Rethinking Collaborative Learning Through Participation in an Interdisciplinary Research Project: Tensions and Negotiations as Key Points in Knowledge Production (original) (raw)
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British Journal of Special Education, 2003
R i c h a rd Rose, writing in this journal in his ro l e as Re s e a rch Section Editor (BJSE, Volume 29, Number 1), argued that teachers should learn to do research in collaboration with other professionals, as part of a drive to make teaching a 're s e a rc h -b a s e d profession'. In this article, Joan Forbes, Senior Lecturer in Educational Studies in the Faculty of Education at the University of Aberdeen, explores this idea in greater depth from her perspective as course leader for an MEd module on inter-agency collaboration. She proposes that recommendations for collaboration to support children with language and communication disorders do not attend to the difficulties involved between professionals from different backgrounds who use different discourses and draw upon different research evidence as a basis for practice. Her paper draws on 'postmodern' research approaches and Michael Foucault's views of 'discourse' to examine a variety of theoretical perspectives previously applied to collaboration. It argues for the value of further theoretical diversity and methodological plurality and intro d u c e s discourse analysis as a tool for helping to understand the notion of collaboration. At the end of her challenging and intriguing paper, Joan Forbes offers some suggestions concerning the value of 'new' questioning kinds of analysis.
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This article examines a general question about how we in research develop the knowledge we write about and present as ‘results of research’. It scrutinizes research processes as a social practice, where several parties participate, collaborate and learn from a process where researchers involve themselves in exploring specific problems across societal contexts. In this way, the presented discussions can be seen as a critique of tendencies to approach research as an isolated endeavour, where results are produced by applying special methods and techniques that prevent influence from the social world and, in this way, creating knowledge about the world by ‘leaving it’. The article argues for approaching the development of knowledge as a social practice in itself. Research processes transcend different contexts, involve different perspectives, and the researchers seek to analyse connections in a common world by exploring how an explicit problem is connected to social conditions and inter...
Collaborative Research, Knowledge and Emergence
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We use the notion of emergence to consider the sorts of knowledge that can be produced in a collaborative research project. The notion invites us to see collaborative work as a developmental dynamic system in which various changes constantly occur. Among these we examine two sorts of knowledge that can be produced: scientific knowledge, and collaborative knowledge. We argue that collaborative knowledge can enable researchers to reflectively monitor their collaborative project, so as to encourage its most productive changes. On the basis of examples taken from this special issue, we highlight four modes of producing collaborative knowledge and discuss the possible uses of such knowledge.
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There is a growing interest in what constitutes effective practice in faculty-led research based learning experiences that involve students learning research by doing research. There is a particular need for research-based evidence about the student experience, their intellectual and personal gains, and the learning processes that contribute to those gains. To address these concerns, this qualitative case study investigates the intellectual collaboration-the meaning making practices-in two research groups of faculty and students doing qualitative data analysis. Negotiation is a key aspect of coding and reliability methods that use measures of agreement among multiple coders to ensure rigor. Negotiation means that participants worked through their differences until they reached agreement. The groups were cooperative not competitive but there was a tension between research productivity and learning goals. "Getting on the same page" required getting novice coders up to speed in a short period of time.
Engaging creatively with tension in collaborative research
Independent Thinking in an Uncertain World: A Mind of One's Own, 2019
Extract from chapter introduction: There is growing (but not universal) acceptance of the need for a greater diversity of approaches to tackling wicked problems (Australian Public Service Commission, 2007; Head and Alford, 2008; Rittel and Webber, 1973). There is also a need to examine the characteristics of and relationships between, individual thinking and agency (“I”) and collective and collaborative approaches (“we”). We are interested in how this relationship can be used to constructively tackle wicked problems, and contribute to a just and sustainable future. In this chapter, we explore the tensions around the “I” and “we” paradox, and how they emerged within our collaborative research project. Through a series of significant project events, we describe the ways in which these tensions emerged, how we responded to them, and the consequences and outcomes of these responses. In particular, we examine how this tension shapes and is shaped by (1) the ‘wickidity’ of the problem, (2) the level of self-organisation and adaptation in our individual scholarship and (3) the degree of heterogeneity of the epistemic living spaces of the various constellations and combinations of the “we” of team work.
Developing the capacity of researchers for collaborative working
International Journal for Researcher Development, 2012
PurposeThe complexities and challenges inherent in research often require collaborative rather than solitary or team‐based forms of working. This paper seeks to open new perspectives onto the nature of collaborative research and onto strategies for developing the capacity of researchers to engage in it.Design/methodology/approachThe paper outlines a speculative model of collaborative working in higher education that is rooted in critical realist perspectives, using it to ground a conceptual analysis of a stage model of expertise for collaborative working taken from the researcher development framework (RDF) developed in the UK by the organisation Vitae.FindingsThe paper highlights the contribution that theory can make to the practice of researcher development, drawing out the relevance of personal engagement, professional dialogue and collaborative vehicles to support shared practice in pursuit of mutual goals. In this way, it identifies gaps within the stage model that pertain to r...
Collaborative research from a methodological point of view. Editorial introduction
Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science
This special issue examines collaborative research from a methodological point of view. It considers the implications of the social processes of collaboration for the construction of scientific knowledge, in the interest, not of problematising the scientific process, but of drawing the process of collaboration into our methodological purview. Methodological scholarship has primarily been concerned with refining methodological techniques, such as questionnaires, interviews and experiments, without regard for the social conditions of knowledge construction-such as whether the research is individual or collaborative, the nature of the collaboration, or within which kind of social institution the research is carried out. We propose that the social practices through which research is conducted, the composition of the research team, the organisation of the team, and the social dynamics within the team should all be considered part of the methodology of scientific research. The need for a methodology of collaboration arises in a situation of repeated calls for collaborative research, both from researchers and from their funders. For researchers interested in understanding human conduct, the fragmentation of knowledge along disciplinary, national, or 'theory-practice' divides appears as an adverse set of conditions for building holistic understandings of the real complexities of human life. This very journal aims to integrate psychological, behavioural, social
Tensions have been identified in the shift to dialogue whereby researchers produce and communicate research-based knowledge in interaction with different social actors. This paper draws on three perspectives on those tensions— science and technology studies analyses of public engagement, action research and dialogic communication theory—in order to explore how the tensions are articulated in the communication processes that are integral to the co-production of knowledge in a case study of collaborative research about virtual worlds. The data analysed are based on the workshops where the collaborating actors (university researchers and practitioners) co-produce knowledge through communication processes in which different expert-identities and knowledge forms are negotiated. The analysis explores the balancing-act between imposing control on the research process and opening up for a plurality of voices. The paper concludes with a discussion of the value of a reflexive approach for the analysis and design of dialogic research communication.