A blogging space is a space to gather in.

my favourite powerpoint/presentation advice sites

• A colleague asked me for advice on presenting  so i shared with her the library  i have accumulated on delicious and which is replicated on diigolet. These sites allow me to bookmark a web site every time its useful and tag it with a lable such as powerpoint. The joy of such spaces is to also see what others in these spaces also are tagging as relevant.
  
  
  
  Presentation Zen: Felix Jung's Pecha Kucha presentation Tips
  tags: presentation pechakucha pecha kucha ppt
• Your prezis | Prezi
  tags: presentation prezi presentations ppt powerpoint
• Seth\\\'s Blog: Really Bad Powerpoint
  tags: presentations presentation powerpoint ppt
• Seth Godin's Presentation Hierarchy
  tags: presentation ppt powerpoint
• Garr Reynolds/Presentations
  tags: powerpoint presentation ppt
• National Museum of Australia - Audio on demand - Bendable learnings
  tags: media language literacy ppt
• Gettysburg Cemetery Dedication
  tags: ppt presentations technology media powerpoint
• Enemy Lurks in Briefings on Afghan War - PowerPoint - NYTimes.com
  tags: presentations ppt communications technology education media powerpoint
• TBS very funny - The Daily Flog
  tags: presentations ppt presentation powerpoint
• Presentations: Stop Death by PowerPoint
  tags: presentations ppt powerpoint
• think:lab: I Can See Clearly Now (And I'm Smiling)
  tags: presentations teaching ppt powerpoint presentation
• think:lab
  tags: ppt

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

Are we there yet? After submtting journal articles, what happens next

Having completed a commitment of the postdoc writing scholarship (3 articles/3 months), what happens next is acceptance, rejection and something in between.
Having submitted 3 articles, one nationally, two internationally plus a conference paper, I looked forward to what others would make of them.

Article one; I thought this was the easiest of my papers. It was a descriptive and hopefully (so i thought), a persuasive account of new practice.
What came back was a thankyou letter.
"The subject matter looks very interesting and ground-breaking.
Thank you too for ensuring that (named organisation) has approved the submission of your article.
We will send your article out to two referees in our double blind review process, and we will be in touch with you
as soon as we have their feedback.

They appeared to like it. I have heard nothing more.
This journal publishes only twice a year. The closing date for submissions for its June publication has only just passed. I chose the journal because the information i present is local and contextually based. Letting others know of whats available locally, how and why it has evolved was written with the intent of local impact on practice. I owed it to my participants to have their knowledge shared locally as a priority.


Article 2; conference paper. This was the most fun one to write. It pushed boundaries on layout and language.
It's a provocative piece.
What came back was an automated acceptance of submission.
Then a few weeks later some more detailed commentary: very positive on form, and some concern on its function.
Under "Changes required for acceptance":
The paper is intriguing and innovative in form but isn’t centrally focused on xxxxx. It really deals with research issues and how to report research ...
Detailed comments
We really like this paper and its bold, playful style. A couple of points for addressing:

1. The focus is methodological, to do with research dissemination, and that is itself a useful contribution to the conference: however, as stated above, it would be good to see more linkage ... connections are currently left unstated.
2. This links to our second point, ... we’d like to see a bit more on the project here as a way of grounding the theoretical/representational work of the paper.
And, as an aside, rather than a requested amendment, the author makes it a bit too easy for the reader not to engage with the txtspk paratext: s/he might include a final sentence or two which is txtspk only, and deny us the comfort of the translation.

For this particular audience, the changes requested were well deserved,: relate it more strongly to the conference.
This was done and it has been accepted.


Article 3; An advance on article 1 for an international audience. Its a better article than article 1; i had mulled it for longer and read a bit more.
What came back was an automated acceptance of submission.
Followed two weeks later by requirement of further anonymity- remove names of ethics boards, remove name of organisation where the study occurred.
Followed by acknowledgement of the resubmission and it being sent for peer review.
10 weeks later the peer review feedback is received, and is very positive:
"The reviews are in general favourable and suggest that, subject to minor revisions, your paper could be suitable for publication. Please consider these suggestions, and I look forward to receiving your revision."
This is followed by commentary from the editor pointing to what seemed contradictory: dramatic use of prose- nonetheless liked by the reviewer and by the editor, but noted as unusual in (this) journal publishing.
The area of emotional support versus counselling, one reviewer and the editor hold the view that helpline work is not counselling but is emotional support. Change the words used.
This is then followed by the detailed feedback of the two reviewers.
"An excellent and timely paper"
develop the relevance section more, persuade reader of what they might do/apply (fair comment, but can i do it in the word count?)
From the other reviewer:
One of the points i thought i had made insufficiently persuasive. (S/he is right).
Clarify term: reference to a PDA, even when also written as a personal digital assistant, needs describing further.
More detail of how to actually do this new practice, how tensions are resolved, a more operational account wanted.

Getting back to this article, so much later, is difficult, my time is dedicated to other things.
I finally got back to it, some 4 weeks after receiving the feedback, checked with the editor that this was ok, for the life of me i could not find where it was written that i have until May.
8 pomodoros later and some peer support, and i have made all the changes requested regarding change of words, describing the PDA, and some deleting in anticipation of making a little more space for readers to ahve more info about what they might actually do.

Article 4.
Received an automatically generated acknowledgement of receipt. Followed by a polite, supportive rejection letter.
We have pre-reviewed your manuscript and decided that it is not a good fit for xxxx. Although the paper makes some nice observations, and we appreciate your efforts, the manuscript as a whole lacks the clear focus and solid grounding in the literature that would be necessary for it to make its points effectively. For this reason we feel that it will not be of significant interest to a broad spectrum of xxxx readers.
I was not too surprized. I felt i was rushing it, I also felt it was more a show and tell rather than being suited to the theoretical stance of this journal. At some point i need to select a better space for this one.


I am feeling positive about the peer review process.
Its been a good thing to have some expert knowledge and academic focus on the content of what i had written of. While having had excellent feedback previously from my PhD supervisor and fellow peers on the PhD journey, I had not yet had feedback specific to the content rather than the process of research.

Here's some other expert advice on peer revew from the Emerald Publishing group
It really is great that others have taken the time to look at what i might do better. This article also provides a format, and example, for responding to comments so the next submission post revisions might be itemised.

And some advice on phrasing rebuttal of comments made in the peer review.

And from Springer publishershttp://www.springer.com/authors/journal+authors/journal+authors+academy?SGWID=0-1726414-12-837830-0 a similar request for a covering letter to address the points raised, and for the tone to remain respectful.

If feeling somewhat deflated on having to resubmit or even resubmit elsewhere, take heart, here's some research that suggests more citations occur for resubmitted papers, though seemingly counter intuitive, it provides a reasonable argument that the process of rejection is making better articles than those accepted on a first run.
Nature doi:10.1038/nature.2012.11583
Discussed here

post phd writing

I committed to writing 3 articles in 3 months, with my phd university having advertised writing scholarships. I hadn't taken this up imeediately on handing in the phd because at that stage of not knowing if it had passed, my voice was stifled...so was my energy and creativity, but 6 months after gearing I had passed was perfect for me and fortunately my phd uni was re-advertising these.
My own workplace uni i then had to negotiate this time with. My inline manager was very supportive figuring it was a win for them also, so all my teaching time (just about) was bought out. Juggling my other roles continued.

I achieved 3 articles and a conference paper done in 3 months 3 weeks. Thanks hugely to my phd supervisor, and particularly also to my friendship with Anne a colleague that shared the phd student and post-doc writing journey.
It still involved late night writing, my time management never seems to stay within 'normal working hrs'.
And now they are coming back to bite me post the scholarship time with changes/amendments.
Still it was an excellent opportunity, I cant imagine being so productive without the impetus of the scholarship committment having driven me.
Success at this was also made possible by undertaking 4 writing retreats across this time, one with two friends from my phd at a distance student days with fellow phd journeyers Anne and Heather at a hired bach in Waikenae on the Kapiti coast north of Wellington.

This was just before starting the post doc scholarship so i used it to read Heather's copy of Thomson and Kamlers book on writing for peer review journals. There is now an ebook version, but at the time i was waiting 3 weeks for my own copy so had photographed pages from the copy borrowed :)
This was followed by a work-place organized writing retreat of 5 days at Waiwera,30 mins north of Auckland,not quite so good- workplace conversations intrude. At this one ai slavishly attempted an article in the 5 days, done but dull and deservedly got the feedback from my phd supervisor that I had vanished in it, my own voice gone..rewrote it over the following 10 days.

I then did one a month later with Anne at her family's bach at Waimarama, about 3/4 of an hour south of Napier. Particularly challenging, and surprizingly advantagious to have no internet, sms could be achieved halfway along the beach if desperate

but also working within the constraints of charged computer time with a dodgy generator made for extreme bursts of concentrated writing alongside enforced thinking time.
Then at the beginning of the third month I did a further writing retreat with the Tauhara academic women's writing retreat. Well structured with small group work for 4/4 an hour each night that could edit or do a sustained conversation on one's 'work in progress' plus optional hr sessions on things like first sentences, last sentences, pomodoros,, and at which myself another colleague also introduced Thompson and Kamler's tinytext method of abstract through to article writing. Excellent role models/resources to call on, and lunch and dinners catered. Well balanced time between writing, getting feedback, creative writing, and fun.

The timing for this was good: end of academic year so minimal teaching load to escape from, and summer 'holidays' when amendments can be considered in an unrushed way.
Some time with a colleague online via skype for pomodoros and also at a uni library with another colleague in the week before Christmas got things done.
Other useful learnings along the way; formulaic writing does not work for me (or perhaps for anyone?). The book by Thomson and Kamler writing for peer review journals was useful, providing the confidence of a tinytext where i could check what i was doing was meeting the 'needs of editors' but it was an error on my part to skip past the section on voice. Rewriting with voice greatly improved the writing i was doing.
However there is no silver bullet, no paint by numbers solution and writing a journal article in 7 days defied my best intentions. Writing 3 in 4 weeks was more doable. This one was one of the resources i accessed on the women's writing retreat, I know Ive looked at this one before but didnt consciously use it this time around, Writing your journal article in 12 weeks
Mapping out potential articles in advance and revisiting it during the writing was also useful so i would not be repeating myself in different venues and so i could sustain the momentum. Choosing journals was something i became more comfortable with as my 'voice' altered and as i became more conscious of the spaces those articles i liked were coming from.
And Marianne at the Tauhara retreat was beautifully grounding in pointing out the cinderella ness of trying to put a thesis into a journal article and how hard if not impossible a task this was. Loved the empathy.
The other success to be gained from the scholarship was in confidence gained.
The feedback gained so far extends this, there is nothing as sweet as getting real feedback saying things like:

"We really like this paper and its bold, playful style. A couple of points for addressing..."

Ehara i te mea

Feeling quite touched that YL acknowledged my doctorate today, fo rplacing Youthline into a stronger position from which they can move forward.
These lovely people who were so willing to share their stories with me, their openess and honesty in disclosing what they hoped for, feared, and worked to create; while they do the work, i got to tell their story and i get a doctorate off their work...
They asked me if i had a favourite waiata, So i chose ehara i te mea

This love it is not a new thing,
but is a taonga handed down by those who have gone before,
from one generation to the next

Ehara i te mea
Nō nāianei te aroha
Nō nga tūpuna
Tuku iho, tuku iho

Te whenua, te whenua
Te oranga o te iwi
Nō nga tūpuna
Tuku iho, tuku iho

Whakapono, tumanako
Te aroha te aroha;
Nō nga tūpuna
Tuku iho, tuku iho.

Not the thing
of recent times, is love
but by the ancestors it has been
passed down, passed down.

From the land, the land
comes the wellbeing of the people;
by the ancestors it has been
passed down, passed down.

Faith, hope
and love;
by the ancestors they have been
passed down, passed down.

#acwrimo (academic writing month) day 5

Today my goal is to work out how to use scrivener. I've known other tweeps rave about it, and popped it on my to do list post phd.
I'd glanced at it before but it had seemed not quite intuitive at the stage i was at in my wriitng, I suspected it was more prepatory oriented than useful most of the way through a big project.

My intention: writing this months journal article and/or for organizing my research wriitng ideas for the coming year

First step started googling scrivener, for a paint by numbers guide on how to write a journal article using it
Found nothing that simplistic in 20 mins.
Have since st myself Scrivener as a series of pomodoro sessions, as i am really feeling avoidant of writing at the moment. Might be why Im investigating the software....but half a day dedicated to this and i assume i will know if it will suit me.

First pomodoro:
Found some descriptive accounts.Skim read them
Posted on #acwrimo my intent to use scrivener for the month, and got guided to the thesis whisperer.
Have now downloaded the free trial for a month.
and posted here.

Five pomodoro later
Ive worked my way through the essentials of the free scrivener download package.
Seems it has an ok template, which i can adapt for writing a paper.
Seems it does not do the scoping that I thought it might do.

Finding voice as a writer

I would never have completed the second journal article in two months had i not finished the month with a writing retreat.
What changed?

Talking with Anne.
I was able to clarify what i hated in the article I was writing.
Hearing myself saying it, I could now follow cj's advice: write an article i would want to read.
The world does not need more dull articles.
Snapped the shackles locking me down.
I dont have to pretend to be a dissociated writer. If painting i would be telling myself dont have to stay inside the lines.
Im still finding my way on this, but there's a bit of a transformation happening.

The other significant change was an absence of internet. I'm really glad for my endnote library in that i have articles there, and reasonable notes about them, taht makes retrieval efficient.
I know also had i had internet available, id waste time searching for who else said something rather than trusting my own thinking things through.
The tiny bits that needed follow up could be asterixed and returned to when i had internet. (These areas i fixed inside of 1 hr)

A further contributing factor was an extremely dodgy generator at the bach we were at. Day 1 was good, but days 2 and 3 and 4 would give short bursts of generator; at most 30 mins at a time...then id write frantically till i ran out of juice...then forced thinking and planning or resting time. Couldnt have planned this. But it felt very pomodoro like.

And the company and the setting were great. There were hills that could be climbed. no. sea to swim in. no. beach walks yes. cafes no shops no.

The article is now finished.

I had thought (since i had not taken it with me, and because i abandoned the plan after the first draft of a "tiny text" that Thomson & Kamler's (2013) book on writing for peer review had not worked for me this time (similarities to a previous article kept blocking me)
I think i had missapplied Thomson and Kamler's work trying to turn it into a paint by numbers style ... (my error, not theirs i hasten to add).
However, what i found on reflection was:
I did attend to voice (the first half of their book
I revisited the overall balance of the article, adjusting the front load so there was room for my argument
And I attended to 'the take home message'.
Hadnt realized at the time how much of their advice I had absorbed.

In the last month Ive had an article sent for a conference, and an article written. Ive read some books on getting ideas known. And Im now going to go back to these, they have a style i find inspiring.
so Im 8.5 weeks into the 3 month writing scholarship, Ive produced 2 articles and a conference paper.
Ive read one book about how to write academic articles for peer review and two popular writing books that present ideas.

My next goal, to move the writing into the future, as Im feeling a bit locked into the past.
I've #acwrimo dedicated for this.

Reference
Thomson, P., & Kamler, B. (2013). Writing for peer reviewed journals: Strategies for getting published. London: Routledge.

Academic journal writing and post doc writing angst

Either i, or the article i struggle with are not made for a 7 day plan. Four days later and i have made progress, but not without huge angst.
The article has writhed and refused to settle.

I have undertaken further reading. Usefully.
I now have a better consideration for where this article is going.
It will not replicate the prior one.
It will not be the prior one with a variation on examples either.
Its evolved a little further, and its exploring through examples a little more detail if the therapeutic relationship as experienced by young people.
Retrospectively that is so easy to say. A week after i thought i had it mapped, i now know where it is going,
This is no paint by numbers but an organic process that until i have written, i have very little knowledge oof where it will go.

I suspect to think otherwise is to be quite seriously deluded.

I am now at 2000 words of a max 60000.

They are so much better structured though than when i was last near this point.

Seriously htough, this is a self torturing endeavour and I wonder where the joy of writing has gone.

I know the conference paper was fun. I also now that ifI had not made commitments I would have blown this particular article off.

1 day down; 6 to go. Publishing a paper on a 7 day plan.

That was a productive day; the map got written; the writing flowed.
Biggest hurdles were in finding examples not previously used, and in updating the background to NZ ers and their predilections for texting.
I learned an oddity along the way:
In 2011, the NZ Commerce Commission identified that NZers make phone calls versus sending texts at a ratio of 1:10
Youthline receiving calls actually sits at 12% when compared to the number of text messages they work with.
This suggests young people do actually make contact with YL by phone calls at a higher rate than they might use for their other interactions.

Hurdling is not my preferred past time.
Writing at this rate of knots still feels really time pressured.
I like that Gladwell describes to 10,000 hrs rule for practice to proficiency, it suggests the more I write the better i will become at it.
I live in hope.
Meantime I know that 10,000 hours of me jumping hurdles is never going to make me a hurdler....and that telling a goldfish to spend 10,000 hrs climbing trees will never result in that happening either...There is, of course, critique of Gladwell's assertion.
The difference might be i actually like the art of writing, of being so focussed, and of word-smithing...