Another long gap between blog entries – this time because of the priority accorded to the completion of ‘Research Study 1’ (the document based upon interviews with practitioners). The deadline for submission of this study – already extended from 7th February to 29th April – proved a challenge to meet, principally because so much time had passed since I started writing the document (beginning with lots of discussion about methodology in the absence of data to analyse), with the result that I kept re-visiting and editing already written parts of the text rather than developing new sections. Sometimes I found I was repeating ideas I’d forgotten I had already discussed many months earlier, and at other times I found some of these earlier ideas not merely irrelevant but contrary to what I needed to say in my final version (for example, I felt obliged to omit reference to personal impressions of the practitioners’ working environments, having asserted that the focus was to be upon practice/community connections within the stories they told). Two important pieces of guidance I was offered in supervision tutorials complicated my progress still further: firstly, I was advised that my first draft ‘introduction’ section was much too long – so parts of the text were redistributed across other sections of the document (prejudicing the clarity of the overall argument). And secondly, I was advised not to refer to my Appendices (centred on the practitioner interviews) as ‘case studies’ as they contained only a narrow range of data about the firms – meaning that much of my methodological study was redundant. In my last supervision tutorial, it had been observed that my accounts of the firms interviewed resembled more closely the kind of description that practices would expect to encounter in professional practice – not precise transcriptions but decent paraphrases, made subject to the interviewees’ approval before being made public. The Appendices were therefore to be regarded not as research outcomes, therefore, but as the material upon which research could begin. My feeling is that not nearly enough of the recently submitted study consisted of academically ‘deep’ analysis of this material, although I believe the merely descriptive conclusions drawn in respect of overall differences (and very few similarities) between the practices interviewed will be of interest to fellow-professionals. Instead, the majority of the study consists (in my judgement, for the reasons outlined above) of a rather muddled and disjointed account of theoretical ideas about analysis assembled piecemeal over a protracted period during which my approach changed. In addition, the study overall is held together by some rather silly conceits – a structure based (for no particular reason other than to show off one’s learning) upon the four medieval humours with their ties to the four elements earth/air/fire/water and to the ancient Greek philosophers associated with each. As with the last document submitted, I feel extremely nervous that the work will be judged sub-standard, and that I will be required to re-write substantial parts of it. If by some chance this doesn’t happen, I will still retain my analysis-notes on the interviews conducted in order perhaps to use them in my main thesis next year (‘Document 5’). In the meanwhile, as a matter of professional integrity (because this is what I promised to do), I must send copies of the relevant parts of Document 3 to the practices I interviewed, in case they wish to offer further comment on my ‘findings’. If these comments don’t feed into Document 5 in due course, they might at least serve in relation to possible journal articles I am now able to write further to my research study 1.
Research Study 1 - submitted!
