An ethnographic study of the enactment of service level agreements in complex IT-intensive business-to-business services.

Service level agreements (SLAs) for complex IT-intensive business-to-business (CITI-B2B) services are high-level representations of services to be enacted, with predominantly quantifiable performance targets. Inevitably, there is a gap between this representation and the nuanced practices of enactment adapting to emergent conditions over time. Overarching terms in the master agreement anticipate this gap; however, the nature of the practices that manage that gap is not well understood. This study aims to develop a deeper understanding of these everyday practices to identify potential areas for improving value realisation in SLA enactment. We conducted a long-term ethnographic study of the enactment of an SLA by a global IT provider and global financial services company, framed by relational theory of contract. Our analysis showed the gap was bridged by a cycle of enactment in which emergent conditions triggered relational interactions among participants, culminating in decisions to adapt the terms of the SLA in pursuit of value realisation. Further, our analysis showed that this cycle is enabled by informal mechanisms of learning, negotiating, and adapting that we conceptualise as relational capability, which is amenable to representation, refinement, innovation, and capability development. Exploiting this capability and as well as the information produced during the cycle of enactment could inform SLA design and enable the transformation of SLAs as evolving learning instruments

Making sense of assets: Community asset mapping and related approaches for cultivating capacities

This working paper critically reviews some main aspects from asset based approaches highlights key strengths and weaknesses for future research/development. Drawing on a large body of reports and relevant literature we draw on different theoretical traditions and critiques, as well as practices and processes embedded within a broad range of approaches including, widely acknowledged frameworks such Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), Appreciative Inquiry (AI), Sustainable Livelihood Approaches (SLA) and Community Capitals Framework (CCF). Although these are presented as distinct approaches, there is a sense of evolution through them and many of them overlap (in terms of both theories and methodologies). We also include emerging frameworks, including geographical, socio-spatial, visual and creative approaches, stemming from a number of projects within AHRC’s Connected Communities programme and additional collaborations

Further exploring the dynamicity, situatedness, and emergence of the self: The key role of context

Drawing on theoretical insights from a complex dynamic systems framework, this work explores the ways that learner selves, as they relate to learning and using languages, manifest across different contexts and timescales and emerge in interaction with various factors. First, a broad overview of dynamically-oriented L2 motivation research is provided before critically considering the need for research that aligns with conceptual advances made under the dynamic turn in SLA. In particular, this critical overview highlights a crucial need for more research employing dynamic methods capable of revealing how learner perceptions of self emerge in relation to their interlocutors and in interaction with external factors, including language ideologies that may uniquely characterize sociocultural contexts where target languages other than English are learned. The chapter concludes by discussing ways to implement dynamically oriented methodology that can provide much needed insights into the inherent dynamic, emergent, and contextually and socially embedded nature of learner selves

Intertextuality as semiotic mediation for youth’s enactment of agency and identity in everyday digital literacy practices

The purpose of this research is to investigate the practice of intertextuality of Farah (pseudonym) a 20-year-old female university student who engaged in a variety of culturally shaped digital literacy practices. In particular, it seeks to elucidate how Farah’s practice of intertextuality serves as a semiotic mediation for her exercise and enactment of agency and identity during her everyday literacy practice on Instagram. This research was framed as a case study design with a connective ethnography approach specifically suited to the online environment and digital communication where the researcher’s physical presence as an observer is no longer required. Data were collected by means of digital media and technology such as WhatsApp Message Service, informal phone interviews, and online observation. The collected data comprised online snapshots of quote bots, pictures, drawings and comments that Farah produced and shared as part of her everyday digital literacy practice. The data analysis entailed examination of Farah’s practice of intertextuality through the lens of sociocultural perspective on text production and interpretation. The findings revealed that Farah’s use of quote bots and doodles posted on Instagram involved the act of borrowing texts from other sources as well as mixing English with Indonesian language. Farah’s practice of intertextuality was pre-mediated, calculated and purposeful, allowing her to engage in digital authorship involving creativity, improvisation and consciousness as ingredients of agency. In the same vein, Farah’s practice of intertextuality allowed her to author the self as a contemplative religious individual. The research concluded with an appeal to policy makers and educational practitioners to respond to the learners’ changing learning landscape by re-defining the way we view learners/students, from merely a recipient of knowledge to an individual who has agency, identity and funds of knowledge that have to be acknowledged and appreciated in any process of curriculum design and its implementation on a daily basis

Researching Masculinity and Violence in Sri Lankan Politics: Subject Construction as Methodology

This article discusses a research methodology study which worked with young men – members of a formerly armed Tamil group in Sri Lanka, now struggling to survive in electoral politics. Study participants had security concerns which made a conventional ethnographic approach problematic. An alternative methodology was needed, offering a contextualised analysis of events that could capture the background, political persuasion and motivations of actors without actually revealing specificities of personal identity and geographic location. The research sought to analyse the context of Tamil militancy, the changing dimensions of Tamil masculinity, and the way in which combat training transformed notions of selfhood and political dissent among young Tamil men. There was an activist element to the project, aiming to open up a discursive space which would enable participants to interrogate their own political praxis in a supportive environment, allowing them to conceive new ways of acting out their political rages. In this, it had partial successes and some failures

Eh, das jus like da kine, ah?: Researching the role of pidgin in church

This paper reports on a yearlong sociolinguistic case study that explored how Hawai‗i Creole English, known locally as Pidgin, is used in sermons at one particular church in the Honolulu area on Oahu. Although this study focuses on one localized socio-educational context, it reflects a greater need to understand the role and function of Pidgin in and across various social contexts. While scholars have explored the use of other languages and language varieties in church, to date, there are no existing studies on Pidgin use in church or in sermons. Consequently, this case study represents a first step in understanding language use in this particular socio educational context. This case study is framed within a Language Policy and Planning approach and particularly emphasizes a move beyond dichotomy-based domain-specific understandings of language use. The data generated in this study through qualitative research methods including participant observation, interviews, focus groups, and personal narratives is framed and interpreted through relevant substantive theory including but not limited to Gee‘s (2008) Discourse and Lave and Wenger‘s (1991) Legitimate Peripheral Participation. The findings challenge current perceptions of the role and function of Pidgin in society and suggest a move beyond dichotomy based domain-specific understandings of language use which reiterates the need to better understand: (a) language use in and across different social contexts, (b) Local language policies, (c) and language-in-education practices, in order to better inform Language Policy and Planning. Implications for future research are discussed

The impact of learning context on the acquisition of sociopragmatic variation patterns in non-native speaker teachers of English

The study is a cross-linguistic, cross-sectional investigation of the impact of learning contexts on the acquisition of sociopragmatic variation patterns and the subsequent enactment of compound identities. The informants are 20 non-native speaker teachers of English from a range of 10 European countries. They are all primarily mono-contextual foreign language learners/users of English: however, they differ with respect to the length of time accumulated in a target language environment. This allows for three groups to be established – those who have accumulated 60 days or less; those with between 90 days and one year and the final group, all of whom have accumulated in excess of one year. In order to foster the dismantling of the monolith of learning context, both learning contexts under consideration – i.e. the foreign language context and submersion context are broken down into micro-contexts which I refer to as loci of learning. For the purpose of this study, two loci are considered: the institutional and the conversational locus. In order to make a correlation between the impact of learning contexts and loci of learning on the acquisition of sociopragmatic variation patterns, a two-fold study is conducted. The first stage is the completion of a highly detailed language contact profile (LCP) questionnaire. This provides extensive biographical information regarding language learning history and is a powerful tool in illuminating the intensity of contact with the L2 that learners experience in both contexts as well as shedding light on the loci of learning to which learners are exposed in both contexts. Following the completion of the LCP, the informants take part in two role plays which require the enactment of differential identities when engaged in a speech event of asking for advice. The enactment of identities then undergoes a strategic and linguistic analysis in order to investigate if and how differences in the enactment of compound identities are indexed in language. Results indicate that learning context has a considerable impact not only on how identity is indexed in language, but also on the nature of identities enacted. Informants with very low levels of crosscontextuality index identity through strategic means – i.e. levels of directness and conventionality; however greater degrees of cross-contextuality give rise to the indexing of differential identities linguistically by means of speaker/hearer orientation and (non-) solidary moves. When it comes to the nature of identity enacted, it seems that more time spent in intense contact with native speakers in a range of loci of learning allows learners to enact their core identity; whereas low levels of contact with over-exposure to the institutional locus of learning fosters the enactment of generic identities