ePortfolio Journal #3: Writing my Grounded Theory
This grounded theory project has been quite taxing to work on. I have been listening to classical music on CBC Listen to relax as I pull together the content in a slow, painstaking, and somewhat confusing process. The most personal aspect of the writing is coming to terms with my perspective on grounded theory and, therefore, what message I am trying to communicate about my research. With the same data, I could head in several directions. Is the message coming from me or the data? How does my perspective on the meaning of lifelong learning influence my perspective on this assignment? I have been in school off and on for more than 20 years since I began taking courses as a mature student a few years after completing high school. At what point, am I going to “grow up” and forge my identity beyond partly being a student? I want to find the balance between striving for employability versus the motivation to enjoy life through interests, activities, and hobbies. Samuel Johnson (1757) wrote: “The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it” (in Woods & Sikes, 2022, p. 1). I hope that anyone who reads my grounded theory study will see the benefits for both students of all ages and the community at large if education is restructured to take advantage of new opportunities provided by technology and more open pathways to learning.
Many years ago, a fellow student mentioned that she had been asked to write an essay on the topic “the personal is political” and she was not sure if it was. I admit my life had gone down a sideroad at that point and I was not a shining example of success, somewhat because I never wanted to play a full part in a consumerist, environmentally destructive economy. Taking a sideroad had led me down the path of working in low-wage service jobs, yet I was serving others, rather than taking part in practices I considered destructive. My performing arts diploma led me to practice yoga, with qualities of effort without concern for results while serving others. Still, I knew then and learned even more emphatically later: most people do not see choices from that perspective and do not respect individuals who fail to meet the criteria of success. So, I believe the personal is political to some extent, though wider politics help mitigate some of the contradictions of being a person who cannot be fully consistent in everything they do.
I aim to make this assignment personal by supporting the young people around me who choose alternative pathways to education and career while also supporting the newcomers I work with who are trying to build a career in Canada and all those in society who are taking non-standard pathways to employment and entrepreneurship, sometimes choosing fields that do not have as much cachet. In this way, my biography intersects with my study, and I wonder how the biographies of various readers of my study would also intersect and influence their reaction and recollection of the piece as suggested by Woods and Sikes (2022, p. 43). This process feels like it is part of Woods and Sikes’ ‘getting-it-right’ stage as I am trying to portray “something significant of human experience” (Charmaz & Mitchell, 1997, p. 206, in Woods & Sikes, 2022, p. 83).
Woods and Sikes (2022) make many helpful suggestions about the writing process; for example, to create a ‘Conclusion’ file early on in which to add notes during the writing process regarding how the material will be pulled together at the end (p. 49) as “a general summary” and “a powerful advocacy for change” (p. 70). They also suggest that a series of drafts is needed during which it is possible to move beyond initial inclinations, gather more data, and discover “something totally unexpected which will add a new dimension to the aims of the study” (p. 48). Pain is described as necessary in the writing process to move beyond an elementary level of analysis and to create a special piece through hard work (p. 52) and I have been feeling more “pain” than usual in figuring out how to pull everything together. I have stayed on my schedule of work, exercise, activities, leisure, and chores, but I keep thinking I need more time away from those pursuits to get the work done.
According to Woods and Sikes, I cranked myself up (p. 55) a while ago by writing a first draft from my codes. Last weekend, I created an extensive appendix to highlight my coding process. After realizing that I missed including some important content in my initial draft, I am now working on incorporating the literature review and writing some additional sections based on my appendix. Another student mentioned that she is finding that procrastination is a factor, and I am also finding that is the case because the project feels “ongoing”; it is difficult to get to the end and decide how to end it.
I bounced some ideas off a fellow English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher who sits near me at my office regarding my dilemma of how to understand lifelong learning through courses as distinct from engaging with learning as integrated with the process of living. A few times, he said, I am not following you. Then, he said, he thinks the epistemology of learning is important and he enjoys learning from video games and learning from daily experiences. After a moment, he quoted the line from a video game he plays: “looking beyond the veil of our own reality”. I appreciated that we could chat about my assignment for a few minutes. We have a lot of interesting conversations, but I do not normally discuss schoolwork with my colleagues. I told him I was taking 20 minutes to strategize because I worked some additional time the evening before after teaching an online class.
I learned a lot from Woods and Sikes (2022) about how to organize my paper. I plan to incorporate the literature review in the main body of my study but to discuss research methods and data and analysis separately. Regarding the literature review, I may incorporate a small theory section explaining how the three dominant theories -human capital theory (HCT), signaling and screening theory, and the credentialist view - influence my study. That is to be decided in the final stages of writing.
After reading another student’s post, I felt a moment of terror at the realization that my working categories still had some element of overlap. Then, I referred to where Woods and Sikes (2022) state that categories should be “mutually exclusive” (p. 72). This morning, I realized that there are nine main categories and within them sub-categories, so the problem is not as serious as I initially thought. My final nine categories are: cultivating critical citizenship and critical thinking; identifying barriers to upward mobility; advocating for lifelong learning; enhancing degrees and acquiring skills; setting the meaning of intelligence in context; restructuring education; structuring/ranking credentials and creating a taxonomy of authoritative methods; relating education to the workplace; and making self-taught learning effective while also understanding what makes traditional institutions effective. The problem was not that any of my categories were “two sides of the same one” but that some of the categories were existing as sub-categories (Woods & Sikes, 2022, p. 72) without recognition that this was the case.
During the ideas stage, Woods and Sikes (2022) state that you can experiment with notions based on your interests to be applied to the data (p. 83), but the line must be drawn somewhere. In writing my first draft, I have needed to write in “set phrases” to show what is data as opposed to where I am developing my theory. I must be clearer about what I am saying and what is from the data. I decided to include some poems in my appendix but to keep the grounded theory study content straightforward. When I read the chapters on using an artistic approach, my mind short-circuited a little and I wished I could do it. I was thinking of a fictional interview, a poem at the beginning of each section – even writing the project in a voice other than my own such as a fictional character. This thinking snowballed so that the task of writing loomed as enormous and dangerous, possessed of a nascent fear of going off the deep end and of failure. I meditated for a while in savasana – otherwise known as lying comfortably on my comforter – and woke from a lucid dream 40 minutes later asking myself, “What am I doing?” I must get this assignment done objectively, and fastidiously, playing by the rules, without taking too many risks.
Writing from my codes did show me that I had the right framing and could generate appropriate content from the codes themselves, without looking immediately back at the data. I also dropped the idea of focusing on computer science/programming careers which can have lower barriers to entry for talented coders who have pursued alternative routes to certification such as online courses, self-study, and reading important texts from the field. Previously, Dr. Wilde shared an article that confirmed my suspicions that coding was a special case on its own. I admit that during the two pandemic years working from home, I used some online coding practice and exploration of education and communicative technologies to keep me going and to feel like I was building employable skills. However, I also need to ground myself in the fact that I may soon graduate from the MAIS program, which is likely much more marketable for me than tech skills. At the same time, tech skills never hurt and make daily life easier. Well, this project has helped me move away from the escape route of coding. Learning to code is a lot like learning to cook in a professional kitchen. It seems an easy way to a fun and exciting career but is likely a lot harder than it looks. Plus, I already have a hospitality diploma and experience in professional kitchens. I know both the appeal and the disappointment quasi-disillusionment of realizing what life will be really like in that job.
To expose myself to outside content for relaxation and mental stimulation, I recently watched the mini-series “Alias Grace”. I am a fan of Margaret Atwood and have read many of her books, but “Alias Grace” I started twice and did not finish. I was captivated by the mini-series. It made me think of my grandma from small town Manitoba who, though her sisters went to university, worked for a few years as a servant before getting married. After my grandfather passed away in Winnipeg, my grandma moved her family, including my mom as the eldest, to Belleville and often thought about commuting to a university to work on a degree, but never did. In today’s world, she would be able to take courses at home and may have realized her dream. As it stands, she was an avid reader and an active member of her community. Additionally, her three children graduated from university, two with master’s degrees.
I ended up writing this poem to clear my mind:
Tailored pinafores,
Cream over green dresses,
Show the details of servile status.
Neatly groomed,
The small things in life have not been forgotten.
There is still laughter,
Good food, small possessions,
And fantasies.
My grandmother donned a uniform of some kind.
What she remembered most was the 3-minute egg.
Never cooked it again -
But the way she carried herself,
The way she planned her day,
Never varied from the objective running of a house.
No fantasies of grandeur -
The strength of the coffee,
The heat of the dinner plate,
The politeness of bedtime,
Were in question.
The smallness of it all,
The conservative long kilts and sweaters,
Turned out so as not to turn inwards.
There could be no questions,
Only happiness in corresponding with relatives,
Especially those earned through marriage.
“Life is a routine” and “Your eyes light up when you enter the living room”.
I appreciate the passage where Woods and Sikes (2022) share: “Qualitative work can be extremely personal. As noted earlier, to a great extent than other forms of research, it allows a working out of one’s own destiny within the context of ‘public issues’” (p. 54). In the past, I feared sharing aspects of my life because of stigma and potential embarrassment. Not about my grandma or any other member of my family, but about my experiences with mental health concerns and my twenties when a lot went wrong. Now, it is possible to speak more freely, yet I have struggled with my self-concept and the surging emotions that come with disappointment and some rejection. This past week, one of my colleagues, who assists newcomers to start their lives in Canada, told me that I am lucky I am in the education department. I agreed with her, and I said to those in the room that I previously had dreams of counselling but after volunteering on a crisis line, I realized that I was better off focusing on education, in which you work closely with others but within a learning environment that teaches and informs, where problems can be cast aside for a while.
I enjoy education but, even so, fight with a feeling of wanting to escape from my present role. I worry about fitting into the ESL culture since I am not from a linguistics or teaching background. When the focus is too much on the mechanics of the language or the pronunciation, I sometimes feel like a fish out of water. Yet, I am well-suited to working in the community and the ESL teaching is just one part of my work that also involves administration, coordination, and mentorship in areas such as training and entrepreneurship as well as language. In recent years, I have spent more time watching films and mini-series and playing table tennis and pickleball. How can I cure my need to feel like I could escape from my job if I wanted to? Or maybe, I should keep trying to do so by exploring through certificates and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), without the burden of worrying about the impact on my transcript. I am getting older and feel myself wanting to avoid taking certain chances. Simultaneously, the idea of taking a big chance through a career change appeals to me. The ongoing pendulum swing between the two sides is infusing my work on this project.
References
Woods, P., & Sikes. P. (2002). Successful writing for qualitative researchers, third edition. Routledge.