Reflections on collaboration[1]jf
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presentation at annual Higher Education Learning and Teaching Association of Southern Africa (Heltasa) conference at the University of the Free State, November 2014
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Reflections on collaboration[1]jf
- 1. PARTICIPATION IN A LARGE GROUP, MULTI-SITE COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH PROJECT Heltasa Conference UFS 18 – 21 November 2014 Jo Anne Vorster (RU) Brenda Leibowitz (UJ) Jean Farmer (SU) Nicoline Herman (SU) Jeff Jawitz (UCT) James Garraway (CPUT) Susan van Schalkwyk (SU) Wendy McMillan (UWC) Clever Ndebele (Univen) Chris Winberg (CPUT)
- 2. Research Setting: The problem SA Research Context: – Incentives – Incentives for collaboration – Unequal playing field – AD researchers have a stake in research – AD personnel not always ‘entitled’ to spend time on research – Yet for AD collaboration vital – to bolster the field
- 3. Research Setting: The opportunity Research project: Structure, Culture and Agency NRF Funding 8 institutions First project of its type in SA Approximately 18 researchers over three years Intentions: • to explore/produce/learn • to arrive at recommendations to inform practice
- 4. Prior Research • Collaborative research valuable • Various success factors analysed (Leibowitz et al, 2012) • It requires attention to issues of identity and interactional features (Leibowitz, Ndebele and Winberg, 2013) • ‘Collaboration’ and ‘collaboration’ (Lesi, Ross and Holden (2012)
- 5. Approaches informing studies • ‘‘Collaboration’ and ‘collaboration’ (Lesi, Ross and Holden (2012) • Situated learning/Community of Practice • Framework of structure, culture and agency (Brew et al 2012; Kahn et al 2012) • Significance of the group as ‘corporate agency’: “The capacity of a group of people to act together in pursuit of a common agenda” (Kahn et al 2012)
- 6. Data Collection 1. What have been the outputs and outcome of your participation for you thus far? 2. What have the challenges been for you in achieving these or any outputs or outcomes? 3. What has facilitated your participation? (In your work context/institution? By the project itself? By you? 4. What has hindered your participation? (In your context/institution? By the workings of the project itself? By you?)
- 7. Interpretation • Search for a framework • Coding • Retroduction • Writing – in process
- 8. Outcome • Intimidation • Pressure • Learning • Production: – Second tranche of funds – Twelve publications – 21 Conference publications – Eight institutional case study reports – A blog
- 9. Structure: External • Support from line managers (✔): – My direct line manager, the Dean, has facilitated my participation. He has been an enthusiastic supporter of my involvement in the project, and never queries when I indicate that I will be out of the office working on this project. • Resources (✔) – I have money (from another project) for a research assistant that I am using to keep work on the data ticking over – that has been some help – My participation has also been facilitated by the fact that I have an office and a secretary that can help out with the administrative work
- 10. Structure: External: Workload (✗) – I am not always able to have my mind 100% on the project, … If I don’t respond to an e-mail (even while on a writing retreat) I will feel that I am neglecting my responsibilities. Because we have strong central controls … I have to sign off many documents – and at the moment there are e-mails telling me that because I’m off campus I’m holding things up… So there is guilt…. – …the inability to attract suitably qualified personnel who have the knowledge and experience of academic development work also meant that the centre has to operate with skeleton staff, the few appointees need hand holding. This meant that the time had to be divided over a number of the centre activities thus leaving me with minimal time devoted to the project’s activities. Thus the outcomes of the project are not met within the scheduled times
- 11. Structure: External - internal (✔) • Resources for research – The writing retreat at Mont Fleur has been the most facilitating event. The place is conducive to working and the encouragement and support from the Project team members is great. I really enjoyed engaging with the group and drawing on their experience and knowledge. I felt very at home with the Project members.
- 12. Structure: External • Geographic spread and travel fatigue (✗) – The main challenge I have faced has been travelling long distances to the meeting places in Cape Town. Travelling has been very exhausting and I would have problems of working well on the first days of meetings due to exhaustion
- 13. Structure: Internal: subgroups (✔) – I found that working in a smaller ‘sub-group’ was more effective than when the entire team was supposed to be working towards a particular deadline … I have participated in a number of ‘sub-projects’ over the past two years and each have, to a greater or lesser extent, generated outputs – …I have been “forced” to work and write with others. This has been a huge challenge as most of my writing experience has been single authored papers
- 14. Structure: internal (✔) • Lack of structure, deadlines and direction from project leadership felt as a constraint by some
- 15. Culture: External/internal • Novelty of research in institution – value of collaboration as provision of opportunity: – Coming from an academic institution where research and publishing by the academic developers has in the past not been emphasised, the need to reflect on, and share our practices through research and publications on our practices is made critical by my involvement in a study of a national magnitude (researcher from a HDI)
- 16. Culture: Internal – Despite the many benefits of working in a large team (and I am very grateful for having had this opportunity), my experience has been that the process has been unwieldy and probably not as productive as it could have been. I have often experienced a sense of frustration over the time taken to ‘get everyone on the same page’ (researcher from a HAI)
- 17. Culture • Ideas of the role of theory in research • Ideas of the usefulness of using Margaret Archer and the interplay of structure, culture and agency • Belief in the importance of collaboration – Shared project (‘concern’ cf Archer): professional development and educational enhancement in SA
- 18. Agency • One could look at individual agency: – Members’ determination to make the collaborative research project work – Members’ determination to derive personal/professional benefit from the project • And corporate agency: the ‘group’ agency that allows the learning to flourish
- 19. Impact of corporate agency Learning through the team writing projects has been very rewarding. Writing for me is usually quite a solitary activity – so I wasn’t too sure how the team writing approach would work – but it has been very useful to hammer things out with the group – to ounce ideas off each other – to critique what we have done – to get the benefits of the other writers’ knowledge, etc. We all bring something different to the writing process – and that has been quite an eye-opener for me
- 20. Impact of corporate agency A major benefit for me has been in the area of writing for publication. Through a collaborative process with two seasoned researchers resulting in a publication in a highly rated higher education journal my confidence in publishing was boosted. Through learning from the process I have in 2013 alone now been able to publish three articles in peer reviewed DHET accredited journals
- 21. Impact of corporate agency I do not know what it feels like to do a PhD totally on your own, but I am not sure if I would have been able to do it as an individual. Being a member of the group gave me exposure to so many different opinions and ideas which, although I did not always understand everything, still informed my own growth and inspired me to continue
- 22. Impact of corporate agency the theoretical and the methodological rigour of our experienced colleagues in the project is very empowering to inexperienced researchers. Coming from an academic institution where research and publishing by the academic developers has in the past not been emphasised, the need to reflect on, and share our practices through research and publications on our practices is made critical by my involvement in a study of a national magnitude”
- 23. Individual Agency Those participants who were able to align the project aims to their personal concerns and projects seemed to benefit significantly from their involvement in the project.
- 24. Individual agency: ‘dispositions’ I guess my own curiosity was piqued by the need to learn about critical realism, which I first resisted, then got so stimulated by, so the answer is ‘my own curiosity’ here.
- 25. Conclusion • Distinction between ‘Collaboration’ and ‘collaboration’ useful. • ‘Collaboration’ and ‘participation’ – interconnected and yet slippery • Interplay of structure, culture and agency – useful analytic framework for studying collaboration • We advocate more research on collaboratave research in SA/resource constrained contexts/contexts with high levels of educational inequality
- 26. Conclusion • The system at the level of structure and culture constrains or enables the emergence of corporate agency; and thus learning in collaborative research groups • In this project: – There was increased agency for both individuals and the group
- 27. Conclusion • Collaboration is helpful to support learning • BUT it is highly challenging, precisely because of the conditions that make it necessary • And these conditions are highly contextual and historical • Given its context, for SA nationally funded large projects can make a significant contribution to the HE landsccape
- 28. References References Boughey, C. & Niven, P., 2012. Higher Education Research & Development The emergence of research in the South African Academic Development movement. Higher Education Research and Develoopment, 31 (5) 641 - 653 Brew, A., Boud, D., Lucas, L & Crawford, K. (2012). Reflexive deliberation in international research collaboration: minimising risk and maximising opportunity. Higher Education, 66(1), pp.93–104. Available at: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10734-012-9592-6 [Accessed February 22, 2014]. Kahn, P., Goodhew, P., Murphy, M. & Walsh, L. (2013). The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning as collaborative working: a case study in shared practice and collective purpose. Higher Education Research & Development, 32(6), pp.901–914. Available at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07294360.2013.806439 [Accessed July 2, 2014]. Kahn, P., Petichakis, C. & Walsh, L. (2012). Developing the capacity of researchers for collaborative working. International Journal of Researcher Development 3 (1) 49 – 63. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/17597511211278643 Leibowitz, B., Ndebele, C. & Winberg, C. (2013) The role of academic identity in collaborative research. Studies in Higher Education. DOI:10.1080/03075079.2013.801424 (3 June 2013) Leibowitz, B., Bozalek, V., Carolissen, R., Nicholls, L., Rohleder, P. and Swartz, L. Educating the Educators: Creating a powerful learning environment. Pp. 117 – 129. In: Leibowitz, B., Swartz, L., Bozalek, V., Carolissen, R., Nichols, L. and Rohleder, P. Eds. (2012) Community, self and identity: Educating South African university students for citizenship. Cape Town:HSRC Press.
Notes de l'éditeur
- South Africa finds itself in the situation of not producing enough researchers, and adapts various measures, mostly based on incentives for institutions or individuals, to remedy this. The National Research Foundation is part of the environment that rewards individual accomplishments with regard to research, for example via its rating system. Yet the NRF also calls for collaborative research in order to build capacity. As an example of this, in 2010 it called for collaborative research proposals, stemming from a minimum of three universities, of which one had to be rural. There are numerous advantages as well as challenges, of setting up collaborative research projects in the field of higher education. It is very recent that the DHET and the Teaching Development Grants are encouraging both collaboration and research Despite the challenges that stem from the geographical distances between universities, the varied research styles, how busy academic developers are, and the lack of support for them to do research in many instances, academic developers are often extremely committed to enhancing their own understanding of the work they do through research, and through collaborative approaches. According to Boughey and Niven (2012:652) those researchers that sustain research production seem to be in “historically privileged spaces”
- Since the participants comeame from universities across the breadth of South Africa, face-to-face communication iswas limited. Discussions arewere facilitated through a variety of electronic media, including e-mail, Skype, a website, blogging, and Dropbox. Physical two- or three-day meetings arewere scheduled twice yearly, and takeook the form of planning sessions, writing retreats, and collaborative working sessions (as, for example, when participants met to collaboratively analyse interview transcripts from the study using the constructs highlighted by the theoretical framework). Four of the participating institutions – as well as the location of the project leader – arewere within close proximity of Cape Town, which meant that this region was a chosen for the face-to-face meetings. For some of the participants from outside of Cape Town, this arrangement includeds a significant amount of time devoted to travelling. A number of the universities arewere in rural areas not serviced by airports, and participants from these institutions included half-day car journeys as part of their travel arrangements. It was decided during the research process to include a sub-study focusing on participants’ experience of large-scale collaboration. Eighteen months into the study, reflections were collected from each of the participants (see Leibowitz et al, 2013). This process was repeated the following year and provides the foundation for this article. This section may belong in the methodology? (JF: I agree – Methodology)
- Kahn, Petichakis and Walsh (2012) that “a focus on learning brings value in terms of increased research capacity, but also for improved research outcomes” (2012:10). Is this the focus – improved research outcomes? With regard to the purpose of the collaboration, a useful distinction made by Lewis, Ross and Holden (2012) is between ‘collaboration’, which they describe as the sharing of ideas, and is more fluid and expressive, and ‘Collaboration’ which is more instrumental, and typical of research in the natural sciences, when individuals work together on the same outputs. They caution that ‘Collaboration’ can hamper creativity, which is relevant to the concern inherent in this study, which is to enhance the learning that occurs through participation.
- With regard to the purpose of the collaboration, a useful distinction made by Lewis, Ross and Holden (2012) is between ‘collaboration’, which they describe as the sharing of ideas, and is more fluid and expressive, and ‘Collaboration’ which is more instrumental, and typical of research in the natural sciences, when individuals work together on the same outputs. They caution that ‘Collaboration’ can hamper creativity, which is relevant to the concern inherent in this study, which is to enhance the learning that occurs through participation. In a context such as South African higher education, where there is so much inequality at the institutional as well as individual level, these agentic processes require more in depth investigation. Kahn, Petichakis and Walsh (2012) also use an Archerian framework to make suggestions about how to develop the capacity of researchers for collaborative research. They do not explore the workings of agency empirically, as theirs is a review article. However their use of the stratified approach allows them to make interesting suggestions about how to enhance capacity, as well as observations about the role of individual properties within collaborative teams. Like Brew et al, they argue that it is necessary to see the structural and agential features as intertwined, thus that it is necessary to study them together, rather than in isolation from one another. They cite the need to consider how a collaborative team moves from merely a collection of private agents, to corporate agency, that is, ‘the capacity of a group of people to act together in pursuit of a common agenda’ (Kahn, Petichakis and Walsh, 2012).
- An electronic questionnaire with four open ended questions and a few sub questions was designed by the primary investigator and used to guide the process of reflection The open-ended questions were purposefully drawn up to facilitate a deep reflective process.
- Here a key theme was that of their professional learning, particularly learning from one another through exposure to different perspectives and practices. To be expected, given the focus of the projects, was people’s reference to a growth in their understanding of the South African higher education context, specifically with regard to academic development. Many, however, also spoke about developing their ‘theoretical repertoires’ (CW) in particular around social and critical realism. Honing skills with regard to methodology and research practice (e.g. coding, interviewing) was also noted. While many described feeling intimidated in the early days of the project, most commented on how they had grown both as academics and as researchers over time, and feeling ‘more confident in sharing my ideas’ (JF). Having access to data that could be translated into actual publications was acknowledged as having particular value for the individual’s own career trajectory. In their reflective study on research collaboration Check that this is described earlier Ultimately it was felt that the project had reinforced “growing beliefs in the value of collaborative work across disciplines, faculties, higher education institutions, geographical locations etc.”
- But the funds were insufficient, especially My lack of resources does impact on what I can do – e.g. I would have liked to have employed a researcher to look at the quantitative data or just have the freedom to employ someone to do more administrative tasks that we could have been relieved of to concentrate on the data analysis (Viv).
- As with Kahn, as well as writers not using a critical realist approach, we see issues such as funding and resources playing a vital role. However one thing is clear in relation to equity and participation: some of the colleagues were able to tap into resources in their own universities as well
- Structural features have an influence on the internal culture of the project Precisely because of the cultures at the various institutions, that collaboration is so vital – to level the playing field but also to enrich the ‘theory’ (cf O Connell)
- By way of contrast, from a HAI:
- This points to an interesting interrelationship between agency and competence – feeling less competent wrt to this theory was perceived as a constraint by some, and an enablement, and a spur to action by others
- Agency, and the issue of corporate
- Corporate agency – makes individual ‘flourishing’ possible
- Corporate agency encouraging individual flourishing
- For example, in some cases the institutional reports provided data to support the work of TLCs and the director of that Centre was therefore able to use that output of the project in very strategic ways.