PIK Week 13 – Research and the Reflective Practitioner

I’d like to begin this week’s Journal with the Haynes reading. Hayes challenges the view (proported by Hernon) that there is a clear distinction between assessment (the process of gathering data) and evaluation which is traditionally done during the final stages, where data is interpreted. She argues that the entire process of needs assessment, planning, service provision, assessment and analysis are predicated on underlying value judgements and that such judgements strongly affect the nature of the research. Her article focuses on evaluative research focused on service provision in the Libraries services area. She identifies that there is a gulf between the ideas and research that dominate library and information studies and the research that libraries conduct for themselves.

Haynes criticises the Gap model used to measure differences between perceptions of a service and various other dimensions (e.g. expectations of ideal service, importance of service attributes, etc.). It is a model that compares a service with what users want, however (as Haynes argues) it does not account for the social role or needs of its users. She argues that service quality can be determined not only in relation to what users say they would like, but what the whole potential user community would most benefit from. She stresses that evaluation must engage in dialog that will allow a library’s mission statements and objects to evolve in response to the changing needs of the community and their users.

I think this is an extremely important approach. Libraries in my own area (Western Sydney) have a range for very successful English conversation classes for people of migrant and refugee backgrounds. A Library evaluation policy that constantly strives to engage in dialogue with their communities to determine organisational goals dynamically and according to the changing and developing needs of their users is essential to ensuring its role as an effective service provider to the community. Furthermore, to what extent should libraries today be solely focusing towards alleviating information poverty, to enable disconnected people and groups to build social mobility, bridge the digital divide, and alleviate Castells’ ‘fourth world’ phenomenon?

I believe the function of libraries are fast becoming centres that don’t simply allow access to information resources, but are centres that strengthen, include and empower disaffected and disconnected community groups. Again, Aleph Molinari’s ‘Learning and Innovation Centre’ is a perfect model with which modern Libraries can pursue to fulfil the information needs and the social needs of its users and communities.

There is the ideological argument here against this role for libraries however. That is, to what extent will library services (in its attempt to build social mobility and inclusiveness) be informed by the overarching dominant ideology that it functions under (or from an Assangian perspective, to what extent will librarians be conspirators colluding with larger more powerful conspiratory systems?) Isn’t the attempt to ‘educate’ community groups who are insulated by their own small worlds, merely an attempt to hegemonise them into the over-arching ideological system? 

This problem can be dealt with an educative approach called critical pedagogy which rests its theoretical basis on the philosophies of Paulo Freire. The short video below outlines the critical pedagogical approach.

This video is a longer interview with Paulo Freire who has some interesting things to say:

I’ve seen a similar approach in my own professional practice earlier in my career. Westside is an ongoing writing and publication project that I’ve been involved in since its inception. It is a project that was initiated by BYDS (a community arts services hub based in Bankstown) in 1998.

It was one the first publications to have officially recognise my literary work as a teenager. The Chief Editor of the publication Michael Mohammed Ahmad was published in the first series. He has transformed the series from a set of yearly magazines that published the writings of teenagers in the Bankstown region into a publishing house with the purpose of recognising the voice of under-represented writers in the Western Sydney region, sourcing and educating hundreds of writers from the region with various literary programs and creating a network of established and emerging writers. Westside has conducted countless projects that have empowered the often misrepresented and disadvantaged communities of Western Sydney. Its approach to improving literacy in Western Sydney can be characterised as one with a strong concern for how dominant ideologies and discourses function to disaffect the subpopulations of the region.

Hague argues that library evaluation systems remain systems centred with a focused on quantitative tools and believes that a mixed method that will supplement quantitative research methods with user centred qualitative approaches which consider users’ social contexts. This is why the evaluative approach she suggests is an important one. It allows practitioners to be aware of the ideological assumptions behind their evaluation of library services and allows them to shape their services in a way that empowers their users with the tools and resources to shape and dictate discourse according to the users own values and ideological background (an approach of critical pedagogy).

Wang’s Photovoice method is an excellent qualitative method that can be used to establish an important dialogical approach to dynamically shape organisational goals. Having moved on to this reading after the Hague reading, I was surprised that it was also an approach that is informed by Freire philosophy. It allows people within the community to record and reflect on their community’s strengths and concerns through photography, promotes critical dialogue about important issues through group discussions of photographs and allows them to reach policy makers. The method has several strengths. 

·         It accounts for a fundamental problem of needs assessment – that what researchers think is important may neglect what the community thinks is important.

·         It uses a visual medium that can overcome barriers of language and is thus a robust form of communication.

·         It allows the sampling of different social and behavioural settings from the perspective of the user.

·         The method itself can sustain community participation during the process of needs assessment and program implementation. Photovoice itself can build network connections and dialogue with researchers. The process itself provides tangible and immediate benefits to people and their social networks through the dissemination of photographs.

·         It allows the target community/users to reaffirm or redefine program goals during the period when community needs are being assessed through interaction with curious community members.

·         It allows an opportunity for participants to bring explanations, ideas and stories of people within their community network into the assessment process.

·         Allows participants to photograph not only their community’s needs, but also their strengths.

Participants select photographs that most accurately reflect a community’s needs and assets, tell stories about the meaning of the photographs and organise them into categories based on issues or themes. Such a participatory assessment process unveils real local needs sourced by the target users/community themselves. Wang’s focus in the paper revolved around a case study of rural Chinese Women, however it is easy to see how this method can be appropriated in a variety of contexts, especially online where programs like Instagram and crowd sourcing have become commonplace.

I’d like to move on to the final reading for this week, Haythornthwaite’s paper on Social Network Analysis, which is an approach (as Christakis’ and Fowlers research shows) with very important ramifications for understanding the broad scale social phenomena of today’s world. 

The approach examines both the content (contagion) and the pattern of relationships (topology) in order to determine how and what resources flow from one actor to another. The approach identifies relationships and network structure before it goes about labelling groups. It then goes on to analyse the dynamism between the dyad by trying to understand the rules and codes that govern information transfer. Furthermore, Haythornthwaite states that relationships can be characterised by their content (or contagion). My earlier post (PIK Week 7.5) on Christakis examines the functionality of social networks and the rules that govern them in more detail.

Haythornthwaite visits some aspect of networks that I don’t feel like I’ve covered in my previous post:

·         Direction characterises the which way information flows – It can be:

o    Asymmetrical (e.g. boss to worker)

o    Undirected – which is more complex and dialogical in nature.

·         Strength refers to the intensity of a relationship or the frequency with which contagion is exchanged.

·         Strength Ties describes the resilience between two actors. It is dependent on contextual factors, like surrounding network topology, contact frequency, duration of associations, reciprocity, intimacy and kinship.

Haythornthwaite also covers five network principles to examine the relational properties of a network:

·         Cohesion -  grouping actors according to strong common relationships with each other (characterised by density and centralization [no. of connections] in a sociograph)

·         Structural equivalence – grouping actors based on their similarity in relation to others (characterised as having identical ties to and from all other actors in the network in a sociograph)

·         Prominence – indicating who is in power (characterised by centrality in a sociograph)

·         Range – indicating the extent of an actor’s network (and their subsequent influence)

·         Brokerage – indicating bridging connections to other networks (characterised by singular nodes in between two different networks – These are the connections Assange proposes need to be targeted to dismantle an organisation)

This approach is, in my opinion, is a very powerful method of understanding how broad ranging communities function and will most likely hold a lot of sway in the information science in the next few years as computer networking analysis technologies and big data develop. It is an approach that identifies power relations within a network, and such an approach is fundamental when trying to understand information and people’s relationship to it.


It would be interesting to look into the meta-theoretical and ontological underpinnings of Social Network though I don't have the time to look into it here. I do find social networking theories like Social Network Analysis, Actor Network Theory, and Christakis and Fowler's insights into social networking extremely influential however. I had begun this course with separate notions of how Ideology, power, and privacy/censorship functioned in the context of information and knowledge. My studies on Social Networking theory have truly allowed me to weave a web and seamlessly connect these seperate notions. Given a well developed ontological basis for these theories, I believe I will have a robust intellectual framework to approach my future studies. It will be an area that I will undoubtedly revisit and focus on later down the track.

References

Haynes, A. (2004) 'Bridging the Gulf: Mixed Methods and Library Service Evaluation'. Australian Library Journal 53 (3): 285-306
 

Haythornthwaite, Caroline (1996) Social Network Analysis: An Approach and Technique for the Study of Information Exchange. Library and Information Science Research V18 , 323-342.

Wang, C. and Burris, M. (1997). Photovoice: concept, methodology and use for participatory needs assessment. Health Education and Behaviour. 24(3): 369-387.