Researching life in e-society with diary studies

To study life in an e-society, it is important to collect data in situ. One research method that provides for data to be collected as people live their e-society lives is a diary study methodology. Diary studies ask participants to record certain events, using various technological means, over a fixed period of time. While diary studies have their strengths, the most important of which is cost effective in situ data collection without the need for an outside observer, they also have their weaknesses, most notably the high level of commitment demanded from the participants. This paper reports on a 2005 diary study of lying in everyday communication, with a focus on lying via computer-mediated communication modes, such as phone, e-mail, and instant messaging. The study, which involved 25 undergraduate students logging their communication activities for seven days on personal digital assistants, serves as the vehicle from which to derive a set of lessons learned about the diary study methodology in practice

The complexities of 'otherness': reflections on embodiment of a young White British woman engaged in cross-generation research involving older people in Indonesia

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.If interviews are to be considered embodied experiences, than the potential influence of the embodied researcher must be explored. A focus on specific attributes such as age or ethnicity belies the complex and negotiated space that both researcher and participant inhabit simultaneously. Drawing on empirical research with stroke survivors in an ethnically mixed area of Indonesia, this paper highlights the importance of considering embodiment as a specific methodological concern. Three specific interactions are described and analysed, illustrating the active nature of the embodied researcher in narrative production and development. The intersectionality of embodied features is evident, alongside their fluctuating influence in time and place. These interactions draw attention to the need to consider the researcher within the interview process and the subsequent analysis and presentation of narrative findings. The paper concludes with a reinforcement of the importance of ongoing and meaningful reflexivity in research, a need to consider the researcher as the other participant, and specifically a call to engage with and present the dynamic nature of embodiment

Breathing Life into Information Literacy Skills: Results of a Faculty-Librarian Collaboration

When an education professor and a reference librarian sought to improve the quality of undergraduate student research, their partnership led to a new focus on assessing the research process in addition to the product. In this study, we reflect on our collaborative experience introducing information literacy as the foundation for undergraduate teacher education research. We examine the outcomes of this collaboration, focusing on the assessment of the process. Using a mixed methods approach, we found that direct instruction supporting effective research strategies positively impacted student projects. Our data also suggest that undergraduate students benefit from not only sound research strategies, but also organization strategies

Researcher self-care in organizational ethnography: lessons from overcoming compassion fatigue

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to offer practical researcher self-care strategies to prepare for and manage the emotions involved in doing organizational ethnographic research. Institutional ethics policies or research training programmes may not provide guidance, yet emotions are an integral part of research, particularly for ethnographers immersed in the field or those working with sensitive topics or vulnerable or marginalised people.Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on ethnographic fieldwork over nine months with a voluntary organization in the UK, Yarl’s Wood Befrienders, to explore the experiences and activities of volunteer visitors who offer emotional support to women detained indefinitely in an immigration removal centre. The author is a “complete member researcher”, or “at-home ethnographer”, a volunteer visitor and a former detainee.Findings – The author describes the emotional impact the research personally had on her and shares learning from overcoming “compassion fatigue”. Self-care strategies based on the literature are recommended, such as a researcher self-assessment, identification of the emotional risks of the research, and self-care plan formulated during project planning. Suggested resources and activities to support the well-being of researchers are explored.Practical implications – This paper provides practical resources for researchers to prepare for and cope with emotional and mental health risks throughout the research process. It builds awareness of safeguarding researchers and supporting them with handling emotional disruptions. Without adequate support, they may be psychologically harmed and lose the potential to critically engage with emotions as data.Originality/value – The literature on emotions in doing research rarely discusses self-care strategies. This paper offers an actionable plan for researchers to instil emotional and mental well-being into the research design to navigate emotional challenges in the field and build resilience

Academic motherhood and fieldwork: Juggling time, emotions and competing demands

The idea and practice of going ‘into the field’ to conduct research and gather data is a deeply rooted aspect of Geography as a discipline. For global North Development Geographers, amongst others, this usually entails travelling to, and spending periods of time in, often far-flung parts of the global South. Forging a successful academic career as a Development Geographer in the UK, is therefore to some extent predicated on mobility. This paper aims to critically engage with the gendered aspects of this expected mobility, focusing on the challenges and time constraints that are apparent when conducting overseas fieldwork as a mother, unaccompanied by her children. The paper emphasises the emotion work that is entailed in balancing the competing demands of overseas fieldwork and mothering, and begins to think through the implications of these challenges in terms of the types of knowledge we produce, as well as in relation to gender equality within the academy

Developing successful intelligence : a curriculum for employability in changing markets for graduate labour

A key pedagogical challenge for undergraduate educators in integrating work and learning in the curriculum, is the identification of appropriate conceptual constructs to facilitate student learning and development. State and employer organisations have articulated a discourse of 'key skills' which has been adopted by universities, and yoked to innovations in pedagogy for employability. We propose the construct 'successful intelligence' to enhance pedagogy for employability. We show how it might be introduced to the undergraduate business curriculum, using a case study of the evolution of an undergraduate management development programme to ground our thinking in practice. We also use student perceptions of teaching, learning, and career planning to distinguish what students regard as real and relevant in their studies, contributing to employability

Lesser or just different? Capturing children''s voices in consumer research

Child research has been conducted 'on' rather than 'with' children, and has often used parental proxies or opinion to account for the views of the child. Due to this the voice of the child has been unheard. Once access and ethical concerns have been addressed the adult researcher then has to decide which role to take when conducting research with children. Children are largely seen in one of three ways, and each perspective has an impact on the role the adult researcher could adopt. The first claims that children are entirely different from adults, and fosters the notion that they are unreliable and contaminated data sources. The second perspective views children as being entirely the same as adults, and the third views children as being similar to adults but as having different (although not necessarily inferior) competencies. The latter perspective has received most support and is the favoured view of the child respondent

A capability approach to language education in the Gaza Strip: “To plant hope in a land of despair”

This article proposes a shift away from competence models (Byram 1997) toward a more holistic approach in language education. Drawing on original critical participatory action research with English teachers in the Gaza Strip (Palestine), Imperiale argues that the capability approach (Sen 1985; Nussbaum 2000) offers a potential framework for understanding and co-constructing language education in precarious circumstances such as those in Gaza. The participants in this study are followed through their process of nourishing what Nussbaum (2006) considers the three capabilities in education: affiliation, narrative imagination and critical examination. Their work also nurtured the further capability of voice and agency, which, in the specific context of Gaza, intersects with acts of aesthetic, cultural and linguistic resistance