I'm coming to the end of two weeks annual leave - which I've used to focus on my family, not work or study, hence the lack of posts, sorry. However, like many of us I have had thoughts 'ticking over' whilst that's been going on. Mostly I've been amazed / in awe of how much time some people have to devote to Twitter. When I think I should be more productive, I remind myself that we've got four young children, so I'm in this for the long haul..one brick in the wall at at time!
The one thing that I've scribbled a note about is (following my previous post) work on my research question, assumptions / propositions and potential areas of enquiry. These are developing all the time, and no doubt will continue to do so as I start things 'properly' this coming semester.
Here's where I'm at to date, which is not very far!
Working Title: "Game Changing: understanding accounts of professional change in multi professional children's services."
Early Propositions (as you can see, framed by the theory I've mentioned so far, especially Gidden's theory of structuration):
- individuals consciously and unconsciously (re) shape their 'self' which is an internal social object used to make sense of and position them in their experience of their world(s).
- individuals interact with their professional communities both shaping and being shaped by them.
- individuals experience their professional 'selves' on conscious (discursive) and practical (tacit) levels.
- Individuals can be supported to present accounts of both the conscious (discursive) and tacit (practical, automatic) information about themselves through visual, interactive, metaphorical methods. I've made reference to David Gauntlett's work on this in his 2007 book "Creative Explorations"
Possible areas of investigation:
- identification of organisational 'rules' that influence the behaviour of social actors within selected multi professional communities of practice in children's services.
- individual accounts of change, focusing on the nature of changing professional identity and practice: what has changed? what relationships, processes, mechanisms (etc) can be identified and examined?
- investigation into the interaction between individuals and their communities of practice and how each influence / shape one another.
Looks like an interesting study!
ReplyDeleteDon't know how far you've got, or what you've already read, so forgive me if I'm stating the obvious (and if you're not looking for comments!)
I would have thought you might have to deal explicitly with the issue of identity and to what extent it can be thought of as integrated. I guess I had in mind the tensions between social, professional, organisational identity - as per the literature following on from Sveningsson, S and Alvesson, M (2003) Managing Managerial Identities: Organizational Fragmentation, Discourse and Identity Struggle, Human Relations, 56, 10, 1163-1193
The other thing would be the hierarchy of professions, professionals and power. Some professional change will be defined in relation to the dynamics of other professions and competition for power. It's not particularly theoretical, but I like the following article on this topic - Currie, G., Koteyko, N. And Nerlich, B. (2009) The dynamics of professions and development of new roles in public services organizations: The case of modern matrons in the English NHS, Public Administration, vol 87, no 2, 295-311.
Anyway, just a thought.
Best
that's really useful, Alex. It's early days, but I'll come back to that. Do keep coming back and commenting, it's useful (if you'd like) - it's useful!
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