Examples of CSed Research Ville Isomttnen Ville.isomottonen@jyu.fi - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Examples of CSed Research

Ville Isomöttönen

Ville.isomottonen@jyu.fi

Department of Mathematical Information Technology

University of Jyväskylä, Finland

Research Approaches in IT Field

We warmed up by looking research approach taxonomy by P. Järvinen You can find it in many papers, one is here:

http://desrist.org/desrist/content/Jarvinen/Uddevalla.pdf

The Range of Methods…

• See Table 2 in Holz et al. (2006). Research

methods in computing: What are they, and how should we teach them? ITiCSE working group paper: http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1189180

(At the end of this paper, you find short descriptions for the methods)

• Many can be and have been applied to

computing education research

Our Lenses

• Research target?
• Method?
• Research question?
• How the research got started?
• Motivation?
• Inductive vs. Deductive

Refs for those doing qualitative studies:

• Hsiu-Fang Hsieh and Sarah E. Shannon. 2005. "Three Approaches to

Qualitative Content Analysis," Qualitative Health Research, Vol. 15 No. 9.

• Attride-Stirling, Jennifer. 2001. "Thematic networks: an analytic tool

for qualitative research." Qualitative Research 1(3): 385–405.

Our Lenses… continues

• Role of literature and theory
• Role of researchers
• Data collection
• “Nature” of results
• Any of your questions; please interrupt anytime

I picked three examples

• A. Kaihlavirta, V. Isomöttönen & T. Kärkkäinen. 2015.

A Self-Ethnographic Investigation of Continuing Education Program in Engineering Arising from Economic Structural Change. Studies in Continuing Education, 37 (1): 99-114.

(But finally I noticed we should focus on only

• ne (the above) during 90 minutes)

Investigation of Continuing Education Program (Self- Ethnography)

Research target (or context): a continuing education program offered to higher educated engineers currently laid-off or under a risk of being laid-off

Target ...continues: Program Background & Motivation

• Economic structural change and large lay-offs;

political incentive to devise a continuing education program (cf. “stay current”)

• Help engineers to recover and re-educate

themselves, taking into account the structural change

• Two universities involved; four thematic

programs (2010-2012)

Method?

• What is self-ethnography?
• A method articulated by Alvesson (2003,2009)

(http://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A:1024716513774)

• Studies lived realities
• Researcher is active and authentic participant of the research

context, who observes the surrounding cultural context

• Differs from ethnography in terms of researcher role (explained in

short)

• May include data collection…
• In fact, in my view, would need further methodological work

(cf. Marco Polo, assertions)

• You may search for recent examples of its use...

Researcher Role?

• Compared to ethnography, the researcher is not an

participating observer but an observing participant

• Participation comes first (explain...)
• Compared to auto-ethnography, less emphasis is

placed on inward-looking story-telling

• We stated that “we are a group of insiders

integrated as the lens through which we try to gain new knowledge” (See references from the paper)

Method continues...

• What is autoethnography?
• Emphasizes inward-looking story telling
• Reports epiphanies on remembered crises (lived

experiences)

• Often times this position seems to be combined with

self-ethnoraphy; we did so as well.

• I'll show you an example of autoethnography:

Forrest, K. A., Judd, K. R., & Davison, J. R. (2012). Coming to know within ‘healthy uncertainty’: an autoethnography of engagement and transformation in undergraduate education. Teaching in Higher Education, 17(6), 710-721.

How Research Got Started?

• We noticed that we, while taking different roles in the

program, are sharing same and similar worries about the program.

• I had started to draft a study (memoing) my experiences,

while other two had started to draft a program report

• We started to systematically discuss and review our

experiences and observations...

Research Question?

• What conceptualizations explain the challenges

encountered during the program?

• It is not really a research question; emergence
• Self-ethnography studies lived realities;
• Auto-ethnography (which is also involved)

reports epiphanies on remembered crises.

• Spontaneous nature of research; emergence

Motivation

• Little previous work on self- and auto-

ethnography available, in particular studies that holistically review education programs

• Specific research context (structural change

and lay-offs); we could inform others by our research

Inductive vs Deductive?

• Inductive (data- or observation-or experience-

driven:))

• Spontaneous; trying to understand lived

realities and remembered crises

Role of Literature/Theory

• We included quite a lot of adult education literature
• Our stance was:

“Our aim is not to prove nor falsify any learning

• theory. Rather, as we link our observations and

experiences with learning theory, we are providing context for our observations and developing discussion on their potential causes” Let us look at the tables in the paper...

Relational Ethics

• With these methods, you reveal your self and

then quite easily who the others are, the ones you are “observing” and “remembering”

• Focus on the style of writing; education

improvement over “student did...”

• Protect by anonymizing… as usual
• In some sense, risky business
• In my view, is nicely suited to critical research

Data Collection?

• We principally used our own textual practice;

“journal writing”

• We reviewed each other's viewpoints and

combined them into a single document

• We also included points from the phone

interviews addressing reasons to drop out and study motivations

Results

• Students were trapped by their previous (working life)

experiences, which, as is known in the literature, can be a “trap”; they demonstrated sever motivational difficulties to adjust to academic studying

• We could not cause a perspective transformation (help them

see academic studying potentially useful for their future); Based on our observations, such transformations would have benefited many

• Thus… We draw main conclusions over three narratives

included in the results and reflect against adult education literature to develop understandings about our observations

Promising for CSEd Research?

• In my view, yes indeed: a way to go from Marco Polo to a

more analytic textual practice that builds on lived experiences

• We certainly should have proper meas to account for lived

experiences as research data

• Lindeman (1926): “experience is the adult learner's living

textbook” --- Why not use it in research?

• Could it be theory-driven (deductive)?
• I would like to see such master's theses and dissertations

=> Can you think of example studies?

Challenges?

• How to arrange the text into an article format? For instance, do you adopt a

narrative style or follow a traditional layout of an research article...

• You need to learn “textual practice” suitable for self-ethnography
• You raised excellent questions:

– Are my observations and feelings relevant to others? ...and relatedly: – Do you need to be experienced in the area your self-ethnographic work is concerned

with? ...in one sense, these self-studies are also spontaneous as for their starting point

– If these methods are not much used in our area, how they will be assessed (e.g.,

master's theses, dissertations)

Action Research Project on Functional Programming Course

Voluntary functional programming course, initially provided with a traditional academic teaching format: typical two lectures per week combined with exercises. A story of education improvement (We ran out of time to really go into this one)

I showed you the following list of questions that may help you to “think about” action research method: Anyone doing action research? Why do you call it action research? Is it critical, practical, or technical? What is validity in action research? What if you “fail” – no improvement When are you done with your project (saturation)? When during your project can you publish? => Attempt to “be intellectual about” your work and use of methods!

Thanks, Questions? ville.isomottonen@jyu.fi