Networking Research: New Directions in Educational Enquiry 9781472553133, 9781441106049

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Networking Research

Also available from Continuum Effective Action Research, Patrick J. M. Costello Researching Education, David Scott and Robin Usher Theory Building in Educational Research, Nigel Kettley

Networking Research New Directions in Educational Enquiry

Patrick Carmichael

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX New York NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © Patrick Carmichael 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Patrick Carmichael has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. EISBN: 978-1-4411-0604-9 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress

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Contents

Acknowledgements Abbreviations and Acronyms Introduction Chapter 1: Chapter 2: Chapter 3: Chapter 4: Chapter 5: Chapter 6: References Index of Authors Index of Terms

vi viii 1

Educational Research, Capacity Building and Networking A Closer Look at Networks and Networking Using Educational Research Networks Supporting Educational Research Networks Researching Educational Research Networks Emerging Themes and Future Directions

9 37 72 107 134 161 173 187 192

Acknowledgements

I have undertaken the research on which this book builds over a period of about a decade, so it is difficult to acknowledge the contributions of all of those who have played a part in its creation. It draws on work carried out in the course of several funded research projects: M

M M

M

M

‘Learning how to Learn: in classrooms, schools and networks’, which was funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), from 2001 to 2005 (Grant Reference L-139–25-1020) ‘A Virtual Research Environment for Education’ funded by the UK Joint Information Services Committee (JISC), from 2005 to 2007 ‘Representing Context in a Research in an Archive of Educational Evaluation Studies’ funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) from 2005 to 2007 (Grant Reference RES-346–25-3003) ‘Transforming Perspectives: technologies to support the teaching and learning of threshold concepts’, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) in 2006–2007 as part of the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Programme (Grant Reference RES-139–25-0361) ‘A Social and Professional Network for Early Career Researchers in Education’ (SPNECRE) funded by ESRC from 2008 to 2009 (Grant Reference RES-069–25-0005) which continued its work as part of the Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) Programme

Thanks are therefore due to my colleagues on these projects and others, in particular the following: Corinne Boz, Marianne Cole, Richard Edwards, John Elliott, Isabel Maria Solano Fernández, Clare Folkes, Alison Fox, Naomi Irvine, Mary James, Katy Jordan, Agustina Martinez Garcia, Vito Laterza, Raquel Morales, David Pedder, Andrew Pollard, Richard Procter,

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Sanna Rimpilainen, Nicky Solomon, Chris Taylor, Frances Tracy, Michael Tscholl, Rob Walker and Deborah Youdell. In particular, I would like to acknowledge the contribution of Helen Burchmore, who carried out much of the fieldwork and data collection in the several of the projects mentioned above, and Robert McCormick, whose review and interpretation of the complex research and policy literature on teacher learning in networks (and published in our jointly-authored book in 2010) provided an important basis for some of the analysis described here. This book draws on the work of many participants in workshops and seminars, interviews, focus groups and online discussions, who gave willingly of their time. I hope that I have been able to represent adequately their voices here. Finally, I should like to thank my wife, Clare, for her invaluable advice, support and encouragement.

Abbreviations and Acronyms

AERS ANT EPSRC ESRC EU HEFCE ISCED OECD JISC SPNECRE RCBN RDI SNA TEL TERN TFLN TLRP WERN

Applied Educational Research Scheme Actor-Network Theory Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council Economic and Social Research Council European Union Higher Education Funding Council for England International Standard Classification of Education Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development Joint Information Services Committee A Social and Professional Network for Early Career Researchers in Education Research Capacity Building Network (of the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme) Researcher Development Initiative Social Network Analysis Technology Enhanced Learning Programme Teacher Education Research Network Teaching for Learning Network Teaching and Learning Research Programme Welsh Education Research Network

Introduction

This book is an exploration of the role of networks and networking in educational research, and particularly in the building of the ‘capacity’ of individuals or organizations to engage both in and with the processes and outcomes of research. As such, it represents an attempt to address not one but two areas of controversy and contestation: both ‘research capacity’ and ‘networks’ are understood in many different ways, some at odds with each other. And yet, as we shall see, there is a widely held assumption that networks (as entities) and networking (as a set of practices) are somehow ‘the answer’ (or at least part of the answer) to the challenges of building research capacity. But what kinds of networks and networking practices, conceptualized in what ways, in order to address what kinds of research and understandings of research capacity? The empirical bases of this book are drawn from my experiences in a series of research projects and other initiatives over the past decade; and as such I can chart the development not only of my understandings of networks through these, but also my own personal ‘capacities’ as a researcher. Between 2001 and 2005 I was a member of Learning How to Learn: In Classrooms, Schools and Networks (James et al., 2007), a large project which was part of the second phase of the UK’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP): of which more later. The size and scope of this project meant that, as well as exploring the role of networks in supporting teacher learning (McCormick et al., 2010), the project began to explore how networks and networking, and in particular the use of online technologies, could support not only dissemination of information about the project (through a project website, for example) but how it could support research activities, project management, data collection and archiving, and other aspects of the project’s work (Carmichael et al., 2003). The success of at least some of these approaches led to their being ‘scaled up’ and used to support other projects, in the course of which (and with the support of funding from the TLRP itself and the UK’s Joint Information Standing Committee (JISC)) the networking practices of other groups of researchers were explored, and these findings fed into subsequent development of online collaboration

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environments (Carmichael, 2007). Subsequent projects addressed the role of online archives in supporting not only the preservation of data and other documentation, but also the teaching of research methods based on ‘classic cases’ of educational research (Blank et al., 2008); and the role of ‘Web 2.0’ technologies to support educational researchers, particularly those early in their careers (Carmichael and Burchmore, 2010). So my own role in these different activities has encompassed carrying out research in the course of which I was a ‘user’ of networks, through which I gained access to resources, benefited from the advice of colleagues and developed a repertoire of ‘capacities’. I have also been involved in supporting the development of research networks ranging from small groups to whole programmes of research; and in ‘researching research’: trying to understand the work of educational researchers in order better to understand the relationships between their practices and what networks and networking might offer them, and how they might impact upon current ways of working. This three-fold division of ‘using’, ‘supporting’ and ‘researching’ is reflected in the later chapters of this book; although it goes without saying that the distinctions between these are blurred, just as they were in my own work as ‘user/supporter/researcher’. I do not want to suggest that this book is simply a linear narrative of my own progress from one research project to another: if nothing else, researching networks makes one only too aware of the disparate influences on one’s own practices. So, many of the accounts and positions represented here also draw on perspectives drawn from other fields including science and technology studies and international development. Many of the issues that frame this book (particularly those that relate to conceptualizations of networks and associated methodologies) were first raised and explored in the course of the research that led to the writing of a book about networks and teacher learning (McCormick et al., 2010) and while I am wary of looking for ‘structural equivalences’ across diverse networked environments, many of the issues that were raised in that work have analogues in educational research more broadly. So what is offered here represents a collection of intersections and repetitions, rather than the neat stages of a personal or organizational biography.

Is This a ‘Research Methods’ Textbook? The book is in part about research methods, but it is not a textbook. There are textbooks which represent specific (and very useful) responses to the

Introduction

3

needs of researchers working in new and emerging areas, and which can be seen as contributions to the development of research capacity. Gorard and Taylor’s Combining Methods in Educational and Social Research (2004), for example, addresses key areas which (as we shall see) present a challenge for educational researchers; similarly, Cavanagh’s Sociology in the Age of the Internet (2007), by bringing together theoretical, methodological and ethical perspectives, offers a valuable guide for any researcher planning to engage in ‘online research’. What this book offers is a range of examples of researchers employing particular ‘methods’ or approaches to the real-world situations they face as they plan, design, manage, undertake and report research; and it provides some examples of how researchers might go about researching the networks and networking practices in which they are engaged. It is an exploration of the nature of educational research and the experience of researchers, and of ways of thinking about networks and networking in support of research activities. And while some effective practices are identified, they are located within the experiences and accounts of researchers working in distinctive settings. No ready-made methods here, but hopefully a range of models, stimuli and provocations that will encourage readers to reflect on their practices, assumptions and capacities.

Is This Book about ‘Online Research’? No. Clearly there are examples here that draw on my experience in developing online tools to support research collaboration, researcher mobility and archiving. Several of the projects in which these data were collected were concerned with the design and development of online collaboration environments, and data were indeed collected about participants’ ‘online’ behaviour. But these are, for the most part, couched in terms of support of research activities, or research relationships in which technologies play an enabling, even a transformative, role, but which are of the ‘real world’. If anything, it challenges the notion that there is a distinctive ‘online’ research. The use of online technologies and other computer-based approaches generates new forms of data and enables new forms of interaction and collaboration, but what emerges both from literatures on networks and networking, and from the accounts of researchers themselves, is that it may be more useful to consider online technologies as an extension or a distinctive set of modalities, rather than a discrete environment in which some distinctively different form of research takes place.

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Why So Much about ‘Research Capacity’? The empirical base of this book draws on accounts from experienced researchers; experienced teachers and teacher educators engaging in research as a ‘second career’; researchers who have moved into new and challenging areas, including interdisciplinary working; and research students. So why is there such an emphasis on ‘research capacity building’? There are several reasons for this: the first is that, as educational research is a relatively new area that draws on a wide range of other disciplines and traditions (more on this issue of education’s disciplinary ‘identity’ later), developing individual and collective research capacity is seen as a central task for education research as a whole. Just as any educational system mirrors the broader culture as part of which it is located, the approaches developed to build research capacity are a reflection of educational research more generally. It is also a liminal area in relation to more established practice, in which thinking about and experimentation with new organizational forms is possible and has been encouraged. In fact, much of the work in educational research which draws on ideas of networks and networking is, to a greater or lesser extent, concerned with research capacity: whether this involves public engagement with research, supporting research students, enabling teachers and teacher educators to undertake research, or establishing networks to support advanced research training or interdisciplinary exchange. This leads to the second reason: namely, that networks and networking have become established as one of the main ways by which research capacity is organized and sustained. Networks seem to be part of ‘the answer’ to the ‘question’ of how research capacity should be developed, and so there are plentiful examples of local, inter-institutional, regional, national and international initiatives concerned with research capacity that describe themselves as ‘networks’. So networks are not only the means by which research activities and capacities are conceptualized: they are also widely interpreted as providing a model for action. We need, however, to trouble the notion that this is a simple task – as we shall see, networks are understood differently in general, and educational research capacity building initiatives have engaged with the idea of networks in differing ways.

Participants, Settings and Research Approaches Much of the work that forms the empirical base of this book involved close working with participants as part of research and development projects. In

Introduction

5

other words, alongside any research data collection there were associated design and development activities: what was being designed ranging from new tools for use within virtual collaboration environments; through online learning content; to classroom assessment practices; to whole courses and programmes of study at undergraduate level. A range of research approaches was used in the course of this work, some based on different ideas about the nature of networks (we will return to these approaches in Chapter 5). But what these had in common was a commitment to participation and engagement: in research, design, development and evaluation. The development of online tools, for example, involved participatory design activities, iterative and rapid prototyping, and continued study of how the tools were then used in the course of the research activities they were designed to support. In other projects, researchers and participants undertook ‘co-interpretation’ activities in which selected data were used as the focus of joint ‘sense-making’. This (like the earlier work undertaken on teacher networks) contrasts with the vast majority of work into networks and networking, which locates the researcher as a non-participant in the settings they study, and frequently involved secondary analysis of data collected for other purposes. In the examples described here, not only were participants invited to engage directly with the subject of the research and asked to consider the nature, role and scope of networks of which they had experience, my colleagues and I were, too, members of those networks, and the research relationships that resulted had a ‘networked’ aspect. This participatory research and lack of detachment (by either participants or researchers) is one of the reasons why in this book I refer throughout to ‘educational research’ rather than ‘education research’: a distinction around which there has been some debate (Whitty, 2006). Even though some of the research approaches that are described here and employed in some of the research described draws on different traditions, the majority of this book is concerned with researchers and subjects (also, for the most part, researchers) ‘making sense of their place in the world’ (Denzin and Lincoln, 2003, p. 19), so, in terms of John Elliott’s distinction between ‘educational research’ and ‘research on education’ (Elliott, 1978) it sits firmly in the former category. The book draws extensively on the work of the UK’s TLRP and its successors, for a number of reasons: other than the obvious one of having been involved in projects funded under the programme and contributing to some of its programme-wide activities. The first is that the TLRP was explicitly required to address research capacity building as part of its remit: not

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just for participants in projects that were funded under the programme, but nationally, and networks were part of that strategy: so it provides a number of important examples of how networks can be conceptualized and networking realized in practice. Another is that the TLRP has been large (over 100 projects, thematic groups, seminar series, fellowships and mentoring partnerships) and long-lived (beginning in 1999, the final phase of Technology Enhanced Learning projects will end in 2012). As a result, it has served as a laboratory for a range of initiatives (including capacity building projects and the use of network technologies) and has had sufficient time for the impact of some of these to be evaluated in terms of their longer term impact on individual careers, policy and practice. In short, TLRP has been a programme of research able to ‘ask questions of itself’ although, as Andrew Pollard, director of the programme from 2002, explains, sometimes this was a challenging task (Pollard, 2010). So, the examples on which I draw in the book are largely from the UK, although there are analogous challenges facing educational research in other parts of the world. One of the most interesting aspects of my work over the past few years has been taking some of the ideas that are presented here ‘on tour’ and I have been particularly grateful for opportunities to work with researchers in Spain, the USA and the Middle East, in order to explore areas of difference and similarity. What has emerged from these discussions is that while education systems may differ in many respects, the role of educational research seems to be equally highly contested around the globe, and individual researchers, particularly those early in their careers, seem to face many of the same challenges, wherever they are. In the course of these international discussions, I have often presented elements of the data which features in this book as a stimulus for a discussion about networks or research capacity, or simply to ask ‘does this look like you’? One particularly appealing description used by a postdoctoral researcher in an interdisciplinary research project (featured in more detail in Chapter 3) was that their working life could not be mapped out as a simple trajectory, or seen as systematic ‘network-building’, but rather involved much ‘ducking and diving’ in order to make progress in a complex and rapidly changing environment. Early career researchers in education, regardless of national context, disciplinary background or current employment status, seemed to recognize their own circumstances in this description. On several occasions the phrase was translated for multi-lingual audiences with an accompanying head-movement, which resembled that of a small animal that has just seen something of interest and is deciding whether to investigate or run for cover.

Introduction

7

So, with the thought that the most important capacity for educational researchers might be to develop the combination of alertness, agility and responsiveness to possibilities conventionally associated with meerkats, we turn to an overview of the remainder of this book.

Contents: An Overview Two initial chapters explore the two key conceptual areas that this book seeks to bring together. Chapter 1 develops the argument introduced above: that the contested nature of educational research informs particular views of the nature and role of research capacity. A series of controversies or fields of contestation are identified, each of which has implications for the ways in which research capacity may be conceptualized. These include regional variations, demographic patterns, the multidisciplinary nature of educational research and the ways in which educational research is organized and conceptualized. A range of UK-based research capacity building projects, programmes and other initiatives are reviewed in relation to these themes, and a number of elements in common are identified: first, a shift towards a view of research capacity as ‘embedded social practice’ and second, the consensus that some variety of networking provides the best way of supporting this. Chapter 2 asks ‘what kinds of networks?’ and explores a range of network theories in order to identify what these might have to offer understandings of educational research and inform research capacity building initiatives. These range from views of networks as constraining structures, through those which see networks as key to the creation and accumulation of social capital, to those which point to the emergence of wholly new social formations in a ‘network society’. Radically different views of networks, drawing on post-structuralist and post-Marxist political theory are then discussed, offering views of networks as fluid and heterogeneous and seeing networking practices as the creation of ‘transverse’, subversive and innovative. How these different ideas might be used to frame educational research activities, and particularly the lives and work of early career researchers, is discussed. Running through this chapter is a tension: between, on the one hand, a network metaphor or rhetoric, which stresses the universality of networks; and positions, methods and analyses operating at the level of the localized and personal. Three empirically based chapters, each focused around a series of vignettes of educational research ‘in action’ follow. Chapter 3 asks how the

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researchers ‘use’ networks, and presents examples of individual researchers working in funded projects, teacher educators involved in a research network, researchers with different background working in interdisciplinary research projects, and finally the experiences of a school engaging with and in a networked research project. A number of the theoretical perspectives on networks are explored further in the light of these examples. Some of the data presented in this chapter were gathered during seminars and workshops (an example of the participatory orientation mentioned above) at which researchers shared their experiences of how best to work in the networked world of educational research, and this chapter gives voice to some of the ‘habits of effective researchers’ as they articulate what ‘ducking and diving’ means in practice. Chapter 4 offers a different angle on the experiences of individual researchers, and presents examples of networks that, if they have not been ‘designed’ or ‘built’, have been enabled and supported either by changes to organizational practice, or through the use of online technologies. Drawing on these accounts and those in Chapter 3, three aspects of ‘socially embedded practice’ are offered as having particular value: providing mentoring, supporting collaborative reading and writing, and the development of appropriate online technologies. Chapter 5 is ostensibly about researching networks, but the approaches offered are not primarily concerned with non-participant and detached inquiry. Rather, these are the kinds of research approaches that can be used by participants in, and supporters of, networks for research, research innovation and capacity building. Going beyond the habits or practices, these are elements in the repertoire of the ‘researcher–networker’. In the final chapter, some of the themes introduced in Chapter 1 are revisited and the implications for the future directions of educational research and of research capacity building are explored. If research is conceptualized as a specialized form of learning, then what are the practices and discourses which need to be ‘embedded’ in order to support new researchers, to encourage innovation and to develop sustainable networks and networking?

Chapter 1

Educational Research, Capacity Building and Networking

Introduction Educational research, the ‘hardest science of all’ (Berliner, 2002) is notoriously prone to ‘crises’: crises of identity or of methodology and notions of quality and relevance; crises around staffing, turnover and demography; and, not least, crises caused by threats to funding and support at every level from the institutional to the global. It also struggles, more than any other discipline, to convince policymakers and practitioners alike of its value in its related professional contexts: both in the development of existing practice, and particularly in the politically charged area of teacher education. A common response to these various crises and critiques is a call to build capacity in educational research, although it is clear that what is understood as ‘research capacity’ varies widely. This should come as no surprise, as underpinnings, understandings and expectations of educational research itself are equally diverse.

Educational Research: Mapping the Field An influential ‘mapping’ of educational research as a field comes in a report for the ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP), which has framed and informed much subsequent work on research capacity in the UK. In this, McIntyre and McIntyre (1999) distinguish four types of educational research: 1. Research aimed at applying knowledge from social sciences to policies and practices for teaching and learning 2. Educational research aimed at achieving improved understanding of teaching and learning practices, processes and contexts 3. Research designed to provide direct evidence of effective approaches to teaching and learning

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4. Research which sees schools and other educational settings as research and learning institutions through established models of practitioner research or through more recent view of schools as ‘knowledge creating’ or as ‘learning organizations’. They argue that there are particular tensions between the first of these types (which is primarily concerned with research which draws upon and contributes to the theory of the social sciences) and the more applied orientations of the others (McIntyre and McIntyre, 1999, pp. 7–11). While expertise in the second and third of these types of research is understood to reside largely in higher education institutions, the majority of research undertaken in university departments and faculties of education is concerned with the second type. This ‘takes as its starting point phenomena of, or concerns about, teaching and learning experienced by people engaged in educational or other activities involving learning or its facilitation, not social scientific disciplines or theories’ or the ‘almost necessarily quantitative’ approaches required of the third type, namely research into effect iveness of specific educational strategies (McIntyre and McIntyre, 1999, pp. 11–15). This brings us to one of the main concerns about educational research in the UK: the lack of expertise in quantitative and mixed methods research, which Gorard (2002) attributes to an unnecessary ‘methodological schism’ which has led many educational researchers to lack the confidence and/or the inclination to interrogate quantitative data or integrate quantitative methods into their research. The fourth type of research identified by McIntyre and McIntyre (1999) is, they argue, likely to be difficult to develop ‘except in the context of partnerships between groups of schools and one or more university departments of education or other educational research organization’. This is made more difficult because ‘the pressures on schools to be quickly improving, and the pressures on university departments to help them to do so, are in some considerable tension with aspirations that schools should engage in, or critically use, high quality research’ (McIntyre and McIntyre, 1999, pp. 18–20). The McIntyre report concludes with a series of recommendations designed to support research capacity building. These include: z

The encouragement of multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary working within higher education institutions; development of understandings of the relationships between education and other social science and science disciplines

Educational Research, Capacity Building and Networking z z

z

11

Mobilization and support of the large numbers of teacher educators in order to engage them in research into teaching and learning Establishment of coherent career paths for contract researchers, including requiring funded research projects to provide development opportunities for students, contract researchers and other junior staff Provision of opportunities for the development of quantitative methods in order to strengthen the research base for studies of effective teaching and learning.

With respect to schools as learning organizations, the recommendations are more guarded and urge ‘systematic investigations of the problems and possibilities for schools and colleges in becoming research organizations, in working in sustained research partnerships with university departments, and in generating high quality research into teaching and learning’ (McIntyre and McIntyre, 1999, pp. 57–60). This four-fold distinction between different kinds of educational research and the recommendations for capacity building that follow from it exemplify the range of different understandings of what educational research capacity might mean and ideas about what building that capacity might involve. In some cases, this involves improving the capacities of individuals already engaged in educational research; others focus upon encouraging and supporting teachers and teacher educators to engage in research activities; and others still are concerned more with supporting postgraduate and postdoctoral activities with the intention of addressing the problem at a sector-wide and demographic level. In some areas, as in school-based research, mapping what capacity already exists, and exploring the priorities and objectives increased capacity might address, is an important first step ahead of the development of any training programmes, partnerships with higher education institutions or other initiatives. Even the term ‘capacity’ is problematic, the demotic meaning of a notion of a generalized and measurable capacity (of organizations, sectors or states as ‘containers’) being at odds with the idea that individuals have varied, evolving and latent capacities. These two meanings are, of course, inextricably linked: the capacity of an educational system will inevitably have impacts upon the opportunities for individual building of capacities, which in turn are a major component of, and contributor to, that more generalized organizational capacity. Subsequent to the work of McIntyre and McIntyre, an OECD review of educational research in England (part of a series also including New Zealand, Mexico and Denmark) (OECD/CERI, 2002; OECD/CERI, 2003)

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argued: ‘the core problems of educational research in England (as in many other countries) lie in the field of capacity building’ (cited in Wolter et al., 2004, pp. 512–13). Wolter et al. (2004, p. 512) also identified a further area for capacity building, recommending ‘that the Government also upskill the qualifications of the main users of research: [government] employees and teachers. This is necessary to guarantee that the users will be able to use high-quality research in their daily work and through their feedback inspire new and better research to be accomplished’ (Wolter et al., 2004, pp. 512–13).

Capacity Building beyond Educational Research These variations reflect different understandings of what capacity and capacities mean more generally beyond education research, and echo debates in the fields of international and community development. Here, the concept has been articulated and problematized both in policy and practice: (see Harris, 2004, on the need to see capacity building as more than ‘technology transfer’ and Nuyens, 2005, on the ‘systems approach’ to development of coherent policies, and coordinated strategies across sectors). Linnell (2003) offers case studies of different conceptualizations of capacity and hence of capacity building, and Backer et al. (2010), in a review of nearly 500 capacity building initiatives and 87 non-governmental organizations in the USA, describe the multiple and complex nature of the interrelationships between individual capacities and organizational, community and ‘whole system’ capacity. They also highlight the critical but varied roles of intermediaries, training organizations and pre-existing governmental and non-governmental agencies and processes. The OECD caution that it is a challenge to develop research capacity which is not ‘disconnected’ from policy and practice and that ‘there are no “quick fi xes” when the aim is to improve the research capacities not only of researchers, but also system-wide, including practitioners and policymakers involved with education’ (OECD/CERI, 2002). Eade (1997) provides a useful conceptual overview which distinguishes capacity building first as a means, process or outcome, and then in relation to individuals, specific organizations (in this case, non-governmental organizations, but these could as easily be institutions, projects or research programmes) or to society more broadly. This could provide elements of a matrix although as Eade comments, ‘the differences between the points are often a question of emphasis or degree . . . balance between these

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shifting over time . . . but it is a useful tool for disentangling central objectives from secondary aims’ (1997, p. 35). While some educational research capacity initiatives have concentrated on developing strength in specific aspects of research within higher education institutions, faculties and departments (Eade’s ‘organizations’), others have (as suggested by the OECD and cited in Wolter et al., 2004, pp. 512–13) identified a ‘wider’ community of research ‘users’, practitioners, or emergent or potential researchers (such as teacher educators). This has led to a focus on developing their capacities to use research or on their acculturation into established research practices and organizations. When we then talk about research ‘projects’, these, like the development projects and programmes identified by writers on international and community development, may be temporary ‘organizations’ with research capacity building needs of their own; ‘processes’ by which established or new researchers gain experience and expertise; or more enduring communities of stakeholders, participants and research users.

Some Features of the Educational Research ‘Landscape’ It is not my intention to reproduce a chronological account of the history of educational research, or an account of how the idea of research capacity building educational research has developed since the McIntyre report in 1999. This would duplicate work by, for example, Taylor (2002); Baron (2005); Rees et al. (2007); Munn (2008); Pollard (2010); the work of Humes (2007) in relation to Scotland; and recent syntheses by the Strategic Forum for Research in Education (2010). These accounts are, for the most part, what might be described as high-level ‘organizational biographies’ that are concerned to discuss the rhetoric and practice of capacity building in general terms, rather than the specific activities and sometimes still emergent practices that are employed by individuals (Mueller and Carter, 2005). I am wary of presenting what appears to be another chapter in a linear (albeit multi-voiced, reflective and critical) narrative; and am more concerned with those specific and emergent research practices. Accordingly, this chapter will present a series of starting points, contentions or controversies, together with some of the relevant research and policy literature that frames, informs or stems from these. It will then consider a range of initiatives designed to support research capacity building in relation to these elements, themes and enduring debates. While some developments in research capacity building or networking can be seen (and may

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well present themselves) as ‘responses’ to a particular crisis, change, call or policy imperative, as we shall see, the actualities are rarely this clear-cut. But one feature that is shared by many of these initiatives is their invocation of ‘networks’ or ‘networking’: they draw in particular on the language of social networks, both in their characterization of the challenges facing education research and also in providing a framing and guide for their activities. Networks, whether used as metaphor or organizational strategy, provide both an interpretational framing of the ‘problem’ and feature as part of the ‘solution’ or ‘response’. Patterns and challenges that are evident across all disciplines and across higher education as a whole (such as recruitment and retention, the position of contract researchers, levels of institutional funding, issues of disciplinary identity and status) are particularly evident in educational research. The ‘structural, historical and institutional factors affect all disciplines in different ways but in Education their impact has been quite profound’ suggest Mills et al. (2006, p. 44) in their demographic review of the Social Sciences in the UK. Education is, however, distinctive in many respects: the ESRC demographic review locates it outside the ‘central social science research cluster’ (anthropology, psychology, economics and politics) but different again from practice-oriented subjects such as Social Work, Development Studies, Socio-legal Studies or Town and Country Planning, or Business and Accountancy (Mills et al., 2006, p. 25). What contributes to this distinctiveness and difference? Reviews by the OECD and ESRC, and a survey of literature on educational research in general, and capacity building in particular, highlight a number of themes or issues. Together, these represent elements in a broader educational research landscape, ranging from the ‘who’ and ‘where’ to the ‘what’ and ‘how understood’: all questions which have bearing on understandings of, and responses to, questions about research capacity. Educational Research has Distinctive Demographic Patterns The OECD’s various explorations of educational systems suggested that the average age of educational researchers employed on permanent contracts is high compared with other disciplines: although if a broader definition of educational researchers is used (including contract researchers, teachers engaged in research and government researchers) this is rather less pronounced. But the overall picture of a skewed demographic distribution, with few ‘early career’ researchers compared to the numbers of experienced staff, many of whom are ‘career changers’ following work as

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teachers or lecturers, or in other disciplines, seems widespread and is an issue of concern. In the UK, as in many other countries, education is facing increasing competition for talent from other sectors of the economy and academic disciplines, and several academic fields, including education, face particular difficulties for recruiting academic staff from a relatively comparatively small pool of emerging researchers. (Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2001; Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2005; OECD/CERI, 2002) Of the disciplines surveyed by the ESRC in 2006, education had the most skewed population. They report how: Education stands out as having more than 70% of staff aged over 45 . . . just under 50% all academic staff in Education are in the 46–55 age range, and the field has the smallest proportion across the social sciences of staff under 34 (8%) . . . only 15% of studentship applicants were under 25 in 2003, compared to 60% of Economists. (Mills et al., 2006, pp. 31, 44) As this last statistic suggests, these patterns are not solely attributable to an ageing population, although clearly the proportion of older educational researchers is increasing as a demographic ‘bulge’ progresses (Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2005). ‘New’ or ‘early career’ educational researchers are characteristically older than in other disciplines and only a minority move directly from first degrees or taught masters’ degrees into educational research (Taylor, 2002). There is, though, no shortage of people wishing to engage in educational research. The 2008 Research Assessment Exercise in the UK revealed that in the period 2001–2008 over 7000 new students had begun doctoral-level study in Education. Of these, only 14 per cent had received UK research council or other external funding; 8 per cent overseas funding; and 16 per cent funding by their host institution; but the rest (over 60 per cent) were self-funded (Higher Education Funding Council for England, 2009). Educational research is a significant area for advanced postgraduate study internationally. The European Commission’s ‘Eurostat’ database (which draws on national data sets as well as generating composite data sets for the European Union) reports that in the areas of ‘Education Science’ and ‘Teaching and Training’ (as distinct from ‘Teacher Training’), numbers of research students engaged are significant and in many regions are rising consistently. See Table 1.1 for selected indicators from 2008, the most recent complete data.

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Table 1.1 ISCED level 6 (research) students 2008 in selected disciplinary groupings, countries and regions (data from Eurostat: http://ec.europa.eu/ eurostat) Country or region

Research students

UK

80906

Spain

66973

Finland

21557

EU 27

525809

USA

460806

Education

Social sciences

Life sciences

Computer sciences

Engineering

5137 (6.3%) 2670 (4.0%) 1519 (7.0%) 19244 (3.7%) 60648 (13.2%)

17172 (21.2%) 14821 (22.0%) 4807 (22.3%) 114548 (21.7%) 95915 (20.8%)

6181 (7.6%) 3364 (5.0%) 988 (4.6%) 35212 (6.7%) 53227 (11.6%)

3649 (4.5%) 1326 (1.9%) 648 (3.0%) 15163 (2.9%) 18433 (4.0%)

10874 (13.4%) 6396 (9.5%) 5472 (9.6%) 81654 (15.5%) 57916 (12.6%)

It is much more difficult to find quantitative data as to the ‘destinations’ and further career trajectories of educational researchers beyond their registration in doctoral programmes. This is because many of them do not feature subsequently in databases as ‘educational researchers’ and many holders of such qualifications may take up posts in which they may apply their research experience in teaching roles, or in local or national government; in nongovernmental organizations and the ‘third sector’ of not-for-profit organizations and charities; or in the commercial sector. This highlights an important issue, already raised in the context of OECD reviews of research capacity: namely, the significance of non-academic, governmental and commercial organizations, both as ‘users’ of educational research and, as employers of trained educational researchers, and therefore an important additional focus for (and beneficiary of) research capacity building. Among researchers into teacher education, the pattern of former teachers becoming research active is even more pronounced than across education as a whole; conventional notions of ‘early career researchers’ are unhelpful in this context, with experienced teachers and school leaders identifying themselves as teacher educators, lecturers or teachers, rather than as ‘early career’ or novice researchers. Of the participants in the UK’s Teacher Education Research Network (TERN) – of which more shortly – 76 per cent (of 44 participants) were over 40 and had held senior posts in schools or colleges, yet the majority had spent less than 10 years employed in higher education. Many TERN participants had a PhD or EdD or were engaged in doctoral study, mostly as part-time students (Murray et al., 2009a). Such teacher educators represent one of those identified as critical

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for the building of educational research capacity by both McIntyre and McIntyre (1999) and the OECD/CERI (2002). While this group are typical in terms of age and experience, their level of engagement in research degrees (and, for that matter, in a research network like TERN) is atypical: these represent teacher educators embarking, or already embarked upon, career trajectories into research into teacher education or educational research more broadly. Capacity to Undertake Educational Research Is Not Evenly Distributed While education departments are numerous and many have staff members who engage in research, there are clearly international, national, regional and inter-institutional variations. Lawn and Furlong (2007) chart, in broad terms, the landscape of educational research in England and draw attention to variations across institutions and regions in the quality of research (as measured in research assessment exercises), the nature and focus of the research, representation in peer reviewed journals, and success in securing external research funding from different sources. Elsewhere in the UK, the pattern of concentration and variation that they identify is still more pronounced. In Scotland, the concentration of educational research in a small number of institutions was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the Applied Educational Research Scheme (AERS) as part of a national drive to build capacity and to undertake research which was both internationally recognized and locally relevant (Brown, 2004; Humes, 2007). In both Wales and Northern Ireland, the dominance of a single higher education institution has had significant implications for patterns of educational research – not only in terms of the number of active researchers, but also the types of research that are undertaken, particularly beyond the research-intensive centres (Davies and Salisbury, 2009; Leitch, 2009). As with patterns of employment, it is important to recognize that significant amounts of educational research take place outside higher education institutions. Governmental departments and agencies, examination boards and testing services, and commercial organizations are active, particularly in research concerned with the effectiveness of large-scale initiatives: what Whitty (2006) describes as education research (rather than educational research) driven by, and aligning closely with the concerns of policymakers. Commercial organizations also undertake policy reviews, meta-analyses and evaluations, and specially convened committees of

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inquiry which may have their own research staff, may work in partnership with higher education institutions, or may commission specific research activities as parts of broader programmes of research, evaluation and policy review. And as Lawn and Furlong (2007, pp. 57–8) report, there are researchers based in university departments of sociology, linguistics and psychology who describe their work as educational research, or whose institutions describe it as such when it comes to research assessment activities. There are also substantial numbers of researchers based in Computer and Information Sciences working in areas such as e-Learning, e-Assessment and educational management systems, and in ‘academic-related’ roles. These include libraries; centres which describe their roles in terms of staff development, academic practice and learning development; or who work in ‘learning laboratories’ focused on educational technology. Lawn and Furlong (2007, p. 58) also reflect that it is difficult to generalize about the nature of research that takes place in different kinds of institutions, faculties or departments – other than in the very specialized settings just described. The findings of Kerr et al. (1998) and Oancea (2004; 2010) do not paint a consistent picture of the research carried out in different UK institutions. This reflects not only variations in the actual research activities, but also the way in which data have been collected, the analysis to which it has been subjected and the forms in which it is presented for scrutiny through activities like research assessment exercises. In terms of the types of research characterized by McIntyre and McIntyre (1999), it is, however, clear that types 1 and 3 (‘social science’ research in education and that contributing direct evidence of effectiveness) have been particularly concentrated in small numbers of research-intensive and highly rated institutions. In general, areas like teacher education, curriculum research and school-based and action research are more typical of less highly rated research establishments; although there are examples of these types of research in the most consistently highly rated university departments as well. Concentration of expertise is evident in other national contexts. The USA in particular has witnessed a policy imperative (and associated patterns of funding) which has focused on research that provides empirical evidence of what constitutes effective practice in educational practice and teacher training (see Ranis and Barnhouse Walters, 2004 and CochranSmith and Zeichner, 2005 for an account of this development and some of the resulting research reviews). St Pierre (2006) traces this development and some of its epistemological, methodological and ethical associations, characterizing it as a particular kind of ‘scientism’ or ‘neo-positivism’

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which frames research in terms of randomized control trials and largescale programme evaluations, and which has contributed to a ‘remarginalization of qualitative research’ (Lather, 2010, p. 2). Baez and Boyles (2009) have charted how this in turn has led to the concentration of funding and research activity, including the nature of doctoral-level study and associated research methods training. In other international settings, the last two decades have been marked by a broad trend towards separation of ‘research-intensive’ from ‘teaching’ universities, with individual institutions identifying ‘concentrations of research excellence’ and in many cases prioritizing or separating out funding for STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics). This has often left smaller institutions and those engaged in educational research, along with other applied and practitioner research, dependent on ‘soft money’, increasing the fragility both of institutional research capacity and restricting the career prospects of early career researchers in particular (see, for example, Standing Committee on Industry, 2008 for a review of research across disciplines in Australia). Education Research Is a Broad Field Drawing on Different Disciplinary Traditions Of all the disciplines surveyed by the ESRC in their demographic review of UK social sciences in 2006, Education was the greatest ‘importer’ of staff from other disciplines, with many of the ‘research active’ staff having their highest level of qualifications in disciplines other than Education (Mills et al., 2006, p. 26). This was identified as an area of concern by the authors of the report who concluded that education, along with some other disciplines, may need to consider strategies how ‘to develop their own pool of researchers whose primary loyalty is to . . . Education, rather than to Economics or Psychology’ (Mills et al., 2006, p. 30). This is particularly important, if as Taylor (2002) has argued, the quality and standing of educational research suffers because of this combination of disciplinary affi liations and backgrounds with patterns of demographics and expertise. Any notion that an academic elite with backgrounds in imported disciplines dominates educational research is, however, an over-simplification. Furlong and Lawn (2009) suggest that in fact the different contributing and ‘imported’ disciplines in education have seen their influence eroded as part of a movement towards the ‘useful’, the ‘applied’ and, in some cases, the instrumental – particularly in relation to teacher education. Bridges (2006) warns that the resultant eclectic ‘post-disciplinarity’ based on

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producing useful and immediately relevant research outcomes may ultimately reduce the capacity of educational researchers to engage in critical inquiry drawing on disciplinary traditions. In the same vein, McCulloch (2002) charts the changing roles and levels of influence of the ‘foundational disciplines’ of educational research: history, philosophy, psychology and sociology, and argues that it is this ‘plurality’ which allows educational research to develop and adapt to changing circumstances. Hodkinson (2004) celebrates this plurality in the face of a ‘new orthodoxy’, of which the ‘neo-positivist’ developments in the USA described above are one representation. He characterizes educational research as a set of overlapping ‘communities of practice’, critically examining the work of Wenger (1998) on situated professional learning, and argues that, rather than being defined by a singular rationality or objective methodology: . . . all academic knowledge is socially constructed. This construction is not primarily an individual activity, but is the collective working of communities of scholars, over history. . . . Research contributes to this process of knowledge construction, and is itself constructed through the norms and practices of the discipline within which it is located. (Hodkinson, 2004, p. 11) From this it follows that educational research, with its own history, also has its own methods, many of which are distinctive, grounded in educational practice and the settings in which it is articulated and enacted. Many of these are learned not through application of research training but the development of what Bridges (2002, p. 20) describes as ‘deep understanding and street wisdom’ and what Elliott (2006) has characterized as Aristotelian phronesis or ‘practical wisdom’ developed through ‘disciplined conversations’. Individual educational researchers often have complex disciplinary and professional backgrounds: generalizations about former teachers or teacher educators moving into research roles and stereotypes of ‘imports’ from other academic disciplines are inadequate to express this. Just as the professional fields related to education increasingly involve interagency and cross-disciplinary working, so the trajectories of educational researchers are increasingly complex. The projects on which I will draw for examples in later chapters have involved collaborations with between educational researchers and health and allied professions; computer and information scientists; and museum curators and archivists (to name but a few). For the purposes of this chapter, however, we will not explore the

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question of the actual nature of educational research further, other than to point up the additional challenges that these issues present for research capacity building. As Rees et al. (2007, p. 766) acknowledge, it may make it difficult to engage researchers with initiatives that appear not to be responsive to this diversity and plurality. A broader issue is how research capacity needs to be developed and supported if, indeed, it involves engagement in multiple, overlapping, disciplinary communities rather than undertaking ‘research training’ in some singular, well-articulated methodological context. Research Cultures and Research Training Cultures are Different and Vary Widely In the UK, debates about research capacity building have taken place against a background in which postgraduate research in education has been reframed as research training rather than a particular form of scholarship, conventionally associated with a single extended piece of research (Deem and Brehony, 2000; Rees et al., 2007). Research training guidelines require that research students develop experience and expertise in a range of methods regardless of whether they are actually employed in their own research project (Economic and Social Research Council, 2005) and that they be supported in ‘doing and learning about research’ (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, 2004, p. 7). Analogous developments have taken place internationally, with a variety of national and regional concerns leading to efforts to codify and standardize the nature of doctoral research in North America, Australasia, and across Europe, under the umbrella of the ‘Bologna process’ (see Park, 2007 for a review of international developments in this area). If, as Hodkinson (2004), Rees et al. (2007), and others suggest, educational research is best considered to be a particular form of learning framed by what Sfard (1998) describes as the ‘participation metaphor’, this presents a challenge for research capacity building and particularly for the design of research training programmes. Deem and Brehony (2000) offer a useful framing of this issue, distinguishing and pointing up tensions between ‘student cultures’, ‘research training cultures’ and ‘research cultures’. They explore the extent to which students in different institutional settings are able to engage with research cultures within their institutions and across the broader disciplinary setting. For some the experience is of ‘becoming-researcher’ within the context of a research community, while other students may be involved in a specific personal

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research project or the development or evaluation of particular practice, and as a result may identify more readily with a formal ‘research training’ culture. On the one hand, research training programmes are probably the most reliable means by which early career researchers such as those engaged in doctoral studies can gain a breadth of expertise and engage with a plurality of disciplinary perspectives and research approaches. At the same time, there remains concern about the adequacy and relevance of formal research training as a preparation for engagement in educational research more broadly, with a wide recognition that further support and mentoring of early career research is necessary beyond doctoral study (see, for example, Johnsrud and Banaria, 2004; Walker et al., 2008). On the other hand, those students and researchers working on specific, funded projects are more likely to be well supported in relation to their own work, and may be better integrated into ‘research cultures’. However, this may result in specialized expertise at the expense of exposure to a broader ‘plural’ experience of research. Educational researchers, for the most part, do not have access to the ‘laboratory culture’ common across the sciences (the technology-enhanced learning world’s ‘learning labs’ are an obvious exception) and as a result of their experiences tend to be dependent on the management and organization of specific projects within which their work is framed. A review of the impact of capacity building activities by the UK’s TLRP called ‘Mapping the Ripples’ built on the idea of ‘research as work’ and used the notion of the ‘expansive/restrictive workplace’ to characterize the research cultures it discovered: This provides a useful vehicle for bringing together the pedagogical, organizational and cultural factors that contribute to workplace learning. These factors include the potential [in expansive projects] to participate in multiple communities of practice, the generation of multi-dimensional models of expertise, and opportunities to access off-the-job training. (Teaching and Learning Research Programme, 2008, p. 5) ‘Restrictive’ practices tended to exclude early career or short-contract researchers from intellectually more demanding work and in some cases from project meetings and other events. In addition, ‘restrictive’ practices tended to privilege particular research approaches, analytical strategies or theoretical perspectives, making it difficult for less experienced researchers to pursue alternative approaches, make outside links or co-author research writings outside the project team itself.

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Another critical issue that emerged from this study was the extent to which early career researchers, even though they were working within high-profile, funded research projects, had anxieties about subsequent employment. Many respondents to the ‘Mapping the Ripples’ survey and interviews reported feeling dependent on the patronage of more senior staff, or were contemplating moves into teaching posts with reduced opportunities for research when funding of their current posts ceased (Teaching and Learning Research Programme, 2008, p. 7). Precarious and short-term employment is an intrinsic part of the culture of educational research, with one of the most valued ‘expansive’ practices being “an ongoing commitment to researchers’ futures beyond the completion of the project” (Teaching and Learning Research Programme, 2008, p. 14). Here then is a significant ‘capacity building’ dilemma: whether (and how) to focus upon breadth or depth; specialization or plurality; and to provide research training or promote research cultures. The practices that the ‘Mapping the Ripples’ report characterizes as ‘expansive’ are of particular significance here, and it is no surprise, perhaps, that all of these can be related in some way to networks and networking. There Is Concern about Lack of Expertise and Innovation in Educational Research Methods Thus far, we have focused on capacities of individuals and begun to explore the means by which institutions, training programmes and research projects might support these. The challenges of doing so are thrown into higher relief in the context of advanced, complex and innovative research methods, where expertise may be particularly concentrated: Gorard (2002, p. 2) cites the example of specialized areas of statistics where ‘collective’ expertise may in fact be represented by a single individual. This represents a dual challenge: not only do new research approaches and the discourses that accompany them need to be developed among established researchers, they also need to be integrated into the ‘research training’ cultures in which new researchers and research students are engaged. Educational researchers, while they identify and draw on different disciplinary traditions (as we have already discussed) do not necessarily engage with most recent developments and debates in those other disciplines. A recent special edition of the Oxford Review of Education attempted to address this by exploring contemporary developments and highlighting potential methodological directions and new opportunities in disciplines related to educational research. These included psychology (Crozier, 2009),

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sociology (Lauder et al., 2009), geography (Taylor, 2009), economics (Dearden et al., 2009) and philosophy (Oancea and Bridges, 2009). Other possibilities, particularly those enabled by the development of new technologies have been slow to impact on educational research practice, with computer-aided analysis; the use of multimedia (Walker, 2002); geographical data; and the use of data ‘born digital’ remaining relatively limited (Cox, 2007; Wiles et al., 2009). Where mixed methods or cross-disciplinary approaches are used these tend to be relatively unambitious and “cautious” (Wiles et al., 2009, p. 4). While Mason (2006) offers a range of models of synthesis and integration, most mixing of methods is restricted to triangulation or to sequential investigation: for example, with surveys being followed by case studies, or quantitative data used primarily to contextualize qualitative findings. A concern about lack of innovation in methods is also evident in more radical and post-structural approaches to educational research. These limitations are highlighted by Pillow (2003), who argues that for all of the rhetoric of the ‘reflexive turn’, many researchers remain concerned about the status and validity of their claims rather than challenging the broader assumptions of research as ‘representation’. Lather (2010) has recently suggested that critical educational approaches need to engage more actively with the discourses and methods of quantitative research and the policy it underpins in order to reintroduce the complexities of practice, and that this will involves new forms of critical engagement and, in turn, demands fresh research approaches. There Is a Lack of Systematic Accumulation of Research Knowledge Closely linked to debate about the methods and claims of educational research is another concern: that there is little accumulation of knowledge, data and analysis. The lack of a shared history, runs the argument, leads to duplication of effort, lack of information on which practitioners and policymakers can act, and leaves educational research dominated by ‘cottage industries’ working in isolation from each other. Oakley et al. (2005), in their account of the development and role of the UK’s Evidence for Policy and Practice Information Centre (EPPI-Centre) discuss how disciplinary cultures, the diverse nature of published evidence and analysis, and patterns of research funding militate against the building of a cumulative evidence base. These concerns are also articulated in the context of educational research in the USA by Shavelson and Towne (2002), who explicitly argue for the application of scientific methods to educational research,

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and suggest that a lack of consistency in approach has precluded either longitudinal or comparative analysis to any significant extent. There is an overlap here with the previous issue of innovation in methods and particularly in relation to mixed methods research: despite increasing use of large-scale data sets such as pupil databases and cohort data, these have as yet been little used in mixed methods, comparative or longitudinal research (Vignoles, 2007; Wiles et al., 2009). Lack of awareness and use of existing data is not simply a concern for quantitative researchers or those working on systematic reviews or meta-analysis. There is little reuse of qualitative data or analyses, or sharing of methods and issues arising from their use; even those who question the use of qualitative data on epistemological grounds acknowledge its pedagogical value as models of practice (Heaton, 2004; Carmichael, 2008). Regardless of whether the intention is to develop large quantitative data sets to support meta- analysis; to construct ‘case records’ for secondary qualitative analysis; or to produce pedagogical resources to support the development of research capacity, there are a number of common challenges. Not only do appropriate technological infrastructures and standards need to be developed and implemented, but educational researchers need to be supported in their engagement with such resources. One of the benefits of accumulation of research data, analysis and publications is that patterns in what is ‘accumulated’ are themselves revealing. It is possible to chart changes in how issues are conceptualized, the purpose and nature of research and patterns of collaboration, as shown by studies of the British Education Index (Sheffield and Saunders, 2002) and the TLRP’s digital repository (Procter, 2007). And the contents of the EPPI-Centre database indicates some of the issues that have occupied UK policymakers: the impact of new technologies and of synthetic phonics on school-age children’s achievement; the effectiveness of various approaches to initial teacher education; and assessments of strategies to reduce childhood obesity being obvious examples. The issue of accumulation of research knowledge offers particular challenges for practitioners wishing to engage in and with the ‘fourth type’ of research identified by McIntyre and McIntyre (1999) and associated with ‘knowledge producing’ schools and other institutions. Cordingley (2010) reviews a range of initiatives designed to make research accessible to teachers, generally through websites with ‘featured research’ or thematic reviews of key recent research, but many of these are couched in terms of research (carried out by higher education, or commissioned by government) informing practice, rather than as part of practice.

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A recent report by the Strategic Forum for Research in Education (2010, pp. 34–5) reviews the work of the EPPI Centre (along with other comparable evidence bases in Australasia and the USA). It advances the case for greater ‘federation’ of resources and access through a single portal and while it suggests that the establishment of centralized ‘Evidence Centres’ ‘may be a step too far in education at present’ (Strategic Forum for Research in Education, 2010, p. 35): the emphasis is still concerned with the cumulation of ‘evidence’. Building up knowledge about research methods, rather than simply data or analyses, in a form that is both accessible and suffi ciently rich that it is of use to researchers, remains a challenge, particularly if it is to reach those particularly those early in their careers, not engaged in formal training, or teachers based in schools There are some examples of a broader notion of cumulation of research knowledge that attempt to capture and preserve methods as well as evidence. In the UK, the ReStore repository is ‘a sustainable repository of online research methods resources which preserves, sustains and actively maintains [web resources] . . . mainly representing subjects of research methods in social sciences’ (ReStore, undated), and the TLRP has developed resources which link research publications (but not evidence) to methodological themes. The Data Documentation Initiative (Blank and Rasmussen, 2004) provides a promising basis for researchers to archive not only data but also research instruments, analytical frameworks, coding frames and protocols, but this work remains at an early stage in its development. How Best to Organize Educational Research is Contested, as is the Best Way to Conceptualize this Organization Around the world, historical responsibilities and patterns of research funding mean that educational research takes place within widely different organizational frameworks. Within these, more significant roles may be played by national academies directly funded by government (as in many countries in Europe, as well as Asia); in specialist research institutes (also common in Europe); within elite research universities; or more widely across the higher education sector, including in teacher education institutions (as is the case in the UK). Despite this, it is possible to identify a number of major trends. Pollard (2010) suggests that across the world educational researchers were called to orient their work towards national performance against internationally derived standards:

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Globalization brought ‘reforms’ of national education systems and international competition emphasized comparative national performance . . . Thus educational researchers came under the spotlight with calls that they should focus on national priorities more directly. (Pollard, 2010) Lawn and Furlong (2007, p. 57) suggest that another important influence is the ‘massification of higher education’ and the changing relationship between teacher education and educational research that has arisen from the incorporation of teacher education into higher education, where this has been the case. Some of the organizational, policy and funding initiatives that have followed from this have employed the rhetoric of improvement through the provision of ‘space’ (see, for example, Evans, 2007) or exchange (with ‘forums’ or ‘panels’). However, the most common organizational response has been ‘programmes’ which characteristically have an overarching set of aims driven by high-level policy imperatives, curricular change or perceived gaps or deficiencies in current knowledge; and ‘centres’ which seek to establish concentrations of expertise, typically associated with a remit to engage researchers and disseminate the results of their findings more widely. In some cases, responsibilities to commission, fund and oversee further research are also devolved to these programmes and centres. This tendency to centralization, of course, can accentuate the patterns of regional and local variation we have already discussed, particularly when research funding and support are reduced elsewhere as a result. This is a particular issue in situations where there is already a perception of a research elite, with ‘capital following capital’. Leitch discusses the potential difficulties this can cause for longer term commitments to capacity building: The ‘shadow’ side of such collectives is that they can inadvertently inhibit capacity-growth by alienating those . . . outside the boundaries of the initiative, who have not directly benefited from the investment. Those alienated, through not being part of the ‘club’, can consciously or unconsciously undermine development through disinterest and cynical disengagement from dissemination events intended as opportunities for knowledge transfer and capacity building.’ (Leitch, 2009, p. 362) More generally, Pollard (2010, pp. 37–8), in his review of the activities of the TLRP, highlights the tensions between the organization of a

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higher-level programme of research with strategic aims and commissioning processes which centre on the quality of project proposals and the credential of principal investigators. This presents a broader challenge in relation to our themes of capacity building and networking: if the dominant organizational form is ‘the project’ then efforts to establish any kind of wider programme, network or community with shared commitments and practices may be made more difficult. As Pollard (2010) describes, in the case of TLRP, programme-level commitments, capacity building among them, may have to be addressed as post-hoc activities, additional to the core of funded projects. Here, of course, is where the tension between the ‘expansive’ and ‘restrictive’ project workplace we have discussed already are thrown into high relief, with early career researchers in particular having to identify opportunities to engage with programme activ ities and negotiate their roles in relation to these as well as ‘project’ priorities.

The Character of Some Educational Research Capacity Initiatives In order to understand better research capacity building in particular in relation to the controversies and challenges set out above, it is instructive to look at some recent and current initiatives for which the development of research capacity has been part of their remit or role. The examples I draw on here are from the UK, and even then, this is a selective list: my purpose here is to illustrate a range of conceptualizations and approaches rather than to provide a complete ‘directory’. The Teaching and Learning Research Programme (TLRP) and Research Capacity Building Network (RCBN) The TLRP has already been featured in this chapter as a major programme that was unusual in that it was charged with sector-wide development of capacity and the encouragement of interdisciplinary and innovative research approaches. A large part of its work was to contribute to the development of the ‘evidence-based practice’ described by McIntyre and McIntyre (1999) and to inform practitioners and policymakers as to ‘what works’, although this was broadly conceived and included development of the capacity to engage with research and its outcomes that we have already described (Pollard, 2010, p. 28).

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The organization of capacity building activities within TLRP took place in two phases. From the inception of the programme in 1999, the RCBN, based at the University of Cardiff provided research training, particularly in areas which were felt to be lacking across the current educational research landscape of the UK. It had a particular focus on quantitative methods and research design, and addressing the uneven distribution of expertise in educational research through targeted training activities and resources (Pollard, 2010, p. 41). In their assessment of the impact of these activities, Rees et al. (2007) suggest that this led to a contingent and shortterm approach on the part of RCBN ‘users’: In their own assessments of the impacts of the RCBN’s activities . . . respondents tended to emphasize their short-term benefits. They stressed the utility of the various training activities in addressing the immediate problems confronted by individuals or whole project teams, rather than their own development as researchers; still less the improvement of the quality of educational research as a whole.’ (Rees et al., 2007, pp. 770–1) From 2005, a second phase of capacity building activities began, drawing in part on the experiences of the TLRP programme and its projects itself, which were emerging as a major source of examples, resources and peer support across the programme. Pollard writes: From 2005, an explicit attempt began to be made to embed processes for the development of research expertise within the social practices of educational researchers. In other words, learning would take place on the job through engaging in the research process. This was seen as complementary to ESRC’s provision through the National Centre for Research Methods and Research Methods Programme. (Pollard, 2010, p. 42) What this meant in practice was a move towards a range of thematic events, seminar programmes and, primarily, the production of online resources which presented research methods in the context of project activities: linking extant literatures, resources, models of research design and examples of how TLRP projects addressed ‘real-world’ problems. Another development at this stage was the initiation of a programme of mentoring called ‘Meetings of Minds’ which, similarly, focused on providing ‘on-thejob’ support for researchers in areas related not only to their immediate

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problems but to their longer term career intentions. We will revisit some of these initiatives in more detail in Chapter 4.

The Applied Educational Research Scheme of Scotland The AERS operated in Scotland from 2004 to 2009, with a £2 million pound budget. While AERS was informed by some of the same concerns as the TLRP, it was even more explicitly concerned with capacity building, in part in response to the lack of any university in Scotland receiving a ‘top rating’ (5 or 5* on a 1–5* scale) in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (Humes, 2007; Christie and Menter, 2009). The multi-university collaboration of AERS focused on three areas that aligned with policy and practice (school management and governance; social capital; and learners, learning and teaching) each, like the scheme as a whole, conceptualized as a network. In addition, a research capacity network was established and a range of strategies used to build capacity within and beyond the country’s research-intensive universities. These included a blended learning M-level course taught by staff drawn from across the AERS network and more widely; a fellowship scheme similar to the TLRP ‘Meeting of Minds’; and the establishment and support, partly through online means, of teacherresearcher networks. One particularly interesting aspect of AERS activity was that the distinction between research capacity development (both formal training and ‘embedded’) and the substantive focus of research activities is blurred, with innovative research approaches and, the emergence of new patterns of practitioner engagement (Christie et al., 2007; Wilson et al., 2007).

The Welsh Educational Research Network (WERN) Another national research initiative is WERN, established in 2007. If AERS was a response to concerns about overall national research capacity in education, WERN was a response to the concentration of that capacity in a single institution and an accompanying ‘downward trajectory’ elsewhere (Tanner and Davies, 2009). Of particular concern was the breakdown of the relationship between teacher education and educational research, with several institutions offering teacher education having no ‘research-active’ staff entered into the Research Assessment Exercise in 2008 (Tanner and Davies, 2009, pp. 375–6). WERN provided small-scale funding (‘bursaries’) for research projects to enable them to

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meet, undertake small-scale research activities and pilots, develop further research proposals, and write collaboratively: ‘an essential criterion was a mix of skills and expertise within the group that had the potential to mentor and build the capacity of the group members’. Central to this was the provision of established research mentors, identified as being of central importance by participants. WERN as an approach to research capacity sits firmly within the ‘embedded social practice’ model initiated by TLRP, and, as in that case, the long-term effects are harder to assess than those of more formal training programmes. ‘WERN’, writes Gardner (2008, p. 5), ‘was never formulated as a transforming ‘silver bullet’ initiative . . . [but] as a pilot initiative to explore how the situation might be transformed’.

The Teacher Education Research Network (TERN) Beginning in 2008, the TERN was an ESRC funded pilot project to build on the work of the TLRP and in particular to explore capacity building approaches in relation to teacher educators. A central question for TERN was, like that of WERN in Wales, how to establish, support and sustain research ties between research-intensive universities and those predominantly involved in teacher education. Building on the work of the Teacher Education Group of the TLRP (Wall et al., 2009), TERN established a model of mentoring and support for group work, with interest groups made up of more and less experienced researchers and teacher educators working on self-directed projects. These included writing for publication, developing research proposals and planning conference symposia. Again, a commitment to an “embedded social practices” approach was explicit in the vision of TERN’s aims and approaches (Murray et al., 2009a; Murray et al., 2009b).

A Social and Professional Network for Early Career Researchers in Education (SPNECRE) Running contemporaneously with TERN and funded under the same initiative was another research and development project: SPNECRE. This sought to engage with different groups of researchers (teacher educators engaging in research; interdisciplinary researchers involved in technology enhanced learning projects; PhD students, particularly those engaged in part-time study; and others) and to explore how emerging

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‘social software’ might support their research and personal research capacity development. While again concerned with ‘social practices’ of research, SPNECRE was specifically concerned with exploration of what these might be and how they might be supported and enhanced (Carmichael and Burchmore, 2010).

VITAE VITAE is a UK-wide organization which supports early career researchers and postgraduate students across all disciplines; as well as organizing training courses, conference and other events it carries out research and reviews policy related to research and researcher experience, and maintains a web ‘portal’ providing access to its own events and publications and those of other bodies. It provides some small-scale funding for capacity building projects. Two notable features are the fact that it co-hosts events and activities with other providers, and offers a means of disseminating information across a wide (and multi-disciplinary network); and the emphasis it places on supporting individual researchers and research students in terms of their futures as researchers and their employability outside the academic world.

National Centre for Research Methods (NCRM) The NCRM is an UK-wide, ESRC-funded initiative that, despite its name, has ‘a distributed structure’, with a ‘hub’ and ‘nodes’ around the UK. The NCRM website describes the Centre as: Part of ESRC’s strategy to improve the standards of research methods across the UK social science community [and aims to promote] a step change in the quality and range of methodological skills and techniques used by the UK social science community, and providing support for, and dissemination of, methodological innovation and excellence. (National Centre for Research Methods, undated) The NCRM organizes courses and other events, reviews and identifies research priorities, and provides funding for specific areas in order to meet these. It also maintains a large (and growing) collection of research methods publications, conference papers and other resources in an openaccess digital repository.

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Researcher Development Initiative (RDI) Alongside the NCRM and its nodes, the ESRC has also funded several rounds of projects in research priority areas across the social sciences. These projects have included developing and evaluating innovative and interdisciplinary methods, running intensive summer schools and advanced research methods training and developing online resources. Some RDI projects have themselves conceptualized their work as developing and supporting networks, and have made use of online collaboration environments in order to provide a means of sustaining these once initial funding has ceased.

Complementary Approaches to Research Capacity? If we now revisit the ‘features of the research landscape’ outline previously, which we will, for the sake of brevity, refer to as: ‘demographics’, ‘distribution’, ‘disciplines’, ‘training cultures’, ‘innovation’, ‘accumulation’ and ‘organization’, it is instructive to see how these initiatives were both framed by combinations of these features and set out to address them in different ways. Table 1.2 attempts to summarize these, and (it must be admitted) represents a very ‘coarse-grained’ overview. Providing even this is difficult in the case of very large and complex initiatives such as the TLRP or the NCRM as these have involved diverse (and sometimes contested) roles and approaches over time. The table is not a review of every outcome, planned and unplanned, of each initiative listed: instead, its focus is the issues in research capacity they have sought to address and approaches they employ or continue to employ. So, while the TERN did, indeed, engage with questions of technology-enhanced research collaboration and disciplinary perspectives on teacher education (Murray et al., 2009a), this was less central to their mission than the development of regional capacity and the engagement of teacher educators in research. What is also significant is the ways in which combinations of these networks complement one another, in some cases (but not always) explicitly, as suggested in the comment by Pollard (2010) about the ‘embedded social practices’ approach of TLRP complementing the work of the NCRM. What this means is that, from the perspective of the individual researcher, there is a complex network of networks with which to engage. Some of these have very different views of research and research capacities, ranging from

Selected research capacity initiatives in the UK – Summary

34

Table 1.2

Priorities in relation to themes Distribution

Disciplines

Training cultures

Innovation

Accumulation

Organization

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

Research Capacity Building Network (2000–2005) Applied Educational Research Scheme (2004–2009) Welsh Educational Research Network (2007 onwards) Teacher Education Research Network (2008 onwards) Social & Professional Network for ECRs in Education (2008–2009) Research Councils UK VITAE (2008 onwards) National Centre for Research Methods (2004 onwards) Researcher Development Initiative (2005 onwards)

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

✓

Examples of research capacity building activities undertaken and supported

Regional & interdisciplinary initiatives, funding for thematic work, practitioner and policymaker engagement, research training resources, online environments General and advanced methods training courses, seed funding, seminars, bulletin, online resources Mentoring, MRes Course, innovation in practitioner and policy engagement, roadshows, online environments Seed funding, mentoring, placements, information exchange, brokerage, online environment Remission of teaching, expert seminars, mentoring, support for group formation, information exchange, online environment Expert seminars, online environment, federation of online research resources, new software Seed funding, seminars, research training, reports and policy, career development planning Online resources, general and advanced methods training courses, online resources, project funding Funding innovative and interdisciplinary methods, courses, summer schools, advanced methods training, online resources

Networking Research

Demographics

Teaching and Learning Research Programme (1999–2012)

Programme or initiative (with dates)

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those based from their inception on a participatory, ‘on-the-job’ model of researcher learning and capacity development to those which offer intensive courses oriented towards advanced research methods, publication or employability.

Research Capacity Building, Embedded Social Practice and Networks Looking across even this selective list of capacity building initiatives, several important issues arise which provide a point of departure for the remainder of this book. First is the variation in understanding of research capacities and research capacity building, reflected in their different audiences and approaches adopted. If we revisit Eade’s distinctions between capacity building at the individual, organizational and wider societal level, and as a process, means or ends (Eade, 1997) it is clear that each of the initiatives listed presents a different profile – although none would fit neatly into one cell of a 3 x 3 matrix based on Eade’s categories. But there are differences: VITAE, for example, is clearly focused on the development of individual capacities (although it addresses this by supporting providers of training, developing models of best practice); and the NCRM’s mission is couched in terms of sectoral and national development, although it addresses this by providing individuals with access to resources and advanced research methods training. It is the ‘socially embedded practices’ that are more difficult to pin down, and which demand further inquiry. Some of the resources that VITAE, or the RDI, or the NCRM provide might well become ‘socially embedded’, but by whom, for whom, and embedded into what? Are these the personal capacities of individuals, the practices and discourses of a specific and potentially short-lived research project, or the research training culture of an institution? As if these questions were not difficult enough, there is an additional challenge, which that some of the means by which new practices might be introduced and supported are not yet, themselves, ‘embedded’! The most obvious example is the use of online collaboration environments, which, we have seen, forms an element of the capacity building strategy of several of the initiatives listed above: but use of these technologies may not themselves represent part of the ‘socially embedded practice’ of the individuals and groups they are intended to support. The other, glaringly obvious, feature is the prevalence of the word ‘network’. Even those programmes, projects and initiatives that do not contain

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the word in their titles use language associated with networks and networking like ‘hubs’, ‘nodes’ and ‘links’. There is a sense that these are more than communication networks: there is something in the network as an organizational form, collectivity or even just as a metaphor that indicates that these have an important role to play in the development of individual and collective knowledge and the capacity (in a more general sense) to engage with new research questions. If all that was required was better communication between researchers, or access to research resources, the problem would be simple to address; but as we shall see, we need to do more than develop increasing numbers of online resources and training materials. Returning to the challenges set by McIntyre and McIntyre (1999) over a decade ago (supporting schools as research organizations; supporting early career researchers; establishing research trajectories; engaging practitioners; more effective interdisciplinary working), a better understanding of networking might help to address these. But in order to do so, we need to understand not just idealized models of network structure, but what the practices of networking itself might be, and how these might be supported, shared and themselves ‘embedded’ in the learning and work of educational researchers. In short, we need to rethink networking both as a particular set of social and discursive practices and the researcher as an active networker. In order to do this, we need to look more closely at the rather diverse and complex literatures associated with networks and networking, and at what these might have to offer our understandings of educational research and the activities of educational researchers.

Chapter 2

A Closer Look at Networks and Networking

Introduction What are the networks that are seen as being so central to research capacity building both in educational research and more widely? According to a recent publication, Network Logic, produced by the influential ‘think tank’ Demos: ‘Networks are the language of our times . . . we live in a world held together by networks’ (McCarthy et al., 2004, pp. 11–12). This collection presents a series of position pieces by what they describe as ‘leading network thinkers and practitioners’ who describe, conceptualize and critique, among others: ‘social networks’, ‘friendship networks’, ‘professional networks’, ‘political networks’, ‘activist networks’, ‘terrorist networks’, ‘digital networks’, ‘media networks’, ‘economic networks’, ‘innovation networks’, and more. Some contributors discuss what it means to provide leadership and governance in a network; for others, networks are intrinsically leaderless and ungovernable. For some, networks are organizational structures that can be ‘built’; for others they are organic entities that ‘grow’; according to some perspectives, the network is what is described; in others, it is the means by which something is described. This sheer diversity demonstrates the challenge: as Watts, whose own studies draw on electronic, social and biological networks, says, despite the apparent simplicity of the idea of a ‘network’ as a collection of objects connected together in some way, the term is ‘slippery’ (2003a, p. 27), so much so that it can become ambiguous to the point of meaninglessness. Rather than lacking a language to solve the problems of a networked world, in fact we have a whole range of languages, conceptualizations and theoretical frameworks with different groundings and concerns. While many of these have found expression and achieved popularity with the rapid emergence of electronic networks, questions about the nature and role of networks in fact predate the ‘internet age’ and notions of ‘virtual society’.

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This chapter considers a number of main theories and traditions in the study of networks ranging from social network analysis through studies of the ‘network society’ to ‘post-political’ studies of social movements. As we shall see, there is a tension throughout these accounts between those that seek to develop some kind of grand unified network theory, a general paradigm or a ‘network logic’; and those who argue that the concept of the network is being expected to do too much work in disparate and in some cases poorly understood settings. This is not a historical account of the development of network theories, nor does it attempt a comparative analysis, as Cavanagh (2007) does in her survey of network theories relevant to studies of the internet. Rather, I will trace a path through a range of theories and traditions from fields much broader than educational research, but that might help frame understandings of educational research and research capacity building in particular, and will attempt to tease out a number of themes and identify key ideas that will then be put to work in the later chapters of this book.

Social Networks and Social Capital Perhaps the most prevalent form of theorizing and researching networks and networking is Social Network Analysis (SNA), which offers established methodological and analytical approaches and a rich associated terminology of hubs and nodes, centrality and distance, connectedness and isolation. As Cavanagh (2007, pp. 27–32) describes, the earliest attempts to use versions of social network analysis were associated with understanding the common structural forms of diverse societies, and the work of RadcliffeBrown, Nadel and others during the middle part of the twentieth century were explicitly couched in scientific terms. Mathematical graph theory provided the basis for analysis and quantification, leaving the key question for social scientists being the identification of the appropriate unit of analysis: often, but not always, the individual person, whose links to others could be used to define their ‘personal order’. The reductive nature of much of this kind of analysis has been criticized: the widely cited work carried out by Milgram (1967) on friendship networks and the ‘small world’ phenomenon, he describes, was critiqued by Kochen (1989) on the grounds that ‘friendship’, as a social construct, varies widely across cultures. Granovetter cautions that despite the appeal of ‘small world studies’ in particular, ‘progress in understanding requires that tightly controlled experiment and real-world complexity regularly and

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systematically inform one another’ (2003, p. 774). One response to this is that research has concentrated on more sharply defined measures such as intermarriage among elites (Wasserman and Faust, 1994, pp. 61–2), academic collaboration and co-authorship (Barabási et al., 2002; Newman, 2001; Newman, 2004); how these specific kinds of academic collaborations change over time (Moody, 2004); or email contact as a proxy for broader communication within organizations (Ahuja and Carley, 1999; Gloor et al., 2004). The World Wide Web can be considered as a network with pages being the nodes connected by hypertext links; social network analysis techniques and concepts have been widely applied in the ‘mapping’ of the internet (Barabási et al., 1999). At the core of this work, however, is an assumption or even a commitment to demonstrate the universality of network theory, with popular accounts presenting networks as a ‘theory of everything’: Barabási’s book Linked (2003) is subtitled: ‘how everything is connected to everything else’ and Watts (Watts, 2003b; 2003a) draws on examples from biological sciences, social sciences, electronics, epidemiology and appearances in films to illustrate and explore common features of networks. Cavanagh (2007, pp. 29–31) also draws attention to different traditions within social network analysis, and provides a useful summary of how these and other network theories conceptualize the nature and extent of networks and the forces at work sustaining and shaping them (Cavanagh, 2007, p. 30). She points up a divergence between emphases on universality and structure in the UK, and a more diverse tradition incorporating ideas about spatiality, geography and information exchange in the USA; the former seen as ‘constraining’ action and the latter ‘enabling’ it (see also Wellman, 1988). This latter tradition has subsequently aligned well with interests in ideas about social capital as well as ‘cybergeographies’ of computer networks and of the internet, and this is a distinction that we will revisit in later chapters as we explore educational research networks and patterns of research capacity. Wellman (1988) and Cavanagh (2007, p. 30) also discuss the distinction that is often drawn between ‘whole network’ and ‘ego-centred’ social network analysis. The former assumes that all of the elements of a network are known, or at least that the boundaries of the network are defined in advance: this in fact limits the potential for analysis and reinforces the tendency to develop ‘models’ of networks rather than empirically grounded studies. In ego-centred approaches, there is no assumption that any individual has oversight of the entire network and the boundaries being studied only emerge as data are collected (Marsden, 2005, p. 10). Critically,

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however, Cavanagh (2007) argues that this difference is based in methodological necessity rather than a commitment to any ontological principle, in contrast to other approaches underpinned by entirely different conceptions of networks which we shall examine shortly. Despite these differences and criticisms, what social network analysis does provide is a rich terminology: albeit one where technical and everyday meanings are often different and where appealing and apparently intuitive concepts are often the most problematic. Also contributing to this is the dominant visual representation of networks, established in the 1930s (Moreno, 1932; Moreno, 1934) of networks as ‘balls and sticks’ with ‘nodes’ or ‘vertices’ (people, places or other entities) connected by ‘links’, ‘ties’ or ‘edges’. Despite the existence of other ways in which networks might be represented (see Wasserman and Faust, 1994, pp. 69–89 for examples of multiple representations of the same sets of relationships and the opportunities each presents for analysis), this particular structural representation, the graph, is clearly compelling. When asked to ‘represent their networks’, for example through a drawing exercise, the majority of individuals will use some version of it (Fox et al., 2007; McCormick et al., 2010, pp. 60ff). This primarily structural approach provides us with seductive measures of ‘connectedness’; the degree of a node is a measure of the number of other nodes to which it connected, and allows the identification of regions of variable density and hence of network centrality. Recognition that network ties are not necessarily reciprocal, that connectedness may be direct or indirect (via other nodes), and that certain network ‘positions’ allow them to fulfil particular roles, Wellman (1988) introduces a further set of concepts and measures. Degree can be elaborated to provide a measure of the number or ‘strength’ of inward and outward ties (in-degree and out-degree) and therefore of net-degree: tellingly, nodes that have only outward ties are termed sources; those that only have inward ties are sinks; and those that have both can then have their betweenness calculated. These terms provide a good illustration of the association of networks with mobility of information, resources or populations. Some of these are illustrated, using the conventional ‘ball and stick’ representation of nodes and links, in Figure 2.1. Following from this comes a range of new concepts: nodes may be isolates; groups of nodes may be cliques (structurally ‘dense’ areas, but the key point here is that information or other resources are not shared beyond the clique); it becomes possible to identify bridges (links between parts of a network), articulation points of high ‘betweenness’, cutpoints (nodes which

A Closer Look at Networks and Networking A

41 B

C

B

Figure 2.1 A conventional graph ‘ball-and-stick’ representation of network of nodes and ties: The left hand side is dense with most of the nodes connected to each other; the right hand side is sparse by comparison. The node labeled A is a source; those labeled B are sinks; and C is highly between because it lies on the paths between many other pairs of nodes.

D

E G

F

H

Figure 2.2 A conventional ball-and-stick representation showing a network with a bridge (D); the node at E would be a cutpoint and that at F is a contractor as it reduces the path length from G to H from 4 to 2.

is removed would break or interrupt the network), and contractors, which shorten the path length between other nodes (see Figure 2.2). Even when a lack of oversight of the whole of a network makes an egocentred approach to studying it a necessity, the rhetorical and metaphorical power of networks remains significant. Individuals are able to characterize the role they believe themselves to play in a network even if their knowledge of its full extent is only partial. As McCormick et al. (2010) describe in their study of teachers involved in professional development activities, individuals are willing and able to draw on the vocabulary of

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networks to express their perceptions, using terms like ‘broker’, ‘connectedness’ and ‘centrality’. At the same time, they may also use a broader metaphorical conception of ‘the network’ in order to express a connectedness, from which they might benefit (or not), and through which they might exert influence (or be denied it), but which is beyond their immediate experience (McCormick et al., 2010, pp. 59–60). This does mean that research into networks that draws on participant accounts (rather than measurements of interaction) has to involve careful analysis in order to determine whether respondents are referring to specific experience and observations, are invoking ‘the network’ as a location for activity; or using it as a metaphor for something intangible, conceptual or even alien and ‘other’. The idea that network positions are enabling rather than constraining and that being ‘well-connected’ is something over which individuals might have control, clearly has important implications. Perhaps most significant among these is the idea that ‘networking’, a set of practices associated with the building and maintaining of networks, is itself important in the development of ‘personal networks’ which individuals use to interact with others and gain access to social capital, defined by Wellman (2001) as including three aspects: the ‘network capital’ of relations with friends, family, co-workers and others; the ‘participatory capital’ that is associated with involvement in macro- and micro-political activities; and an orientation toward community development through the mobilization of knowledge and resources. In his highly cited work on ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ ties, Granovetter (1973) argues that it is the ‘weak’ ties in low-density regions of networks that are essential for the development of social capital. Weak ties are characteristically found in low-density networks, linking individuals who are less socially engaged with each other, in contrast to strong ties in high-density networks of friends or work colleagues. If all that exists in a network or part of a network are highly connected cliques, then these will not engage with information from distant parts of the social system. This provides a challenge, for weak ties are often intermittent, non-reciprocal and nonredundant (that is, dependent on a single mode of communication). In contrast with the strong ties between well-connected elements (such as members of a team who work together intensively, and use a range of communication media as well as meeting face to face), it is easy for weak ties to be disrupted. If individuals wish to avoid this disruption, or to maximize the value of the ties that they have established, or to establish stronger network ties, then

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it follows that we should find evidence of specific ‘networking’ practices. Some of the most detailed work in identifying these and, critically, relating them back to the structure of social networks, has been carried out by Burt (1982; 2000; 2001; 2005). He advances a ‘structural theory of action’ which aims to show how structural elements provide a context for the actions of individuals in networks (Burt, 1982), and identifies a number of network structures that enable different patterns of social capital to develop. This is best illustrated in his account of the role of brokers as key actors in identifying and closing ‘structural holes’ areas in networks where there is the potential for an increase in ‘density’ through the establishment of strong ties (Burt 2000, p. 14). According to this perspective, social capital resides in brokers who use this capital to recognize opportunities and to enable or encourage new relationships to develop. While Burt (2005, p. 62) identifies continuing involvement and ‘synthesis’ as a ‘higher-level’ brokerage, brokerage functions are not necessarily sustained: even though there may be an exchange during which the broker and the other individuals are connected, there are potential ‘next steps’ in which the broker maintains their ties with both, one, or neither of the other participants. Burt (2005, pp. 22–3) describes how, while one person may see a closed network of already-connected people, another may be able to recognize opportunities for brokerage and to identify those with the greatest potential for development. This ability depends both on their expertise as a broker, but also, inevitably, on their location within a network, with the interests and perceptions of the broker, their action and network structure being essentially interrelated. For networks to function and to be sustained for any length of time, a key issue is that of trust, and Burt (2005, pp. 98ff.) describes how histories of cooperation or other valued interaction bring about a ‘cumulative build’ or escalation of trust within networks. It is this which leads to the establishment of reputation, which in Burt’s analysis describes how network participants are expected to act given any particular set of circumstances, and imbues any network contact with them with a known value. Brokerage practices may then, strengthen ‘weak ties’ by involving individuals and building social capital within a region of a network, or they result in the establishment of trusted and valued weak ties on which an individual or group can draw as long as they are maintained. Perspectives that see networks not solely in terms of structure, but also associate them with the movement of information and resources and the development of social capital, provide us with ways of understanding how networks emerge, develop and decline and how they can be influenced through the actions of individuals. While structure is important and

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network position associates individuals with social capital, influence and reputation, ‘networking’ can be understood as a distinctive set of practices and discourses. In order to understand these better, however, we need to explore further both the nature of networks and networking, including the ways in which they have affected society more generally through the development of global communications and in particular, the Internet.

The Network Society Castells 2000a; 2000b; 2000c; 2004 in his explorations of what he terms the ‘Network Society’, charts how the increasing importance of communication networks, their associated technologies and the practices, power relations and elites that accompany them, have transformed business and social organization. He points to examples of local and global economic interdependence; new patterns of expertise and mobility; and changes in individual and collective identities. Based on these, Castells argues that the network society is organized around new forms and expressions of time and space, central to which is the concept of the ‘space of flows’, which is contrasted with the ‘space of places’. The ‘flows’ are characterized as: Purposeful, repetitive, programmable sequences of exchange and interaction between physically disjointed positions held by social actors in economic, political and symbolic structures of society. (Castells, 2000b, p. 442) While there may be a tendency, enabled by internet technologies in particular, towards a reduction in the significance of time, distance and place, Castells also points to new kinds of ‘places’ that are emerging as material expressions of the ‘space of flows’. These are the high-technology business parks, research centres and campuses, distribution centres and automated production lines, the locations of which are independent of historical or symbolic factors, and that are, instead, located at optimal points in the space of flows. Castells elaborates different elements in the space of flows that provide the material support for these business and social practices: the first of these is the electronic infrastructure (the servers, high-bandwidth cabling, satellite connections of organizational networks and the internet more generally); the second is the tier of information: web pages, hypertexts, databases and increasingly ‘linked’ data; and the third is the managerial elites who,

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in Wellman and Burt’s terms, are adept at managing their personal networks and use these to enable social actions, allowing them in turn to influence wider networks. In some cases, these three tiers align or overlap: an example might be a centre of medical research where material conditions and specialized information and expertise lead to a concentration of wellconnected clinicians and researchers. This, in turn, brings about increased reputation, attracting patients, funding and support, and promoting further technological development (Castells, 2000b, p. 444). At the same time, this is not necessarily the case, as when the first tier (the electronic) allows the second and third tiers (the informational and managerial) to be widely dispersed, allowing managerial functions to be maintained at a distance from the material aspects of an organization’s activities. Castells’ characterization of the space of flows is related most clearly to enduring themes of social network and social capital in his discussion of the existence of hubs and nodes. The idea of hubs appears in mathematical models of networks (not just social networks) as important nodes or vertices of high degree: that is, with many connections due to preferential attachments, where already well-connected, trusted nodes will tend to gather further network ties (Barabási, 2003). But for Castells, hubs are not simply well connected, nor are they simply concentrations of social capital, but rather points of exchange whose value is dependent on the network: Hubs are communication sites: airports, harbours, train or bus stations that organise exchanges of all kind, as they are increasingly interconnected and spatially related . . . they are dependent on the network . . . their logic depends on their place in the network and . . . they are sites to process signals that do not originate from any specific place but from endless recurrent interactions in the network. (Castells, 1999, pp. 295–6) Castells explicitly highlights the role of internet technologies not just in the transformation of the global economy (elements of electronic networks fulfilling and enabling both the role of hubs and nodes) but he is clear that the internet is not the space of flows – there are still ‘places’ within it: ‘electronic spaces, such as the internet or global communication media, are but one dimension, however, important, of the space of flows’ (Castells, 1999, p. 298). In subsequent work, Castells specifically addresses the role of the evolving internet and highlights its impact the nature of social relations: . . . the most important role of the Internet in structuring social relationships is its contribution to the new pattern of sociability based on

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individualism . . . Increasingly, people are organised not just in social networks, but in computer-communicated social networks. So it is not the Internet that creates a pattern of networked individualism, but the development of the Internet provides an appropriate material support for the diffusion of networked individualism as the dominant form of sociability. (Castells, 2002, pp. 130–1) The internet is good at maintaining Granovetter’s ‘strong ties’ at a distance (Castells, 2002, p. 130) and plays a particular role ‘in supporting extended families and specialised communities . . . forms of sociability constructed around specific interests’ (Castells, 2002, p. 132). Castells argues that, rather than the internet and other technologies such as mobile phones spelling the triumph of individualism, they represent only one of a range of new forms of sociability – another aspect of his ‘network society’. Castells’ vision of the network society (which, it must be recognized, he has elaborated and revised over time) has attracted critique. Cavanagh (2007, p. 39) points to its tendency to offer ‘mutually elaborative’ binaries like places and flows; and while Castells’ analyses integrate the social, the spatial and for that matter the ‘virtual’, there is another binary evident between places rich in meaning and spaces as non-meaningful non-places. (Massey, 1994) suggests that there are, instead, continua: from yet-to-be defined spaces to highly organized places rich in associations, from private to public, and from expansive to restrictive. As such, these may be highly signed in terms of discipline, class and gender. Few spaces are neutral and ‘different social groups, and different individuals, are placed in very distinct ways in relation to these flows and interconnections’ (Massey, 1994, pp. 148–9), and the focus of inquiry should, therefore, not be on network structures and spaces but on the social processes and relationships that they reflect, enable and constrain. A broader critique of Castells’ work, articulated by Urry (2003) and revisited by Cavanagh (2007) is that it falls into the same trap as other ‘network theories’ in attempting to provide a ‘theory of everything’. Urry suggests: The term ‘network’ is expected to do too much work . . . almost all the phenomena are seen through the single and undifferentiated prism of ‘network’. This concept glosses over very different networked phenomena . . . from hierarchical networks . . . to heterarchic . . . movements, from spatially contiguous networks meeting every day to those organized around imagined ‘cultures at a distance’, from those based upon strong ties to those based on very important and extensive weak ties, and from

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those that are . . . social to those that are fundamentally materially structured. (Urry, 2003, pp. 11–12) Again, then, we see a call for understanding of the practices and discourses of diverse networks, but also a distinction being drawn between the networking activities in groups that are widely dispersed and weakly tied, and others characterized by close connections and intensive collaboration. This distinction is important as it raises questions about the relationship between networks and other social structures whose nature has been contested: most notably, communities.

Networks and Communities Social network analysis approaches recognize that, within networks, particular forms of social organization can be identified. Girvan and Newman (2002) describe how ‘networks seem to have communities within them: subsets . . . within which the . . . connections are dense but between which connections are less dense’ (Girvan and Newman, 2002, p. 7821). Versions of the representation they provide are common to accounts of the relationship between networks and communities, with communities represented as high-density localities within networks between which are weak ties or highly between edges (see Figure 2.3).

Figure 2.3 A conventional representation showing communities within a network; while each community has a different local structure, all represent areas of high density with less dense connections between them.

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They go on to describe an approach to the identification of communities through the progressive elimination of network bridges with high ‘edge betweenness’ rather than focusing on finding centres of high network density: in other words, to determine which communities are most robust and resilient rather than those that simply have the greatest number of network connections. As the work of Granovetter and Burt suggests, placing too much emphasis on developing highly connected and cohesive communities with many strong ties may reduce the opportunity for the value of wider networks to be realized: an emphasis on intensive, collaborative working may promote particular kinds of knowledge creation but may hamper attempts to import or share ideas or practices. Burt argues that the optimal organization of networks involves a balance being struck between closure within a community with many redundant ties (which reinforces local practices and perspectives) and the maintenance of external contacts (Granovetter’s weak ties to distal sources of advice and expertise). The counter-examples, the cohesive but self-referential clique, and the group which is brought together but whose diverse members have practices and perspectives drawn solely from elsewhere, are less able to innovate and to adapt to changes beyond their immediate experience (Burt, 2001, p. 48). Hakkarainen et al. (2004) take the ideas of weak and strong ties, brokerage and closure and the optimal organization of networks, and consider how they can be used to conceptualize ‘knowledge communities’ within business and educational networks. Drawing also on the work of Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) they suggest that strong ties: Appear to be essential for transmitting complex knowledge structures or tacit and non-codified knowledge . . . because sharing of tacit and informal knowledge is only possible through extended and intensive communication . . . knowledge that is not codified or fully documented or that is dependent on its context, is very difficult to transfer. (Hakkarainen et al., 2004, p. 76) This aligns with the characterization by Wenger (1998) of communities of practice within which strong ties between trusted actors allows the integration of new knowledge: alongside the tacit knowledge that is enacted through participation, rather than being reified as a process or a product. Wenger is clear, however, that participation and reification are intrinsically and essentially related for the development of communities of practice. Reification, he states, provides:

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Points of focus around which the negotiation of meaning becomes organized . . . any community of practice produces abstractions, tools, symbols, stories, terms and concepts that reify something of that practice in a congealed form. (Wenger, 1998, pp. 58–9) This perspective highlights the importance, once again, of brokers as individuals who occupy positions at the margins of communities of practice, and as such they use their position to facilitate the development of boundary objects ‘that both inhabit several communities of practice and satisfy their informational requirements’ (Bowker and Star, 2000, p. 298), linking communities of practice across the network. Hakkarainen et al. (2004) provide an elaboration of the diagram shown in Figure 2.3, incorporating weak and strong ties, brokers who are located at the margins of communities and well-placed ‘information gatekeepers’ who may be peripheral to the work of community of practice but are sufficiently wellplaced to identify structural holes and opportunities for brokerage. They characterize what they call ‘networked expertise’ as: The emergence of new competencies that arise from crossing boundaries between communities and domains of expertise by engaging in horizontal – not only vertical – learning within . . . teams with heterogeneously distributed expertise. Networked expertise represents relational competencies that emerge through co-evolution of individual and distributed cognitions. (Hakkarainen et al., 2004, pp. 79–80) Brown and Duguid (2001, pp. 141–3) make a rather different distinction, between ‘communities of practice’ and ‘networks of practice’. Members of the former work intensively and generate new products and knowledge while the latter may have interests in common and work on similar projects, but do not necessarily communicate or collaborate to generate new knowledge. An example of a network of practice might be, for example, the adherents of a particular research approach; or the broad group of users, rather than the tightly knit community of developers, of an open-source software application. The themes that emerge here: of networks as relational, heterogeneous and potentially orthogonal to hierarchical organizational and workplace structures are significantly different from the assumptions of social network analysis with which we began this chapter, and we shall return to these later. However, it is worth looking briefly at a number of other conceptualizations of networked organizations. Gee (2005) draws a distinction between

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models of communities of practice (and of communities more generally), which are concerned with ‘membership’, and those that are more concerned with spaces and relationships. He goes on to argue that in many cases, while the idea of a broader network may hold, the idea of groups such as communities of practice that are defined in terms of their members may be less helpful than that of ‘semiotic social spaces’ or ‘affinity spaces’. In particular, Gee argues, the kinds of knowledge creating companies described by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), in common with many online environments, have significantly more permeable boundaries than the idea of communities of practice might suggest. ‘Newbies, experts and everyone else share the same space’ within which they can establish a multiplicity of roles and relationships rather than linear progress from apprenticeship to mastery; reification through abstraction or inscription is not solely the domain of the experts, nor does it need to represent the dominant or consensus view (Gee, 2005, pp. 225–7). Another analysis of the relationship between networks and communities shifts the focus from the structure, boundaries and membership of the community to the role they fulfil for individuals; Tuomi (2002, pp. 108–111) draws on the model of ‘thought collectives’ (proposed by Fleck (1979)) which, like Wenger’s communities of practice, have a smaller core group (an ‘esoteric circle’) and a larger peripheral one (an ‘exoteric’ circle). While individuals may belong to several exoteric circles, they rarely belong to more than one or two esoteric ones; or may belong to none at all. Individuals developing their ‘personal networks’ (Wellman, 2001) need to manage multiple affiliations and memberships, in order both to maintain the weak ties of their broader network, while establishing the strong ties within communities and esoteric circles. Communities, like the networks to which they may be related, are not eternal and, indeed, Snyder et al. (2009) make this point about communities of practice. In addition to personal networks of weak ties and long-lived relationships which may be built up over a considerable period, individuals find themselves engaged in activities and collaborations in which temporary ‘task groups’ are formed. These are typically ‘managed’ by others and as such may be constrained in terms of their emergence and goals, their organization and membership, their lifespan, and the technologies or other material resources available to them (Swaak et al., 2000). In a discussion of teacher ‘networked learning communities’, Jackson and Temperley (2007, pp. 8–9) describe these kinds of events as ‘knots’ in the networks that connect schools. Examples of such knots in teacher networks include: joint work groups; collective planning teams; mutual problem-solving teams;

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and shared professional development activities such as joint staff training days, conferences or seminars. This was one focus of previous work on teacher networks in which the author was involved and is discussed further in McCormick et al. (2010) and Fox and McCormick (2009). Other networks have different kinds of ‘task groups’ or ‘knots’ and we will explore what these might be for education researchers in due course. The metaphor of the ‘knot’ is also used by Engeström et al. (1999) in order to characterize temporary, goal-oriented local ‘knotworks’ of heterogeneous actors that emerge in order to address complex problems: for example in emergency medicine or different kinds of multi-agency working. In such settings: ‘collaboration between the partners is of vital importance yet takes shape without rigid predetermined rules or a fi xed central authority’ (Engeström, 2007, p. 44). Engeström invokes the metaphor of mycorrhizae, ‘symbiotic association[s] between a fungus and the roots or rhizoids of a plant’ (Engeström, 2007, p. 44) as a model for networking, problem-solving and learning that is more flexible and generative than those which emerge from a rigid, structural view of networks, or, for that matter, of communities of practice as centres of networked expertise. We shall return to the theme of the rhizome shortly; but first, the emerging emphasis on the heterogeneity of networks demands a brief trip to the rocky coastline of Actor-network Theory.

Heterogeneity and Asymmetry Actor-network theory or ANT (Callon, 1986; Law, 2004; Latour, 2005) appears to differ radically from social network analysis in that it uses a very different language and involves a very different conceptualization of what networks are. The origins of ANT can be traced to social studies of science and technology, with early work being concerned with the working practices of scientists and the focus being how scientific knowledge comes to be through the interaction of people, material artifacts and ‘inscriptions’ (Latour and Woolgar, 1986; Latour, 1999). The networks of ANT are not social structures, but rather textured fields or long chains of relationships and associations. Latour (2004) has highlighted the difficulties called by the use of the term (offering ‘worknets’ as an alternative): the network is, he says: ‘a concept, not a thing out there. It is a tool to describe something, not what is being described’ (Latour, 2005). Specifically, it describes sequences of actions in which each participant in the network is a mediator that translates (transforms the meaning) of what ‘moves’ in the network.

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Latour (1999) illustrates this by describing the numerous small and relatively unproblematic steps that are taken between the collection by soil scientists of samples in the field to the construction (potentially in different locations, and at different times, and by other people) of maps, graphs and other representations of the field data. A series of translations are evident, enabled by mediators, one of which is a scientific tool called a ‘pedocomparator’, which allows soil samples to be stored, labelled, compared and safely transported back to a laboratory for further analysis. There are links to our discussions of brokerage and boundary objects here, but what is distinctive about ANT is the importance attached to ‘symmetrical analysis’ which recognizes that these mediators may include non-human actors or actants. The involvement of these non-human mediators often accounts for the durability of power relations or practices which seem counter-intuitive or resistant to change: ‘look for nonhumans when the emergence of a social feature is inexplicable’ suggests Latour (1999, p. 209). In another influential study, Callon (1986) describes how, in the fishing port of St. Brieuc (close to the rocky shores alluded to above) the different actants including scallops, the fishermen whose livelihoods depend on catching them, and a range of other biotic and abiotic factors that are linked up and ‘punctualized’ into a network, in the course of which they are transformed and their original identities come to be defined in relation to the network as a whole. This then means that the capacity to act becomes not the sole preserve of human actors in social networks, but rather of associations of human and non-human actants in heterogeneous networks. The network is what comes to be through these processes, rather than being the backdrop to, or product of, human action. The emphasis in ANT on translation, heterogeneity and relationality, rather than structure and homogeneity makes the dominant form of inquiry the single-case study, constructed with no expectation of any reductive or structural generalization to particular network forms. It also draws attention to the role of the researcher or analyst: in the accounts mentioned here (Latour, 1999; Callon, 1986) the aim is not the application of ‘theory’ (Law and Hassard, 1999, p. 1), but rather the tracing of associations in a network of which the researcher is necessarily a part; it follows that if mediation is about translation and meaning making, then research activities themselves constitute further mediations. This demands discursive practices and even new forms of reflexivity on the part of researchers. Law (2006) argues that by carrying out analysis in terms of networks, researchers perform networks into being; and, given the contested nature of the concept of networks, and in doing so may actually strengthen a

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hegemonic, functional version of networks which fails to fully recognize their relational aspect and concentrates, instead, on a structural interpretation. Frankham (2006) points to a tendency for analysis of educational networks to work in this way, performative network methodologies being developed in the context of complexity and heterogeneity, but then in turn coming to define what counts as affordance or success: Their efficacy [is] judged in the connections or structures (meetings, newsletters, email exchanges, requests to join the network) that constitute the network, rather than what is spoken of (and how) and what learning takes place as a consequence of those structures. (Frankham, 2006, p. 673) Writers on ANT have highlighted both the difficulties faced in ‘doing’ ANT (notably Latour, 2005) and on the need for new forms of discourse which, for example, support symmetrical analysis without falling back to a reductive model which posits a simplistic equivalence between human and non-human actants (Suchman, 2007). Other critics have pointed to a tendency to focus on the stable products of translation rather than processes by which these came to be (Lanzara, 1999) or to ‘trace’ what one recognizes: typically the inscriptions and representations associated with a network rather than the highly situated and tacit discourses that may accompany their mediation (Bourdieu, 2004). ANT is clearly a distinctive approach to thinking about networks and networking; but at the same time, we can see some elements in common with some of the other approaches we have already discussed. Cavanagh (2007, pp. 32–3), while recognizing the different perspectives it brings, points to the fact that, like American social network analysis, there is a focus on the temporally and geographically situated, and a concern with movement of information, knowledge and ideas rather than with mapping large-scale structure. Another alignment, pointed up by Fox (2000), is with work on communities of practice. Not only is there a central concern with meaning-making (whether construed as mediating, brokering and learning): there is a common recognition that the network is different from the conventionally recognized organization, and is likely to cross, permeate or disrupt its boundaries: as Brown and Duguid (1999, p. 49) suggest ‘the canonical organization becomes a questionable unit of analysis’. This is an important issue for any study of educational research, for, as we have discussed in Chapter 1, what those organizational frameworks should be, and how they might be conceptualized, is highly contested.

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The Rhizome: Smoothing, Striation and the Subterranean We turn now to another body of work which, like ANT, shifts the focus from the individual network participant to that of the heterogeneous assemblage, and which challenges the distinction between network and individual. The work of Deleuze and Guattari has been concerned with networks and connectedness since the early 1970s and so precedes the huge upsurge of interest brought about by the development of computer networks in particular and the idea from Castells and others of a ‘network society’ that follows from this. Their work shares with ANT a concern to overcome view of networks solely as material structures while also avoiding focusing on simple binaries, looking instead at the processes by which subjectivities are created and action is initiated and sustained. I cannot hope to do justice to the range and scope of Deleuze and Guattari’s work here, and ideas salient to understanding networks and networking appear across the extensive body of their jointly and sole-authored work. Some of their major works (A Thousand Plateaus (2004), and Deleuze’s sole-authored Difference and Repetition (2004) in particular) are made even more challenging by virtue of their engagement with complex concepts while also embodying the novel philosophical, methodological and authorial approaches they espouse: they are as much accounts of their inquiries as they are guides, or reports of the outcomes. The reader new to their work is advised to look to Bonta and Protevi (2004) or Parr (2010) for useful ‘dictionaries’, which do serve as guides, pointing up associations and recurrent themes across these and their other works. With the publication of A Thousand Plateaus in 1976 (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004), a range of potent and evocative geophilosophical metaphors and concepts were introduced, including the notion of the ‘rhizome’ as a counter to the ‘arboreal’ and hierarchical structures that embody and reproduce power structures. It is possible to draw out, from the early parts of A Thousand Plateaus, the characteristics of the rhizome: z z

z

It connects any point to any other point (connections do not have to be between same and same, or like and like). It cannot be reduced to either the singular or the multiple because it is composed of dimensions (directions in motion) not units. Consequently no point in the rhizome can be altered without altering the whole. It operates by variation, expansion, conquest, capture and offshoots rather than through reproduction.

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It pertains to an infinitely modifiable map with multiple entrances and exits that must be produced. It is acentred, nonsignifying, and acephalous, and is not amenable to any structural or generative model.

According to Deleuze and Guattari, the rhizome is what emerges, not the structure by which other things travel or emerge: it is not an alternative organizational chart to be contrasted with the arboreal structure of conventional organizations. For that matter, the two do not exist in polar isolation from each other: within the rhizome there will exist arboreal regions, just as within apparently hierarchical structures there will be opportunities for rhizomatic associations to emerge enabling, directed but unpredictable ‘lines of flight’. This coincides with other distinctions they draw between the tendencies to the nomadic and the sedentary, the smooth and the striated, the assemblage and the apparatus. Smooth spaces (although because of the inevitable combinations and interchanges, it makes more sense to talk about ‘smoothing forces’) are necessary, according to Deleuze and Guattari, for the emergence of symbiosis and mutualism in heterogeneous assemblages, which may occupy patches of smooth space but are always at risk of striation and overcoding that denies complexity and subjectivities, reasserting striation and structure (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004, pp. 475–81; Bonta and Protevi, 2004, pp. 143–6). This presents both a methodological challenge and a difficulty for those who wish to use smoothed spaces as the basis of understanding or promoting particular kinds of social action such as network building, brokerage or knowledge construction. Smooth spaces are temporary and highly situated, the resulting lack of ‘long term memory’ meaning that only ‘microhistories’ and ‘microsociologies’ are possible (Bonta and Protevi, 2004, p. 145): any kind of generalization or reproduction would therefore constitute a striating force, ‘molarizing the molecular’ and overcoding particularities. Yet the images of the rhizome and the smooth space have found an apparently ‘easy resonance’, as Peters (2004, p. 224) puts it, between the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari and networked learning and collaboration activities, particularly those that are enabled by internet technologies. Cavanagh (2007, p. 47) characterizes this as being the result of Deleuze and Guattari’s work being seen as a ‘toolbox’ of categories rather than as a philosophical excursion. In relation to networks in particular, this seems to manifest itself in two ways. The first of these a tendency to recognize smoothness and nomadism where in fact there may be striation,

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stratification and structure. The interconnectedness of the hypertexts has been led to claims that they represent a rhizomatic form, contrasting with conventional information hierarchies (Dreyfus, 2001; Poster, 2001): the rhizome being a ‘fitting depiction’ of the internet, according to Poster (2001, p. 27). This view is challenged in a careful analysis by Buchanan (2007), who points to the enduring hierarchical, arboreal character of electronic networks in the face of rhizomatic aspects of internet technologies such as hypertexts and search engines. While new formations may be possible on the ‘information tier’ of Castells’ network society (such as ‘Web 2.0’ developments (O’Reilly, 2005) and the ‘Linked Web of Data’ (Bizer et al., 2009)) the extent to which these are ‘rhizomatic’ may be limited and circumscribed by technological infrastructures, existing patterns of ownership, existing or emergent business models, and political exigencies. This is not to say that the potential for the emergence of new forms of connectedness are impossible: but, as Bayne (2004) has demonstrated, while the rhetoric of electronic networks (specifically to support learning in higher education) may suggest smoothness and nomadism, the reality may in fact be that the design of network technologies may reproduce or even amplify tendencies to striation, materializing arboreal structures through the definition of roles, assignment or reinforcement of power and circumlocution of spaces, and she points to the contrast between the rhetoric and realities of most ‘virtual learning environments’. A second and related issue is that the verbal and visual metaphor of the rhizome is so appealing that it leads to concentration on its material expression: the entangled root mass being similar to most people’s conceptions of a telephone or computer network such as the internet. The rhizome, as described by Deleuze and Guattari, is, however, not the particularly tortuous, changing and complex network graph of some alternative form of organization, nor is it a space ‘made’ smooth or striated: rather, the tendency toward smoothness or striation, and towards the arboreal or rhizomatic arises from flows, encounters, collisions and interchanges. As Bonta and Protevi (2004, p. 145) point out, a third type of space has become increasingly significant as previously inaccessible smooth spaces have become increasingly well mapped and globalization reduces the significance of territorial boundaries. The counter to the striated and the arboreal state apparatus is no longer the smoothed space of the desert nomad but the interstitial and subterranean ‘holey spaces’ that exists in forests rather than deserts, underground (sometime literally) or in the ‘gaps and voids’ of cyberspace, and that are seen as ungovernable and subversive. Holey spaces encourage or even demand forms of networking that

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are recognizable from more conventional ideas about social networks (the ‘cells’ of dispersed resistance movements resembling the optimal configuration of strong and weak ties described by Burt (2001), for example); but, of course in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, what emerges are particular kinds of heterogeneous assemblages with social, material and semiotic elements. There are similarities here to the ‘networks’ and assemblages of Actor-network Theory, but an important difference is that in this case the elements are not punctualized but rather remain defined by their exterior relations; their ‘role’ within a larger assemblage is not what defines them, they may be associated and disassociated from assemblages without losing their identities; and they may also exist in multiple, overlapping assemblages and have variable degrees of association with different assemblages (De Landa, 2006).

Guattari and Transversality For an idea of how these networked assemblages might emerge and how they might act, it is worth stepping back from the better-known joint work of Deleuze and Guattari, and examining earlier writings of Felix Guattari. In this work, which dates from the early 1970s and which stems from studies of political organizations and psychiatric institutions, he avoids the tendency to see everywhere the smooth and striated or the arboreal and the rhizomatic, and introduces the notion of transversality, the set of practices and discourses that characterize what he terms the ‘subject group . . . that endeavours to control its own behaviour and elucidate its object, and [ . . . ] produce its own tools of elucidation’ (Guattari, 1984, p. 14). Transversality in such groups: . . . is a dimension opposite and complementary to the structures that generate pyramidal hierarchisation . . . this dimension can only be seen clearly in certain groups which, intentionally or otherwise, try to explore the meaning of their praxis and establish themselves as subject groups. (Guattari, 1984, p. 23) The transversality of groups is not simply a question of its membership or purpose (many of the ‘task groups’ that we have already described, for example, draw people from diverse backgrounds in order to address some pre-defined task); nor is it a mechanism by which some form of social capital is concentrated; but, rather, is an expression of the ‘extractions’ from the

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heterogeneous levels at which it operates and the interchanges and inquiries that it enables. Transversality involves continued inquiry into one’s own role and those of others, as well as that of the directions being taken by the subject group. In contrast to organizations, which may engage in self-study, but which do not question their own existence, the transverse group ‘keeps asking whether it is right, whether it should be totally transforming itself, correcting its aim, and so on’ (Guattari, 1984, p. 39). This goes further than the self-identification as a ‘horizontal’ group of like-minded individuals, as this risks what he describes as ‘foundering in the besotting mythology of togetherness’ and it is the responsibility of ‘group analysts’ to act as a mirror to the transverse group and to make participants aware both of this tendency and of other practices which might endanger the group’s future (Guattari, 1984, p. 21). As envisaged by Guattari, the development of transverse groups offers opportunities for interchange, learning and the transformation of self, group and the organizations within and across which they form. As in the later notion of the rhizome, Guattari recognizes the interconnectedness of every element in a heterarchic network: so individual transformation or group formation has the potential to change the organization as a whole. These groups are not the communities of practice that many organizations might seek to encourage, but, rather, are disruptions of individual and group ‘phantasies’, the term that Guattari uses to describe articulations of social status, sets of rules, discourses of social reproduction or individuals’ perceptions of how they might progress long particular career trajectories. This, however, imbues them with uncertainty and risk as it raises the possibility of a new group phantasy that deprives participants of the certainties of existing disciplinary practice or a clear career trajectory and may, in the short or long term, prejudice their position, status or prospects (Guattari, 1984, p. 21).

The Socialized Worker, the Empire and the Multitude Another tradition that shares some of Guattari’s interest in reflective and self-directed groups capable of producing their own tools of elucidation (as well as effecting change at organizational level and more broadly) emerged as a response to changing political conditions in Europe following World War II. Commonly referred to as ‘workerism’ or operaismo, this has a bearing on the study of networks in two respects. First, it was early to recognize the emergence of aspects of what was later to be recognized as the ‘network

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society’; and secondly, through processes of elision and interchange with Deleuzian perspectives, it was to lay the foundations of one of the most influential recent accounts of networks and networking: Negri and Hardt’s ‘post-political’ theory of ‘Empire’ and ‘Multitude’. The material basis for the development of workerism was the decline, restructuring and dispersal of the industrial plants and production lines that had been the power base and the theoretical point of reference of the established Left in Italy. As Wright (2002) describes, a move towards the use of sociological approaches to document the changing experiences of working people initiated by Dolci and Montaldi in the 1950s found increasing currency as geographical dispersal of workforces, the growth of smaller companies producing components and the casualization of labour, particularly among the young, demanded rethinking of a Marxist theory predicated on the ‘mass worker’ of the factory production line. One focus in this reformulation was a section of Marx’s Foundations of a Critique of Political Economy written between 1857 and 1858, which discusses the transformation of work through mechanization. Marx advances the argument that the development of the machine or production line should not be understood as a means by which the work of the individual is transformed, but rather as the development of a new material and intellectual, and most critically a social, assemblage, which shapes new relationships and forms of communication. The notion of a ‘general social knowledge [that] has become a direct force of production . . . hence the conditions of social life . . . have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it’ (Marx, 1973, p. 706) was important in debates about a broader conception of the connected and ‘social’ worker and the emergence of ‘autonomism’ as an organized political movement. The introduction of network technologies has intensified these changes in working practices and social relations, and has contributed to the development of radical perspectives on social capital and knowledge management (Day, 2002) and to theorization of the successors of the mass worker (DyerWitheford, 1994; Dyer-Witheford, 1999). The idea of the ‘socialized worker’ (operaio sociale) operating autonomously of political organizations (such as parties or trades unions) has been progressively articulated since the 1970s. Bologna (2007) discusses the recomposition of working classes and the importance of movements of women, the unemployed and students against the ‘chain of decentralization . . . a far more powerful weapon of massification than the production line’ (p. 54), but argues that what is required is understanding of the ‘hidden circuits’ at work in changing experience of work, politics and private

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life. Others developed a broader ‘post-political’ vision, Negri calling for the recognition of: ‘A new working class . . . a conception more adequate to the wider and more searching dimensions of capitalist control over society and social labour as a whole’ (cited in Dyer-Witheford, 1994, p. 11), while Lotringer and Marazzi (2007, p. 10) characterize: ‘A new social subject . . . conscious of its own history and potential [the] existence [of which] incorporates the most advanced aspects of our technological societies’. Further strands within autonomism highlighted the dominance of state-run media and concentrated on exploring the potential of network media including pirate radio, television and, later, the internet. The association of post-political autonomism with new forms of social confrontation such as extra-parliamentary action, civil disobedience and what Lotringer and Marazzi (2007, p. 11) describe as ‘political antagonism . . . redefined as social, even micro-social, confl ict’ led, in 1979, to leaders of the autonomist movement being charged with sedition and support for terrorism (see Wright, 2002 for full accounts of the background to and details of these events). The imprisonment or exile of many political activists and academic leaders of the autonomist movement had the effect of strengthening ties between those whose activities had hitherto been particularly concerned with events in Italy and broader intellectual developments. While Guattari had already worked closely with Italian autonomists and written on the localized and ‘molecular’ nature of political action in Italy (Guattari, 2007), the extended French exile of Negri, in particular, led to ‘post-political’ autonomism taking on a distinctively ‘Deleuzian’ character. As Toscano (2010) points out, though, the influence was by no means one way: common themes and references make it more appropriate to see Deleuze, Guattari and Negri articulating similar and inter-related programmes of inquiry in different philosophical and political arenas. In Negri’s case, this culminated in a series of influential publications arising from his collaboration with Michael Hardt, beginning in 2001 with Empire (Hardt and Negri, 2001). In this series of publications, Hardt and Negri first extend the themes of casualization, geographical dispersal and networked communication and propose the emergence of a wholly new stage of capitalism; echoing Castells and others, they argue that the network form has eroded the power of nation-states, contributing to the emergence of a ‘universal republic . . . of powers and counterpowers structured in a boundless and inclusive architecture’ which they describe as ‘Empire’ (Hardt and Negri, 2001, p. 166). This is conceptualized as a smooth space in the sense that Deleuze and Guattari use the term, rhizomatic in contrast

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to the arboreal and hierarchical structures of imperialism and industrialized capitalism. The Empire is sustained through network effects which invite inclusion and offer consensus: ‘The Empire does not fortify its boundaries to push others away, but rather pulls them within its pacific order, like a powerful vortex, with boundaries or differences set aside’ (Hardt and Negri, 2001, p. 198). Where this interpretation departs both from Deleuze and Guattari, and from other strands within workerism and autonomism, is that the assertion that this network is seen as a generalized and globalized form of power which is exercised through the control of ‘immaterial labour’: that is, the management of information, services and primary production. This is described as the hegemonic form of labour, even though it may involve only small fractions of the working population in specific regions (Negri, 2008, p. 129), much as Castells identifies concentrations of the techno-managerial elite as being central to the functioning and expansion of his vision of the network society. The subsequent Multitude further develops both this characterization of Empire as networked, particularly in the way in which it engages with threats and enemies, which are, themselves, networked. An ‘essential characteristic of the distributed network form’, write Hardt and Negri, 2006, is that: It has no centre. Its power cannot be understood accurately as flowing from a central source or even as polycentric, but rather as distributed variably, unevenly and indefinitely . . . The network constantly undermines the stable boundaries between inside and outside . . . its presence and absence tend to be indeterminate . . . Networks are essentially elusive, ephemeral, perpetually in flight . . . at one moment appear[ing] to be universal and at another vanish[ing] into thin air. (Hardt and Negri, 2006, pp. 54–5) Against this background, the concept of the socialized worker becomes subsumed into an equally generalized and fluid notion of ‘Multitude’, which, like Empire, is distributed, heterogeneous, acentred and composed of fluid and autonomous networks, which have much in common with the assemblages we see described by Deleuze and Guattari, and in which the capacity for action and the ‘collective intelligence’ resides in the links that are established and the creative interchanges they enable (Hardt and Negri, 2006, p. 92). At the same time, as Juris (2005) argues, they may be constrained and governed by the dominant hegemonic ‘network logics’ and infrastructures (including access to electronic networks) of Empire.

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Social action, then, does not rely on discipline or structure; instead, ‘creativity, communication and self-organized cooperation are its primary values’ and its aims are to produce autonomous smooth spaces ‘producing new subjectivities and new expansive forms of life within the organization itself’ (Hardt and Negri, 2006, p. 83). This marks a significant shift departure from prior Marxist theory: not only does it suggest that the task is to establish new idea of ‘value’ divorced from processes of production; it also shifts the locus of innovation and knowledge construction. Rather than new technological developments or working practices being external factors to which individuals must respond, according to this interpretation, new knowledge emerges through innovative forms of social action, reflexivity and collaboration. The role of Empire in this new relationship is not to create, but rather to appropriate, territorialize and repurpose (DyerWitheford, 1999, pp. 214–15). According to Negri and Hardt, a corollary of this shift (which draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s characterization of smooth spaces as promoting divergence but lacking interconnections, longevity and shared histories) is that these autonomous spaces and self-directed projects of the multitude are ‘all but incommunicable’: isolated from each other despite the availability of networked communications (Hardt and Negri, 2001, p. 54). This is an interesting, albeit a depressing position to reach ((Wright, 2002, p. 175) describes it as ‘dismal’) and stands in stark contrast both to the rhetoric of transversality, innovation and boundary crossing that we have seen in other theories of networks and networking. Hardt and Negri have addressed challenges to this contention by arguing that those social movements that develop cooperative, collective approaches do so both in response to ‘specific and local problems’, but then engage not with each other, but more globally with common aspiration towards global democracy and equality. Local networks then become ‘a resource . . . for the construction of a post-socialist programme’ concerned with overcoming the undemocratic nature of the networked Empire (Negri, 2008, pp. 135–6). Critics of Hardt and Negri point to our now familiar problem of how studies of networks have a tendency to become self-referential ‘theories of everything’ (Cavanagh, 2007, p. 43). As early as the mid-1970s Bologna was criticizing Negri for overlooking the specific conditions of Italian workers in pursuit of a new ‘general theory’ or grand synthesis (see Wright, 2002, pp. 170–5 for a discussion of these and other debates within the autonomist movement), and this is perhaps the key criticism that has been levelled at Hardt and Negri’s work. More recent criticism comes from Mouffe (2005, pp. 108–13), who argues that despite (and possibly because of) the

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Deleuzian terminology and the revolutionary rhetoric, Hardt and Negri’s writing presents a view of an individualized, globalized, networked society as inevitable and enduring, with the global and networked the only level at which action is meaningful and effective. Citing Massey, she also questions the assertion that the Empire is in any case ‘smooth’, but rather is highly striated at local, regional and national level (Mouffe, 2005, p. 114). Regardless of whether one sees local and regional activities as the primary focus of networked social activity or, following Hardt and Negri, as a resource for a future, more democratic global society, it is clear that changes in socio-economic and techno-managerial circumstances bring about new social movements and organizational forms and in different fields, with research being no exception. Crang et al. (2007, p. 2406) suggest that ‘online and offline interactions are constituted and constructed together to sustain and transform the complex temporalities and spatialities of everyday urban life’, with intersections and interstitial spaces becoming ever more significant. The dislocations of time and space, rather than leading to the emergence of a stable global network of homeworkers engaged in immaterial labour, has contributed to multiple intersections and interstices, against which background new working practices, social groups and movements have evolved. Returning to Castells (2004), we find that he argues in The Power of Identity, the second volume of his Information Age trilogy, that the transformation of society and new forms of techno-managerialism have been accompanied by diverse responses, social formations and new practices, manifested as: ‘a widespread surge of powerful expressions of collective identity that challenge globalization and cosmopolitanism on behalf of cultural singularity and people’s control over their lives and environment’ (Castells, 2004, p. 2). Not all expressions of the network society, he argues, are associated with economic and social domination. Castells describes different forms of identities: ‘legitimizing identities’ (which are associated with the reproduction and strengthening of existing structures), ‘resistance identities’ (which are generated in response to violence, stigmatization or devaluing of roles) and ‘project identities’ developed: ‘when social actors, on the basis of whichever cultural materials are available to them, build a new identity that redefines their position in society and, by so doing, seek the transformation of overall social structure’ (Castells, 2004, pp. 8–10). While Castells offers a broad categorization of identities, more important is the idea, common to a range of theories of networks and networking (and particularly evident in Guattari’s notion of the emergent, precarious and heterarchic transverse group) that those identities are relational,

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flexible and multiple. These identities are both performed and performative: they are a response to the networks in which they exist but also have the potential to constitute and utilize new kinds of networks and new networking practices.

The Rise of the Social Precariat Critiques of the generalized ‘post-political’ vision of a ‘network society’ (such as those of Wright and Mouffe) have led to a renewed focus on understanding the complexities of individual experience, patterns of social action, and the new networking practices to which Castells points. Work that harks back to the earlier approaches of Dolci and Montaldi, and to Guattari’s conception of transversality, has led to a recent upsurge of interest in the emergence of the ‘precariat’ (Berardi, 2005; Raunig, 2007; Shukaitis, 2009), which is characterized as a diffused, heterogeneous social form created inevitably as a consequence of a globalized network society and occupying the interstices of arboreal, hierarchical organizations. Members of the precariat are highly diverse, ranging from low-paid workers in the grey economy to highly skilled and qualified ‘info-workers’; they are often highly mobile ‘multiworkers’ holding several jobs at once, or none at all, and few are unionized or active in established political organizations: The precariat does not represent a unified, homogeneous or even ontological formation; it is divided and diffused across many hotbeds, not because of weakness or incapability, but rather as a discontinuity of geography and production distributing itself in space. (Raunig, 2007) Berardi (2005) (one of the moving forces behind the development of the autonomist ‘Radio Alice’ in Bologna in the 1970s) defines the precariat in terms not dissimilar to Castells’ characterization of a ‘timeless time’ and spaces characterized by mobility and fluidity: ‘[the precariat is] the area of employment, in which fixed rules in terms of working conditions, wage and working hours can no longer be distinguished . . . ’, and highlights the role of internet technologies in particular in its development. Going further than Castells in his analysis, he argues: The technical conditions are those of digital recombination of info-work in networks . . . There is no longer a need to have bought over a person for eight hours a day indefinitely. Capital no longer recruits people, but

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buys packets of time, separated from their interchangeable and occasional bearers . . . de-personalised time has no rights, nor any demands either. It can only be either available or unavailable . . . (Berardi, 2005) Raunig (2007, p. 5) provides a more optimistic account, describing how, over a period of a few years, the appellation ‘precariat’ has been creatively appropriated as an aspect of the radicalization and development of collective consciousness on the part of casual workers: in Castell’s terms, a shift from their being constrained by ‘resistance identities’ to more socialized and reflexive ‘project identities’. Rather than being an externally defined category in social surveys loaded with implicit or explicit associations of voluntary exclusion from civil society and hence of ungovernability, groups began to identify themselves, at a series of events across Europe and particularly at May Day carnivals, as ‘the social precariat’. Raunig suggests that: With the reference to the social aspect, the struggle and the reflection were expanded from the focus on labor to the precarisation of sociality, of life, and most of all, precariat changed from something bad to be prevented to a self-designation. The precariato sociale became the common term for a multifaceted and diverse crowd, who did not describe themselves as victims, but as a social movement. (Raunig, 2007) And with an explicit reference to Guattari, he describes how ‘migrants, autonomists, political activists, art activists, precarious and cognitive workers of all kinds formed a manifestation of transversality’. The network society may have contributed to the emergence of precarity, but transverse networks – not smooth spaces – are also the means by which the precariat manifests and organizes. Raunig argues that these are significant, not only in their material circumstances, but also in the ways in which new social relations, practices and discourses are emerging from this experience (2010, pp. 75–119). Discussions of the composition of the precariat and of the nature of precarity are germane to questions about educational research, research capacity building, and networking more generally, on two levels. First, they are a good example of how new social conditions and collectivities stimulate or even demand new conceptualizations and theoretical framings. Thinking differently about networks is potentially constitutive of new identities, and material and discursive practices: just as Guattari’s transverse groups spend much of their time asking whether they are right, have the right aims, and should be organizing themselves differently

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(Guattari, 1984, p. 39), networking involves asking questions of oneself, much as educational research, as we have seen in Chapter 1, asks these kinds of questions ‘of itself’. Secondly, there is the issue of precarity itself. Raunig (2010, p. 77) cautions against a simplistic reading of the precariat or an over-extension of the term: there are objective differences between the circumstances of a highly-qualified freelancer in the digital media industries and a casual worker in a sub-minimum-wage job. But writing as the scale of the global banking collapse and associated recession became clear, he observes that: From the repeal of guaranteed (and lasting) employment to the expansion of various forms of ‘atypical employment’ (which has meanwhile become typical . . . ) and the extension of working hours into . . . the terrain formerly called the private sphere, the continuum of precarity reaches all the way to issues of social security and the precarization of life [including] migration and residence]. (Raunig, 2010, pp. 78–9) The issue of the ‘precarity’ of educational researchers, and particularly early career researchers has been hinted at in the literature on research capacity in education from McIntyre and McIntyre (1999) onwards. Shrinking budgets and reduced opportunities for permanent employment in the public sector across the world means that many educational researchers, and early career researchers in particular do indeed find themselves ‘precarious’ in their employment, and share features of the precariat as described above: often having to be mobile; working across multiple jobs (frequently from home) with blurring of research, work and leisure time; seeing their time packetized and measured against predetermined activities; and in many cases taking on work for which they are overqualified, or for which they have to rapidly ‘self-train’. When, in 2010, I presented the ideas of Berardi, Raunig and others about the emergence of precariat to a group of postgraduate and postdoctoral early career researchers there was a general agreement with the characterization they offered and recognition of its relevance to their personal circumstances. They offered other examples which clearly aligned with Raunig’s more expansive notion of precarity: issues of ‘career structure’ and ‘ job security’ identified by McIntyre and McIntyre (1999, p. 8) were part of a broader precarity which encompassed the need to move home regularly, or difficulties in securing mortgages while on recurrent rather than permanent contracts. When we discussed Raunig’s caution about over-extending the concept of the precariat from workers in settings such

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as the fast food industry to the immaterial labour of what he describes as ‘cognitive workers’, several of the researchers found this very amusing, as they currently worked both as educational researchers and in the fast food industry.

Networking Research: A Culture of Inquiry? The foregoing excursion through a range of network theories, if it does nothing else, goes some way to explaining why the Demos collection on networks with which the chapter opened is so broad in scope. The idea of networks is indeed pervasive, but as we have seen, the way they are conceptualized varies widely. Given that networks and networking were seen as such a key part of educational development and capacity building, which of this panoply of theoretical frameworks can help us understand educational research activities, let alone provide a basis for supporting capacity building and innovation? Social network analysis, and particularly those versions which incorporate ideas about social capital provide ways of characterizing the gross structure of networks and describing the roles that individuals can play in enabling the movement of information and other resources (Wellman); the idea of personal networks introduces the idea that such individuals can play an active role in the construction of networks of both strong ties oriented towards intensive collaboration and weak ties which introduce new ideas (Granovetter); social capital may reside in particular roles such as brokers as well as in regions of networks oriented towards intensive collaboration (Burt, Hakkarainen et al.). Actor-network Theory (Latour, Law) and the work of Deleuze and Guattari provide a different view of networks: while these acknowledge the role of individual agency in networks, they see the resulting networks as temporary regions of stability and intensity in heterogeneous and heterarchic spaces rather than areas of high density or increased traffic in homogeneous structures. As with communities of practice (Wenger, Brown and Duguid), there is recognition here that conventional organizations may not be the most fruitful unit of analysis. The idea that organizations (businesses, learning organizations, mass movements) have themselves been radically transformed is presented in the grand syntheses of the ‘network society’ (Castells) and the Empire (Hardt and Negri). Such general network theories have attracted critique from those who argue that it is important not to lose sight of enduring inequalities or specific local conditions and to tread a careful path between generalization

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and specificity (Urry, Massey, Mouffe). Throughout the literatures on networks, there is encouragement to study of new collectivities and relational practices, particularly related to problem solving and knowledge creation (Burt, Engeström, Hakkarainen et al.), and self-realization and patterns of social action (Guattari, Berardi, Raunig). It is important to recognize, also, that despite the inevitable narrative structure of this chapter, the history of thinking about networks and networking involves multiple strands that draw on different disciplinary, methodological and socio-political traditions. For example, social network analysis, while longer established than some of the other approaches described in this chapter, continues to develop apace, particularly through the use of technology-enhanced approaches such as ‘data mining’ to study the development of online networks. In the same way, while it is tempting to see network theories in terms of a series of binaries or polar opposites, in fact there has, as we have seen, been considerable overlap, convergence and ‘borrowing’ across traditions of inquiry into networks and networking. While there are different conceptions of networks, articulated in differing ideas of where agency lies, where meaning is established, and whether networks are the means by which action is achieved or the expression of that action (as Cavanagh, 2007 describes), it is perhaps more fruitful to consider the study of networks as what Hall (1999) calls a ‘culture of inquiry’. Hall describes how, among early modern historians, there exist disciplinary and sub-disciplinary groups (social history, oral history, cultural history and others), each expressing commitments to specific practices (Hall, 1999, pp. 173–4). At the same time, there exists a shared culture in which particular discourses within these disciplinary territories are also shared across boundaries, with local traditions of inquiry linked in complex relations rather than simple binary oppositions. Narratives and analyses are constructed so as to invite and offer formative critique in ‘a shared terrain of explanatory and interpretative discourse’. These narratives, Hall argues, by virtue of their discursive construction and communicative potential, are themselves a form of social action, not only offering accounts of the past (histories); but also recurrent patterns (instances, recipes), imagined alternatives (fantasies) and possible futures (scenarios or envisionings) (Hall, 1999, pp. 83ff.). While this shared terrain might not be immediately evident (even to participants in research into networks), the frequency with which of many of the authors cited in this chapter draw on multiple sources, interrogate both qualitative and quantitative data, undertake and cite secondary analysis, and work with multiple representations of networks can be seen as exemplifying this multi-voiced and formative culture.

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There are certainly tensions within this culture of inquiry, just as there are multiple perspectives in creative tension within educational research: between large-scale social network analysis and situated studies of the development of social capital; between visions of a network society and studies of specific practices and discourses that constitute networking; and between the broad visions of networked world and calls for small-scale studies of the inquiring socialized worker. But in order to engage with the question of what networks mean and how they might contribute to educational research, we need to engage with these multiple positions and work with these tensions. Even if we were to base analysis primarily on a view of networks that comes from Actor-network Theory or the work of Deleuze and Guattari, we would have to recognize the importance of other conceptions of networks that might be articulated by individual research participants, or as manifest in disciplinary or organizational practices. We might use one view of networks, in other words, to trace the influence of other network metaphors and concepts used, invoked, translated and territorialized by participants. Concepts of network and networking are not therefore to be seen simply as analytic categories, but are themselves important actants and elements of social-material-semiotic assemblages: an important issue in the context of research capacity building in which the concept of the network is so central. However, this makes it even more important to keep in mind the double articulation of networks: both as sets of materializing practices and as envisionings of the virtual, immanent or fantastic.

The Educational Researcher: Networked, Socialized, Precarious? The various perspectives on networks and networking outlined here can be related to the issues and themes identified in Chapter 1. Social network and social capital theories provide clear opportunities to explore patterns of collaboration by focusing on geographical location, co-authorship, attendance at events and involvement in collaborative research activities; and the concentration of research expertise in specific regions and institutions represents a particular form of the concentration of social capital. The influence of particular individuals and the role they play in the conduct of educational research and the development of opportunities for capacity building parallels the identification in the various network theories we examined, of key roles such as brokers (Burt), stewards and gatekeepers (Wenger), and analysts (Guattari).

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What is less clear is how the discourses and practices of educational research, and the means by which innovation takes place, knowledge is shared, and capacity developed, relate to the various conceptions of networks we have explored. To what extent is it helpful to see a research project as one of Wenger’s communities of practice; one of Engeström’s knotworks; a ‘transverse group’ as described by Guattari; a heterogeneous assemblage; or a localized ‘smooth space’ in an otherwise striated and stratified plane . . . or is this entirely dependent on particular conditions and circumstances? For individual researchers, and particularly those at early stages of their career, Wellman’s notion of personal networks in which they establish a history of working relationships (strong ties) and a repertoire of people, resources and approaches upon which to draw (weak ties) may seem an appealing one. But at the same time, such cumulation may simply contribute to Guattari’s ‘individual phantasy’ of career advancement, encouraging the avoidance of the transformative ‘violent encounters’ that are central, in Deleuze and Guattari’s view, to differentiation and innovation. In many cases, the nature of educational research and the precarity of many education researchers that we have discussed in Chapter 1 means that they may well belong to multiple groups and projects: some very directed and taskoriented, others, more like self-directing transverse groups. This is where small-scale studies of individuals’ networking practices and the relationships they develop have particular value as a counterpoint to overly broad ‘network logics’: they shed light on how best to support educational research and capacity development than general, population-level syntheses which fail to pay sufficient attention to local variations and subjectivities. Raunig presents a research agenda framed by the concepts of multitude and precariat in which he addresses themes familiar from Chapter 1 (organizational form, distribution, diversity, communication, innovation and cumulation) and asks very similar questions to those found in discussions about research capacity building: How can a form of organization emerge that fosters the exchange, the intercourse of differences more than unifying them? How can new means of communication be used for this organising? What are the forms beyond state, party and union that emerge in dispersion, in a dispersion that is not only meant geographically, but also relates to the modes of production as well as the locations of production? Accordingly, what are the machines, in which singularities concatenate, instead of being put into identitary vessels? (Raunig, 2007)

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Work on the emergence and articulation of the social precariat demonstrates the importance of looking critically at new social forms and practices; engaging with identities that are emergent, complex, and multiple; and looking beyond skill sets or career trajectories to take account of the particularities of the settings in which research is conducted. What the following chapters will do, then, is to explore further the forms, interchanges, communicative practices, assemblages and ‘machines’ that comprise the networked landscapes of educational research. The specific focus is a series of research projects and initiatives (some of which have already featured in Chapter 1) and which were partly or wholly concerned with developing capacity in educational research. But in doing so, they will attempt to put to work some of the concepts and approaches from the network theories reviewed in this chapter. This has a dual purpose: first, to explore what these might bring to conceptualization of educational research capacity building and educational networks more generally; and secondly, to use these as means of more clearly articulating what, and how, the ‘embedded social practices’ of educational research may evolve.

Chapter 3

Using Educational Research Networks

Introduction The focus of this chapter is how educational researchers can use knowledge about networks to support their working practices; gain access to resources, people and information; and develop their own networks both to address immediate needs and longer-term research capacities and career trajectories. Clearly, the view that one has of networks will contribute both to these activities and practices, the way in which they are conceptualized, and for that matter whether networks can indeed be ‘used’ at all. For some of the researchers whose accounts are presented here, networks are alternative, expansive organizational structures that provide a backdrop to (and sometimes constrain) their actions and opportunities; for others, a less constraining space in which their identities as researchers take shape; and for others ‘their’ personal network is something in the construction and maintenance of which they play an active role. Some of the networks are primarily social; others are highly heterogeneous assemblages of distributed knowledge, some, but not all, of which might reside in human actors. What all of these have in common is that networks and networking are, as discussed in the final part of Chapter 2, part of their everyday language and their conceptualization of the field of educational research. In the interviews, focus groups and texts that form the basis of this chapter, networking is not an analytical framing introduced by the author: networks are a central element in the discourse of researchers in all of these settings. This chapter will present four vignettes based mainly on interviews, focus groups and reflective diaries with researchers, most of whom identified themselves as early career researchers or as being in their ‘second career’ as a researcher. The first of these is an individual researcher working in an ‘expansive’ research context in which their use of networked resources made a significant contribution to the learning, socially distributed knowledge and research capacity of a team engaged in a research project; the second draws on the accounts of a group of educational researchers as

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they attempt to develop individual research careers while reconciling these with their roles as teacher educators. The other examples involve researchers operating in less well-defined networks: the third describes the experiences of interdisciplinary researchers managing and navigating multiple, disciplined and disciplining networks; and the fourth and final vignette explores how teachers in a small primary school begin to engage with and in research networks and initiate school-based inquiry. Most of the research approaches involved in the construction of these vignettes themselves involved networks and networking. Phone interviews and online diaries were complemented by the use of ethnographic ‘probes’, and some of the vignettes presented here involved participants working ‘at a distance’ from researchers, compiling ‘video diaries’ in order to illuminate their research practices, patterns of collaboration and use of networking technologies. Other data were collected in face-to-face meetings, workshops and at conferences: those spaces of intensive collaboration within broader networks that were discussed in Chapter 2. In fact, many of the most valuable research data were collected through a combination of these: periods of what might be described as ‘online’, ‘internet’ or ‘virtual’ research (Mann and Stewart, 2000; Hine, 2005) being initiated, complemented or illuminated by more focused, typically face-to-face, cointerpretation or sense-making. It is clear, then, that conducting this type of research, and generating vignettes of this kind, involves engagement in particular networking practices: the distinction between ‘researcher’ and ‘researched’ (if it was not already blurred in many settings) becoming even more tenuous. We shall return to this important issue in Chapter 5. The chapter will then draw out some of the themes emerging across these vignettes and discuss these in relation to the various network theories and ideas of research capacity that we have reviewed previously. This is not intended to present ‘habits of highly effective researchers’: although in some of the examples this is what indeed what participants offered. Instead, it comprises accounts, drawn from multiple sources, of researchers at work, making use of networks; and offers ways to think about these asa starting point for reflective inquiry and further analyses.

Celia’s Story: The Researcher, the Project and the Network Celia was a researcher who worked for several years in a research project funded under the ESRC’s TLRP, and was researching the distinctive teaching and learning cultures in a specialist higher education institution. With

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a first degree in arts, she identified herself, when she was interviewed, as an early career researcher in education whose main task as she described it was ‘learning to make sense’ of both the institution, and processes and practices of educational research. She talked about the role of the networks upon which she drew in order to support her work, identifying the experienced project director as her first ‘point of contact’ with whom she worked closely; the project’s advisory group which included other established researchers as well as teachers from within the institution; and the wider research programme. She also described how collaboration with another project within the programme, which had already been running for several years when Celia’s research began, had been particularly valuable: [That] project was one of the ones we collaborated fairly directly with. Rosalind had a link with them . . . was very interested in their work and spoke to them at length. When I started at [here], on Rosalind’s advice I wrote diary of events and things I was going to in the first few weeks . . . I had absolutely no idea of the culture . . . so I was capturing all of that in a diary when I first started, and they let us use . . . a research instrument that they had written for analyzing learning cultures. We used that to write a preliminary analysis of the learning culture [here], which I wrote based on my diary, which captured my perceptions at that particular time. We then shared that [across both projects] and then [visited them] to discuss that. (Celia; Video Interview) What is immediately evident in this short excerpt is the way in which Celia’s individual learning and her engagement with others were closely coupled to the collective learning and research activity of the project group as a whole. The picture of individual learning and collective research capacity as interrelated recurs in an account of her recently commenced PhD studies: I started a few months ago . . . and obviously I’m part time, so I actually only go once a week during term time and the rest of the time a lot of the collaboration is done through the virtual environment that’s been set up for the course which I’m following for my core research training. That’s brought a lot of collaboration between different institutions into [the project] . . . the virtual research environment in that context has been a great way of me keeping in contact with my coursemates and my tutor. We put our work into student folders in that so that we can see what each other is up to . . . look at other people’s Endnote libraries to see what they

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are reading . . . one way in which the virtual environment has brought things into [the project]. (Celia; Video Interview) A further aspect of Celia’s role involved what she described as ‘informal networking’: Some of the collaboration we do is through going to events . . . hearing what the students and the professors are doing . . . and then talking to them about that informally and sometimes formally bringing them into the project, perhaps as a participant, or to go and work on the student associate scheme. All that kind of research happens through us getting involved in what goes on here . . . within the building. (Celia; Video Interview) The role that Celia played within the project could be described in terms of transfer and brokerage, with her role interpreted in terms of the importation of new knowledge and approaches and enrolment of new members into the research project; but what is marked here is the interrelationship between her own learning and problem-solving and the activities of the project group as a whole. Hakkarainen et al. (2004) explore this relationship between individual and collective knowledge and expertise in their detailed multi-method study of knowledge creating organizations. Unlike earlier characterizations of ‘communities of practice’ as being primarily concerned with the replication of expert practice through processes of apprenticeship (Lave and Wenger, 1991), these are organizations in which individuals are encouraged to participate in processes of ‘progressive problem solving’ in which they draw on shared artifacts and reifications of practice: [The individual] having access to the results of cultural learning in the form of shared experiences or learning embedded in jointly developed practices, tools and knowledge artifacts . . . these cultural resources shared within the organization are, in turn, used to solve new problems, so that the new problem solutions are dependent on the results of earlier cultural learning. Active engagement [of the individual] in progressive problem solving, a process that builds of the achievements of one’s team or organization, leads to dynamic development of expertise. (Hakkarainen et al., 2004, pp. 162–3) What makes Celia’s account significant here is that her progressive problem solving draws not on the project team alone (as is the case in the

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organizations studied by Hakkarainen and his colleagues, but on wider networks: the advisory group, the wider research programme; and the participants in her PhD research methods course. Still more important, though, is the way in which these processes draw together the knowledge and experience of others; shared artifacts (such as the learning cultures survey); and Celia’s own observations, gathered in the course of her own ‘sensemaking’ about her new environment. This challenges any notion of transfer from one context to another, instead demanding that we explore the processes by which artifacts are contextualized or territorialized. Edwards and Miller (2007) have challenged the notion of educational contexts as ‘containers’ and associated notions of transfer, arguing that we should not take bounded spaces such as projects or organizations as given and study these as ‘contexts’, but rather, as Van Oers (1998) suggests, trace the processes and problematics of ‘contextualisation’. This allows local conditions and specificities to also feature more significantly in the development of emergent practices, and rather than a ‘closed space connected by conduits’ contributes to ‘hybrid networked and mediated domains which give rise to alternative framings and metaphors’ (Edwards, 2005). We see this most clearly in the changing role of Celia’s reflective diary, which, in association with research approaches originating from outside the project (and reified through the learning cultures survey), was remade, first as a source of data and then as a point of focus for discussion and further inquiries, first within the project team, and then more generally across the institution. One shared cultural artifact (the learning cultures survey) allowed a new conceptualization not only of the content but the purpose of a second (the reflective diary) and contributed to the production of a third: an interpretation of the learning culture of the institution which was shared, discussed and subsequently incorporated into academic and professional publications. At the same time, the learning cultures survey itself became imbued with new meaning, as it was instantiated within the project and institutional setting, and contributed to the production of the interpretative account. This new assemblage in turn became a means by which project members conveyed their interests and understandings to potential research participants and users in the institution more generally: the diary with its field notes, the survey, and the interpretative account together represented an articulation of the research practice of the project in a way that any single artifact or document might have failed to do. Research capacity here is not being built solely through training, nor through some form of apprenticeship: even though Celia’s account

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ostensibly involves her moving between a research culture (the project) and a research training culture (her PhD methods course), the boundary between these is, at best, a permeable one, with Celia constantly seeking associations between the two environments and between her own learning and that of the project group as a whole. Access to the virtual learning environment blurs these distinctions further and provides a means by resources and reifications related to Celia’s own learning and also those of other students enrolled on the PhD course may be shared, incorporated and remade, in and through the shared practice of the project team and its wider network. Practices and artifacts which began life as a means by which an individual tried to make sense of their own situation became, through these relational and contextualizing practices, means by which the project as a group could begin collectively to make sense of the particularities of their institutional research setting, and others in the institution could understand ‘what mattered’ to the research team. The challenge, of course, is to trace the processes by which this kind of development takes place; we have concentrated here on a single ‘thread’ in a complex research project. As Hakkarainen et al. (2004) say: This process takes place in the context of so many continuously interlacing individuals and communities that it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine to what extent an innovation relies on individual collective achievements. Individual and collective competencies appear to reciprocally affect and feed each other, and thus cannot be separated. (Hakkarainen et al., 2004, p. 163) Small wonder, in the face of this complexity and the challenges it offers to both the analysis and facilitation of networking practices, that the metaphor of transfer in networks, as in learning more generally, can seem so appealing! A related issue, on which Celia touches in her account, is the importance of relationships with other educational researchers being extended, discursive and reciprocal. This was not a case of a research instrument or other resource simply being made available for sharing. Participation in the broader TLRP programme meant there were opportunities, both for collaborative working and for the kinds of reciprocal patterns of learning described above, to develop as the originators of the learning cultures survey saw their prior work reinterpreted and remade in another research setting. This raises important broader issues about the support of research

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networks and particularly what this demands of online technologies, an issue to which we will return in the next chapter.

Identities in Transition: Teacher Educators as Researchers Another group of researchers was interviewed about their experiences of engaging in research into teacher education. Several of these were members of the research networks described in Chapter 1 (including the TERN and the WERN), while others had experience of teacher education research principally within their own institutions. All worked as teacher educators in higher education institutions in the UK, and had received some support (through sabbaticals, remission of teaching time or funding of travel) for participation in research activities including participation in networks, which organized events and provided facilities for face-to-face meetings and online collaboration. The experiences of these researchers were substantively different to Celia’s in a number of respects: for the most part, they had only limited time to engage in research, and most already had careers as teachers, lecturers or in related professional areas. In other areas, issues that Celia had found challenging, but had apparently managed to manage and reconcile with her role, remained unresolved. Even though she was conscious of engaging with new practices and ideas, Celia’s had been able to manage her multiple roles as researcher and research student to her advantage and that of the research project in which she was involved. But for some teacher educators, such tensions remained unresolved and were played out against a contested, highly politicized, professional and institutional backdrop. And, as we will see, some of the enduring questions about how best to conceptualize networking, learning and research capacity were reasserted (and some cases thrown into high relief) in these distinctive and challenging settings for research and research capacity building.

Research Is a Foreign Country The theme of crossing boundaries into research, and how difficult this can be, as one simultaneously has to make sense of the practices and discourses in research settings and among educational researchers, is pronounced in the accounts of teacher educators engaged in research. Matthew, an experienced teacher educator active in research into social policy, and responsible for a variety of research capacity building initiatives in his own higher

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education institution, described their experience as being like venturing into a series of foreign countries: If you’ve had twenty years experience working in a school, you then take a jump into the university life, then you are asked to get involved in research and you are not a researcher. It is a different profession . . . they are learning a new language late in life . . . to continue the analogy you get people who move to a different country and they want to integrate themselves into daily life so they work very hard to learn the language . . . when [their] motivation meets a level of developing confidence and competence . . . you are away. (Matthew, Interview) Matthew identified attendance at research conferences as essential in this respect, ‘taking people out of their day to day environment in teaching-intensive institutions . . . seeing that things are happening outside the institution’. Why is this so important? Matthew argued that looking outside the individuals’ own institution was essential primarily because the research culture of teacher educators was not well established in comparison to other disciplinary areas; the models and means of becoming a researcher might live further afield: If you go into a sociology department that culture is already there. It is already expected . . . It is there before you get in. You know that you need to publish. You know that you need to be a researcher in whatever area, whatever specialism you have . . . it is very different in a teacher education department. (Matthew, Interview) Another experienced teacher educator, also active in research, offered a similar interpretation, but highlighted the need not just for a culture that supported research, but supported research into teaching: When I went into higher education . . . I went in expecting to be able to do research. And actually found that there wasn’t a culture of research . . . There were people talking about research, but actually there wasn’t much research going on. And we were all involved in teacher education so we . . . we kind of had a cultural understanding of teaching, but we didn’t have a culture of research of teaching. (John, Interview) Both of these interviewees suggested that this was caused or exacerbated by changes in the nature of initial teacher education, where the introduction of

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competence-based courses meant that binary distinctions between research/ teaching and theory/practice were asserted at all levels: You know this is obviously historical . . . the dilution of teacher training programme theory. A lot of theory, especially sociological, political theory has been sidelined or placed on the margins . . . So they do [the theory and research] before if you are doing Educational Studies plus PGCE route [three-year undergraduate plus one year initial teacher training] . . . or you do it afterwards . . . as CPD [Continuing Professional Development]. (Matthew, Interview) Matthew and other teacher educators described how this impacted not only on students, but also on their teachers, with potential research opportunities for those involved in educational studies courses encompassing critical, comparative and international perspectives, while those involved primarily in Initial Teacher Education saw their opportunities for research as being constrained not only by time issues but by the ‘practice’ orientation of the courses on which they taught. ‘Research’ and ‘theory’ were conflated, leading to teacher educators being, in some cases, hostile to both. Matthew reported how a colleague had, following a research network event, said that the whole event had been: . . . a complete waste of time. He’d rather do some, not research [but] professional enquiry as a teacher educator. He didn’t see the value, especially in publishing research. [He was] basically saying: ‘this is not for me, I don’t see the point of it in this institution. (Matthew, Interview) Luke was another teacher educator, whose research was primarily concerned with the role of new technologies in teaching and learning in schools and in teacher education. Like Matthew, he identified a disjunction between teacher education and research discourses, and linked this to the demographic patterns of education staff, both in teaching and research, that were discussed in Chapter 1. While those in established posts and leadership roles, he suggested, had a shared set of ‘cultural references’ that included critical perspectives and readings of educational research, many other, younger staff did not: The generation of people who are in fairly senior positions . . . they’re leaders of various kinds, but they are experiencing a discontinuity, because the environment in which they’re working is not the environment in which

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they were trained. So I say to people, ‘Well I’ve I’m encouraging my students to read John Holt’ . . . and I can tell by the looks I get, who I’m talking to in terms of cultural references. And Illich. I had a student read that the other day. Actually, it is really relevant. People look at you: ‘Who’s Illich?’ or they say, ‘Yeah, fantastic’. So you get that . . . sort of divide that opens up. (Luke, Interview) Luke extended his argument to discuss not only the importance of these theoretical and cultural reference points and ‘past narratives’, the loss of which he attributed to their not forming part of QA (Quality Assurance) processes, but also the need to explore speculative ‘future narratives’. A wholly practice-oriented professional community which distances itself from research, and saw networks as means of reinforcing and ‘quality assuring’ practice, he suggested, offered no means by which individuals and groups could engage in an ‘ontological turn’ and construct such a ‘future narratives’: Narratives tell you something about your past, also about where you’re going. Every document you read, it says, ‘What students are doing now will be very different in 2030’, but nobody really knows what it’ll be like in 2030, they just have this feeling it’s going to be terribly different. And there’s a lot of uncertainty and mystery about the future. And in that respect we have almost got to have a narrative, and it is a narrative of uncertainty. (Luke, Interview) This is a challenging position and raises interesting questions about the role of networks and networking. Luke’s interpretation suggests that rather than offering resources, examples of best practice or reinforcement of existing structures, they are the means by which those structures and norms may be disrupted or disturbed : in the case of Illich’s ‘Deschooling Society’ (1971), by one of the shared cultural referents of a previous educational narrative. There are echoes here of Guattari’s description of the transverse subject group, seizing opportunities to develop new network ties across existing organizational boundaries in order to initiate minoritarian discourses. The disruptive encounters that are possible when an unfamiliar actant (such as a book published four decades previously) is brought into a cohesive clique may represent the initiation of processes by which new avenues of inquiry and personal trajectories leading into the ‘other country’ of research might begin to be mapped out.

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A Journey, Not a Destination? Among the teacher educators interviewed, many of the metaphors they used invoked images of travel and journeys: personal career trajectories were described against a background of territories, boundaries, foreign countries and spaces: spaces to think, spaces to meet, spaces to write. So we will continue to trace some of these associations with travel by looking at the experiences of some of the participants as they engaged in the networks, events and online interactions supported by teacher education research networks. Now in the ‘foreign country’ described by Matthew, they were engaged in discussions on how best to organize themselves, how and when to use networking technologies, and to what activities they should devote the time they had together. Two distinct positions emerged from these discussions, upon which interview participants reflected. The first involved initial encounters and discussions as being primarily concerned with finding a common purpose or area of interest, and was exemplified by John’s views. He acknowledged that participating in his current research network was about more than planning or undertaking projects: There’s always urgency with lots of projects, but with this one you’re not just doing a project, you’re also developing relationships at the same time. Which is unusual. The most interesting thing is not what you actually produce, but how people actually work together. And how you set up relationships to research with one another in a very, very short period of time. It’s very hit and miss, but somehow it seems to have worked in the end. (John, Interview) But at the same time, the critical transition, and what made the network ‘work’ was, for John, the selection of ‘a project’ to which all participants subscribed and were prepared to devote their efforts, even though this led to some members of the initial group leaving or finding others with whom to collaborate. It’s been interesting trying to get, or mediate the target. ‘Where should we go?’ was quite interesting and quite time-consuming, surprisingly . . . because until we had a target, we were just wandering around. But now we’ve got a very clear target, we’ve started to allocate roles and so now it’s on the next iteration of ‘Where we go and how we do this to achieve it?’ (John, Interview)

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John acknowledged that the emphasis on a tightly defined ‘project’ or ‘target’ could lead to a temporary collaboration without a long-term future (as in the ‘task groups’ and ‘knots’ discussed in Chapter 2 (Swaak et al., 2000; Jackson and Temperley, 2007): But this group that we’re in . . . [the production of a conference paper] had a very short tight deadline, a very prescribed outcome. This kind of community is an interesting one . . . if it can come together so quickly, whether it can disappear as equally quickly? (John, Interview) Ruth, who participated in the same initial processes of forming working groups within a wider network, and for whom the emphasis was rather different, articulated a second position. The group of researchers with whom she worked also spent time discussing areas of common interest and potential directions before beginning to construct a proposal for funding. Ruth had initially been sceptical about the value of this as a group activity, and was keen to ‘hold onto to [her] principles’ not spending time writing something with the sole purpose of obtaining funding ‘at any cost’. Reflecting on the experience subsequently, however, she described how the writing of the bid, while, providing her with opportunities to learn about specific research processes and procedures, also served as a means of extending her networks, directing her to new resources and ideas, and allowing her to interact with researchers from diverse backgrounds: Part of this is writing the bid, the whole process of doing that . . . understanding what are the funders looking for . . . the sales process . . . the academic style of writing that is part of it. But then it is also the whole theoretical plane . . . lifting it out from the practical research side and bringing it up to the theoretical . . . which has been happening within all these smaller discussions. You know you’ve got a person from education . . . one from sociology . . . you have got another one who into inclusion. So you’ve got this spiral of various characters and so it is bound to open some doors . . . so even though you are not foregoing your principles . . . it really opens up a new set of doors theoretically. The key thing about this is that is has been very much about nurturing our development. ‘Yes’ for doing a bid. ‘Yes’ for publication. But it is actually this collaboration, the process that is equally important. (Ruth, Interview) We have already seen the distinction drawn between groups that are taskfocused and those that are self-directing in our discussions of different

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networked formations and collectivities. Both of the groups described by John and Ruth were to some extent self-directing but at the same time part of their terms of reference was to develop a ‘project’ of some kind. What we see in these accounts, then, is not something as crude as the distinction between task groups and communities, as Swaak et al. (2000) would put it. Instead the differences are articulated in the decision-making processes (which appear to have involved the more experienced researchers in each group); the means by which roles emerged or were ‘allocated’; and the relative value attached to ‘the process’ rather than ‘the target’. This is significant for educational research practices in the two respects. First, it exemplifies two different perspectives on the nature, role and potential value of networks and networking. One of these see networking as being about the production of specific forms of social and intellectual capital, the value of which is tangible and measurable (in terms of publications, research bids, membership or some measure of stability, influence or sustainability); The other sees them as providing a means by which more subjective perceptions of what is valued may be articulated and realized. This has implications for what educational research networks seek to ‘provide’ and what patterns of interaction they seek to ‘support’ (an issue to which we will return in the next chapter). The second, related, issue is that individual participants in networks (both early career and experienced researchers, however these might be defined) are required to make judgements about how their own professional development, research capacities and future opportunities will be influenced by particular patterns of participation and engagement in different forms of networked and networking activities. The teacher educators described how they had to work to resolve tensions between different personal and professional motivations and ways of using networks. These included prioritizing, reconciling or balancing some or all of the following: z z

z z

The personal benefits brought about involvement in the production of a ‘target’ such as a publication or proposal The establishment of enduring personal network ties with other researchers (more or less experienced, or with common or complementary interests) which might outlast the specifics of any production process The development of personal skills, engagement with new theoretical perspectives and individual research capacities The identification of networked resources and ties with the potential to enhance aspects of their professional role – for example, prospective

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speakers, guest lecturers or research approaches of relevance to others in their institution This is much more difficult terrain than that in which Celia had found herself, where individual, project, programme and institutional prior ities seemed to align well and individual learning was seen as reinforcing collective capacities. With research being seen (by some at least) as irrelevant to, or even at odds with, the practices of teacher education, the teacher educators interviewed had not only to negotiate their roles within new networks and manage tensions between the activities listed above: they had also to decide if, and how, they could accommodate these activities within their institutional roles. This was more than an issue of time management, however: while some network participants made efforts to report back to colleagues on their activities in broader networks and described themselves as brokers, connecting their colleagues to ‘the outside’, others reported that developing networks and contributing to joint activities such as publishing and bidding for research funding was seen by at least some of their colleagues and managers as antithetical to the demands of teacher education or other institutional priorities. In other words, for our teacher educators, developing ‘personal networks’ of the kind described by Wellman (2001) involved not simply the establishment of network ties or the accumulation of social capital, but also an ability to strategically align oneself with other networkers, while maintaining associations in existing networks and institutional structures. This was more complex than developing a ‘second career’ as an educational researcher, but rather involved treading an often precarious path between overlapping networks, managing multiple identities, and balancing opportunities and risk in often rapidly changing institutional and policy context. Teacher Educators/Researchers: Identity and Precarity Frances, a researcher active in several teacher education networks, but who had also spent time as a full-time research associate, talked about the relational aspects of identity formation and the importance of understanding where different trajectories might lead: Identity work was quite time-consuming. I mean it’s finding out who you are. It’s finding out what the field looks like . . . it’s starting to have anticipated futures within that field. Not all of the doctoral training that I received was useful to me . . . I do think there is the need for [a] training

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base. But it has to be done in a very contextualised, very personalised way and it has to be relevant to where you think you’re going. I think you could only start to get a realistic view of where you think you’re going, through engaging with [a research] community. (Frances, Interview) According to Frances, access to networks was important, not just as a means by which individuals or resources could be accessed, nor as a location where collaborative work could take place, but as a means by which ‘anticipated futures’ could be identified, and personal research capabilities developed. Engaging with wider networks was made necessary because of the diverse nature of educational research: I think education is such a huge field [and] . . . traditionally there have been quite discrete communities within that. So if you want to develop expertise, it’s knowing how to go about doing that. That’s not just about skills, that’s about signposts . . . [making you] think . . . about your potential and your identity. So it’s knowing where to look for things and it’s knowing where the signposts might be. (Frances, Interview) Ruth also talked about the need to find the most appropriate resources, collaborators and mentors, and, like Frances, suggesting that this involved researchers establishing the network ties they needed according to their emerging needs: I’ve been given mentors and they never work. And I seek the mentors that I can work with. So I go and get mentored here, and get mentored there . . . (Ruth, Interview) As well as, once again, invoking geographical metaphors and images of journeys (with and without signposts), there was, underlying these accounts, a sense of risk, uncertainty and the kind of precarity identified by Guattari, Berardi and Raunig. Ruth had experienced precisely the kind of dilemma which Guattari describes in the context of transverse groups in medical settings: namely that surrendering established professional identities may have the potential to be transformative and productive, but that, at the same time, it makes considerable demands upon the individuals involved. Guattari describes this as potentially exposing the ‘madness’ of existing practice: [For professionals] to accept being ‘put on trial’, being verbally laid bare by others, a certain type of reciprocal challenge and humour, the

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abolition of hierarchical privilege . . . this will tend to bring to light, or at least into the half light, a number of signs that actualize aspects of . . . madness hitherto repressed. (Guattari, 1984, p. 21) Commenting that she had experience of working in situations that were ‘very hierarchical . . . in that “I have got more experience than you, so therefore listen up” ’, Ruth described how, in her current, more ‘lateral’, group of researchers: It’s all very idealistic, and when it comes down to it, of course, you run into a number of problems . . . senior academics who have been recruited need to risk their identities, by seeing themselves as learners and attempting something new . . . which hasn’t been straightforward. (Ruth, Interview) Moving beyond the security (and constraints) of a teaching post challenged established identities, not just as a teacher or teacher educator, but in other respects; the temporary funding of research posts meant that some of the ‘anticipated futures’ identified through networks had ramifications which extended beyond the professional domain and into the personal lives and relationships of prospective researchers: I did some networking and had some ideas on what I wanted to do, and obviously had that interest in what it meant to be a researcher . . . you lose that personal identity . . . you lose your identity you have as a parent, or partner, or whatever else. (Frances, Interview) Another area of uncertainty emerged in the complex space in which individual and collective learning met. This has already been alluded to in the case of Celia’s project and institutional roles; in the case of a more heterogeneous, cross-institutional network involving participants with different disciplinary backgrounds, institutional affiliations and personal motivations , individuals were faced with difficult decisions about how much, and what, they reveal, share, give and take, in order to co-exist. Much as Guattari invokes Schopenhauer’s image of ‘porcupines huddling together for warmth’ (1984, p. 18), Ruth articulates this in terms of developing a shared spirit of learning: Once I’ve given my point, it no longer belongs to me, it belongs to the group. And therefore we as a group will deal with it, rather than have

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discussions about getting my point of view . . . But I think it is also the skill to know that, ‘Yes, you have got that strength . . . I have a different strength’ . . . It is about seeing how those strengths . . . compliment each other within the greater process. And I think that needs a certain level of maturity and almost a shared spirit of learning. (Ruth, Interview) The issue of how to accommodate both individual concerns and shared learning intersects with the preceding discussion of identities in transition, compounding the challenges facing researchers, particularly those early in their careers. The very interactions and exchanges that may contribute to the establishment of their identity as a researcher, initiate a group project or play a part in the success of the group and the network more broadly may also have to involve surrendering aspects of their distinctive experience, or seeing their potential contribution incorporated into a collective capacity to undertake a research project or write a piece for publication. This makes their situation more complex than that which we saw in Celia’s case, or which Hakkarainen et al. (2004) describe in relation to individual and collective knowledge creation. Ideas about the articulation of individual and tacit knowledge discussed by Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), for example, tend to locate such activities within comparatively stable working environments rather than in groups within educational networks in which status, relationships and shared practices are still emergent. There is an element of precarity here too, certainly with bearing on the realization of the future research trajectories and ‘anticipated futures’, but also with potentially more far-reaching implications. Deciding whether to commit one’s ideas and expertise to a project that is not only emergent but which also depends on the continued engagement of other participants, may be a high risk strategy, especially for the teacher educator whose continued involvement in research may depend upon institutional support or be open to questions about its relevance and value in professional settings. Participants in research networks described how, particularly in the light of the time and effort necessary to develop new working practices, determine shared interests and find a focal project, networking was sometimes seen as a luxury or a distraction: not only from teaching, but from other research tasks as well: Universities as organisations become very jealous of the resources that they’ve got, and are very reluctant to see people engaging in activity where their time and skill as a resource is somehow being seen to be going somewhere else. (Luke, Interview)

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I think for some people [starting out in research] it’s been incredibly beneficial. And it’s going to help them significantly . . . I don’t necessarily feel as if I’m benefiting in terms of my research because in fact, it’s become a little bit of a distraction from my own research. But then that was a journey that I wanted to do. (John, Interview) There is a sense, across many of the accounts of teacher educators involved in research networks, that the projects and programmes of activities in which they were involved were transient, that groups would disperse and that individuals would, in time, move on. Networks were seen as fragile, easily disrupted by the disengagement of key individuals or by the withdrawal of support of sponsoring organizations. This meant that the ability to maintain valued network ties as a distance and over time, to re-establish ties that had been disrupted, to engage with new networks and understand and contribute to their practices was vitally important both as an ‘embedded social practice’ and, for that matter, a core ‘research capacity’ of teacher educators. ‘Networking’ was not just a means by which these practices and capacities could be developed, but was, itself, an import ant aspect of those practices and capacities to be developed.

Ducking and Diving between Disciplines: Researchers in Technology-Enhanced Learning The processes, practices and discourses of networking were explored with another group of educational researchers who also described themselves as being in unfamiliar territories: these were interdisciplinary PhD students and postdoctoral researchers associated with technology-enhanced learning (TEL) projects. While many had complex career trajectories and they often described themselves as ‘discipline hoppers’, this differed from, and offered different challenges to the ‘first career/second career’ transition that was described by some of the teacher educators. Most of the members of this group were studying or working full time on a specific project, so while they were less concerned with finding time for research, they still had to manage competing demands on their time, while developing their identities as researchers and their future career trajectories. While the teacher educators discussed the challenges of working in the spaces between teaching and research, for the TEL researchers, an alternative or additional challenge was to operate in (or as one, said, ‘carve out’) spaces between established disciplinary territories. While teacher

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educators alluded to navigating in territories that were personally unfamiliar to them (Matthew’s ‘having to learn a new language’): these interdisciplinary researchers described working in spaces for which there was no ‘map’ or signposting, and, frequently, no common language. How, then, did they find their way? There were differences between those who identified themselves as being ‘originally’ computer scientists and those who described themselves as being ‘from’ an education or social science background, but all saw the emerging, multi-disciplinary space of technology-enhanced learning as being difficult to navigate. Ironically, however, this space was rich in the rhetoric of networks and networking: the issue that many of the TEL researchers faced was not how to locate networks or establish ties in a low-density network, but rather how to discriminate between and assess the many opportunities that presented themselves. This in turn demanded engagement with the practices and discourses of other individuals and with different disciplinary backgrounds and trajectories either through intensive working together within projects, or through deliberate and self-conscious activities that one of the researchers described as ‘not induction, but more like orientation’. Like Frances and Ruth in the teacher educator networks, they described the value of various forms of signposting and talked about their experiences of finding mentors or key readings that provided patterns of engagement or means by which sense could be made of what they encountered. While some of the latter were explicitly about cross-disciplinary, interdisciplinary or mixed-methods research (for example Mason, 2006), or about social theory applied to technology (examples here included Ciborra, 2002 and Nardi, 1996), others were described by participants as being more like ‘primers’ which articulated and exemplified the disciplinary practices of an unfamiliar field: the foreign language analogy appearing once again. Here, for example, educational researchers described how the work of Olsson (2004) had helped them understand the ‘mindset’ of software designers and developers, and those with backgrounds in computing sciences and engineering attributed a comparable role to works by Wenger (1998), Lincoln and Guba (2000) and Yin (2002). Other insights into the practices of a new network only came through the experience of working intensively with others: observing, participating and interrogating practice. As Collins and Evans (2007) describe in their account of the distinction between ‘interactional’ and ‘contributory’ expertise, the support or advice of the expert who is able (and willing) to articulate their hitherto tacit knowledge (and thus has both kinds of expertise) is particularly highly valued in this situation. In a focus group,

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some of the TEL researchers gave accounts of this in relation to the different practices around publication and conference attendance in different disciplines, highlighting, for example, the different status accorded to ‘conference proceedings’ in education (lower) as opposed to computer sciences (higher). This led to a lively discussion about how a newcomer to the world of TEL research needs guidance in selecting which conferences to attend, and how supervisors or mentors can provide insights. The problem, explained by one researcher with a social sciences background, was: You get a call for papers from the International Global Conference on this, that and the other . . . and it looks great and very glossy but then your supervisor tells you ‘don’t bother, it’s complete rubbish’ and no-one you’ve ever heard of is involved and there are all kinds of costs . . . and the special issue you might get into is online only . . . (Alex, Focus Group Discussion) At this point several other participants began to offer their own experiences, citing ‘dodgy’ conferences ‘with nearly identical names’ to much more highly regarded ones and those they described as ‘pyramid schemes’ where attendees could register free of charge if they organized a symposium of paying delegates. The problem, continued the original speaker, was that: Some of the really good places to go are really low-key and you think ‘why?’ until someone shows you ‘well, so-and-so’s going to be there’ and it’s linked to this journal, and they have 30 minute sessions . . . and look what came out of it last year. (Alex, Focus Group Discussion) This picture of the nature of networks and the activities, interactions and learning that they enable goes beyond any notion that the relationship between networks and more closely tied communities (such as might exist in a research project) is one of information flow ‘in’ from the former to the latter where social and intellectual capital accumulates. Instead, the relationship between the two, from the perspective of the researchers, is reciprocal: networking helps individuals develop their practice in specific settings or communities; but there is also an important capacity building role within project or departmental communities in helping them to make sense of networks, and developing networking practices. The other issue that emerges here is that the networks that the researchers described were highly heterogeneous. While person-to-person ties were

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clearly important, they were also the means by which researchers begin to identify and make sense of much more complex dependencies, associations and assemblages involving organizations, events, publications, online resources, theoretical framings and methodologies, and technologies across which disciplinary differences were performed and power relationships played out. The conference that is seen by Alex’s mentor as ‘important’ in the context of her field of research came to be so because of its close association with people, publications, organizations and locations; this, in turn, had the potential to increase its value to Alex if she had attended. If she presented her work, the extended presentation time might have allowed her to engage more effectively with an audience for her work, receive further formative feedback or recommendations and establish new network ties. And, again, we see that the value of networking needs to be assessed in terms of the nature and quality of the interactions it promotes and supports, rather solely in terms of measures such as size of networked audience or the ‘reach’ and ‘impact’ that it enables. Subsequently, the TEL researchers went beyond discussing how they navigated the material aspects of their research networks (publications, research instruments and events) and began to discuss conceptual and methodological ‘points of focus’, to use Wenger’s term, of their interdisciplinary working. This discussion was concerned with exploring how they established working relationships within their cross-disciplinary projects, and from this emerged a list of ‘troublesome’ concepts and areas of working including: views of learning, the nature and role of evidence, the nature and limits to participation, ethical dilemmas and others. There was recognition of the need to work closely together and to interrogate the practice of others. ‘We talked about that for a year before we realised we were talking about completely different things and hadn’t understood anything the other person had said’, reported one researcher of their experience on a research project; and many recognized in their work the ‘trading language’ phenomenon reported by Galison (1996) in which terms were pragmatically taken to be broadly synonymous and practices broadly equivalent, at least in the short term. In the emerging cross-disciplinary space of TEL research, however, what were identified were not necessarily issues around which consensus achieved or where boundaries were established. Rather, these were points of dissonance, which, according to Strathern (2006) and Haythornthwaite (2006) offer opportunities to explore new practices and where new knowledge can emerge through radical reframing of questions and problems, changes of direction or revisiting of previously unchallenged assumptions.

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What was particularly salient to our current discussion about networks was that these often-contentious elements were themselves identified as part of a semiotic and conceptual network: [Our different] ideas of research ethics will be underpinned by view[s] of participation, or of learning, or of the purpose of the research – we could have differences in all of these, with a fundamental difference at the root. (Miles, Focus Group Discussion) Other examples were also offered, linking: methods, evidence and quality; participation, ethics and accountability; learning, assessment and success criteria. These were not, however, independent of the material and social networks that had been previously identified: rather, they were linked into highly heterogeneous social, material and conceptual networks in which conferences, publications and special interest groups were associated with particular issues, themes and questions, and with specific epistemological and methodological positions. Developing an understanding of these associations was seen as being key to successfully navigating any disciplinary space, and particularly an emergent and contested one like technology-enhanced learning. Bringing together groups from different disciplinary backgrounds promoted the articulation of these associations: educational researchers explained how they understood this heterogeneity in their own areas of expertise for the benefit of computing scientists and vice versa (in some cases, relating how they had been helped to understand this for themselves by a supervisor, mentor or more experienced colleague). Several of the educational researchers with some experience of publishing work about TEL described a specific publication (the Journal of E-Learning and Digital Media), in the course of which they asserted relationships between: the title (which had recently changed) and content of the journal; the topics of recent special editions; the commitments and interests of the editorial board; those individuals’ associations with institutions, faculties and departments, and other publications; and their ‘take’ (this word used several times) on several of the key ‘points of focus’ identified previously. It was portrayed as a heterogeneous assemblage in relation to which any potential author would have to locate and perform their own research: as they would for any publication, conference or grant proposal. In the same way, other researchers explained the differences between different ‘sub-disciplines’ in the computing sciences in similar terms: ‘You wouldn’t submit a paper to . . .’; ‘They understand “design” to be about . . .’; ‘That journal’s very closely tied to [a

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specific institution] and they’re mainly interested in . . .’. Contested terminology, in particular, was seen as something that could easily misdirect the researcher new to a field: specific words and phrases had to be understood in the context of highly territorialized and disciplined research landscape, but also pointed up challenging new opportunities to position oneself in relation to current debates and disciplinary priorities. Interdisciplinary research appears to offer particular challenges for educational researchers, particularly if it is conceptualized not just as ‘discipline-hopping’ or as assembling a team to solve some kind of wellunderstood problem, but rather as knowledge construction in an emergent field. The research capacities that may be important may not be well defined and the liminal spaces in which they work may not yet be stable enough for ‘embedded social practices’ to be either ‘embedded’ or shared ‘social practices’. Against this background, it was no wonder that one of the participants in a TEL research project described themselves as ‘ducking and diving’: using networks to explore beyond the boundaries of established disciplinary practice, but at the same time having to constantly look for ‘signposts’, seek recommendations, seize opportunities to meet others with common or analogous interests or challenges, and trace associations between elements of evolving networks. This represents another instance of the ‘precarity’ we identified in the lives of the teacher educators engaged in research. The TEL researchers talked about having to balance the risks and opportunities offered both by working in interdisciplinary projects rather than within disciplined and disciplinary settings; and by engaging with research approaches, practices and discourses which on the one hand might be personally productive and transformative, but which risked placing them in what Deleuze and Guattari describe as the interstitial and holey spaces beyond and between conventional disciplinary boundaries. These concerns manifested themselves in a concern about where they might publish their work, but also in relation to the examination of their PhD dissertations (in the case of the research students) and in future employment prospects. This was a group of researchers working in uncharted (not merely unfamiliar) territories and for whom building personal and highly heterogeneous networks on which to draw and through which to present themselves was essential in an anticipated future (to borrow Frances’ term again) where conventional disciplinary labels might fail adequately to express distinctive identities. Supporting these researchers and the environments in which they can work represents a particular challenge for capacity building initiatives, but one full of possibilities of new models of collaboration and methodological innovation.

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Stonebrook: The Small School in a Wider Educational Network The final vignette in this chapter is rather different from the preceding ones: first of all, its focus is a school, rather than an higher education setting; and secondly, it is not about the activities of an individual trying to use networks, but rather is concerned with strategies introduced by school leaders in order to benefit both individual teachers and the institution as a whole. Stonebrook is a small primary school in a village on the borders of the London commuter-belt, with a stable population including many families that have lived there for generations. The parents of some of the children currently in the school also attended it themselves: something that has led, from time to time, to resistance to change in teaching and learning practices. An important part of the head teacher’s strategy for developing expertise among the small staff of teachers and teaching assistants is deliberately to establish and draw on external networks in order to promote reflection and inquiry into current practice. This is a school in which the staff are encouraged to see themselves as ‘creating knowledge’ about education: using networks and developing networking practices are parts of a strategy intended not only to benefit individual teachers but also to contribute to collective learning and development. Teachers and teaching assistants regularly attended courses organized by the local authority and by higher education institutions, and the school takes part in research projects (in the course of one of which these interview data were gathered). Regular attendance at annual conferences led to teachers from the school also contributing to these events: At the [University] Maths conference, the people who usually run it, the tutors, I have great regard for and we tend to visit them once a year at least. They are residential and expensive . . . and they are very much in line with the way we think about and teach Maths. I do tend to push the staff into taking risks because one year I encouraged them to put on a workshop at [the conference] . . . I hope they got something out of it because the audiences loved them and had some empathy with them, because they were quite nervous and they were real, working teachers and not people dictating to us how to do it. (Esther, Headteacher, Stonebrook; Interview) What the teachers at Stonebrook brought into the school, and incorporated into their practice, ranged from descriptions of approaches to

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teaching (in this case, mathematics) to specific research instruments intended to support classroom observation or gather teacher and student views on aspects of teaching and learning. One research project in which the school was involved from 2001 until 2005 was Learning how to Learn: in Classrooms, Schools and Networks, which sought to research and develop assessment practices in a range of primary and secondary schools in England (James et al., 2007). As this research project involved four higher education institutions and over 40 other schools across the country, it was itself conceptualized as a network offering access to a range of individuals, resources and events (James et al., 2006a), and provided participating schools with a range of development activities, digests of published research, research instruments and approaches, and the means to analyse data they collected. These were subsequently collated and published, along with accounts of their use in different project schools (James et al., 2006b). With a commitment to ‘leaving things behind’ in participating schools, the project too had an interest in ‘moving’ things around networks as well as establishing networking practices that would endure beyond the life of the research project itself. The head teacher also reported how the school’s representation at networked events (such as the mathematics conferences) and participation in research projects (such as Learning how to Learn) meant she regularly received requests for staff to contribute to local authority training programmes for newly qualified teachers; there were frequent visitors to the school, observing what went on in the classrooms of established teachers whose profile had been raised through networking activities. They attributed this in part to the establishment of ‘trust’: People come in from other schools to observe our staff. A number of other schools have trust in us too . . . [the subject] could be anything, but there is a feeling that a lot of what we do is good in the community. (Esther, Headteacher, Stonebrook; Interview) This appears, on first inspection, to be a good example of a school ‘using’ networks and establishing weak ties in order to draw on distributed knowledge and research approaches and then sharing accounts of the distinctive and territorialized findings they had generated and practices they had informed. It also aligns in several key respects to the vision of the ‘knowledge creating schools’ (Hargreaves, 1999) identified as contributing to one of the most problematic and poorly understood forms of educational research described by McIntyre and McIntyre (1999).

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But, as in our previous examples, how much sense does it make to talk about practices being ‘brought in’, being ‘shared’ or ‘moving’? And, for that matter, what kinds of capacity to engage within and in research are being developed by this deliberate effort to use and contribute to educational networks? In Wenger’s terms, what is ‘moved’ around the networks are, for the most part, reifications of practice (descriptions, documents or other representations) rather than practices themselves. In the case of research instruments such as classroom observation schedules or questionnaires, practices are reified in particular ways that set in train particular, contingent, sequences of activity: observations, distribution of surveys, collation, analysis and (sometimes) some form of action as a result of findings. In other cases, the teachers are required to recontextualize or reterritorialize these reifications in their own classroom practice: ‘Any reification must be re-appropriated into a local process in order to become meaningful’, argues Wenger (1998, p. 60). It is important, however, not to see reification as somehow capturing or packaging practice in one network site in a way that allows it be simply transported and unpacked for reuse at another, but rather as the provision of a focus for subsequent and potentially innovative or divergent meaning-making. Even in the case of research instruments being provided for teachers to use in their classrooms (as during the Learning How to Learn project), the role these might play in informing practice will have to be negotiated in the new setting, even if the rhetoric that accompanies them is couched in terms of generalizability and cross-school comparison (see McCormick et al., 2010 for a discussion of this distinction in the context of developing assessment practices by school teachers). The significance of this meaning-making is particularly evident in the context of Stonebrook, as further research in the course of the Learning how to Learn project determined that there were, in fact, few opportunities for this collaborative meaning-making to take place. The school’s assessment coordinator, who was one of those who had been most active in the identification of networking opportunities and in working with researchers outside the school, was able to identify multiple sources of information and advice (the project director, the researcher who visited the school, and online resources and books) and talked about the ways in which research approaches introduced in the course of the project had proved useful in her own practice. However, she reported: There’s no real formal agenda for staff meetings, there’s no formal ‘this is what we’re going to be doing as professional development’ . . . so it’s a case of remembering to say ‘can we put [the research project] on the

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next staff meeting agenda and talk about [it]’ or ‘can I feedback on a cluster meeting I’ve been to?’ (Elizabeth, Assessment Coordinator, Stonebrook; Interview) The small size of the school contributed to and compounded this pattern, with timetabling and part-time staff contracts also making it difficult for teachers to participate in peer observation, team teaching or joint reflection on practice in general or the research project’s work in particular. Data collected as part of the Learning how to Learn project highlighted a strong sense of shared purpose and a highly collegial environment, but found a less marked orientation towards collaborative inquiry into teaching and learning practices. This was one of a number of patterns described by Pedder (2006; 2007) in his work on the development of practices related to assessment in which Stonebrook was one of the subject schools. Stonebrook was unusual among the schools studied in that it was more highly ‘networked’ than many others, but at the same time, its staff struggled to develop an orientation towards practitioner research or inquiry within the school itself. The case of Stonebrook provides a counterpoint to that of Celia, for example, where individual learning and research capacities informed and supported those of a research project team and the institution as a whole. At Stonebrook, teachers participated in networks that allowed sharing of reifications of practice, and talked with enthusiasm about the ways in which their own practice had developed because of this participation. The combination of circumstances in this particular school had led to the development of the kind of pattern that is reminiscent of Burt’s discussions of groups which are well-connected through weak ties, and in which social capital develops in individuals, but where the group or organization as a whole lacks the cohesion provided by strong ties and shared working practices (Burt, 2001, p. 48). But in other respects, the social setting, the stability of staff and pupil populations and the high level of collegiality evidenced both through survey data and interviews indicate a well- connected, socially cohesive community: many measures of network structure or networking activity (for example, focusing on the ‘social’ rather than on inquiry) would probably lead to the characterization of Stonebrook as highly cohesive and densely networked, with multiple redundancy in its network ties, as staff, parents and pupils interact in and out of school. But this does not mean that these patterns are replicated when it comes to teacher learning or practitioner research: teachers may be importing ideas and translating them into their own practice but may be appropriating,

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territorializing and meaning-making in isolation, or through interactions with their external networks. Reifications and practices remain in a liminal, boundary state, never fully integrated into the shared practice and discourse of the school and thus dependent on the continued presence of the gatekeeper or broker who may have tentatively introduced them. The practices may have ‘moved’ but they are not, in the words of the school’s assessment coordinator ‘embedded’, who commented ruefully ‘it makes it difficult to leave’ (Elizabeth, Coordinator, Stonebrook; Interview). With the regular appearance of visitors to the classrooms of these individuals, however, come the opportunities for discussion, meaning-making and reappropriation that may be missing within the local setting, as emerging network ties offer new opportunities for reifications and practices to once again become mobilized. The efforts of the head teacher to develop support networks certainly have the potential to develop research capacity among individual teachers, as they engage with research, establish ties with higher education institutions and locate other individuals with similar interests: as was the case during the Learning how to Learn project. The recognition of ‘networking’ as a legitimate aspect of professional learning and a way of engaging with research was a strategy which was highly valued by teachers not only at Stonebrook but in other schools participating in the project (Carmichael et al., 2006). But the case of Stonebrook suggests that while networks and networking are important, there is clearly more to becoming a ‘knowledge creating school’ than simply encouraging individual teachers to become effective users of networks.

Habits of Highly Effective Researchers? The title above is perhaps misleading, as the reader who has leafed to this page hoping to find a neat list of generalized ‘habits’ presented as in popular self-help books (the phrase comes from Covey, 1989) may be disappointed. In fact, this was the title of a 2009 seminar for postgraduate and postdoctoral researchers in education at which they were invited to identify the practices that they used to enable their research activities, with the intention that this would inform the design of online tools and environments (see Carmichael and Burchmore, 2010). The results of this and other events were incorporated into an online resource hosted by the ESRC TLRP as part of its support for early career researchers in TEL projects (Teaching and Learning Research Programme, 2010) to which researchers were able to add their own experiences and suggestions (although

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the sources and potential relevance extends beyond TEL research). With an emphasis on sharing ‘tried and tested’ approaches, examples offered included the following: z

z

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Keeping a Research Diary: many researchers highlighted the value of private or selectively shared research diary combining records of activities but also emerging themes, reflexive accounts and lists of contacts, readings and other resources. There was discussion about the best format for these, with some researchers describing chronological accounts but others advocating forms that used network or spatial metaphors (concept maps, wikis or hypertexts). The practice of photographing whiteboards or scanning non-linear texts as images and including these was common – a reflection of the need for complex and emergent ideas to be incorporated into more structured and chronological accounts. Managing Your Readings and Citations: this was seen as being a critically important practice to ‘get right’ – many researchers reported changing the ways in which they managed documents, citations and online ‘bookmarks’ as their practices evolved, the scale of the networks of linked resources increased, and new technologies became available. Those with experience in different disciplines highlighted the ‘mess’ of educational research and the need to organize resources in ways that reflected their changing understandings: this was compounded by the lack of a single source of all relevant publications (‘there’s no PubMed for education’ pointed out one researcher with experience in life sciences and referring to the US National Library of Medicine PubMed Digital Archive); which meant that citation management was described as a ‘crafting activity, building up your personal collection’ rather than ‘pulling PubMed straight into EndNote, [the citation management software]’ (Georgia, Research Associate, Focus Group Discussion) Seeking and Sharing Reviews and Recommendations: this was an area in which experienced researchers could support the development of early career researchers, but was more all-encompassing than this. Recommendations (of readings, research approaches, individuals and events) were seen as one of the main reasons for engaging in networking, and also were seen as the means by which networks were maintained. Researchers talked about ‘reciprocity . . . you send me your list of this, I’ll send you a review of that’. (Tina, Research Associate and PhD Student, Focus Group Discussion) Developing ‘Literacy’ in Multiple Methods: researchers talked about the need to develop awareness of multiple methods, reflecting the kinds

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of pragmatism and pluralism that characterize educational research in general, and which was discussed in Chapter 1. Qualitative researchers talked about the need to be able to incorporate quantitative data into their work, to interpret statistics and to use cohort data to ‘locate’ their work in policy frameworks, and among the interdisciplinary researchers of the TEL projects, understanding different disciplinary practices and the weight attached to different forms of evidence, was, as we have discussed, of critical importance. Engaging with new research methods was a key role identified for mentors and an area in which recommendations (of courses, books or examples of their use in practice) were particularly valued. The most valued advice was informed by personal experience, relational, and could be contextualized: ‘I don’t just want a good book about statistics’ said one participant, ‘I want the book which shows me how to use the right statistics in the right place, in a way which statisticians aren’t going to point and laugh at it when I write it up’. (Andrea, PhD Student, Focus Group Discussion) While versions of these examples do not necessarily involve engagement in extensive networks (much of this advice would be perfectly appropriate for individual students or researchers, or those working in comparative isolation), what we see in the accounts of the participants is that these are practices which often draw on and contribute to the development and sustainability of networks: establishing ties with others with specialized expertise in particular research methods is not only of value in resolving immediate problems (an example of ‘using’ the network) but also supports and even ‘builds’ a network, as well as modelling future networking practices. And while some of these examples can be interpreted in terms of the generic networking practices of the kinds we see described in studies of social networks by Burt, Granovetter and Wellman (maintaining weak ties, establishing reciprocity and trust, developing brokerage functions), there is also a distinct focus here on research capacities specific to educational and interdisciplinary research: particularly on research methods and approaches and their practical applications. What were being collected, recommended and discussed across networks (both online and through face-to-face events) did include quick overviews or ‘primers’, but more commonly these were detailed accounts of practice, solutions to methodological problems and research innovations. Much of the most intensive networking activity, and particularly that drawing on broader networks of weak ties (as might be addressed through a posting to an email mailing list,

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or brought to a ‘work-in-progress’ seminar for discussion), was related to complex methodological issues. These included the development of mixed methods approaches; analysis of complex or challenging data including video or digital records; researching in methodologically challenging settings, such as with young children, or with participants with disabilities; and ethical issues or dilemmas. Other examples researchers cited were explicitly presented as accessing or sharing ‘craft knowledge’ or ‘tricks of the trade’, which in some cases were related as advice that contributors had received from more established researchers. The ‘self-help book’ analogy was invoked again with one participant suggesting that what they wanted was a guide to ‘what they don’t teach you on your M.Res. [Master’s Degree in Research]’ (rather than what is missing from the curriculum at Harvard Business School, according to McCormack (1984)). This would include things, they suggested, like: Always . . . always . . . take a paper to a conference, even if they don’t ask for papers and just want a presentation. Even if its not the one you’re presenting. And leave a pile of them somewhere, and keep a few to give to people. People lose business cards and forget who they came from, but when they’re stuck at the airport, they’ll look in their bag and find [your paper] and think ‘ahh . . . this is that guy’. (Matthew, Research Associate, Focus Group Discussion) Many of the ‘practical’ approaches described by the researchers (and featured in the vignettes in this chapter) can be interpreted as aspects of networking practices, if we understand networks as being more than simply homogeneous social structures. The research journal, for example, serves not only as a diary, but also as a reification of an evolving repertoire of research practices that includes networking practices. It can be seen as an assemblage of diverse elements that may subsequently come to matter through their emerging network ties: we see this clearly in Celia’s account of how her personal reflections underwent reframing and translation through their incorporation into a more expansive social, material and conceptual network, and became a significant shared resource. Management of citations, documents, online ‘bookmarks’ and personal contacts, in the same way, is not simply a matter of making writing tasks easier, but involves the construction of personal networks of resources, which are then performed and enacted as literature reviews, analyses, writing and presentations. The advice to ‘always take a paper’ to a conference can be interpreted at one level as being about how to establish new ties in a social network;

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but the practice makes even more sense if one interprets conferences and other events as ‘hubs’ in the network society where sometimes unexpected encounters and exchanges take place and new heterogeneous assemblages come into being. The paper is not simply being ‘moved’ around a social network: as a reification of both educational research practice (its content) and networking practice (the means of its mobilization), it has the potential to become part of a heterogeneous, heterarchic network which may subsequently be enacted as a special issue of a journal, an edited collection, an invitation to speak, or even an employment opportunity. This example also demonstrates awareness, on Matthew’s part, of knowledge of how educational research networks function, at least as far as this is expressed in the organization and patterns of behaviour characteristic of educational research conferences. He was clearly aware that conference delegates liked acquiring papers; didn’t always manage to attend all the conference sessions they wanted; exchanged, but subsequently lost, many business cards and scraps of paper with scribbled email addresses; and often found themselves delayed, bored, and desperate for something to read as they travelled the global transport network. Network Expertise and Network Technologies These detailed accounts look less like ‘habits’ or one-off activities and more like instances of the ‘networked expertise . . . relational competencies that emerge through co-evolution of individual and distributed cognitions’ described by Hakkarainen et al. (2004, pp. 79–80). Underpinning this expertise is the ability to operate in two different modes, and how and when to move between these: one, involving broader networking, is focused on the sharing of reifications (resources, knowledge, problems, recommendations and so on); the other is concerned with intensive collaboration and the development of shared practice. This mirrors the continuum between practice and reification described by Wenger (1998, pp. 58–9), and the vignettes and researcher accounts presented here show differing approaches to this. Celia’s case shows how the mediated introductions of reified research practices were used to formulate ways of working intensively within a specific research setting, bringing new meanings to existing practice and helping to establish new research relationships. In Stonebrook school, on the other hand, networking had become focused on the sharing of practice, at the expense of the discursive development of shared practice within the institution.

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In the projects and communities of the TEL and teacher educator networks, the most successful networking was attributed (by the participants themselves) to the ability to move between expansive, sharing environments that provided a diverse repertoire of resources and approaches, and those that allowed space and time for intensive working. Among the TEL researchers, there was enthusiasm for online environments which supported both the ‘at a distance, occasional contact’ capable of ‘supporting serendipity’ as well as ‘working together, even at a distance’ (Russell, Research Associate; Focus Group Poster). The most enthusiastic and apparently effective ‘users’ of network were able to establish, maintain and mobilize networks, and to re-make and territorialize networked resources into their own practices. Recommendations and advice from their broader social network were seen not as ‘best practice’ to be imported wholesale, but more as a focus for meaning-making, intensive working and, potentially, the development of innovative practice and creation of new knowledge in a specific research project or setting. These dimensions of reification/participation and wide network/close community are also helpful in framing the various accounts of how online technologies were used by different groups of educational researcher, and may go some way to understanding widely varying levels and patterns of use of web technologies in particular. While most of the researchers who were interviewed or who participated in focus groups and seminars used a range of web technologies, only a minority associated these with the intensive day-to-day collaborative work that took place within project teams: for the rest, web technologies were a means of maintaining ‘weak ties’, searching for resources and seeking (and sometimes receiving) advice and recommendations. If we continue to work with our distinction between ‘sharing’ and ‘developing shared practice’, there are clearly some technologies which were mentioned which seem to support the development and maintenance of broader networks (email, blogs, recommender systems and micro-blogs), while using technologies to support intensive collaboration, even at a distance (where one would expect their role to be evident), remains less frequent: not yet an ‘embedded social practice’ for the majority of those engaged in educational research. Rather than distinguishing a distinct ively ‘online’ form of educational research in which one either engages or one does not, it may be more helpful to see network technologies and their specific affordances as a further set of material elements: practices, interactions and technologies that support them being co-constructed by groups of educational researchers as they develop their particular approaches to networking.

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Grand Narratives, Local Precarities? What is also evident in all of the accounts presented here is a version of the same tension, outlined in Chapter 2, between grand narratives of networks and local circumstances, constraints and precarities. In this respect, the situation that faces the educational researcher who wants to engage in and with networks is no different from any other experience of trying to make sense of a purportedly networked, but still highly complex, fluid and contested environment. There was a sense, in many of the accounts of researchers who were interviewed or who took part in other activities reported here, of as yet unrealized or poorly understood potential: of networks in general, and of specific networks, or network technologies, in particular. Grand narratives of free association, open access, movement of ideas, and easy sharing were contrasted with local subjectivities and constraints imposed by institutional or disciplinary practices, personal limitations or access to technologies. Models of effective networking practices were seen as being particularly valuable: themselves a particular kind of reification of practice, but in the case, of networking practice. If there was one kind of networked resource to which participants wanted access, it was models of how to use networks to support their own practice as educational researchers. What the ‘users’ of networks wanted to exchange were examples not only of educational research, but instances of networking itself: networks, to paraphrase Marx, may contain the seeds of their own construction. However, the experience of working with researchers across all the diverse settings described here suggest that there is little sharing of the detailed micropolitical and microsociological accounts that might form the building blocks of shared network expertise. Another, related theme that come out across all these vignettes is that of researcher identity and precarity. While Celia played multiple roles and seemed adept at managing them all, drawing on and mobilizing networks to support her, other educational researchers, in teacher education, technology-enhanced learning, and in schools, seem to be treading a careful path amidst multiple identiary and identity-forming practices. There are risks associated with asserting a particular identity: both in terms of what one leaves behind (teacher identity, teacher educator identity, or ‘home’ discipline) and the associations one establishes: as researcher in nonresearch institution; as an interdisciplinary researcher; or in an emerging discipline where norms and practices are not yet well established. The case of the school-based teacher-researcher at Stonebrook presents another

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identiary challenge: Elizabeth talked about the dangers of becoming associated with a particular research or policy initiative to the point where colleagues saw her identity as being inseparable from a raft of responsibilities, commitments and practices: ‘punctualized’ or ‘blackboxed’ in ANT terms, locked into an assemblage in which being ‘assessment coordinator’ necessarily involved fixed commitments rather than any more general orientation towards inquiry or development of practice. Another challenge for Elizabeth was to make herself dispensable (and perhaps to seek employment elsewhere) by managing the distribution of knowledge through networks and establishing practices leading to the building of collective expertise. In the next chapter, we will begin to explore how these kinds of network expertise might be enabled. How can support be provided to researchers, individually or collectively, who are having to confront some form of identiary or professional precarity – while simultaneously learning, innovating and conducting research? And how their experiences be reified and shared in such a way that they can, in turn, serve as models and resources that might contribute to more effective networking and educational research?

Chapter 4

Supporting Educational Research Networks

Introduction This chapter presents further studies of networks and networking, but this time the focus is on how networking activities and the development of individual capacities, innovative methods and collective knowledge can be supported. There are clearly some overlaps with the examples in the previous chapter (all of which could be retold as stories of ‘support’); but the emphasis here is on organizational responses to the needs of individuals, including more emphasis on the use of network technologies. These are not intended to be ‘solutions’ to ‘problems’ raised in the previous chapter: but rather represent conceptualizations of networks and of their role in supporting research and research development which are deliberate and collective rather than individual accounts of navigation and orientation. Once again, the research and development activities in the course of which these data were collected and interpreted were themselves ‘networked research’, involving multiple research sites, the use of multiple data sources including participant observation, and study of both offline and online activities and interactions.

Supporting the Networked Research Project The first example involves a large multi-institutional and mixed-methods educational research project, involving research staff at four UK universities. The project is described in a previous study of this and other projects’ use of network technologies: Four teams (one based in each university) had as their primary task the collection of detailed biographical data through open-ended interviews. Each team took responsibility for a part of the sample with each researcher

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maintaining contact with a group of research participants and conducting interviews. The fi fth team (which was co-located with one of the qualitative teams) had a focus on quantitative research and used a national survey as the basis of analysis and in order to contextualize qualitative data . . . the department that hosted the two teams was also host to the project director and a team of research administrators . . . biannual residential project meetings and separate annual meetings for the project directors’ team took place in addition to local meetings between researchers in each of the participating universities. (Laterza et al., 2007, p. 253) This was very much the organizational model that was presented in the project’s proposal to its funders. The project team included very well-established and internationally renowned researchers, and while some of them had previously worked in the same institutions, their subsequent career trajectories had led to their being based in different higher education institutions, leading to the kind of dispersal of specialized research educational expertise described in Chapter 1. That this represented a challenge was recognized by one of the project directors: When you look at the project from the outside, you can say they are collecting massive amounts of data and they’re going to analyze it collectively, but that’s not going to happen . . . for . . . logistical reasons, reasons of academic differences, working patterns, so what we have at the moment actually are five little projects . . . and the challenge will be to lift that to a higher level and show that the project is more than just the five projects. (Iain, Interview) Other members of the project team also discussed the need for ‘iteration between qualitative and quantitative analysis’, and described an ideal situation in which researchers would be able to use one set of data ‘to ask questions of the others . . . in order to write joint papers’ (Paula, Group Interview). This raised practical issues of software compatibility: how, for example, might reports from quantitative analysis programs could be shared across the project? So here, already, we have a notion of the project as a network, open to interpretation in terms of space and power relations; communications technologies; and (sub)-disciplinary practices. Two particular strategies were adopted in response to the dispersed nature of the team and the large amounts of data that were being generated:

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The use of a virtual collaboration environment hosted at another location (the focus of the account presented in Laterza et al. (2007)) to enable sharing of project data, analyses, agendas and minutes of meetings, draft and completed writings and other resources. While the project team experimented with synchronous communication tools (such as online chat) and discussion boards, the primary use of this environment emerged as being an access-controlled central digital store, managed and maintained by the project research associates. The production and sharing of short interpretative accounts of each of the research participants, drawing on transcripts of interviews and other data which were collected over extended periods of time. These documents (generally no more than 1000 words in length) were produced at each of the research sites and then shared through the virtual collaboration environment.

This appears to be an example of how online environments can support collaboration, with focal artifacts (the 1000 word documents) acting as boundary objects and providing a basis upon which individuals or groups could develop cross-case analyses and theoretical accounts. It would be possible to present this as a successful implementation of network technologies (and accompany it with diagrams of the structure of the network so supported), perhaps representing the virtual collaboration environment as a new node in the network, or, following Castells, as a hub in the infrastructural tier underpinning the developing informational resources (transcripts, interpretative accounts, analysis) and collaborative activities of the research team.

The Networked Research Project: Emerging Practices and Roles An account of how these processes operated in reality (rather as presented than in a structural or system diagram) and constructed through interviews, focus groups and participant observation, tells a rather more complex story, and suggests that a different reading of the networked research project may be rather more illuminating than any diagram of an idealized network. The research associates and administrators responsible for managing data collection and processing and supporting the research team members’ use of the virtual collaboration environment documented their use of various online tools and reflected on how this had supported the different research approaches and been dependent on levels of technological expertise among

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the project team. They highlighted details in the processes of data collection, interpretation and analysis that a purely social or structural network ‘map’, or digital data about numbers of logins, uploads or discussion board contributions (had there been any) would not have captured. First, it was clear from the characterization both of the overall project as being made up of potential ‘little projects’, and the potential complexity of the data and analyses to be stored as digital resources meant that each ‘site’, including the virtual collaboration environment, could more usefully be considered as a network of its own right. The extended nature of the interaction with research participants entailed thinking about the research teams at higher education institutions and partner organizations as ‘gatekeepers’ to wider networks. And the virtual collaboration environment was in turn made up of a set of tools within which data, analyses and other resources were located, with local access controls configured to allow particular parts of this information network to be kept more private than others. Then there were organizational decisions made about the use of the virtual collaboration environment, with concern that academic members of staff might not have the confidence or the inclination to upload data and contribute to collaborative activities online. The complexity of the data to be collected, and the challenge of ‘iteration’, led Linda, the research administrator, to report: ‘I think it’s good to have only one person [able to upload content] otherwise you never know what had happened to the files . . . If somebody else mix and matches . . . I think . . . is that the right version or not, or is it older than the file that I have, or younger or, so, so it’s easier to have one person in place to do it. I can rely on what I’ve done. (Linda, Interview) Linda and another member of the team then began to establish an internal structure within the virtual collaboration environment, which was in fact rebuilt entirely at least once in the light of concerns about how complete the anonymizing of data sources would be: the ‘information tier’ of the project network being reconfigured in the light of methodological and ethical concerns. This included carefully designed fi ling systems which allowed critical workflows to be modelled, with Linda able to ‘chase up and hassle’ researchers who had not emailed their latest sets of interview transcripts or interpretative accounts. The progress from original audio recordings to transcripts (carried out by contractors) which were then checked by the original interviewer and then written up as an interpretative piece was monitored, with the documents generated

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at each stage being ‘checked in”, named consistently and uploaded by Linda. Linda’s emerging role as gatekeeper of the project’s informational network meant that in practice, other members of the project team used the virtual environment less and less: a document that she had originally produced to serve as a data catalogue for her own use came subsequently to be distributed at project meetings so that researchers could see what data and analyses were available and would then contact Linda who would ‘check out’ sets of documents and dispatch these by email. This is an elegant example of what Latour (1999) refers to as ‘blackboxing’ of complex systems, which leads to a focus on inputs and outputs rather than internal workings. Of course, from the perspective of the researchers, Linda, the virtual collaboration environment as a whole, and the structure of the file system were all part of this black box, a heterogeneous assemblage of the human and technological (it should be stressed that this was perceived as Linda’s capabilities being enhanced, rather than those of the technologies). It was Linda’s regularly updated spreadsheet that became, if anything, more important in its own right than the collaboration environment it described. It was the focus of review, planning and collaboration at face-to-face meetings, directing researchers to the interpretative 1000 word documents, which in turn pointed them back to original transcripts on which they drew in order that they could then write detailed case studies and cross-case analyses. So how has this research been ‘supported’ then? We now have three related accounts: the first presents the ‘networked research project’ as an organizational response to the need to bring together individuals with complementary expertise; the second acknowledges the difficulties that this engenders in practice, and offers technological and methodological responses which can be couched in terms of online collaboration, sharing and boundary objects ‘moving’ around a technologically enabled network. But it is actually the third account, which traces out more fine-grained processes, recognizes how key decisions and novel materializing practices come to play important roles, that seems to give real insight into how to support the research practices of individuals and processes of collective knowledge building. It also recognizes that technology is not necessarily a solution to some apparent ‘networking problem’: collaborative technologies will not automatically close structural holes or promote the accumulation of social and intellectual capital, and it is more useful to look at them as aspects of practice which is emerging and relational. One final more general note: when researching networks, one is constantly reminded of the ‘ego-centeredness’ of one’s own understanding,

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and the fact of how little one can know of other’s networks and networking practices is often brought home. We will consider some of the implications of this in the subsequent chapter on ‘Researching Networks’. In this particular case, the appearance (in an interview conducted by video) of the spreadsheet that Linda had developed to keep a track of the contents of the supposedly easy-to-use online file management tool came as a revelation. In such situations, the nature and practices of the network in question, and the place technology plays in it are suddenly understood entirely differently, the object of inquiry shifts, the focus widens, and new associations are revealed for exploration.

Bun Club: Networking in the Research Intensive University The foregoing account was concerned with the working practices of established researchers and looked at ways in which new research approaches and tools (in particular collaborative technologies) were integrated with some, but limited, success into these, and the new roles and relationships within a relatively well-defined project team. But what about support for networks of early career researchers for whom research is only one aspect of their ‘multiworking’ and sometimes precarious employment? This next example discusses a particular initiative in which I was involved, along with a group of colleagues who were, for the most, contract researchers working on technology-enhanced learning and academic practice development in higher education. Rather like the teacher educators featured in the previous chapter, their development of research capacities and researcher identities had to be reconciled with the demands of highly structured development, implementation and evaluation projects within an established organizational context.

Bun Club: The Emergence of Practice The ‘Bun Club’ was established at a research centre in a research-intensive university in the UK in 2005 and met for the following three years: at its most active, it met weekly, although there were periodic ‘suspensions’ of meetings. The centre was a ‘non-faculty’ entity initially established to develop, deploy and evaluate learning technologies for use within the university, but its role had extended to encompass research into teaching and learning more generally, and had a group of about eight educational

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researchers working on a variety of projects. Some of these projects were primarily concerned with evaluating pedagogical practice within the university itself, but others were externally funded and more wide-ranging in their scope and ambition. Most of members of this were either postgraduates or postdoctoral researchers, with the author acting as a project manager and being a member of the centre’s management team. All of the members of the group were on short-term or ‘indefinite’ (not permanent) contracts, and often worked on multiple projects. They had diverse backgrounds spanning the pure and applied sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities: some had worked as teachers, researchers, curators, evaluators, instructional technologists, and as content developers on e-learning projects, while some were PhD students who were working part-time during their studies or while ‘writing up’ dissertations. The idea of the club was originally proposed by Elena, a member of the group who had a background in physical sciences, where she had experience of a ‘laboratory culture’ within which informal ‘brown-bag’ lunchtime seminars were commonplace, and the provision of food accompanied (and seemed to promote) discussion of research activities. As the research group grew in size and in the number of projects it undertook, she had noticed that individuals in the group did not necessarily know much about the work of others, particularly when they were part-time, met only intermittently or undertook much of their work in other settings around the university. The idea of regular meetings, but without the formal associations of academic seminars or presentations, led to the idea of the ‘Bun Club’ as being concerned with ‘sharing problems rather than just successes, and reporting “work-in-progress”, not just the finished article’ (Elena, email). There was also awareness that, around the university, other researchers were employed by particular units or faculties, working on learning technologies, continuing professional development or curriculum evaluation, and that they might also be interested in participating. While many of these were engaging in and with educational research, they were not perceived as ‘research active’ and the expectation was that their audiences would be internal to the university or would be professional organizations concerned with staff development or learning technologies, rather than academic conferences or educational research journals. A typical meeting of the club involved going ‘around the table’ with each participant giving a report on their recent activities both inside and beyond the university, and then an activity led by one or more participants. This might be a ‘rehearsal’ of a presentation to be given at a conference or other event, or a report of activity in a particular research

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project. The emphasis on sharing problems, as much as solutions and productions, meant that other activities might involve the participants at the meeting being involved in considering how best to analyse a set of data; discussing an ethical dilemma faced by the presenter; or offering critical advice on the design of a questionnaire or interview schedule. This role extended into the club acting as a ‘pilot’ group for novel research approaches: examples included using focused interviews using video; ‘sense-making’ methodologies and critical incident analysis; or collaborative analysis of complex qualitative data. One member at each meeting was additionally charged with providing cake or buns (hence the name of the group). As the group became more confident in ‘using’ meetings, individuals were sometimes asked to provide a more formal presentation to share some aspect of their experience or expertise. For example, the author was asked by a number of other club participants to demonstrate and ‘talk us through’ the online grants application process recently introduced by the UK’s Research Councils; and others were asked to lead meetings on aspects of educational theory or research practice with which they had recently engaged. One participant who was undertaking a part-time master’s degree in educational research reported on their recent experiences on their taught course, sharing useful readings and discussing research practices. This is an interesting blurring of the distinction identified by Deem and Brehony (2000) in that it involved bringing aspects of the more formal ‘research training culture’ in which they were involved into the more practically oriented ‘research culture’ of the group and the club. The club provided a space in which an individual member might draw on the combined experience of others, or where a group who had identified a common need or interest would ask a person perceived as ‘more expert’ to provide guidance or advice. The membership of the group was fluid and changed over time; visitors to the centre participated in meetings, and a tradition emerged in which they would present some aspect of their work. Specially invited guest speakers were comparatively rare, however, and when periodically the idea of inviting external experts to meetings on a more regular basis was raised, this was not popular: ‘that’ said one participant, ‘would make it just like your usual seminar series’. Interestingly, the group never met as ‘Bun Club’ outside the centre, and rarely outside the same meeting room; and even though there might be occasions where some or even all of the membership might be present at another meeting or event related to a project, or to centre business, such gatherings were perceived as being

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‘different’. ‘Present: All of Bun Club (but this ≠ Bun Club)’ recorded one participant in the minutes of such another meeting, using the ‘not equal to’ symbol. Bun Club was more than the sum of its members: simultaneously a social group, a place and the expression of a distinctive set of discursive practices. Bun Club as Network and Community The club, as a small, relatively stable group, lends itself to exploration as a social network in the way that has been carried out in relation to work teams in high technology companies by Hakkarainen et al. (2004). What emerges from this kind of analysis is that according to most of the obvious measures (attendance, number of contributions) there was no clear centre to the network (Elena organized the programme of events and delegated responsibility for selection, purchase or production of buns but made about the same number of presentations and attended the same number of events as other members). The disparate nature of the projects meant that there was no clear ‘core’ in Wenger’s terms, or indications of the ‘cognitive centrality’ of any subgroup described by Hakkarainen et al. (2004): and while observers occasionally described the group as a ‘community of practice’, this characterization was rejected by members of the club themselves, apparently keen to downplay any distinction between experts and novices, a ‘common purpose’, or any drive to develop an exclusive set of shared ‘trademark’ research practices. There were, in fact, some activities in which members of the club did have shared interests, principal among these being developing their abilities to write for academic audiences, either in the form of conference papers or journal articles, rather than simply writing reports on project activities. This does provide a means of mapping at least this one dimension of the club’s character as a network, and a review of writing emerging from the club’s members gives some interesting clues as to how it supported this aspect of collaborative practice. A co-authorship network (a particular kind of social network where ties represent the act of writing together) can be constructed (Figure 4.1) and shows how different subgroups (numbered 1–4) tended to write together, mainly as a result of working together on specific projects. The role of the more experienced researcher (A) is reflected in their involvement (often as a subsidiary author) across these projects, but there are also examples of groups writing together independently (K, L, M and N) and of collaborations across project subgroups (between G and D; and F, D and E).

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H J

G

B 3

C

1

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A F 2

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N 4

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Figure 4.1. The “Bun Club” as a co-authorship network. The graph is constructed so that those participants who ostensibly worked on the same projects are adjacent, and weight of lines shows the relative number of publications on which pairs of participants were co-authors over a two-year period (narrow = 1; medium = 2–5; thick = 6+)

If we trace the development of this network over time, other patterns come to light: G and E, for example, having gained experience of writing with A and others, subsequently going on to establish new writing partnerships (with J and E respectively). Tracing these patterns over time also suggests that conceptualizing the club as a network rather than a community is more accurate: individual roles and collaborations evolved as their commitments changed; visiting researchers engaged with the club’s activities; and members departed, in some cases, to return when a new project began or they were ‘seconded’ back to the centre after a period working elsewhere. What was also evident was the way in which the diversity of experiences and the range of projects in which club members were involved promoted the development and sharing of practice, with the kinds of active remaking of practice occurring as readings, research approaches and concepts brought to the table in a meeting of the club were seen to have ‘promise’ in relation to a problem that was currently unresolved in another setting. Recognition of ‘promisingness’ is seen as being of critical importance in innovation and problem-solving by those working in what Bereiter (2002, p. 330) calls ‘design modes’, and represents a means of linking individual to collective knowledge: that key ‘network expertise’ again. Much as in Celia’s case (featured in Chapter 3), where she was able to make associations between prior

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data, current problems, and reifications of research approaches, Bun Club meetings provided a location for these kinds of exploratory and associative discussions to take place. It is possible to trace how this worked through the presentations and diaries of participants. For example, a small project in which a thematic analysis of teacher and student views of learning in undergraduate engineering courses was carried out in which Helen, a visiting secondary school student, conducted some secondary analysis of course documentation, interviews and seminars, based on a typology of views of learning presented by Watkins (2003) (which itself draws on other work such as that of Sfard (1998)). The student presented their findings at a meeting of the club, and there was discussion of what had emerged. In a meeting a few weeks later, another more experienced researcher who was just beginning an evaluation of the University’s Language Centre presented her proposal, which had proved difficult to write. Following Helen’s presentation on teacher and student beliefs about learning, she had returned to a set of preliminary interviews, had recognized that this might be a means of initiating her evaluation, and had incorporated a version of Helen’s interpretative framework into her proposal. ‘Thanks to Helen for showing the direction to go on this!’ read the next slide in the presentation. This is more than transfer, replication or accumulation of knowledge: promising ideas given expression in the supportive environment of the club encouraged creative appropriation and remaking in new network settings. The Bun Club became an important part of a broader network, a hub for exchange, meaning-making and a place to float ‘promising’ ideas and innovative research approaches: but organizational and project pressures meant that at times it also featured as a structural element: featuring in workflows, research designs and even funding proposals as the means by which pilot research activities could be undertaken, peer review offered on draft publications or collaborative phases in design or analysis supported. Bun Club: Smoothed, Transverse, Enduring? This tendency for the structural affordances of the club within the University organization to be reasserted may seem at odds with the intention to provide something that transcended those very structures. But this is precisely the kind of phenomena that Snyder et al. (2009) report in relation to communities of practice, which have become recognized as highly beneficial to organizations; and it also reflects Deleuze and Guattari’s observations on the tensions between smoothing and striation,

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the stratified and the nomadic. There was certainly a sense of ‘carving out’ a space for Bun Club within organizational structures (participants, most had to complete timesheets of their activities, had to record their attendance at club meetings as ‘personal training’), and there was initially a tendency for club meetings to be seen as an ‘interruption’ or a ‘space’ in activities which were for the most part dominated by hierarchies of project organization, themselves driven by discrete funding streams, requirements to produce ‘deliverables’ and to report in particular ways and to predetermined timescales. Because the club did contribute to the individual and collective capacities of its members, however, as time passed, the club became the site of more ambitious activities as members identified opportunities for further research funding and constructed bids, made proposals for conference symposia, wrote journal articles and chapters in books. These were typically aligned with existing projects (as the co-authorship network shows) or were constructed as new projects, but with increasing success, the club began to shift its role: from a location at which individuals would discuss the issues and challenges they were facing on ‘other people’s projects’ to providing a place and a means in which new associations were made and directions began to be set by club members themselves, ultimately transforming the broader organizational networks of which it was a part. This personally and collectively transformative aspect aligns not so much with the idea of a temporary smooth space, always subject to striation and stratification, but rather to Guattari’s characterization of the transverse group (1984). Decisions to break down prevailing hierarchies, to distribute roles and to allow discussion about the direction of the group led to the club having less immediate potential to effect institutional change (than say a ‘working party’ of invited individuals with specific roles and influence), but, as in Guattari’s ‘thermodynamic analogy’ (1984, p. 19), this allowed the development of more intensive, creative and innovative relationships and ultimately to new and more ambitious ‘transitional phantasies’ enacted through imagining radical alternatives, counterfactuals and ‘why not?’ scenarios. There was, as Guattari suggests is inevitable in such cases, also a degree of subversion of the usual forms of hierarchical organization and ‘hitherto repressed madness’ (1984, p. 21). Examples included having ‘not-seminars’ (the club would meet even if there was no immediately apparent purpose: the antithesis of the usual practice of circulation of agendas and detailed meeting planning); conference reports included not only summaries of content but ratings of

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‘quality of conference bag’ and ‘orangeness of food’ (an allusion to the seemingly ubiquitous conference finger buffet); and an organizational chart drawn by a visiting child, with cartoon representations of group members not arranged in any way that would conceivably help the casual visitor understand their roles in the organization. The club was represented online in a virtual collaboration environment and made use of network technologies to maintain ties and involvement when individuals were away from the centre, but as Guattari suggests, this ‘transversality’ exceeded verbal communication and applied to ‘diverse regimes of signs’: more than just having a representation online, or through a growing collection of publications, this also included aspects of what Connerton (1989) calls ‘performative memory’ through which commitments, experience or membership of a group or culture are embodied through material practices, ritual, imagery, gesture and jokes. Transversality, argues Guattari, has the potential not only to transform the group and the individuals within it, but the organization(s) within which it develops; but at the same time, the precarity brought about by short-term ‘soft’ research funding, and the potential for members of Bun Club to move on to new institutions for personal or professional reasons meant that its form changed with time and ultimately meetings ceased. What is evident, however, is that the associations and networks established through the transverse working endured well beyond the life of any single ‘project’ with which individuals were more formally associated, even surviving wide geographical dispersal and appointments to new posts. This is significant both in terms of understanding networks and research capacity building: the intensity of working in a transverse, reflective group played a part in establishing enduring ties and shared set of cultural and methodological references which persist even at the time of writing this book. The informal but intensively collaborative transverse group may be one of the most resilient of all network forms. Bun Club as Capacity Building It is worth reflecting further on ‘Bun Club’ specifically in relation to research capacity building; while collegiality, visual jokes and the eating of buns may have played a part in establishing a transverse and supportive space for innovation, at the core of the club’s work was a focus on the development of research methods, particularly in participatory research as it applied to higher education and technology-enhanced learning.

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A leaflet circulated to other sites in the University to raise awareness of work of the centre and to invite new members to join the club summarized its role as: Involv[ing] reflection and collaboration at all stages in the research lifecycle – from announcing funding calls and new projects, through designs and methods (looking at, developing and testing research instruments), data collection (what shall I do with these?), analysis, how to report, discussing drafts of abstracts to conferences and papers, reading articles, and finally having celebrations when things get published! (Bun Club Leaflet, 2007) A review of the meetings of the club reveals that about half of all these had a focus on methods, with about a further quarter being concerned with reading or peer reviewing activities in which research methods played some part. These ranged from widely scoped discussions of theoretical frameworks or research approaches, to specific sessions in which participants looked at the design of survey instruments, tested interview schedules or tried out innovative methods being developed by club members themselves. This differed from most research training that participants had previously experienced in two respects: first, in its contingency upon the emerging needs and interests both of the individual members and of the group itself: topics of meetings themselves tended to be negotiated, excerpts from emails contributing to the process including phrases like: z

z z

‘I’ve been collecting a lot of data in focus groups. Can we talk about ways to analyze this which are better than just listing everything that comes up?’ (Claudia, email) ‘I need Activity Theory explained to me. Can we use this as a way of designing our data collection or is it just for analysis?’ (Elena, Wiki Entry) ‘Volunteers needed for a pilot and feedback on my video stimulated recall activity please. Before I try it on real people!! ’ (Katherine, email to Group)

The second distinctive aspect of the experience of club participants was their opportunity to engage in all stages of research projects, as the leaflet cited above suggests, there was an opportunity to be directly involved (or at least to actively observe, question and critique) at all stages from scoping and problem formulation to reporting and demonstration: what a visitor to the Bun Club from the United States referred to a ‘soup-to-nuts’ research

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training, with specific methods located and related to broader research issues and agendas. Individual and collective learning in interaction contributed to the kinds of progressive problem solving outlined by Hakkarainen et al. (2004), and the development of expertise and innovation in research methods was ‘embedded socially in practice’. An international visitor wrote in a report on her visit to the centre: When I was at [the centre] . . . I was very pleasantly surprised by the usefulness [of group seminars] and the willingness of . . . members to discuss and exchange information about projects, papers, ideas, etc. These meetings are a good opportunity to share information and learn together . . . (Maria, Report, 2007) Participation in the Bun Club certainly did offer opportunities to engage with wider networks, and the collective capacity of the group to undertake new and more challenging research activities was enhanced. In fact, this accumulation and concentration of expertise was precisely the way in which the role of the group was performed and representated when it came to applying for funding or proposing a conference symposium which demanded consistency across a set of proposed papers. But more significant in the long term were the opportunities for the development of network expertise: engaging with research methods and theoretical frameworks, and contextualizing these in relation to current, and often highly situated, practice. This in turn supported the development of novel research approaches and also contributed to the participants defining their roles more broadly than in the terms of their current project or employment status. The transverse group, while it may influence other elements of the organization within which it operates, may not be able to immediately transform it into the ideal of the expansive workplace (Fuller and Unwin, 2004; Teaching and Learning Research Programme, 2008), but it may have a significant impact on the current identities and ‘anticipated futures’ of its participants.

Supporting Researchers in Networks Both of the networks that have been described here owe some of their success to their ability to foster and encourage intensive working: if not actually face to face, then through the activities of specific gatekeepers or

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mediators. This points up how the organizational structures of network may actually be less important contributors to their success than specific practices and discourses: the ‘new subjectivities and . . . expansive forms of life’ to which Hardt and Negri (2006, p. 83) allude. This raises a number of important questions. First, is it possible for organizations to support without constraining, enabling networking expertise and transversality without imposing restrictive structures and roles? Second, how can the specific and situated practices and discourses we have described be ‘scaled up’, remade or recontextualized across a broader network: to remain with Hardt and Negri’s analysis, how can they be made ‘communicable’ so that the ‘local can speak to the global’(Hardt and Negri, 2001; Negri, 2008)? And third, what role can network technologies play in supporting these processes ‘at a distance’? It seems obvious that ‘expansive workplaces’ need some expansive form of networking to match the needs and aspirations of the researchers, and particularly the early career researchers, with whom they are associated. So, rather than focus on network structures, the remainder of this chapter will consider a number of strategies and initiatives with the potential to support the development of networking expertise and communicable practices. These three areas draw on a combination of existing literature and empirical research with both network ‘users’ and providers and comprise: z z z

Providing and Supporting Mentoring Supporting Reading and Writing Together Developing Technologies for Networked Expertise.

Providing and Supporting Mentoring What emerged from the accounts of educational researchers featured in Chapter 3 was the importance of the opportunities to be mentored by more experienced researchers. This was a central aim of TERN (Murray et al., 2009a; Murray et al., 2009b) but was also implemented in other networks including AERS in Scotland through a Fellowship scheme (Christie and Menter, 2009) and participants reported less formal mentoring taking place within other networks, projects and workplace settings. What they described was different from, and complementary to, formal research training or research supervision, it was described by many as ‘apprenticeship’, the ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ proposed by Lave and Wenger (1991) often being cited as framing their expectations or experience of being mentored.

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The ESRC TLRP initiated an extensive programme of research mentoring offered across a wide network, under a scheme called ‘Meetings of Minds’. This ran from 2005 until the end of the programme, when the British Educational Research Association took responsibility for its continued operation. What perhaps is most notable about this scheme in terms of how networks can be ‘used’ to form promising social-material assemblages is that, rather than having a group of established mentors, applicants for funding were required to make links with a potential mentor and then a joint application for funding and support was submitted. As the application procedure involved proposing a programme of meetings, work and potential outcomes, this involved potential mentees in developing a proposal into which they had to ‘enroll’ the mentor, at which point the proposal would potentially begin to be shaped by (at least) two perspectives and to reflect the interests and intentions of both participants in the fellowship. Some of these fellowships were conceptualized and presented explicitly as facilitating knowledge exchange across sectors or between geographically dispersed participants. One participant describes how his fellowship supported exploration of ‘biographical and narrative methodologies in the context of understanding the professional development of teachers in further education colleges and the learning and skills sector’ (Tedder, 2009, p. 1). Others, however, were focused on the production of specific outcomes (such as membership of the editorial board of a journal, development of book outlines, research proposals, reports and journal articles) and so mentoring addressed strategies to support writing for publication, including focusing on the development of intellectual argument (Lawson, undated) and writing research proposals supported by mentors’ experience of successfully bidding for funds or of commissioning or reviewing research (examples include Galanouli, undated; Thurston, undated). Thurston’s account in particular highlights the value not simply of apprenticeship or support, but of engaging with an alternative perspective in coming to understand how notions of quality and originality were constructed: [my mentor gave] me critical insights into how a reviewer might respond to specific sections of the bid . . . helped me fine-tune the research questions and adapt the balance of the information contained with in the bid . . . She was able to provide me with just the sort of critical review that I was unable to obtain within my own institution . . . only did it enhance my current abilities to articulate my ideas as a researcher, but it also has led directly to a career development opportunity. (Thurston, undated, p. 1)

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Harris et al. (2009) build on the work of Stansell (1997), who suggests that mentors often create these supportive conditions unconsciously through modelling. They advance a model of ‘co-generative mentoring’ as a set of practices that go beyond the normal activities of a research methods training course, but at the same time distinct from collaborative working (Harris et al., 2009, p. 37). This recognizes that mentoring involves different set of practices and discourses in order to support (and switch appropriately between) acquisition and participation modes of learning (Sfard, 1998) and to make use of both interactional and contributory expertise (Collins and Evans, 2007). This demands a particular kind of network expertise both on the part of those being mentored, who need to reflect on and articulate what it is they want to gain from mentoring interactions, but also from those supporting networks, who need to help (or, at the very least, allow) potential mentees to find their way to the most appropriate mentors. Ruth, participating in her teacher educator networks, talked about ‘getting mentored here and . . . mentored there’ and the TEL researchers also talked about the value of exploring networks, particularly in interdisciplinary working, to discover: What people have to offer . . . sometimes you find someone who’s been that way before . . . but now is known for something else, but in the past they were where you are now . . . they dig back and pull out the things that really help you. (Miles, Research Associate, Focus Group) Mentors draw on their network roles to offer not only a different perspective (reviewer rather than reviewed; editor rather than author) but also to provide access to past histories of networks and the activities they have supported. What this means for those who seek to support networks then is that they need to be prepared to find ways to support these kinds of interactions as less experienced researchers actively seek mentoring, advice and formative feedback. Acting even as a potential mentor also places as new set of demands on experienced researchers: above and beyond contributing to research training, supervision or supporting early career researchers solely within the narrow confines of a particular research project or other organizational boundaries. At the same time, they have to be prepared to surrender their role as mentors: as in any networked interaction, and particularly those, like many mentoring relationships, with a high ‘coefficient of transversality’ and the ever-present potential for ‘reciprocal challenge’ (Guattari, 1984, pp. 18, 19), social relationships will inevitably evolve and impermanence is likely to be the norm.

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Supporting Reading and Writing Together A broader but clearly related role for networks was in supporting collaborative writing: of books, articles, proposals and other textual forms such as web content and case studies: as we have seen, this was a common rationale for seeking mentoring. Writing for academic audiences was seen not only as an important ‘embedded social practice’ by organizations and projects such as the TLRP and the TERN, but was also identified by participants in networks as defining of an identity as a researcher (a member of the ‘Bun Club’ reporting in a posting to the club wiki that having published an article she was now a ‘Real Researcher™’). Matthew, one of the teacher educator researchers, reported that it was only through ‘doing’ that this came about: People are interested in publishing. I think a lot of the confidence [is] around publishing and developing this . . . culture of actually doing it . . . a lot of research is around publishing. You need to be visible. It is actually sending the paper off that gives you the confidence. It is very difficult to have the confidence before you actually do it! (Matthew, Interview) At the same time, other researchers saw writing for publishing as being not solely an issue of confidence but of negotiating new networks with their own sets of practices and power relations. Ann, an established teacher educator with research interests in the application of post-structuralist theory in education, challenged the notion that publishing and the associated self-confidence it brought ensured a secure researcher identity: [This] guest speaker said, ‘Oh, the research world can be intimidating and hierarchical and it can be off-putting to beginning research but that’s a matter of self-confidence. And as you develop as a researcher and you become published . . . that doesn’t really become an issue’. But I would disagree with that. I don’t think it’s a self-confidence issue, I think it’s to do with power relations within the research world. (Ann, Interview) This suggests that networking initiatives that assert the primary importance of academic publication and which do not explore the complex relationships between writing, collaboration and identity may fail to develop enduring research cultures, or to equip individuals with the network expert ise to deal with new social and micro-political agendas as they engage with new networks.

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The kind of multi-purpose engagement both in and with research cultures that the ‘Bun Club’ initiated aligned with envisioning of network activities from other participants. Charles, a researcher with experience of mentoring groups of teacher educators, suggested: ‘You’ve got to nurture writing groups and collaborative projects and cultures with mentoring’, where it’s OK to say: ‘would you be willing to read my paper?’ The way this needed to be initiated, he suggested, was to say: “We’re going to build a network to support you in your research, and the way it’ll work is it’ll start very safe with a reading group, and your comments on a paper. It’s going to get more dangerous and exciting for you by having to write your pieces, and get comment and feedback on your paragraph or two in response to the reading. And then it’s going to get more dangerous because then we start sharing our research designs or our ideas for key questions.” (Charles, Interview) Confidence and risk-taking would be best supported, according to these views, by modelling the practices of broader research networks. Undertaking critical reading and reviewing and then incorporation of elements of key references into collaborative or individual writing for discussion within the local network would provide a basis for subsequent, more ambitious excursions: You’d [need to have] a facilitator who could pick good papers, but you just say, gave them a paper to read. And then use two or three papers and discuss them . . . [or] they all could choose one and comment on it and have a debate around these papers. And then the next stage might be when you’ve done that a couple of times, or whatever, or got something going, you could say, ‘Well, how are they relevant to you? Why don’t you write a bit more?’ (John, Interview) The value of supporting progress from critical reading, through reviewing, to writing for a progressively ‘graded public’ has been discussed in relation to professional learning of teachers involved in action research projects (see, for example, Altrichter, 2005) but these accounts suggest that such models may be far more widely applicable. The purpose of ‘reading for writing’, as Jonathan, one of the TEL researchers described it, was twofold: not only did it model ‘what good writing looked like’, it also built up a shared knowledge of a cultural and disciplinary references which could then be drawn upon when it came to writing: preparing the new

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researcher for engagement with new networks of conference audiences, seminar attendees and journal editors, reviewers and readers. Developing Technologies for Networked Expertise Researchers across settings and disciplinary backgrounds also discussed how network technologies could most usefully be designed, deployed and conceptualized in order to support both their research activities and the development of research capacities. While some had experience of virtual conferences and seminars and ‘augmented conferences’ in which face-toface interactions were accompanied by online activity before, during and after, for most participants, online environments were seen as means of storing and gaining access to resources – much as the collaboration environment ‘curated’ by Linda came to operate. As with virtual learning environments, as Bayne (2004) reminds us, the fact that there exists a ‘network rhetoric’ of sharing, collaboration and fluid, seamless movement does not mean that this is what happens in practice. What was noteworthy was that the issue was frequently not that the researchers had low levels of computer self-efficacy or knowledge of online technologies, but that the technologies they encountered online failed to live up to expectations: whatever the promise of ‘networking’, they did not match their experience of ‘offline’ dedicated computer-aided research applications (such as quantitative or qualitative analysis tools) or of the intensive face-toface interactions they saw as central to their practice. Charles, continuing his discussion of the role of networks to support writing, commented: Rather than trying to leap straight in, saying: ‘this [online environment] is a research network . . . maybe the idea of a reading group online . . . and then eventually a writing group online, because I think the writing is very important. (Charles, Interview) Online environments such as wikis, discussion forums and shared document editing systems were seen as being ‘too slow’ to support meaning making and knowledge construction, failing to support the intensity, immediacy and challenge that was enabled through face-to-face meetings: It all seems a bit too slow, or doesn’t get down to the nitty-gritty (Martin, Interview) [The virtual collaboration environment] was just too slow for us . . . because you tend to work in a certain way, and things were getting posted up and

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so things weren’t happening in real time. So people would say ‘I’ve posted this up’, whereas with an email you’d expect a reaction, there wasn’t any reaction. So you didn’t want to post a second thing up, because it then appeared as if you were not respecting other people’s thinking time. (Luke, Interview) The other feature that these accounts highlighted was that, while there was some interest (particularly among the TEL researchers, and those who had recent experience of membership of student cultures) in the potential of more multi-modal social software such as Facebook and Twitter, or videosharing environments such as YouTube, the expectation was that ‘online’ meant production of, or access to, ‘texts’. And this in turn was a barrier to prospective researchers who were cautious about committing to writing activities and sharing the results, and valued the intensive and interactive face-to-face environments offered by one-to-one mentoring, seminars or network meetings. Charles reflected on his experience of supporting early career researchers in teacher education: When you think about it online you’ve got to write. And that’s a lot more stressful than just having a chat. I mean whoever goes back over the text of some of the discussions that we have, in a face to face session, I mean it’d be just drivel wouldn’t it? (Charles, Interview) In terms of networks as places where associations are made and assemblages constructed, part of the problem was that few online environments were perceived as offering space for the messy negotiations, counterfactuals, half-formed hypotheses and formative critique that characterizes ‘meaning making’ and knowledge construction. For many of the researchers, both more and less experienced, online environments provided at best a neutral storage space in which comparatively well-formed representational assemblages (diagrams, plans, drafts of documents, outlines) could be presented: they were the space of Galison’s ‘trading language’ (Galison, 1996), guarded, selective and pragmatic, rather than a space for the discursive construction of new concepts and new meanings. The development and introduction of technologies, and particularly novel network technologies into research practice, provides useful indications of how networking practices may be supported more generally, and successful technology use is contingent asking searching questions about how the network, project or group functions and wishes to function. This, remember, is a key feature of Guattari’s transverse group as

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it extracts elements from the hierarchies and subjectivities across which it operates; and frames Raunig’s call for reflexivity in relation to new and rapidly evolving social forms. Encouraging this kind of reflection is a means of addressing (and potentially overcoming) the dual nature of many technological systems. Orlikowski and Barley (2001) argue that while they are often conceived as infrastructures or social artifacts, their affordances couched in terms of collaboration, communication or productivity, in reality they are manifested as limited sets of functions that imply or demand a certain level of practical skill and designate particular forms of interaction. Part of the TLRP’s support for the work of its projects and other activities, their engagement with a range of audiences, and research capacity building across the UK was the development of an ambitious research support infrastructure. At the time the programme began, many organizations involved in educational research were already using online resources, but most of these had developed in isolation leaving researchers having to manually search for resources across a range of digital archives, online libraries and websites, a situation reviewed by Sheffield and Saunders (2004). The TLRP infrastructure (parts of which were then replicated in Scotland to support the activities of the Applied Educational Research Scheme, and informed the work of the Access to Research Resources for Teachers (ARRTS) project in Northern Ireland) comprised: z

z

z

z

A digital repository of project outputs (articles, conference papers, research briefings, posters and other content) and which was linked to digital libraries including the British Education Index at Leeds University A virtual collaboration environment (which was subsequently adopted by the British Educational Research Association and was the same one used to support the work of the Teacher Education and Welsh Education Research Networks and the TEL Researchers) A programme website within which were project ‘sub sites’, news services, events notifications, different search interfaces and links to downloadable publications and posters Resources produced by the Research Capacity Network (the relationship between the TLRP and RCBN is discussed in Chapter 1) and other resources designed explicitly to act as ‘walk through’ guides on topics and issues that have an explicit capacity building dimension: research approaches and methods, particular research paradigms or epistemological positions; ethics; and engagement strategies.

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The point about this collection of technological elements is that they represented a deliberate attempt to construct not individual resources, courses or websites, but, over time, an extended information network with project websites linking to the digital repository; the digital repository accessible from within the virtual collaboration environment; metadata records of items added to the repository automatically submitted to the funding research council; and so on (Carmichael and Procter, 2004). Some of research projects did develop innovative approaches both to the management of their research activities (including the project described at the opening of this chapter) and others used them to enable new forms of interaction and collaboration with other researchers (Laterza et al., 2007), research ‘users’ including practitioners, and research participants including school students (McEvoy and Lundy, 2007; Wilson et al., 2007). A more enduring challenge is how to support not the intensive (but typically short term) working of research projects, but individuals and loose associations and collectivities such as those we have described: the teacher educator networks; groups of teacher-researchers based in schools; and informal, self-directing seminar groups. For these, resources like digital repositories of papers are clearly useful as concentrations of resources of known provenance and measurable quality; but this does not provide the early career researcher with the mediation and guidance that they would receive within a research project or from an experienced mentor. Perhaps the problem is inherent in the idea of providing a research infrastructure, when what we have seen is particularly valued is the opportunity to engage with assemblages of heterogeneous elements including those that are social, technological, material and conceptual. This is, however, a more challenging task for the designers and developers of online technologies. The ‘walk through’ guides developed by TLRP have elements in common with, for example, the now defunct ‘ERIC papers’ produced by the U.S. Department of Education and the topical articles of the Infed online ‘Encyclopaedia of informal education’ (both of which were mentioned by interviewees as being particu larly useful as ‘primers’ represent one approach): reifications constructed so that the reader can relate their content to their own practice, and also act as a first step in ‘signposting’ potential further readings and points of reference. As such they serve not just as isolated resources, but also as constructions, representational assemblages of elements that Hakkarainen et al. (2004, p. 162) describe as ‘knowledge artifacts’. Another approach allowed the development of a rich web archive of educational evaluations, principally case studies, which the author was

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able to develop in collaboration with members of the Cambridge Conference on Educational Evaluation (MacDonald and Parlett, 1973; Stronach and Torrance, 1995). This uses emerging semantic web technologies (see for example Berners-Lee et al., 2001; Shadbolt et al., 2006; Lytras and Naeve, 2006) to link heterogeneous digital resources, which are then displayed using a range of different visualization techniques. In this case, the web resource is based on a Fedora digital repository (Lagoze et al., 2006) (which holds the digital resources and descriptive metadata related to them, much as does the TLRP digital repository), the user interfaces being developed using the Exhibit web application framework: this allows data to be displayed using lists, maps, timelines, networks and image galleries (Huynh et al., 2007). Original resources collected from a series of significant educational evaluations from the 1970s until the present and carried out in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Japan and the USA were digitized and are presented so that users can explore all aspects of these evaluations ranging from project scoping and commissioning; research design; data collection; interpretation and analysis; reporting, dissemination and impact (Cambridge Conference on Evaluation, 2009). Collections of resources presented using visualizations including text listings, maps, timelines and image galleries, with the user able to select particular kinds of resource, which are described using a consistent vocabulary applied across all the collections. Users too can search across collections, progressively narrowing the parameters of their search; resources can then be downloaded or metadata references exported as ‘bookmarks’ or for import into a citation management tool. The application of a consistent vocabulary allows users to search across all collections for instances of particular kinds of resources (such as, for example, research proposals, ethical frameworks, observation schedules, field notes or ‘found objects’). These are presented as a ‘transverse’ collection, but maintain their associations with the project in which they were collected: a new association is created, but the exterior relations of its elements are preserved. What adds a further dimension to these collections is that original researchers were invited to take part in focused interviews in which they discussed the policy, macro- and micro-political and methodological issues that they faced when they undertook the original evaluations. These interviews while interesting in their own right also represent opportunities for the user of the web resource to make sense of and understand the significance of the other digital resources. In one example the researcher, Dr Cynthia Cole, describes how her evaluation of the ‘Buddy’ initiative

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(which introduced internet-connected computers into homes in the rural mid-West of the USA) was transformed by her collection of children’s drawings of their homes and families. In a video excerpt, she describes the documents and the interpretations she made of them; digitized copies of the originals are in the repository for download, as are the case study and cross-case analysis that followed from her work. The appeal of these semantic web technologies is that they allow the elements that are presented to the user to be presented in different ways, assemblages to be disassembled and new ones constructed, and the basis upon which elements were associated to be made (and remain) transparent. Rather than digital repositories being primarily oriented towards the storage and sharing of data or publications, they can be integrated into personal or collaborative environments that support the construction of new collections, the assertion of new associations and intensive collaboration and learning. The role of network technologies in supporting research, and capacity building in particular, is extended from allowing access to resources, to the provision of flexible spaces in which those resources can be manipulated and the contexts of their creation, application and reuse explored.

Infrastructures or Knowledge Environments? One of the issues raised in Chapter 1 was that the question of how to organize research, and to conceptualize that organization, was problematic. What the examples presented here, from the small-scale research organizations (seminar groups, mentoring schemes and clubs),to national and international programmes, suggest is that conceptualizing these as networks may be very valuable and productive, particularly when these are recognized as heterogeneous and constructed through the actions of their participants. At the same time, networks are hegemonic and in some cases reinforce existing hierarchies and inequalities: they are not intrinsically ‘transverse’, emancipatory or supportive of innovation. The establishment of networks may be seen as supportive of research and of research capacity, but it is important to remember Law’s concern about ‘performing’ networks (2006). Their conceptualization as ‘research infrastructures’, however, may lead to an overly structural view which reinforces an idea of knowledge construction as accumulation, and of learning and capacity building as transfer and technical training. Better, perhaps, is to work from an idea of research networks as providers and smoothers of

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knowledge environments where researchers can seek associations between the work of others and their own research, and enables and equips them to do some smoothing or transverse ‘tunnelling’ of their own: an expansive workplace that, with the appropriate use of network technologies, potentially knows no bounds. These do not necessarily have to use Web 2.0 or semantic web technologies: what is more significant than the specific technologies is recognition of the epistemological position that informs their design, development and deployment (see, for example, Paavola et al., 2002). The challenge, Massumi (1995) suggests, drawing on the computer-aided design software used by architects and designers, is to develop ‘active spaces’ which are ‘composed of, and support, interactions between dynamic elements’ (Massumi, 1995, p. 6). Underpinning view of the ‘research network’ (and the technologies that might support it) is another important conceptualization: that of the ‘researcher–networker’. The idea that networks are heterogeneous, fluid, relational and constructed through associations, rather than ‘built’ for specific purposes, means that, whether or not the focus of their research is ‘on’ networks, researchers operate ‘in’ and as elements ‘of’ networks. The examples presented in the two foregoing chapters provide many instances of this. To abstract skills, capacities and research practices, to focus on a single modality of interaction, or to simply try and trace how an object, document or other reification (such as a research instrument) ‘travels’ fails to adequately represent both complexities of research and the challenges of capacity building. This has significant implications for thinking about research design, research relationships, methods and ethics: as well as for research capacity building. The next chapter will consider some approaches to researching networks and networking, and examine some of the ways in which ‘researcher–networkers’ can go beyond thinking in terms of ‘using’, ‘building’ or ‘supporting’ networks and can begin to reflect on their own networks and networking as a significant part of their research practices and capacities.

Chapter 5

Researching Educational Research Networks Introduction It is becoming clear that the theoretical position one takes with regard to networks and networking profoundly affects the nature of the approaches used to study them. As the examples we have considered in Chapters 3 and 4 demonstrate, different understandings of the same sets of phenomena lead to very different interpretations of structures, forces at work, practices and discourses involved and, for that matter, even whether the setting or subject on questions even constitutes a network at all. What is also evident is that, other than the highly reductive approaches used in some forms of social network analysis, the research approaches, methods of data collection and kinds of analysis that contribute to understanding of networks are highly eclectic: not only is network research largely ‘mixed method’, there is extensive borrowing and remaking of concepts, terms and data, sometimes leading to confusion, sometime to generative exchanges and critique as part of a ‘culture of inquiry’. This was evident in prior research undertaken on teacher learning networks (Carmichael et al., 2006; McCormick et al., 2010), where the relationship between the specific meanings of terms from social network analysis (distance, centrality, connectedness) and their value as qualitative categories is explored: and this is no less significant in relation to research networks more broadly. Hybrid approaches, therefore, may represent a way forward. The work of Flap et al. (2003) and Van der Gaag and Snijders (2003) in the Netherlands has shown how qualitative accounts can be used to complement and extend quantitative survey and census data in explorations of the social capital available through networks. Staged studies in which initial high level ‘mapping’ tasks precede more focused studies of specific networked communities or individuals, the former providing some of the source data for subsequent inquiries (Marsden, 2005). These approaches were implemented by Palonen et al. (2004) and Hakkarainen et al. (2004, pp. 85–91) in their studies of telecommunications companies, who describe how ‘social network analysis [made] visible the structure of the organization’s

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communications and the nature of the information flow’ while also using interviews to explore the nature of the interactions, individual and group learning and attitudes toward knowledge sharing (Hakkarainen et al., 2004, p. 85). The theoretical perspectives and approaches to networks that we reviewed in the latter half of Chapter 2 use rather different methods to research networks which, of course, they may not see in terms of structures and ‘flow’ in the same way as social network and social capital theory would suggest. Actor Network Theory, with its emphasis on heterogeneity and the need for ‘reciprocal analysis’ as the associations in a network are traced out, has tended to make use of single, non-generalizable case studies focused around specific settings, artifacts or other actants (Sørenson, 2009; Suchman, 2007) or on sequences of critical incidents or translations (Latour, 1999). Deleuzian approaches to understanding networks and assemblages involve, at their core, the attempt to go beyond representation of singular entities (including people), and argues for more widely scoped and contingent inquiries into their organization; the disparate series and associations they form; the linkages, resonances and forced movements which result; and the qualities and extensions, species and parts which form the ‘double differenciation’ of any system: that is, both its virtual and conceptual elements, and its realization in artifacts, practices and discourses (Deleuze, 2004, pp. 347–8). The tensions we explored at the end of Chapter 2, between grand narratives of universal networks, and the need for small-scale studies of individual subjectivities (the accounts of the precarious individual researcher, the student group, the mentor or the mentored) present a challenge for any research into networks, and to hybrid and mixed method approaches in particular. The ‘slippery’ and contested nature of network concepts and terminology needs to be kept in mind at all times: the ‘network metaphor’ is sufficiently powerful that it may appear to offer opportunities for local observations to be related or generalized to the global, (as Hardt and Negri’s would suggest), while in fact this may be unhelpful or misleading.

Online Research? Before we proceed, it is worth reviewing the online/offline distinction (or rather the blurring of this distinction) in relation to researching networks.

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With the development of network technologies and the internet in particular, the notion of ‘online research’ has emerged (Mann and Stewart, 2000; Hine, 2005; Blank et al., 2008). Two views have, since the early 1990s, dominated ‘online research’. One is that the ‘online’ represents a community, or a place in which communities are built (Rheingold, 2000; Smith and Kollock, 1999), and this has in turn determined that the appropriate methodology for study of ‘the online’ is some form of ethnography, albeit one constrained by the limitations of electronic communications but also enabled by new opportunities for interaction. Hine (2000, p. 10) describes online ethnographies as ‘wholeheartedly partial’, drawing on the methods and commitments of ethnography but not quite the real thing. Others have argued that measuring online research against a ‘real world’ equivalent misses the point about the new forms of representation, interaction and knowledge construction that internet technologies enable, and that research approaches need to be adapted accordingly. Kozinets (2010) argues that, as ethnography is itself socially constructed and typically highly eclectic in its methods, studies of online communities should be considered on their own merits and defines the methods of what he terms ‘netnography’. boyd argues, along the same lines: Networked technologies have completely disrupted any simple construction of a field site. Traditionally, ethnographers sought out a physical site and focused on the culture, peoples, practices, and artifacts present in a geographically bounded context. This approach made sense because early anthropologists studied populations with limited mobility. Furthermore, there was a collective understanding that culture and people were contained by place. Mobility complicated matters (resulting in excellent ethnographies of diaspora populations), but mediated technologies changed the rules entirely . . . we cannot take for granted the idea that culture is about collocated peoples. It is not a question of mobility but of access . . . (boyd, 2008, p. 27) The other dominant view has seen the internet as a network that can be ‘mapped’ and ‘measured’ and across the structural and informational tiers of which social network analysis techniques can be applied (Barabási et al., 1999; Dodge et al., 2009). In fact, the availability of a vast and growing structural network with what Castells would describe as an ‘information tier’ that is linked together has allowed social network analysis to develop rapidly, with data ‘born digital’ supplementing or even supplanting those collected using face-to-face means. This has led to interest in how social

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networks may be ‘extracted’, either through selection of appropriate proxies for relationships (such as contributions to online bulletin boards, links on web pages, or email contact (Ahuja and Carley, 1999) or through mining of data such as web pages for semantic information suggestive of particular types of relationship (Mika, 2005). This is exemplified by the work of Contractor (2009), who has studied massively multiplayer environments such as World of Warcraft and has employed ‘confirmatory network analysis’ to explore complex social relationships and patterns of information sharing. Another example is the investigation of the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) conducted by Watts (2003a); the accessibility and structure of this online resource, combined with the unproblematic nature of the relationships it expresses (all films are uniquely identified, as are all actors, and an actor is either on a cast list or is not) allows the development and testing of social network concepts and measures in a way that would previously have been impossible. But, as in our earlier discussions of research approaches more generally, it is in creative hybrids that the answers may be found. Howard (2002) describes a combination of social network analysis of online data and broadly ethnographic methods similar to the staged research of Palonen et al. (2004) and Hakkarainen et al. (2004); and Orgad (2005) argues for the importance of iteration between online and offline modes of research in order for one to inform the other.

Research into Networks, Research in Networks What are offered here are five approaches to researching educational research networks which are organized not in terms of their scale (from global to local), or whether they are online or offline, but rather in how they reflect different research relationships. They vary in the extent to which the participants are engaged both with and in the networks under examination, and range from those in which they are detached from the processes of analysis (participants as data, in effect); through those in which they are engaged as co-analysts of network data; to those in which the distinction between researcher and researched is blurred, the emphasis being on networking to enable new forms of association and directions of inquiry. In practice, what this means is that the research approaches are progressively more ‘overt’ and critical in the ways in which both researchers and participants (if that distinction even holds) engage with networking concepts and practices.

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Mapping Educational Research Networks How well do the structural approaches based on social network analysis work in a field such as education, given all of the issues discussed in Chapter 1? While it may be possible to map more well-defined academic fields such as pure mathematics or the physical sciences (Newman, 2004), or sociology (Moody, 2004) the patterns we have seen in relation to disciplinary influences, the wide range of academic and professional publications in which educational research is published, and the lack of systematic accumulation of research data makes it difficult to construct convincing ‘maps’ of the educational research landscape. Add to this the mobility of many researchers as they move between teaching and research roles and the extent to which much educational research is not widely reported (commissioned research, internal institution-level reports and evaluations are examples) and it is clear, as Lawn and Furlong (2007) report, any ‘mapping’ maybe overly dependent on formal reporting procedures such as research assessment exercises or other government reviews (which are, of course, themselves highly selective and performative). It is possible, however, to map localized networks, particularly if some meaningful boundaries can be established or if some kind of ‘name generator’ activity reveals a reasonably coherent networked community or area of higher networked ‘density’. In a study of the TLRP, Procter (2007) used the ready availability of bibliographical information about ‘project outputs’ from the programme’s digital repository to identify co-authorship networks, where, following Newman and Moody, co-authorship of any publication was taken a proxy for the existence of social relationship. This demonstrated how different research projects had different practices in relation to authorship and, while it pointed up the evolution of cliques within projects (sometimes reflecting methodological differences, or institutional affiliations), it also showed how ties were formed between projects, often through participation in thematic activities, cross-project seminars, or as a result of new projects later in the programme drawing together individuals who had previously worked and written separately. This process (similar to that used to analyse patterns of co-authorship within ‘Bun Club’ in Chapter 4) produced some rather attractive network maps, of which one is shown in Figure 5.1. Most of the clusters represent projects within the programme, with co-authorship between members of different projects (for example, on thematic seminar publications) beginning to establish larger components. Even by the end of the main phase of the TLRP, its diversity meant that there was little sign of the

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A

C

B

Figure 5.1: The area of high network density at ‘C’ can be attributed to a single publication with 31 authors.

‘giant component’ described by Newman (2004) in relation to other more ‘cohesive’ disciplines. Selection of appropriate proxy measures (and a critical evaluation of their validity) is essential in this kind of analysis; as Procter (2007) reports, a wide variation in the publishing and authorship practices across projects was found, and it is wise not to attribute too much to the patterns that emerge. Rich data sources such as digital repositories allow analyses on the basis of different kinds of relationships; as each published resource produced by the TLRP was associated with a project, one or more authors, one or more topics (from a limited vocabulary of ‘keywords’) and a particular ‘publication type’ (book, article, report etc.), it was possible to construct network maps showing not only ‘who writes with whom’ but also ‘who shares an interest (topic) with whom’, ‘what projects share interests with other projects’ and so on. With computerbased social network analysis tools it becomes comparatively easy to generate many different such ana lyses and produce different visualizations of these. The danger, of course, is that these may produce the appearances of centrality, density or distance as a result of, say, limitations or inconsistencies in the applications of keywords, or as an artifact of the computer program itself. The real value of these analyses (and for that matter the kinds of visual representations shown in Figure 5.1) becomes apparent when they are

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combined with qualitative accounts or used as the focus of interviews or group discussions. This is also the case with network mappings and other analyses generated not from data mining but from ‘name generator’ activities across groups of individuals. As part of a formative evaluation of a distributed research and development project working across three universities and involving teachers, researchers and software developers, Morales and Carmichael (2007) used a free-form mapping task, based in turn on that developed for use in teacher learning networks (Fox et al., 2007; McCormick et al., 2010), both as a ‘think-aloud protocol’ activity and as a ‘name generator’ for the kind of more structured network mapping task described by Palonen et al. (2004) and Hakkarainen et al. (2004). The initial task asked participants to draw and talk about the means by which they maintained communications within and beyond the project: We would like you to visualize the networks you are involved in and are going to ask you to communicate these through drawing rather than writing. Whilst you are drawing we would like you to explain verbally what you are doing and we will tape-record these as annotations to the drawing. Using pictures, and lines to link the pictures to show connections, could you show with whom and how you keep in touch? (Morales and Carmichael, 2007, p. 1035) This activity generated a series of drawings which, like those described by Fox et al. (2007), were both conceptions of how the project worked and perceptions of their own experiences. While these, and the accompanying narratives, were intrinsically interesting, for the purposes of this activity, they were used to draw up a large ‘matrix’ listing all of the contacts (some beyond the project group itself being aggregated into categories: ‘teaching colleagues’; ‘students’; ‘software companies’). Participants were then asked to assess the frequency and nature of their communications with each person or group on the list. Triangulation at this point revealed that many of the individual maps had been ‘incomplete’ as participants were able to offer responses to names on the aggregated list that had not appeared in their original representations, or featured in their interviews. Aggregation of all of the matrices revealed a complex communication and advice network, which included not only the formal ties established through the management of the project, regular meetings, and structured online exchanges but examples of cross-institutional and transverse groups. A further set of interviews, in which these patterns were discussed, confirmed that, particularly among the more junior members of

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the project, alternative communication channels had been established in order to help them share knowledge and solve problems as they occurred, rather than waiting for formal meetings to occur. Perhaps most interesting was the discovery that ‘advice size’ (a key measure identified in the work of Hakkarainen et al. (2004)) was not ‘symmetrical’. Some members of the project who did not describe themselves as particularly active in providing advice were in fact identified by others as key sources of information, advice and formative critique, with echoes of the ‘unconscious mentoring’ identified by Stansell (1997) that was discussed in Chapter 4. Where these approaches are of greatest value in the context of research capacity building, then, may not be to seek to measure the size of networks or to assess personal or group ‘reach’ or ‘impact’. Instead, they may provide a means to help individuals and groups begin to explore common points of reference or interest; to determine the sources of information and advice upon which they are overly dependent, or upon which they could draw more; or to recognize structural similarities and differences between their own roles and those of others; and opportunities for new associations and collaborations. Exploring Networks through Co-Interpretation The examples above already go further than simple network analysis of data gathered or mined from different sources and subject to a kind of secondary reanalysis, with interview and focus groups being used to collect data and confirm emerging patterns. More direct still are approaches in which researchers and participants work together and undertake co-interpretation and ‘sensemaking’ activities in order to understand patterns in complex network data, identify critical incidents and discuss the ways in which network roles and practices have evolved. The large volumes of data produced through online networking activities offer many opportunities for this kind of inquiry, but there is a need for careful data reduction in such cases in order to provide an appropriate focus for discussion and interpretation. As part of an investigation of how groups of educational researchers had made use of a virtual collaboration environment developed as part of the online infrastructure of the TLRP, extensive ‘logs’ of activities were reduced to show numbers of ‘logins’; contributions to online discussions and chat; and uploads and downloads of documents (Procter et al., 2008). This allowed the production of composite graphs with individual participants’ activities over a period of about a year highlighted. This allowed

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general questions about levels of engagement in project activities and in use of the online environment, but also provided a basis for questions about specific incidents and the research practices associated with them, including: z z z z

What was happening in the project at this particular period? Why were you using the online environment so much/so little at this period? How do you explain the differences between the pattern for [person a] and [person b]? Why did [person a] become involved in using the online environment at this point?

These questions initiated a shared process in which both researcher and participants were able to make sense of prior networking activities. Weick (1995) states that: To talk about sensemaking is to talk about reality as an ongoing accomplishment that takes form when people make retrospective sense of situations in which they find themselves and their creations. There is a strong reflexive quality to this process. (Weick, 1995, p. 15) The kinds of accounts that emerged from these discussions included insights into longer-term patterns of networking, closely associated with the design and conduct of research: But you can see I think that’s me coming in and I think that little peak would have been about October . . . . . that would have been about time to initially just identify the schools and the paperwork around, drafting up letters . . . this is doing consents, I can see those little peaks are the times I was trying to get access to schools. (Rachel, Sensemaking Interview) What also emerged were insights into emergent ‘technology-enabled’ research practices: I tend to log on it mainly for . . . the chat sessions and [they] take place on Monday mornings at ten o’clock, so I would imagine that when it . . . peaked here we tried to have a . . . session [online] every Monday. (Deborah, Sensemaking Interview)

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At the end of the online chat sessions mentioned, one member of the group produced a summary of discussions and decisions taken, which was then uploaded into the online environment as a permanent record. Analysis of online activity alone might not have captured the richness of these activities, evidence of the emergent discursive practices being lost in a mass of online data. These accounts showed how the use of the online environment to support research activities involved negotiation and discussion of what it offered, how it might be used, and of methodological, interpersonal and ethical issues that might arise and need to be addressed. In many cases, an initial flurry of activity as members of the researchers tested out the possibilities and limitations of online networking was followed by what one of them described as a ‘whoa’ moment, at which there was a pause and discussion about ‘how we are going to use this?’ This kind of collective reflection is clearly an important practice: we have been seeing this in our vignettes and examples from our discussion of Guattari’s ‘subject group’ onwards. But more significant is that the use of a focused sensemaking activity exposed the existence of such events and practices in a way that social network analysis or analysis of online activity alone would have failed to do. Sensemaking of this kind allowed both researchers and participants to develop new insights into patterns of networking activities both offline and online. Researchers were able to return to usage data equipped with new interpretative frameworks and to look for patterns which might previously have gone unnoticed, while participants were motivated to think about new affordances of the online environment and how best to support its effective use within their continued research activities. The more general issue is that data that provide information about a single mode of inter action (whether it is online activity, co-authorship, attendance at events or some other measure) can serve as a basis for a one-dimensional view of a network. These can be very useful in mapping the extent of a social network (as in the case of name-generator activities) or charting the intensity of networked interactions (as in the online data analysis); but their real value comes when they are used as the basis or foundations upon which understandings of the multi-dimensional and heterogeneous nature of more varied assemblages can be built up through extended enquiry. The potential for these activities to additionally fulfil a research capacity role should not be overlooked as they offer significant opportunities they offer for individual and collective reflection. Procter et al. (2008) report how what was ostensibly part of an evaluation of online technologies led

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to managers of projects to evaluate their research management practices more generally (recognizing critical incidents, ‘bottlenecks’ and issues of differential workload and available time, for example). And sensemaking around even limited and reduced network data enabled early career researchers to identify ways in which they could ‘position themselves’ better within a project group and make better use of network technologies to support their own research activities. Articulating Networks through Technology Design When technology research, design and development processes are closely linked, they provide opportunities that go beyond the kinds of analysis of technologies in use and the ways in which they may constrain or enable, or may be remade through practice. Even in the cases of technologies that are brought into researchers’ practices (as in the case of the virtual collaboration environment mentioned above), selective adoption, ‘hacking’ and social practices may lead to what is ostensibly ‘the same’ technology having multiple instantiations and taking on a range of meanings and roles. As reported in Laterza et al. (2007), different groups of researchers will see combinations of affordances and limitations in technologies: we have already discussed one such ‘remaking’ of technologies in Chapter 4, in the case of Linda’s use of specific features of a virtual collaboration environment, supplemented by some additional strategies of her own. Until comparatively recently, such creative appropriations and combinations were beyond the technological capabilities of most educational researchers, and customization, adaptation and design of new technological tools were highly dependent on the availability of appropriate technological support. With the emergence of ‘Web 2.0’ technologies and social software environments (O’Reilly, 2005), and the opportunities these offer for individuals and groups to establish and adapt technological systems and to use these to support networking, however, this situation is changing. However, while Web 2.0 technologies may be increasingly established as part of ‘student cultures’ and in teaching and learning (Alexander, 2008), they do not as yet play significant roles in ‘research training’ or ‘research’ cultures, as Deem and Brehony (2000) would define them. That said, several of the Research Development Initiative projects mentioned in Chapter 1 have engaged with these technologies and some educational research conferences (most obviously in the area of technology-enhanced learning) have used ‘Web 2.0’ technologies to extend the reach of events, with podcasts, online discussions and audience feedback to speakers using blog technologies.

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In order to discover what role ‘Web 2.0’ technologies might have in supporting early career researchers, a series of participatory design activities were organized as part of the Social and Professional Network for Early Career Researchers in Education (SPNECRE) project described in Chapter 1. In these ‘workshops’, participants were invited to reflect on their current use of technologies to support their research activities; their knowledge of ‘Web 2.0’ technologies and their features based on experience in other settings (including teaching and learning, social groups and personal life) and to identify ways in which their work as researchers could be supported, enhanced or transformed by the development of appropriate technologies using the ‘Web 2.0’ paradigms of user-generated content, information exchange and aggregation (‘mashups’) and person-to-person contact. ‘Paper prototyping’ activities were used to elicit ideas and designs, which were then presented, scrutinized and interrogated by other participants and formed a focus for further discussions. On the basis of these initial designs, more ambitious and speculative ideas began to emerge. Some were very vague (‘something that just brings everything I need together in one place’) while others emerged as groups of participants began to generate ideas by critiquing, extending and combining elements from across the prototypes: often very rapidly and in divergent and illuminating ways (see Carmichael and Burchmore, 2010, for a more full description of these processes and comparison with more conventional software design approaches). This activity was less overtly concerned with networks that those outlined previously; what participants were being asked to represent in their designs were software applications and web interfaces rather than their conceptualizations or experiences of idealized or specific networks. Not all of the ideas that were proposed were particularly novel in technological terms, and not all of them involved networking practices: some were focused on issues of personal productivity, for example. But others represented very clear articulations of their preoccupations as early career researchers, and many were, indeed, concerned with networks and networking. In designing or envisioning technological solutions (most of which were conceived of as ‘tools’ or ‘widgets’ of the kind found in social software environments such as Facebook and LinkedIn, or the kind of ‘apps’ that run on portable devices and smartphones), participants raised issues about access to appropriate sources of information; the management of ‘weak ties’ such as contacts made at conferences and other events; the value of reviews and recommendations from other researchers; and aggregations of data from many online sources.

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Most of the participants in these workshops were familiar with online citation management, concept mapping and social networking tools, and identified aspects of these that would be useful in future generations of software – there were many suggestions of ‘cutting and pasting’ elements from different technologies of the nature of: ‘I’d combine the personal profile from [social software environment a] with the alerts tool from [environment b] and then I could get automatic updates about . . .’. But this bricolage went beyond technological features, as participants identified examples and elements of heterogeneous networks they would like to be able to interrogate, navigate or construct. A good example would be an online environment in which expressing ones’ current interests in a personal profile would allow one to receive messages from publishers’ alerting services about new publications of relevance. It would also allow automated contact suggestion so that others with similar interests, who might be amenable to contact and collaboration could be identified. Finally, it would offer a means by which recommendations (from the alerting services) could easily be passed to ones’ new or established contacts. Looking at examples like this raises several issues. The first is that, even if they do not yet exist in a single environment oriented towards education researchers, all of the component parts and the technologies are already available: the participants, in proposing this, are drawing on their knowledge or experience of existing technological assemblages in order to propose a new one. Second, the themes that are being addressed in the design of such a tool or online environment (access to information of quality; meaningful accumulation; collaboration, mentoring and advice) are all familiar to use from the vignettes and practices of the preceding chapters. And third, the networks that such a technological assemblage would allow researchers to engage with are highly heterogeneous: the dominant language may be of social networking, but what is being envisaged here includes people, search engines, taxonomies, documents and information fragments as short as a reference to a web page or online document, but loaded with meaning and capable of maintaining or reestablishing a network tie. Asking participants, particularly those new to a field or to research, to ‘design a network’ is too challenging a task, but encouraging them to design an artifact or reification to support a practice or address a problem makes the issue more tractable. The design processes surfaced and reified practices that were tacit, or, more interesting still, research and networking practices that participants felt were currently unrealized, untested or too ambitious. As such, this design-as-research approach may have considerable

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potential in initiating dialogues about current research capacity issues, current networking practices, and how these might develop and be supported. Also interesting to consider is the question of what is an appropriate focus for these design activities; the SPNECRE project took as its focus the design of collaborative online environments, but there are other possibilities. A space, an event, a text, a representation of an individual or a group; all of these could be the basis of design-as-research activities which serve as a starting point for investigation of the research and networking practices they might support, constrain, enable or challenge. Documenting Networks ‘In the Wild’ The foregoing approaches (mapping, sensemaking, design-as-research) typically bring research participants into a specialized environment in which networking and research practices are then discussed: interviews, focus groups and design activities take place around data, analyses, prototypes and reported (or envisaged) practices. And while these activities may contribute to and influence subsequent practice or function as translations in a wider network (remembering the arguments of Latour (1999) and Law (2006)), they are contained and bounded in space and time. The potential to gather very large data sets over long periods about some aspect of networked research practice (as in the sensemaking example) does not negate the ‘special’, artificial and bounded nature of the space in which the appropriately reduced data set forms the focus of a discussion. Establishing different kinds of research relationships allows other dimensions of networking practices to be explored, and in particular can help to develop ego-centred or subjective views of how networks function, what roles they play in the lives of participants, and how their expertise is applied in the course of their work. We will consider two approaches in which researchers were invited to document their own networks and networking practices and their relative merits. The first of these approaches was used as part of the participatory design and development project in which Celia (Chapter 3) and Linda (Chapter 4), and some of the participants in the sensemaking activities (this chapter) were involved. In order to determine the potential role that collaborative network technologies already played in their research, and in order to inform future developments, they were provided with a portable digital video camera and a supply of tapes, and were asked to undertake a series of structured and semi-structured data collection activities. These included an activity called ‘a day in the life’, in which they were

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asked to record events in which they individually engaged in ‘networking’ or ‘collaboration’ activities. While one purpose of this activity was to help understand the use of online technologies, and some of the activities documented did include the use of technologies, this was not the primary focus of the activity (one incentive for participation in the data collection was that the project retained the camera at the end of the project, for its own use). The ‘day in the life’ activity did not in fact demand that all recording took place within a 24-hour period, and in fact most participants collected about 2 hours of data (equivalent to one digital tape). In some cases, this was narrated, documentary style, in others, a short introduction preceded a segment in which the participants went about their research activities, which included: z

z

z

z

Groups of researchers meeting and discussing survey design, data collection, analysis and undertaking writing tasks, including the drafting of an abstract for a conference presentation Staff working together to discuss the organization and management of online resources, including talking through the processes of using the virtual collaboration environment itself Researchers visiting schools to negotiate access to classrooms for data collection, discuss the processes by which classes of children might be selected for observation, and organize the implementation of the projects’ ethical framework and informed consent arrangements Mentoring activities in which more experienced researchers worked with experienced colleagues on research processes using ‘think-aloud’ approaches: ‘talking through’ a draft survey design, or suggesting alterations to the text of a project leaflet

One pattern that emerged across several of the projects involved was the importance of face-to-face meetings, even when these involved a considerable amount of travel: in fact several of the participants explicitly recorded parts of their journeys as aspects of their ‘networking’ activities. While online collaboration, including audio and video conferencing was used, this was widely seen as being a means of arranging ‘real’ meetings, maintaining contact with research participants (such as those based in schools), and undertaking project management tasks. The real ‘work’ of research was still a face-to-face business, with online communication no substitute for working closely together on writing or analysis, or for visiting research sites and spending time in classrooms and staffrooms.

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The data that were collected were valuable in several respects. They provided insights into the working practices of the researchers, including the kinds of processes we have discussed at length in Chapters 3 and 4; in some cases, confirming and exemplifying data collected through interviews and focus groups involving the same participants. The open nature of the task also illuminated participants’ understandings and conceptualizations of ‘networking’ and ‘collaboration’: tellingly, the networks they identified were not solely (or even predominantly) ‘external’ ones: project teams, ‘critical friends’ and teacher-researchers were all represented as members of ‘project networks’. Finally, the data collected proved an important basis for further discussions and sensemaking activities, interpretations of what was portrayed on the video records being offered back to participants and opening up lines of inquiry into how typical or frequent were activities; the motivations and drivers behind the practices observed; and how these had evolved over time. As the data were collected in the context of a research and development project, extracts from the video record also proved valuable in informing software developers about the practices that online tools might support, the concerns and priorities of educational researchers as ‘users’, and the means by which new technology-enhanced research approaches might be introduced and supported: the more naturalistic data complementing and extending that collected through more structured design activities. An alternative to the highly subjective ‘day in the life’ approach, and the opportunity it provides for participants themselves to determine ‘what matters’ is offered by ‘day experience’ methods (Kahneman et al., 2004; Hektner et al., 2006). These typically involve participants being sent short messages (via pagers or mobile phones) to ask them where they currently are, what they are doing, with whom they are interacting, and, optionally, more focused questions about use of technologies or other material practices. Participants may take photographs, make a short diary entry, or respond via the communications technology used to ‘prompt’ them. Clearly participants can still decide ‘what matters’ but this approach can provide a more varied and eclectic range of data which can in turn lead to a different, less self-conscious reflexivity. Riddle and Arnold (2007), who used ‘day experience’ approaches to explore the day-to-day lives of students (including postgraduate research students in education and other fields) suggest: This method casts participants in the role of co-researchers, rather than as relatively passive sources of un-processed data. It sets out to enthuse

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and engage the participants in stimulating ways . . . [it] works well to complement other methods such as surveys, interviews and focus groups and may provide a useful comparison with the accepted wisdom or the institutional perspective. (Riddle and Arnold, 2007, p. 2) Once again, additional value is gained by through the reworking of these data through collaborative analysis, triangulation and sensemaking. Riddle and Arnold (2007) organized focus groups they described as ‘slide nights’ at the end of data collection episodes. Part reflection, part social event, these allowed participants to talk about the photographs they had taken, expanding upon the significance of locations and the outcomes of interchanges and meetings, and reflecting on the networks they were developing in the course of their research. Drawing on these data, Howell (2008) used elements of spatial theory to explore patterns in postgraduate student activity and networking, highlighting some instances of restrictive workplace environments and training cultures, and the importance of provision of networking opportunities to address both intellectual and social isolation. Use of ‘cultural probes’ (Gaver et al., 1999), whether in more or less structured frameworks, to undertake ‘live’ research inquiries into networking practices shifts the focus not only onto participants as researchers, but also focuses on the material practices of networking, not just network structures or conceptual models. This has been explored in the context of teacher practice and professional learning by MacGregor, who draws on a combination of visual methods, concept mapping and Actor Network Theory to explore the materiality and the heterogeneity of learning environments (McGregor, 2003; McGregor, 2004), leading to her characterization of teachers as ‘network effects’. This in turn suggests an interesting way of conceptualizing the ways in which individual actions and experience contribute to collective research capacity development, and which echoes the importance of the interfaces between individual and the collective learning highlighted by Hakkarainen et al. (2004). Research as Networking; Networking Research The final example in this chapter is not so much a description of a research method or approach, nor is it offered as a model of practice, but rather as an account of how research activities more generally might usefully be conceptualized as networking, and what new understandings this might bring. It draws on my own experience of a relatively small-scale research project

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which explored aspects of teaching and learning in higher education, and the prospects for technology-enhanced learning associated with those. The project, called ‘Transforming Perspectives’, was concerned to explore how the idea of ‘threshold concepts’ (Meyer and Land, 2005; Meyer and Land, 2006) might inform the development of technologyenhanced learning in undergraduate courses. ‘Threshold concepts’ are associated with five properties or characteristics: learners find them to be ‘transformative’, ‘irreversible’, ‘integrative’, ‘bounded’ and ‘troublesome’. Not all concepts identified as ‘thresholds’ display all of these properties, however: Meyer and Land (2006, pp. 6–7) say they are ‘likely’ to do so, the ‘boundedness’ is not necessary and the ‘troublesomeness’ is ‘potential’. Although Meyer and Land acknowledge that threshold concepts as they define them can be understood and researched from both cognitive and social learning perspectives, and others, notably Cousin (2006), have highlighted the social influences and outcomes associated with radical cognitive change, research into threshold concepts has been, to date, dominated by cognitivist perspectives both on the nature of concepts and on teaching, learning and assessment. The project has been described in a number of publications (Irvine and Carmichael, 2009; Carmichael, 2010; Carmichael, in press) and it is not my intention to replicate those accounts here. But it is worth explaining that the project was from the outset conceived as a network, with the dual purposes of researching the substantive problem of how threshold concepts might inform technology design and deployment and increasing the willingness and capacity of participating individuals and university departments to undertake research into their pedagogical practice. The issue of ‘research capacity’ was an integral part of the research design, and was oriented towards supporting research in order to, in turn, inform the development of innovation in teaching and learning. The project involved a group of teachers (including research students involved in teaching and tuition) drawn from across ten disciplinary areas, although (as in so many of the examples featured in this book) many had complex careers spanning different disciplines and both academic and practitioner roles. In an initial seminar, a presentation of the ‘concept of threshold concepts’ was followed by discussions within and across participating disciplinary groups as to the potential value of threshold concepts as an organizing or interpretative artifact in their pedagogical practice; areas of the curriculum in which they might be explored; possible research approaches; and ‘candidate’ concepts. On the basis of presentations of what were described as initial ‘positions’, members of the research team

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were able to offer further insights on threshold concepts, provide pointers to appropriate parts of the growing literature on threshold concepts (the project produced an annotated bibliography (Burchmore et al. 2008); and to suggest others; and to assist in designing small-scale inquiries into their current pedagogical practice. What was also evident at this stage in the project was the way in which groups, often, but not always, from related disciplines opted to work together, to exchange resources, or to ‘try out’ ideas and proposals on each other. Providing opportunities for this kind of negotiation was an essential element of the seminars, and the research team found that they spent a good deal of time brokering potential collaborations and exchanges. One of the most significant issues around which there was discussion and some disagreement was the status of the concept of ‘threshold concepts’ itself and how this should be reflected in classroom practice (Carmichael, in press). Some participants saw the ‘concept of thresholds’ as useful and, for teachers, empowering, but it was something that would remain external to the teaching and learning environment: an artifact that aided in curriculum design, but not one with which students needed to be troubled other than being alerted to the fact that a particular topic was ‘difficult’. Others, notably in the social sciences, characterized the experience of firstyear undergraduates in terms of learning ‘encounters’ with complex ideas: for these teachers, ‘threshold concepts’ was simply one more theoretical or conceptual element that they would ‘take into their’ classrooms, encouraging students to interrogate it and reflect on their own experience much as they would any other aspect of the curriculum. These differences clearly shaped the research approaches that participants developed with the support of the research team, and the forms in which the outcomes of their research activities were materialized. If we look across all of the activities making up the broader ‘Transforming Perspectives’ project network, it becomes apparent that, despite some of what emerged being underpinned by particular institutional imperatives, disciplinary curricula or epistemological commitments, and not being particularly open to any kind of ‘redirection’, this was the exception. And while individual participants were able to identify ways in which the project had allowed them to develop new skills, engage with new theoretical perspectives and literatures and establish valuable new social connections, the project offered much more than opportunities for individuals to build social capital for themselves. The provision of ‘smoothing’ spaces in seminars, the cross-project brokerage role of the researchers, and the availability of a growing range of boundary objects and knowledge artifacts

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Table 5.1 Transforming perspectives: selected elements of the heterogeneous networks acting within the project Element

Examples within the project

Participant Roles

Researcher; teacher/tutor; research student; learning technologist (and combinations of these)

Prior and Current Disciplines

Engineering; biosciences; education; theology; computer sciences; social sciences; earth sciences; music; humanities; literature (and others)

Conceptualization of Threshold Concepts

Post-structural/constructionist; critical theories; constructivist; empiricist/positivist

Significant Knowledge Artifacts

Published papers; project literature review; websites; examples of research instruments used in prior or similar projects; posters from prior projects

Research Activities

Surveys; documentary analysis; concept mapping; teacher focus groups; student focus groups; students as co-researchers

Mode of Representation of Case study/poster; concept map; article; pedagogical Research Activities activity; assessment activity; technological artifact Interpretation of Role/Value Reflection on own practice; own pedagogical development of Project through working ‘in-discipline’; own pedagogical development through cross-disciplinary working; improved collective pedagogical practice; changes to assessment processes; improved efficiency of assessment processes; contribution to design of learning technologies; model for future pedagogical development; model for future research activities (and others)

(including, critically, those produced by the participants themselves) meant that the project is better understood as a heterogeneous and developing network within which associations were made and new assemblages developed through continuing exchanges and iterations. It was possible to identify at least some of the components of this network from interviews carried out with participants towards the end of the project as well as from analysis of texts, posters and other data collected in the course of the project, and a selection of these are presented in Table 5.1. We can trace some apparently clear ‘paths’ through this table. so, for example: research students in biosciences, who were beginning to take on undergraduate teaching, had epistemological perspectives were closest in outlook to constructivism, drew on prior examples and the literature review and used these to inform an analysis of curriculum documents to reveal how a particular concept was introduced to students. They identified that students did not understand its relationships to other concepts

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and as a result developed a ‘concept map’ rather than a sequential representation of the curriculum in order to support student learning, which they then asked students to evaluate. They interpreted their participation in terms of personal learning and their transition from learners to teachers, and threshold concepts as an effective way of stimulating reflection on their own learning as well as that of others – the students for whose learning they were now responsible. Other project groups engaged in different ways, in some cases spending more time engaging with theoretical perspectives, in others agreeing a ‘working definition’ of threshold concepts or rapidly selecting potential areas of study in order to move swiftly to engagement with staff or students in their particular disciplinary or curricular settings. But even the apparently clearest and most linear paths in fact involved extensive discussion, experimentation, and what Guattari, in his account of ‘transverse groups’ describes as ‘extractions’ (Guattari, 1984) from across the project network, even if they were subsequently abandoned. The project seminars in particular provided a means by which ideas could be tested out and new material and social relationships established. In some cases, groups who had initially thought they had interests or commitments in common broke up; in other cases, seeing and hearing what had been happening in different ‘locations’ within the project initiated new collaborations. Most interesting, perhaps, was the range of responses to perceptions of difference. In some cases, participant accounts of their work (generally beginning with a report and discussion of a poster or other representation) were like ‘collisions’, defining or reinforcing disciplinary and pedagogical diversity: ‘this’ said one participant from the sciences, in response to a presentation from social science teachers ‘is why we’re different’, and indicating that while this evoked curiosity, they did not hold out much hope for future collaboration. But in others, the realization and articulation of differences in ideas was what encouraged new associations to be made, with one participant from a computing science background reflecting: I liked Robert’s example, from paddle sports . . . that really got me thinking about the transformation aspect . . . but then Antony’s poster [from humanities] . . . he’d understood it totally differently and it was good to talk about where he was starting from. (Chris, Interview) As we discussed in Chapter 3 in relation to interdisciplinary working, it is often disjuncture, the ‘violent collisions’ between established practice and

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new discourses that stimulate individual reflection and cause new relationships and assemblages to emerge. The heterogeneous collection shown in Table 5.1 (itself, of course, a simplification of the complex project network) is of course only a small fragment of a much larger assemblage. In fact, one way of understanding the role of the project is in terms of Guattari’s transverse group, operating in the interstices and across the hierarchies of the larger institution. And many of the material and social assemblages that emerged from the project have, it transpires, found their way into discourses and practices far beyond the original series of seminars and practitioner research projects, being translated, territorialized and remade in new settings. In a more detailed account (Carmichael, in press), I trace how two groups of participants (teachers of undergraduate social anthropology and engineering) territorialize and materialize the ‘concept of thresholds’ beyond the original seminars, discursively remaking the idea as they introduce it into a new setting. Some of the research methods have ‘resurfaced’ in other projects; the poster template offered to participants as one way of structuring their findings has been shared and reused; and, most critically of all, several of the participants who were beginning their careers as teachers in higher education reflected in later interviews that their experiences made them rethink about ‘teaching as research into learning’ and ‘inquiry into learning rather than just passing on the wisdom’. And the insights into highly localized and clearly articulated practice have informed the development of learning technologies – rather tellingly, leading to the abandonment of the search for any single technology as the basis of support for teaching and learning of threshold concepts. At an individual level, the processes that participants describe in their accounts of participating in the project are not dissimilar to Celia’s account back at the beginning of Chapter 3. In ‘Transforming Perspectives’, there were multiple paths to be traced and a plethora of opportunities for the creative extraction of elements from different ‘tiers’ in order to experiment and innovate, and, as in Celia’s case, research innovation and the development of individual and collective research capacities were intrinsically linked. Research ‘designs’ in both examples emerged from through convergence and critical, formative discussions; research methods and instruments were mobilized, adapted and reused; and the social aspect of the network allowed brokerage and mentoring in the context of a specific research setting. So, in the terms of the original remit of the TLRP: to try and document and provide an evidence base of ‘what works’, what were the key outcomes

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of trying to encourage networking practices, and of conceptualizing the project as a network? z

z

z

z

z

The idea of participation in a network or ‘culture of inquiry’ that was explicitly cross-disciplinary, the purpose of which was to critically but ‘respectfully’ engage with the disciplinary traditions and practices of others as well as to reflect on one’s own, provided a basis for a carefully and continuously negotiated engagement. This contrasted with many participants’ prior experience of ‘projects’, which had demanded particular patterns of engagement and levels of commitment or which had imposed particular research designs or theoretical framings. Following on from this, the opportunities for self-direction of individuals and groups within this supportive environment (which, of course, included not only social opportunities but mentorship, access to resources, recommendations and an accepting but critically constructive audience) allowed participants to establish ties, introduce new resources and identify promising directions themselves: ‘tracing associations’ was not an activity restricted to the research team alone. While there was an aspect of the project that was concerned with issues of research methods, including the design of research instruments and activities, these were developed in the context of current research activities in which the participant had direct involvement, albeit with support from others involved in the project. Learning about questions of research design became research design as a form of learning; learning about research methods provided resources to be mobilized rather than being solely about the acquisition of generic skills. The role of members of the research team itself changed in response to the evolving direction of participant projects and their need for support; with researchers acting as mentors, brokers, critical friends and gatekeepers to other networks and networked resources. In addition, the transverse nature of the network, incorporating researchers, teachers and students from diverse disciplinary backgrounds, allowed divergent positions to be represented, encouraged approaches to reflexivity drawing on the collective knowledge of the network, and challenged institutional assumptions about the needs, preferences and motivations of learners. Perhaps the most important aspect of the project was the fact that, within the activities initiated by participants, and the social-materialconceptual assemblages that emerged, all elements could be seen as relational and flexible. While, as alluded to above, there were some

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elements described as ‘immovable objects’ (such as assessment systems, areas of the curriculum that were seen as ‘prerequisites’ or institutional systems), social relations and roles could be renegotiated; research designs and methods adapted; and the theoretical basis of ‘threshold concepts’ itself was itself interrogated, critiqued and reworked. This was not a case of a given theory informing a singular research design, in pursuit of a particular kind of curricular transformation. Relationality engendered creative, divergent responses; the network provided a space for exploration of practice and the discourses that accompanied them.

Networked Research and Research Capacity When research projects are written up and reported, one of the conventional approaches is to list ‘outputs’ and ‘impacts’; and ‘Transforming Perspectives’ was no exception. The final report to the funders of the project was able to point to changes in teaching and assessment practice; improved knowledge about the use of technologies in teaching and learning; the production of a set of case studies; and the availability of some of the research instruments developed and used by participants. And subsequently, the project has been described and some of the practices of participants and researchers traces in a series of academic articles and other writings, of which this book is one. But what ‘capacities’ have been built here, and how do these relate to the individual and collective capacities that we discussed in Chapter 1? As an example of the ‘embedded social practice’ approach to research capacity building articulated in this case through a particular set of networking practices, this is an important question. The participants, and particularly those new to teaching, were, as we have seen, conscious of having gained experience of working in a network in which there was a less clear-cut distinction between teaching and research (an issue we discussed at some length in Chapter 3). Of the educational researchers involved in the project, several, who were ‘early career researchers’ themselves, were able to develop experience not only of engaging with a new and distinctive research literature, but also of mediating this to project participants; acting as mentors in the application of research methods; and engaging in building their own social networks: an important factor given the concerns of the ‘precarious’ contract researcher. In terms of the ‘expansive–restrictive’ dimension to the research workplace, a conception of the project as a

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network makes it difficult not for ‘expansive’ opportunities to be offered to early career researchers. But perhaps most significant respect in which this particular project can inform a view of what educational research capacity building might be is that the practices and discourses of research proceeded in close association and sometimes in creative tension with the development of research capacities, both individual and collective. This brings us back to the model of ‘progressive problem solving’ articulated by Hakkarainen et al. (2004, pp. 162–3) and which we first discussed in relation to Celia’s research in Chapter 3. This sees the active engagement of individuals as leading to the dynamic development of expertise and both individual learning and collect ive knowledge construction. Perhaps this provides an important pointer as to how we might better understand and develop a model of ‘embedded social practices’? We shall return to this question in the final chapter of this book. But first, some reflections on the role of the networked researcher or ‘researcher–networker’.

The Role of the Researcher–Networker Throughout this chapter, the examples we have drawn upon have referred to the importance of reflexivity: whether this is a structured reflection around specific data (as in co-interpretation and sensemaking), or a more broadly scoped reflection on ones practice as a teacher and learner (as in ‘Transforming Perspectives’). The key, however, may not be to limit this to a singular, ‘personal’ reflexivity, but rather to expand its scope to our social networks and the more heterogeneous assemblages in our ‘networked selves’ play a part. This involves an acknowledgement that our ‘selves’ may be multiple and complex as we engage in different networks in which we play different roles; and for the educational researcher, it also demands recognition that the relational nature of networks and of networked research places them firmly ‘in’ networks rather than simply researching ‘on’ networks. As with research capacities, an important element of this may be to think not in terms of individual roles (‘the researcher’ or ‘the early career researcher’) or in terms of generalized models of research but in terms of research as the construction of local, heterogeneous networks, and as the provision of the opportunities to engage in and with, and play a part in the construction of these networks: at the sites where, as Crary (1992) says, ‘discursive formation intersects with material practices’.

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This could be said, of course of any complex social formation or collectivity that needs to be better understood: there is much in common here with the kind of agenda that Raunig (2007) proposes for understandings of social and economic precarity. But our interest here is what these mean when the context is how to develop better understandings of educational research: we are asking of researchers that they revisit their own practices and identities in relation to new social forms, technologies and associations. Researching in networks demands new relationships with other researchers, colleagues and research participants that are highly contingent and sensitive to changing circumstances, and takes account of changing identities and roles, including those of the educational researcher themselves. In this last respect, the approaches and practices outlined in this chapter represent elements of a repertoire, which can be used in the course of these reflective practices: they are not models to be copied, but, themselves, are assemblages to be deterritorialized and reterritorialized, remade and mobilized in new settings.

Afterword So, in short, educational researchers find themselves in and of networks, not just studying networks, but also performing and contributing to the construction of networks. ‘Sensemaking’ approaches do not just ‘make sense’ for the researcher, but for other participants as well; sharing a graphical representation of a co-authorship network might well influence with whom people write in the future. This is where the importance, and for that matter, the challenges, of developing some kind of ‘extended reflexivity’ become evident. Sometimes, the realization that one is ‘of’ a network, or influencing it in some unforeseen way, is only brought home through the outcomes of research processes themselves. In the network mapping task developed by Fox et al. (2007), and subsequently used by Morales and Carmichael (2007), one issue that had to be confronted was how to interpret the appearance of the researchers themselves appearing on the ‘map’: or even more interesting, in a recursive way, the appearance (in a small cartoon on the map) of the process of drawing of the map itself. One final example which brought this home to the research team involved in the ‘day in the life’ activity may serve to illustrate some of the new kinds of research relationships which become possible, but which may demand

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some careful thought. The purpose of asking teams of researchers to produce video records of their activities was, ultimately, to assist in the design of new online collaboration environments. Members of one project were already using a version of the environment that was under development and were discussing its use to support their own ‘networked research’. The issue of how frequently data were backed up to external storage was raised, and after some discussion, there was a pause; simultaneously, several participants glanced at the video camera at the end of the table, recording the meeting for the ‘day in the life’ activity. Realising that here was a new mode of interaction with the developers, one member of the group looked directly into the camera, indicated the laptop on the table on which the group had been looking at the online environment, and asked: ‘Hey. How often does this thing get backed up?’ ‘Networked research’ approaches will almost inevitably bring new kinds of interaction into play, and new kinds of research relationships along with them: part of the challenge, however, is to recognize their potential.

Chapter 6

Emerging Themes and Future Directions

This book began by highlighting how the building of research capacity represents not only a significant challenge, but also a potentially important focus for research in its own right as ‘changing the ways in which research in the social sciences is conducted . . . constitute[s] an important social phenomenon, worthy of systematic analysis’ (Rees et al., 2007, p. 763). The published literature on research capacity building in education, however, consists mainly of ‘organizational biographies’, with relatively few theoretically informed or critical accounts, or empirical explorations of how research capacities have been conceptualized by academics and educational practitioners themselves. More significantly, the rhetorical ‘network logic’ that has been employed has (as in many other fields) tended to focus on the design and development of system-wide infrastructures and on individual acquisition of skills, or access to and accumulation of social capital. Despite this, and as we have seen in the vignettes in the foregoing chapters, the real ‘action’ of research, innovation and capacity building seems to occur at a level somewhere in between, where new social formations and collectivities allow remaking of meaning, creative appropriations and contingent responses to real-world problems and challenges faced by researchers and practitioners. The dominance of such views of networks may be at the root of the ‘restrictive’ rather than ‘expansive’ research cultures to which we have referred throughout this book. As Shukaitis (2009) argues in his study of the role of networks in emerging social formations: If, through networking, one is induced only to see others as possible contacts, leads and sources of information . . . that dynamic . . . effectively prevents the emergence of any kind of real discussion. (Shukaitis, 2009, p. 177) As well as precluding discursive and reflexive practice, the emphasis on sector-wide networks and individual ‘access’ to those networks has

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implications for research capacity building: one potential outcome being the increasing casualization and precarity of a research workforce to whom much of the responsibility to develop their own individual capacities is passed. This is very much the case in other fields: Raunig (2007) identifies this tendency in the working conditions of contract workers in the IT and media industries, but it is also prevalent in the international development sector that was discussed in Chapter 1, where this tendency is identified by Eade (1997) as one of the main barriers to the development of organizational and sector-wide capacities, and one to which top-down networking initiatives can provide only a partial response. A range of network theories has been reviewed, some of which reinforce these dominant, hegemonic views of networks, while others challenge their assumptions and methods. There is extensive ‘borrowing’ across network theories, those approaches that mix methods formatively and critically generating some of the most interesting analyses and suggesting new directions for inquiry. The various approaches to researching networks, discussed in Chapter 5, also serve as means by which individuals and groups can explore different aspects of the networks and networking practices in which they, themselves, are involved. These range from investigations of the structures and limits of their social networks through to the role of non-human actants in their individual working practices. Network metaphors and concepts are themselves powerful and performative and this means that they become significant elements of networks in their own right, shaping everything from the definition of roles to the design of collaborative technologies. It follows from this that the most illuminating and productive approaches to ‘using’, ‘supporting’ or ‘researching’ networks (and those concerned with research and research capacity building are no exception) are those that recognize this and explicitly engage with how networks and networking constrain and enable current and future activities. This is the basis of the call by Raunig (2007) for a reflexive, action-oriented research agenda to explore experiences of the precarity in the networked society. The emphasis, as Fenwick and Edwards (2010) suggest in their discussion of Actor-network Theory in Education, then becomes placed not on ‘telling’ or some form of representation but as ‘intervening in . . . issues to reframe how we might enact and engage with them’ (Fenwick and Edwards, 2010, p. 1). This brings us back, however, to the question of scale: at what level should we seek to understand and intervene, in the face of the enduring tension between views of networks as universal and all-encompassing and the highly variable experiences of the networked educational researcher?

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We have already discussed how changes in social formations and interactions have shifted the focus of investigation and the unit of the analysis from the conventional organization to the network. In the light of the vignettes presented in the previous three chapters, the answer may be to shift our focus again, and think about research and research capacity building in terms of assemblages.

Networks and Assemblage Theory The idea of assemblages has featured throughout our analyses of research and research capacity activities, primarily as a way of expressing the heterogeneity of local networks: it finds expression most notably within accounts that draw on Actor-Network Theory and in the work of Deleuze and Guattari. The most complete account of the nature and role of assemblages, however, which develops a complete ‘assemblage theory’ underpinned by a consistent ontological position, can be found in the work of Manuel de Landa. De Landa has attempted to reformulate aspects of Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophical work for an audience of scientists and philosophers of science (De Landa, 2002) but his most relevant work in relation to networks and assemblages is A New Philosophy of Society (De Landa, 2006). De Landa argues that, rather than using analyses that tend to ‘macroreductionism’ of social phenomena to the societal or global or ‘microreductionism’ to individuals, Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of assemblages can be applied to social entities on all scales that are best understood through analysis of the interaction of their components. Since the patterns of these interactions are unpredictable and multiple, De Landa’s assemblages are highly localized, and ‘individuality’ emerges from the capacity for interaction, rather than from intrinsic properties of any entity: Capacities to interact with other entities . . . [form] an open list, since there is no way to tell in advance in what way a given entity [which may itself be an assemblage] may affect or be affected by innumerable other entities. (De Landa, 2006, p. 10) At the same time, De Landa’s assertion, following Deleuze, that all socialmaterial phenomena can be understood as assemblages means that they can be defined in terms of these capacities to interact: Assemblages are characterized by relations of exteriority . . . these relations imply, first of all, that a component part of an assemblage may be detached

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from it and plugged into a different assemblage in which its interactions are different . . . the whole cannot be reduced to those parts [as] they are the result not of an aggregation of the components’ own properties but of the . . . exercise of their capacities. (De Landa, 2006, pp. 10–11) De Landa discusses the processes of deterritorialization and reterritorialization in relation to assemblages in a number of social and organizational settings, and his approach suggests that educational research capacity building, along with other aspects of research, can be seen as the expression of new interactions between the elements of existing and emergent assemblages. As the vignettes of researchers at work we have examined illustrate, it is difficult to predict which elements will be ‘unplugged’ from a prior research design, archive or reflexive account and ‘territorialized’ as part of a new assemblage. But De Landa’s theory of assemblages suggests that attempt to reproduce ideal models of research in the face of proliferating and unpredictable diversity are likely to be less valuable, if they are even possible. Celia’s use of a particular research instrument became more meaningful through its capacity to interact with the elements of an emerging research assemblage, just as the various inquiries that emerged in the course of ‘Transforming Perspectives’ involved the creation of a variety of assemblages with different compositions and patterns of interaction. De Landa’s assemblages, of course, are composed not merely of material elements but also of social and conceptual ones, and also of habits, discursive practices and critically, also include temporal and spatial aspects. These also “perform a material role” in assemblages: for example, by limiting the time available to develop social ties or providing space for discussions and the development of shared practices (De Landa, 2006, p. 57). The examples presented in Chapters 3 to 5 provide many examples of this: the significance of time to work together, or to reflect rather than being forced into a quick decision, or the provision of neutral spaces, being cited by many participants. At the same time, it is the capacities of elements, and the patterns of interaction they enable, rather than any intrinsic properties, that are the most significant: whether these are in interpersonal networks or the heterogeneous assemblage of a complex representation such as a research design or a complex document. More troublesome elements of assemblages are ‘shared stories’, which, while they function as reifications and thus allow communication to occur (as discussed in Chapter 2), are one of the main ways by which stratification and macro-reductionism come about. These, De Landa suggests:

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. . . concentrate on unified space and time, and on actors with clear motivations and fixed attributes and therefore do not really capture the actual structure of a given conflictive situation . . . these narratives tend to leave out any collective unintended consequences of intentional action. (De Landa, 2006, p. 58) These have the advantage of helping to define identities and to allow identification of commonalities. But at the same time such stories, particularly if they are couched as individual narratives of success, have the potential to become not simply illustrative or exemplary but normative: the basis of reproduction rather than active remaking and recontextualization. This raises important issues about the nature of the accounts and resources presented as parts of research training and capacity building resources. Should these attempt to provide stories for sharing, oriented towards the definition of what represents ‘good’ or ‘best’ practice? Or should accounts be offered which have no intrinsic ‘message’ and offer no ready-made solution, but rather find their meaning through the new assemblages into which they become incorporated? The latter leaves the individual and group with more work to do, but may clear the way for new assemblages and research innovation. De Landa’s emphasis on the exteriority and reconfigurable nature of assemblages goes some way to addressing Hardt and Negri’s concern about isolated and incommunicable instances of action. Assemblages such as rich narratives or reflexive accounts of research activity (as long as they avoid the trap of becoming normative stories) have the potential to be used as elements in larger assemblages/networks as well as being dismantled and remade in some new territory. The methodological ‘assemblages’ of the Education Evaluations archive described in Chapter 4, for example, become mobilized more widely in relation to new challenges faced by researchers and evaluators; the data structured and curated by Linda invites different kinds of secondary analysis; and the approaches of Bun Club are replicated in new institutional settings by its former members.

Beyond Boundaries Thinking about assemblages rather than organizations or networks, and focusing on how the development of shared practice occurs, rather than simply ‘sharing’, also sheds light on how educational researchers in projects, schools or research groups might understand their work. The example of

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Stonebrook school (Chapter 3) provides the best example of how networks can come to be seen as ‘external’ to the organization and individuals in question: as something that exists beyond the boundaries of the school in a view that encapsulates the dominant network logics of connected systems and local accumulation. We have seen in several vignettes how organizations can be analysed in terms of the networks that exist within them, and in McCormick et al. (2010) this approach is used as a means of understanding larger schools with some success. The problem inherent in this approach is that it replicates and even intensifies some of the issues we have identified in that the analysis that follows can be reductive and even performative: Law’s point (2006) about studying an organization as a network coming to perform and reinforce a hegemonic and structural view of networks is salient here. The distinction between ‘sharing practice’ and ‘supporting the development of shared practice’ may be lost if what is studied at a local level is how things ‘move’ rather than how these are used to solve problems and develop new understandings. Reducing what happens in these areas of intensive collaboration to higher volumes of ‘network traffic’ or concentrations of ‘network density’ does not capture the complexities of the vignettes of research practice on which we have drawn. More significant, perhaps, is that, despite the rhetoric of universality, movement and flows, these approaches end up defining boundaries that, too, may come to define notions of what is ‘external’ and therefore what is available or accessible to individual participants. Ironically, the response to this situation (as we have seen in several of our vignettes) is often to set up further networks to try to overcome these barriers and to establish new roles: gatekeepers, coordinators or brokers. Seeing networking as a set of processes or as an aspect of expertise allows us to rethink boundaries not as barriers but, rather, as permeable zones that may be bridged, narrowed or closed and in which new meanings can be made. Operating within, supporting (and for that matter, carrying out research) in these boundary zones is not easy: what is evident in examples from Stonebrook to ‘Transforming Perspectives’ is the strength of the forces which can take interchanges and innovations from boundary zones back into signed and disciplined territories. What De Landa describes as the ‘centripetal’ tendencies of existing practices and discourses, conventional disciplinary definitions, and individual and collective identities are significant elements in any networked environment. Thinking in terms of assemblages, however, and concentrating on their interactions rather than structures and exploring the potential for new relations of exteriority to

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develop, offers a way to challenge these assumptions and introduce ‘centrifugal’ forces or transverse associations, keeping dialogues alive and potential directions of inquiry available. It is clear from many of the vignettes in Chapters 3 and 4 that working with others plays a significant role in developing the research capacities of many participants (the experienced researcher, the ‘critical friend’, the supportive head teacher or the mentor): and this is particularly the case in the boundary zones of emergent practice. But these accounts also demonstrate the importance of complementary networked expertise on the part of the less experience researcher or the person seeking advice or guidance in seeking out, reflecting upon, and potentially incorporating the advice, support, reifications and strategies that emerge from these interchanges. Following Deleuze, Guattari and de Landa, it is the patterns of interaction that are possible that are more significant than the designation of any individual as a mentor or broker. And if, rather than distinguishing internal from external networks, or networks from communities, the key process is understood as engagement in and with heterogeneous assemblages of all scales, then all activity is mediated and relational: everyone becomes capable of fulfilling territorializing ‘brokerage’ functions, and mentoring becomes a set of collective interactions rather than the role of specified individuals.

Networking, Research and Capacity Building What we draw from this argument and from the insights we gain from the work of De Landa in particular, is a view of research capacity building not in terms of addressing individual or collective ‘deficit’, but as a locus of innovation and the creation of new assemblages. At the same time, the contingency and unpredictability that follows makes it difficult to design research training courses, research capacity building initiatives or technologies such as online environments to support research or research training. These too, of course, can be considered as particular forms of assemblage from which educational researchers draw elements and associations, rather than as models or patterns to be reproduced. The research approaches outlined in Chapter 5 can be seen in the same way: reifications of particular sets of circumstances to be remade as local practice (Wenger) or representational assemblages from which elements can be ‘unplugged’ and combined in new combinations in response to local conditions and challenges (de Landa).

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It is time to take stock and review some of the questions about educational research and research capacity building that have arisen and which have framed the vignettes and analyses presented. The examples throughout this book present the experiences of researchers engaged in projects and other research activities which broadly conform to the idea of research capacity as ‘embedded social practice’ (and in some cases, in projects and programmes which explicitly describe themselves in such terms). What our examples, and the insights offered by approaches which emphasize relationality, contingency and transverality suggest, though, is that it is not the ‘embeddedness’ per se, but the opportunities to engage in the ‘extraction’ and ‘embedding’ processes that are most valued and seen to contribute most to learning and innovation. And this informs not only the kinds of expansive research cultures that support such individual and collective learning, but also the role of networks in offering access to a wide repertoire of rich accounts of research: research-as-learning itself becomes a process of assemblage creation in which the components are social, material, representational and ‘intangibles’ such as time and space. The idea of the researcher–networker introduced in the chapter 5 can then be understood not just in terms of their being ‘embedded’ and well-positioned for accumulation of social capital, but as being well-supported in their active engagement in ‘embedding’ in such assemblages. This model lends itself more easily to some kinds of educational research than others. Revisiting the four-fold division suggested by McIntyre and McIntyre (1999), it is easier to see how research into improving understanding of teaching and learning, and that which involves researcher– practitioner partnerships would lend themselves to a view of research focused on processes and assemblages as we have discussed. In research that involves the application of social science to educational policy and practice, the challenge is to establish boundary zones and ‘trading spaces’ in the light of the potentially strong disciplinary territorializations at work. This is the kind of setting in which, as with the TEL researchers described in Chapter 3, explicit attempts to exert ‘centrifugal’ forces and maintain deterritorializing dynamics, are necessary for both individual and collective research capacities to develop. The drive towards evidence-based practice with research providing ‘direct evidence of effective approaches’ (McIntyre and McIntyre, 1999, p. 7) is more challenging: not in terms of assemblage theory, which could be used to describe the interactions between methods, data, analysis and findings, and which would see, say, a systematic review as a particular form of representational assemblage. The challenge comes instead when the researcher

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or practitioner seeks to see beyond the recommendations for policy or practice, to dissemble the assemblage either to analyse it, draw on elements of it, or to learn how to conduct such research activities themselves. This is not an issue of ‘transparency’ (the EPPI centre, for example, (Oakley et al., 2005) is scrupulous in their presentation of the processes they employ). It is, rather, a result of the highly territorialized and stratified notions of evidence and analysis that underpin these and which lead to the performance of quality and the strength of recommendations in particular ways. We have seen examples of researchers encountering such disjunctions between modes of research or between disciplinary positions throughout the examples in this book; and, in parallel, we have also encountered and attempted to reconcile the apparent schism between grand but reductive network theories and accounts of individual experiences. In the latter case, these can be overcome by thinking about heterogeneous assemblages at different scales: by extension, our understandings of research as a networked expertise can also benefit from a framing in terms of heterogeneous, contingent assemblages. We have been discussing such expertise throughout the foregoing three chapters of this book, and there is clearly much in common between de Landa’s assemblages, Latour’s chains of translations, Guattari’s transverse groups, and network expertise described by Hakkainen and his colleagues. The building of individual and collective research capacities can then be understood as developing expertise in recognizing, mobilizing, dissembling or ‘unplugging’ and reassembling highly heterogeneous combinations of material, social and theoretical elements. Much as Hakkarainen et al. (2004) identify network expertises, this involves developing ‘assemblage expertises’ founded upon the recognition that the individual researcher does not stand apart from assemblages but is part of them. In case the image that this presents is one of early career researchers gathering diverse elements from across the educational research landscape with little concern as to issues of research design, ethical practice or ‘fitness to purpose’, a re-inspection of the examples demonstrates their highly discursive nature. An orientation towards assemblages encourages (in fact, it demands) a high level of engagement with issues of ‘quality’ and the enrolment of experienced researchers, texts and exemplars, as well as a careful consideration of the local conditions against which processes of contextualization and territorialization take place. Few of our examples of educational researchers ‘using’ or ‘researching’ networks/assemblages involve simple processes of transfer and reproduction; and the ‘support’ of these activities demand far more than simply offering resources or templates to be slavishly followed.

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Final Remarks It is a conventional practice at this point to identify a range of opportunities for further research or to propose a programme of action. However, in the ‘spirit of the assemblage’, I would prefer that this book is seen as a presentation of some of the intersections between the divergent thinking about networks, and the practices and discourses of educational research. The various examples and vignettes, the practices and the materializations, described throughout the empirical-based chapters represent some of these intersections and associations. Reflecting on the examples in this light, what is apparent is that, both in relation to substantive research questions (‘how do we explore the learning culture of this institution?’; ‘what concepts are most challenging for learners in this subject?’; ‘how can we change assessment practices across the school?’); and in relation to research capacity issues (‘how can we support teacher educators engage in research?’; ‘what promotes effective interdisciplinary research?’; ‘on what networks can early career researchers draw?’), there is a willingness on the part of educational researchers to engage creatively with diverse research approaches and to seek creative combinations in order to carry out meaningful, high-quality research. This is just as evident in the accounts of ‘early career researchers’ and participants in the various research initiatives we have explored as it is in those of experienced researchers and in sector-level reviews of research priorities. This may seem like an obvious thing to state, particularly at this late stage, but these individual commitments position educational research as a distinctive field characterized by a desire to innovate, to create new research assemblages, and to engage with diverse theoretical positions. This brings me to a final point that, once again, draws on a view of educational networks as heterogeneous and discursively constructed assemblages. It also reflects my own experiences as a ‘researcher–networker’ and as a teacher and mentor of early career researchers: I have used some of the examples and vignettes included in Chapters 3 to 5 in undergraduate and postgraduate teaching and as a focus of other research training activities. In the course of these, participants found two kinds of research data particularly useful and compelling. The first was the set of accounts of ‘classic’ educational evaluations (described in Chapter 4) in which the original researchers reflected on the influences on their work and their engagement with issues of research design, ethical practice, and how to engage with policymakers and practitioners. The other accounts that were particularly valued were those in which other early career researchers

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reflected (in research diaries or through cultural probes, like the video diaries mentioned in Chapter 5) on their own activities, tracing out their day-to-day experiences of solving problems, engaging with theory and drawing on others’ expertise and experience. This provides an interesting glimpse of a very different kind of educational research network to those we have discussed so far. Rather than being primarily a social network, or an electronic infrastructure by which individuals share and accumulate publications, citations, resources or other reifications of practice, this is a network of interrelated narratives. Narratives, by virtue of their discursive construction, and their potential to invite and offer critique, are themselves forms of assemblage, not only offering accounts of the past (histories); but also recurrent patterns (instances, recipes) imagined alternatives (fantasies) and possible futures (scenarios or envisionings) (Hall, 1999, p. 83). This is not to say that all educational research needs to be narrative research, but rather, that it is located within a narrative: it is this that explicates the often tacit and territorialized bases of designs, decisions and claims and enables creative extractions and associations to be made. If, as Stenhouse (1978) suggests, educational research should be seen as ‘contemporary history’ then these narratives fulfil an analogous role to its ‘historiography’. Narratives also provide a means of accumulation, but in a manner that recognizes the importance of differential repetitions and divergences. Celia’s story represents not a narrative of repetition and reproduction but a creative divergence from the prior research on which she built; just as the participants in the ‘Transforming Perspectives’ project generated multiple narratives of engagement with the idea of ‘Threshold Concepts’ linked by family resemblances, rather than iterations of a single design. This is not to say that all narratives need to seek to be divergent; some may follow established and territorialized paths; but at the same time, there is room for transverse explorations of the relationships between hitherto unassociated elements and assemblages: plans, proposals, critiques and envisionings. Reviewing the examples of early career researchers, teachers and teacher educators and interdisciplinary researchers engaging in and with educational research throughout this book, it is evident that the elements of such a network already exist. They are able to draw on textbooks, ‘primers’, and other published work; engage with reflexive accounts where these are available; and benefit from the mediated advice and guidance of experienced researchers, mentors and tutors. There clearly is also collective expertise in supporting research and research capacity building, to which recent initiatives have contributed significantly. What these rich narratives of research

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additionally provide are means of linking these resources and practices to the issues and challenges facing educational researchers in their everyday lives; not just models of practice or success stories, but accounts which recognize practical challenges, dilemmas, micropolitical agendas, and issues of identity and precarity. So, on reflection, this book represents an attempt to provide examples or excerpts of such accounts: a contribution to a network of narratives which highlights some of the ways in educational researchers in different settings, in turn, make use of networks to develop their own narratives of learning and development. So that is the spirit in which it is offered: not as a textbook or as a collection of models of best practice, but as a narrative of narratives. It is, itself, a particular assemblage from which I hope the reader can ‘unplug’ or ‘extract’ some elements and which can contribute to their own learning, research practices and the support they offer to others. Most critically, I hope the narratives and theoretical framings here can provide a basis upon which they can build new narratives, which they in turn share. It may be difficult to ‘use’, ‘support’ or ‘research’ networks, but it is most certainly easier to do so together.

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Index of Authors

Aerni, P. W. 124 Ahuja, M. 39, 137 Albert, R. 39, 136 Alexander, B. 144 Altrichter, H. 126 Andrews, L. 18 Arnold, M. 149–50 Backer, T. E. 12 Baez, B. 19 Banaria, J. S. 22 Barabási, A. L. 39, 45, 136 Bardsley, N. 24 Barley, S. R. 129 Barnhouse Walters, P. 18 Baron, S. 13, 21, 29, 161 Bayne, S. 56, 127 Berardi, F. 64–6, 68, 86 Bereiter, C. 116 Berliner, D. C. 9 Berners-Lee, T. 131 Bizer, C. 56 Black, P. 1, 96 Blank, G. 2, 26, 136 Bleeg, J. E. 12 Bologna, S. 59, 62 Bonta, M. 54–6 Bourdieu, P. 53 Bowker, G. 49 Boyask, R. 13, 21, 29, 161 boyd, d. 136 Boyles, D. 19 Brehony, K. 21, 114, 144 Bridges, D. 19, 20, 24 Brown, J. S. 49, 53, 67 Brown, P. 24 Brown, S. 17

Buchanan, I. 56 Bueschel, A. C. 22 Burchmore, H. 32, 99, 145 Burt, R. S. 43, 45, 48, 57, 67–9, 98 Callon, M. 51–2 Campbell, A. 31, 33, 122 Carley, R. 39, 137 Carmichael, P. 1, 40, 51, 96–7, 99, 130, 134, 140, 145, 151–2, 155, 159, 165 Carter, C. 13 Cassidy, C. 30 Castells, M. 44–6, 54, 56, 60–1, 63–4, 67, 109, 136 Cavanagh, A. 3, 38–40, 46, 53, 55, 62, 68 Christie, D. 30, 122 Ciborra, C. 90 Cochran-Smith, M. 18 Collins, H. 90, 124 Connerton, P. 119 Contractor, N. 137 Cordingley, P. 25 Cousin, G. 151 Coutts, N. 30, 122 Covey, S. 99 Cox, R. 24 Coxon, T. 14–15, 19 Crang, M. 63 Crary, J. 158 Crosbie, T. 63 Crozier, W. R. 23 Csikszentmihalyi, M. 149 Davies, S. 17, 30 Day, R. E. 59

188

Index of Authors

Dearden, L. 24 Deem, R. 21, 114, 144 De Landa, M. 163–7, 169 Deleuze, G. 54–7, 60–2, 67, 69–70, 94, 117, 135, 163, 167 Denzin, N. 5 Dodge, M. 136 Dreyfus, H. 56 Drummond, M.-J. 1, 96 Duguid, P. 49, 53, 67 Dunne, T. 150 Dyer-Witheford, N. 59–60, 62 Dynes, S. 39 Eade, D. 12–13, 35, 162 Easterby-Smith, M. 14–15, 19 Edwards, R. 76, 162 Elliott, J. 5, 20 Engeström, R. 51 Engeström, Y. 51, 68, 70 Evans, L. 27 Evans, R. 90, 124 Faust, K. 39–40 Fenwick, T. 162 Fielding, N. 2, 136 Flap, H. D. 134 Fleck, L. 50 Fox, A. 51, 53, 96–7, 99, 134,140, 159, 166 Fox, S. 53 Frankham, J. 53 Freeman, T. L. 124 Fuller, A. 121 Furlong, J. 17–19, 27, 138 Galanouli, D. 123 Galison, P. 92, 128 Gardner, J. 31 Gaver, W. 150 Gee, J. P. 49–50 Girvan, M. 47 Gloor, P. 39 Golde, C. M. 22 Gorard, S. 3, 10, 23 Gough, D. 24, 169

Graham, S. 63 Granovetter, M. 38, 42, 46, 48, 67, 101 Groves, K. 12 Guattari, F. 54–8, 60–70, 81, 86–7, 94, 117–19, 124, 128, 143, 154–5, 163, 167, 169 Guba, E. G. 90 Hakkarainen, K. 48–9, 67–8, 75–7, 88, 103, 115, 121, 130, 133–5, 137, 140–1, 150, 158, 169 Hall, J. 68 Hall, W. 131 Halsey, A. H. 24 Hardt, M. 60–3, 67, 122, 135, 165 Hargreaves, D. 96 Harris, E. 12 Harris, J. B. 124 Hassard, J. 52 Hawkins, P. 14–15, 19 Haythornthwaite, C. 92 Heath, T. 56 Heaton, J. 25 Hektner, J. M. 149 Hendler, J. 131 Hextall, I. 31, 122 Hine, C. 73, 136 Hodkinson, P. 20–1 Honour, L. 1, 96, 99, 134 Howard, P. N. 137 Howell, C. 150 Hulme, M. 31, 122 Humes, W. 13, 17, 30 Hutchings, P. 22 Huynh, D. 131 Illich, I. 81 Irvine, N. 151 Jackson, D. 50, 83 James, M. 1, 96, Jeong, H. 39, 136 Jepson, A. 14–15, 19 Johnsrud, L. K. 22 Jones, L. 22 Jones, M. 16, 31, 33, 122

Index of Authors Juris, J. 61 Kahneman, D. 149 Karger, D. 131 Keiner, E. 12 Kerr, D. 18 Kitchen, R. 136 Kochen, M. 38 Kollock, P. 136 Kozinets, R. V. 136 Krueger, A. B. 149 Lagoze, C. 131 Land, R. 151 Lanzara, G. F. 53 Lassila, O. 131 Laterza, V. 108–9, 130, 141, 143–4 Lather, P. 19, 24 Latour, B. 51–2, 53, 67, 111, 135, 147, 169 Laubacher, R. 39 Lauder, H. 24 Lave, J. 75, 122 Law, J. 51–2, 132, 147, 166 Lawn, M. 17–19, 27, 138 Lawson, H. 123 Lee, R. 2, 136 Lehtinen, E. 48–9, 67–8, 75–7, 88, 103, 115, 121, 130, 134–5, 137, 140–1, 150, 158, 169 Leitch, R. 17, 27 Lincoln, Y. S. 5, 90 Lindblad, S. 12–13 Lines, A. 18 Linnell, D. 12 Lipponen, L. 133 Lotringer, S. 60 Lundy, L. 130 Lytras, M. 131 MacBeath, J. 1, 96 McCarthy, H. 37 McCormack, M. 102 McCormick, R. 41–2, 51, 96–7, 99, 134, 140, 166 McCulloch, G. 20 McDermott, R. 50, 117

189

MacDonald, A. 18 MacDonald, B. 131 McEvoy, L. 130 McGregor, J. 150 Machin, S. 24 McIntyre, A. 9–11, 13, 17–18, 25, 28, 36, 66, 96, 168 McIntyre, D. 9–11, 13, 17–18, 25, 28, 36, 66, 96, 168 McNamara, O. 16, 31, 33, 122 Mann, C. 73, 136 Marazzi, C. 60 Marsden, P. 39, 134 Marx, K. 59 Mason, J. 24, 90 Massey, D. 46, 63, 68 Massumi, B. 133 Menter, I. 30, 122 Meyer, J. 151 Mika, P. 137 Milgram, S. 38 Miller, K. 76 Miller, P. 37 Miller, R. C. 131 Mills, D. 14–15, 19 Moody, J. 39, 138 Morales, R. 140, 159 Moreno, J. 40 Mouffe, C. 62–4, 68 Mueller, F. 13 Mulder, I. 50, 83–4 Munn, P. 13 Murray, J. 16, 31, 33, 122 Naeve, A. 131 Nardi, B. 90 Neda, Z. 39 Negri, A. 59–63, 67, 122, 135, 165 Newman, M. 39, 47, 138–9 Nonaka, I. 48 Nuyens, Y. 12 Oakley, A. 24, 169 Oancea, A. 18, 24 Oliver, S. 24, 169 Olsson, E. 90 O’Reilly, T. 56, 144

190

Index of Authors

Orgad, S. 137 Orlikowski, W.J. 129 Paavola, S. 48–9, 67–8, 75–7, 88, 103, 115, 121, 130, 133, 134–5, 137, 140–1, 150, 158, 169 Pacenti, E. 150 Palomba, D. 12–13 Palonen, T. 48–9, 67–8, 75–7, 88, 103, 115, 121, 130, 133, 134–5, 137, 140–1, 150, 158, 169 Park, C. 21 Parlett, M. 131 Parr, A. 54 Payette, S. 131 Pedder, D. 96, 98 Peters, M. 55 Pilow, W. 24 Pollard, A. 6, 13, 26–9, 33 Poster, M. 56 Powell, J. 24 Procter, R. 1, 96, 99, 130, 134, 138–9, 141, 143 Protevi, J. 54–6 Ranis, S. 18 Rasmussen, K. B. 26 Raunig, G. 64–6, 68, 70, 86, 129, 159, 162 Ravasz, E. 39 Rees, G. 13, 21, 29, 161 Rheingold, H. 136 Riddle, M. 149–50 Rimpiläinen, S. 30, 122 St Pierre, E. A. 18 Salisbury, J. 17 Saunders, S. 25, 129 Schkade, D. A. 149 Schmidt, J. A. 149 Schubert, A. 39 Schwarz, N. 149 Sfard, A. 21 Shadbolt, N. 131 Shavelson, R. 24 Sheffield, P. 25, 129 Shin, E. 131

Shukaitis, S. 64, 161 Sinclair, C. 30 Skidmore, P. 37 Skinner, D. 30 Smith, M. 136 Snijders, T. A. B. 134 Snyder, W. 50, 117 Sørenson, E. 135 Spencer, J. 14–15, 19 Stanley, G. 16, 31, 33, 122 Stansell, J. C. 124, 141 Star, S. L. 49 Stenhouse, L. 171 Stewart, F. 73, 136 Stone, A. A. 149 Strathern, M. 92 Stronach, I. 131 Suchman, L. 53, 135 Swaak, J. 50, 83–4 Takeuchi, H. 48 Talvitie, J. 134, 137, 140 Tanner, H. 30 Taylor, C. 3, 13, 15, 19, 21, 24, 29, 161 Tedder, M. 123 Temperley, J. 50, 83 Thomas, J. 24, 169 Thurston, A. 123 Torrance, H. 131 Toscano, A. 60 Towne, L. 24 Tuomi, I. 50 Unwin, L. 121 Urry, J. 46–7, 68 Vahaaho, T. 51 Van der Gaag, M. P. J. 134 Van Oers, B. 76 Verwijs, C. 50, 83–4 Vicsek, T. 39 Vignoles, A. 24–5 Völker, B. 134 Walker, G. E. 22 Walker, R. 24 Wall, K. 31

Index of Authors Wasserman, S. 39–40 Watkins, C. 117 Watts, D. J. 37, 39, 137 Weick, K. 142 Wellman, B. 39–40, 42, 45, 50, 67, 70, 85, 101 Wenger, E. 20, 48–50, 67, 69–70, 75, 90, 92, 97, 103, 115, 122, 167 Whitty, G. 5, 17 Wiles, R. 24–5 Wiliam, D. 96

Wilper, C. 131 Wilson, A. 30, 130 Wolter, S. 12–13 Woolgar, S. 51 Wright, S. 59–60, 62, 64 Yin, R. 90 Zeichner, K. 18 Zhao, Y. 39 Zook, M. 136

191

Index of Terms

actor-network theory 51–3, 57, 67, 162–3 blackboxing 106, 111 methods 52–3 punctualization 52,106 symmetrical analysis 52 translation 52, 169 Applied Educational Research Scheme 30, 34, 122 archiving 24–6, 129–30 assemblages 52–5, 57, 91–2, 128, 156 in actor-network theory 52–3 in De Landa’s assemblage theory 163–9 in Deleuze and Guattari’s work 54–5 different from infrastructures 130 heterogeneity 55, 91 boundary objects 52, 109–11, 152 boundary zones 77, 166–8 brokers and brokerage 42–3, 48–9, 52–3, 55, 67, 69, 75, 85, 99, 101,152 Cambridge Conference on Educational Evaluation 130–1 capacity building definition 11 in educational research 4, 9, 11–12 as ‘embedded social practice’ 7, 31, 33, 35–6, 71, 89, 94, 104, 121, 125, 157–8 in international development 12–13 narrative accounts 81, 171 collaboration 74–5, 77, 90 communities of practice 20, 22, 48–50, 117–18 relation to networks 48–9, 75

conferences 79, 91–3, 95–6, 102–3, 113, 115, 118–21, 145 contract researchers 11, 14, 22, 112, 157 see also educational research, precarity culture of inquiry 67–9, 156, 171 educational research accumulation of research knowledge 24–6, 116–18 as applied social science 9–10, 90 demographic patterns 10, 14–17 distribution of expertise 10, 17–18, 27 as an importer from other disciplines 19–20, 23–4, 89–90 innovation in methods 23–4, 130 as interdisciplinary research 10, 20–1, 89, 92–4 recruitment 15–16 school-based research 10, 95–9 as workplace learning 22 see also online research electronic networks 37, 44–6, 56, 61, 63, 68 internet as a network 46, 136 internet in the ‘network society’ 44–5 employment of educational researchers 14, 16, 18, 113 expertise 44, 75, 86, 90, 114, 121, 124, 147, 158, 171 ‘networked expertise’ 49, 51, 116, 121, 127, 167, 169 identities 63–5, 70–1, 74, 85–9, 91, 105–6, 112, 121, 125, 159, 166 immaterial labour 61, 64, 67 and precarity 64

Index of Terms interdisciplinarity 89, 92–4, 150–7 knotworks 51, 70 mentoring 22, 29, 31, 86, 90–3, 101, 122–4, 126, 167, 170–1 National Centre for Research Methods 32–4 network(s) and access to expertise 74, 84–5, 120 see also expertise and access to information 74–5, 84–5, 90, 120 centrality 42, 115 co-authorship 115–16, 138–9 hubs 40, 45 internal and external to an organization 98–9, 110 and knowledge creation 48–9, 75–6, 88, 92, 116–19, 129 as metaphor 41, 162 nodes 40, 45 links 40 reciprocity 40 strength 42–3, 46, 48–9 place and space 46 reputation and trust 43 researching networks 137–57 as heterogeneous assemblages 150–7 using co-interpretation 141–4 using cultural probes 147–50, 159–60 using participatory design 144–7 using social network analysis 138–41 research into networks as a culture of inquiry 67–9 ties see network links vertices see network nodes ‘network logic’ 37, 61, 161 ‘network society’ 44 and internet technologies 44–5 and space of flows 44–5 tiers 44–5 networking as a set of practices 42–3, 77, 89–91, 99, 113–22, 166

193

online research 3, 73, 109, 127, 135–7, 159 see also electronic networks operaismo 58–9 as a network theory 58–9 and the socialized worker 59–60 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 11–17 post-marxist theory 58–64 ‘empire’ and ‘multitude’ 59, 60–2 see also operaismo post-political theory see post-marxist theory precarity 64–7, 70–1, 94, 105–6, 162 appropriation of term 65 of cognitive workers 64 of educational researchers 66–7, 69–71, 94 reification 97–9, 102–5 research archiving see archiving research capacity building see capacity building Research Capacity Building Network 28–9, 34 research cultures 21–3, 79–81, 114 and training cultures 21, 114 research methods mixed methods 10, 24, 25 108–9 qualitative methods 10, 74, 76 quantitative methods 10–11, 24 Researcher Development Initiative 33 researcher–networker 133 rhizome 54–8, 60, in analysis of electronic networks 56–7 in the work of Deleuze and Guattari 54–8 semantic web technologies 131–3, 137 social capital 42, 59, 67, 85 see also brokers social network analysis 38–44 combined with other research approaches 136–7

194

Index of Terms

ego-centred and whole network approaches 39–41 methods 38–9, 40, 137 premises 38 criticism of premises 38 traditions in the UK and USA 39 Social and Professional Network for Early Career Researchers in Education 31–2 Strategic Forum for Research in Education 26 task groups 50–1, 83–4 Teacher Education Research Network 31, 33–4, 78, 122, 125 teacher educators 78, 126 as potential researchers 78–80 as researchers 79–80, 89 tensions between teacher education and research 80, 84–5, 88 see also educational research teacher researchers 10, 95–9

Teaching and Learning Research Programme 5–6, 22, 25, 27–30, 33–4, 73, 77, 99, 123, 125, 129–31, 138, 155 technology-enhanced learning 89–94, 112, 128, 168 thought collectives 50 threshold concepts 150–7, 171 transversality 57–8, 121–2, 128–9, 169 video diaries see researching networks using cultural probes virtual collaboration environments 109, 127, 129, 133, 144–6 VITAE 32 Welsh Educational Research Network 30–1, 34, 78 workerism see operaismo writing for publication 83, 91, 93–4, 123, 125 academic articles 123, 125 research proposals 83, 123