Stake on constructivism

Constructivism: the belief that knowledge is made up largely of social interpretation rather than awareness of external reality.

I have to nourish the belief that knowledge is constructed - that's the term Stake uses on page 99 'nourish'. It's an odd metaphor of food and nutrition - why do I have to nourish beliefs? Will beliefs starve without it? my research approach will wither and die without that belief. Why? Because my research approach is founded on the belief that people create and construct engagement between them. Engagement is not a given reality that everyone agrees on. the word itself has various meanings;

• engage - in a fight. See soldier who engaged with a gunman
• engage - take someone on in a contractual and legal arrangement - even a marriage is such an arrangement, hence a couple gets engaged.
• engage - a relationship that's positive and helpful, which is where I want to look

Without understanding and accepting these various understandings my research cannot progress. Therefore my research is founded on constructivism.

---

Stake, R. E. (1995). Art of case study research, Sage.

Real life

I've been speaking to people who know about consultants and consultancy from working with consultants, from providing consultancy, people who don't spout academic words at me with strings of adjectives connected with 'furthermore', 'however' and 'in addition'. People outside academia don't have to prove everything or show which ideas are grounded in the literature with citations in order to avoid plagarism. They're pragmatic and get on with life, managing what has to be managed. They satisfice, i.e they make do with what's available.

Academia is not allowed to satisfice, but must cover all arguments in logical (and lengthy) detail.

Academia and real life are different worlds.

Foreign academics

Now I realise why Jorge Cham couldn't get into the UK last week - it's something to do with the new system for handling immigrants. But it's ridiculous and embarassing when invited academics can't do lecture tours. The petition at http://www.petitiononline.com/MCvisit/ protests the new regulations.

Frustrating day

Yesterday Estates came and pulled the plug on my computer. For Health and Safety reasons, they were meant to provide me with an extension cable and close the socket hatch that was open beneath the foot of my desk. I'd left my computer on while I photocopied something; they arrived, and pulled all the plugs out. I walked in, found two men under my desk. I thought:

"Oh! My computer's off."

and wandered off to do something else. When I got it working again, I was relieved to find my two most important databases, Endnote and Nvivo, were still okay. But this morning when I switched on, it had lost all my personal settings:

• no signature file,
• no Firefox add-ons,
• no history,
• no bookmarks,
• no network directories and
• no printers.

So sending an email meant manually adding contact details, printing wasn't immediately possible.

Thank goodness for the OUBS cheerful techie, who not only sorted it around lunch time muttering imprecations on Estate's head as this is not the first time they've done this, but also commented that he could make my machine work much more quickly and when was I going to be out so that he could clean it up?

I'm out tomorrow - and forgot to get my train ticket for the meeting. I left the office early to get it. So having planned to proof read a transcript and code another, I've only proof read about 5 minutes of a transcript. Frustrating.

New Vice Chancellor

Our new VC, Martin Bean, came for an informal first meeting with the OUBS people today. He described himself as 'Chief Cheerleader' - a rather nice title. What impressed me was that he seemed to know that the students get this personal relationship with a tutor (associate lecturer) on each course they study. He seemed impressed by the quality of the course material that the full time lecturers write, and he answered our questions fully, apparently honestly, and as if after only a month in the job, he had done a lot of homework. Indeed, I believe he has; he says he has visited all of the 14 regions, and now understands the difficulties of British roads, as well as attending a residential school, and I know he's been to a degree ceremony in cognito.

Critical realism

I'm trying to understand the philosophical options that underpin my research. Two that may be relevant are

• critical realism
  
• social constructivism

Critical realism seems to be how things are in the world and the world is real, but there's still a distinction between the world of nature and the world of social. It's a natural world you can experiment with, analyse and measure; a social world has people who make up or construct concepts between them so the social world can't be controlled.

What's social constructivism in comparison?

UK student visas

The BBC today has news about problems with the immigration points system and letting students in.

There's a radio programme Donal MacIntyre on the subject this evening on radio 5 at 19.30 and an email address to contact the programme: donal@bbc.co.uk.

Something funny is happening; the PhD cartoonist, Jorge Cham, said he nearly got thrown out last week when he came to the UK to give a series of lectures. See his three cartoons:

• Detained Part 1
• Detained Part 2
  
• Detained Part 3

Perhaps it's this points system that is delaying the Home Office returning the passport of one of our Chinese students.