Confusion/clarity
Writing style
Any researcher attempting to write up research must seek to explain it clearly to their audience. There is little point in writing something which confuses rather than communicates. Writing style in Ultraversity reports will fail to meet the criteria for year 3 work if it
"fails to communicate with a variety of audiences." (Year 3 Criteria).
My writing was said by one critic to 'read badly'. This surprised me as the same account of the research had been very well received by my peer review partners and was based on the account of the research as given in the exhibition. Other respondents remarked in feedback about my explanation of my use of action research in the exhibition:
" Excellent - clear cycles and very good explanation of what it is"
"clearly structured and easy to follow"
" excellent, well explained and followed through"
(survey comments- appendix 1)
And talking about my research in general
"the format was very clear and easy to read and you followed a clear “journey” for the audience to follow."
"I have found it easy to follow"
(Blog comments - appendix 1)
However, if work seems badly written to one member of the audience then that is their experience of it and no arguments from me that is is not will convince them otherwise. That is their authentic experience. The individual reader is entitled to make value judgements about the quality of the writing style of a piece.
Clarity
I wrote in a posting to my learning set:
Linda Hartley on Thursday, April 13, 2006 at 12:51 p.m. +0000 wrote:
(re feedback )
"It is the responsibility of the researcher to make things clear"
My responsibility is to make things clear for others?
Well I've got news. Things weren't clear at all. Over the 4 months of the research things were very far from clear. Attempts to impose clarity at this juncture are a lost cause or a fudge. If the picture is confusing then it's accurate. that's how it looked from here too.
This was a genuine response and I explained the situation further in this posting:
Linda Hartley on Saturday, April 15, 2006 at 10:50 am +0000 wrote:
"Paying detailed attention to what you are doing for at least part of every day, making notes on it, revisiting it in reflection, and this for 4 months, is tiring. Having to then open it up and try to explain it to others even more so. Doing this on top of holding down a job. Well there's the huge issue. "
This is close to the description of the research process found in McNiff(2002)(1) where she states that:
" that things do not often proceed in a neat, linear fashion. Most people experience research as a zig-zag process of continual review and re-adjustment."
However. she adds a warning which I initially overlooked:
Research reports should communicate the seeming incoherence of the process in a coherent way."
I did try to make my account as clear as I could however this was not successful in the opinion of my learning facilitator. I therefore I took these criticisms into consideration in the final write up of the report where I totally re-wrote my account trying to balance the 'incoherence of the process' with the need to provide an audit trail which others can follow.
Brevity
In writing any report of action research or indeed any qualitative research there is a need to be selective. Huge quantities of qualitative data are produced and we were warned in the module guidance:
"NOTE Don’t worry: You don’t need to include absolutely everything at this stage...choose wisely...and excess material can be used as further exemplification for your defense (sic) of your research in Module 4. Please do not inundate us with 50 pages of appendices! We won’t have time to read it all...it is as simple as that. Choose good examples of data and the way you analysed it. You will get the same marks for showing us a few good examples as giving us 50...."
(Activity 1: Implement research plan and analyse findings - pdf provided in FirstClass Community)
Indeed some authorities suggest only actually including those aspects of the research referred to in the findings and conclusions (Dick 1999)(2)
"In general, you report only the conclusions and the methodology and evidence relevant to those conclusions."
In my initial account of the research I tried to follow this advice but this seems to have led to accusations of lack of evidence and lack of clear explanation of purpose.
"Overall the work appears to lack both evidence and a clear purpose" (feedback)
I have therefore attempted to make these clearer in this module.
Defining Terms
I agree that it might have been useful to spend more time defining the terms used in my research. I relied on the use of a hyper-linked glossary, particularly in the exhibition. This allowed people to click on a linked word and be taken to an explanation of the term, often with an option to 'dig deeper' and explore a diagram or further writing on the subject. Unfortunately the hyper-linked glossary is little use in a file where links do not work and it was in this format that my learning set first saw the work. I later amended this in the on-line version though issues with the pdf file remain.
Diagram size
The main diagram - an overview of the research (Appendix 1 -d2 diagram 2) was shown at a much larger size in the exhibition rather than in the version in Writely or on-line version of the degree. Again this was a facet of using a print friendly file format in that the chopped half of the diagram off if I attempted to use it at full size. In my attempt to consider an audience who might wish to print I inadvertently reduced the file to a size where it was hard to read. This has now been resolved as can be seen in (Appendix 1 - d1 diagram 1)
Diagrams - meaning
A diagram which formed part of a reflection on values also caused confusion. This has led me to question the usefulness of this kind of 'working diagram' in a finished account. I did in fact remove this one and placed it in an appendix, realising as I did so that it's main use had been in the reflection process rather than as something that conveyed meaning for others. This is quite an important realisation and will impact on my use of such diagrams in the future.
Forward to methodology1
(1) McNiff J, 2002, Action research for professional development, Concise advice for new action researchers. Available,
URL: http://jeanmcniff.com/booklet1.html Last accessed 24/4/06
(2) Dick, B. (1999) Qualitative action research: improving the rigour and economy [On line]. Available at http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/gcm/ar/arp/rigour2.html