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Research Update: Reflective Writing for Sojourn Debriefing

How do we know if international teaching sojourns are more than a great travel experience? That is the question we have asked ourselves for the past three years as five of us have researched sojourn preparation, reflection and debriefing. The term “sojourn” refers to a period of time spend abroad. In the case of this research, the sojourn is the time the BEd students in our Teaching Across Borders program spend volunteer teaching and living abroad. While our larger project examines reflective writing in the preparation and time away, this research update focuses on reflection upon return home.

Sojourn debriefing – usually we like to begin at the beginning, but in the first phase of our research we started where most research, and programs, do not even venture – the end. We designed a reflective writing model that we used during a reflective writing workshop the participants attended after they had been back home for two months. We wanted the participants to reflect deeply on one significant event from their time away. The model provided quite effective as students were able to use it to think and write about this event, starting with descriptive writing, but moving on to descriptive reflection, dialogic reflection, and in some cases, critical refection (These are four types of reflective writing described in other research as levels of depth of reflection).

What did we learn?

First, we learned about ourselves as researchers who have also each spent time abroad. In designing the model, we tested out three widely known models on ourselves: Gibbs’ (1988) Reflective Cycle; Rolfe, Freshwater, and Jasper’s (2001) Reflective Model; and Johns’ (2010) Model for Structured Reflection. We met, tried writing based on each model, and then discussed which aspects of each we felt should go into a hybrid model we would use for our program participants. Through sharing our writing and developing this process, we became more aware of the strengths each of us brought to the project. We found this method effective for helping us design a model we could envision using, because we had lived the experience of assembling it. The new model was more than a sum of its parts because we added to it from our own insights. We have written about our design of the model in this scholarly publication:

Dressler, R., Becker, S. Kawalilak, C., Arthur, N. (2018). The cross-cultural reflective model for post-sojourn debriefing. Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives, 19(4), 490–504. doi:10.1080/14623943.2018.1530207

Second, we learned about reflective writing and our participants. Reflective writing forces writers to think about their experiences and consider what they might learn from them. Some of the experiences were difficult ones: experiencing homesickness, encountering systemic racism, questioning one’s career choice (in this case, teaching). Others were poignant: reaching out to a misunderstood student; seeing the historical, political significance of the place one was living, surprising oneself with language and intercultural competence that was previously unnoticed. While not all students reflected to the degree of dialogic or critical reflection, each had the opportunity to reflect, grow, and make sense of their experience.

We have recently submitted an article about these post-sojourn reflections and anticipate writing more about them when we look at the cases of individual participants over time.

Looking back at our work summarized so succinctly does not do it justice. Stay tuned for more updates in the coming year.

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5 years after graduation: A PhD journey retrospective

As I drove into campus today and witnessed students in convocation garb being photographed by family, I was reminded that on or near this day, five years ago, I was awarded my PhD.  Here is a numerical retrospective of my PhD journey:

10 teacher workshops

9 professional association memberships

8 different graduate courses taught

7 single-authored conference presentations

6 refereed journal articles

5 years since convocation

4 grants as Principal Investigator (PI)

3 grants as co-investigator

2 office moves

1 academic appointment

These numbers represent some picking and choosing to match up with the countdown and the list is by no means exhaustive. What they represent for me is dynamic interesting work that has also been emotionally and intellectually challenging. I look forward to celebrating more milestones in the coming five years. I will keep you posted.

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Researching social media: Facebook

My research took an interesting turn when I invited one of my daughters to explore the role of social media in the identity positioning of one particular study abroad sojourner – herself. We focused on her use of Facebook and that project resulted in an article for the Canadian Journal of Applied Linguistics.  Not only did we learn a great deal about how she, as a study abroad sojourner, used Facebook to position herself as an emerging bilingual over the course of two sojourners, but learned that there was so much more to using Facebook to study abroad than I had first thought.

I had once read a great book about EBay and its history. I believe it was The Perfect Store by Adam Cohen. It provided an overview of how it came to be as well as how the platform evolved over time. Although it is now dated, I felt it provided the perfect example of a storehouse of apparent trivia that a researcher might appreciate when studying EBay. Unfortunately, such a book does not exist for Facebook. While the history of how it started is well known and has it’s own movie, documentation of its evolution is much harder to track down. On top of that, when Facebook changes, it does so retroactively, so you can’t look back at your older Facebook posts to get a sense of what used to be. As a researcher, it is frustrating to realize that you can’t  easily and reliably claim that Facebook was a certain way at the time of the research.

So, after the first article was written, my daughter and I embarked upon a project about a project – exploring the methodology of using Facebook to research study abroad. In doing so, some questions were answered – we connected with researchers who shared how they establish procedures and came across this nugget: a Wikipedia entry for Facebook Features (not Facebook history which one usually discovers first). Our work resulted in an article that is currently under consideration for another journal. Stay tuned to this space to learn more!

Update: You can find our methodological article here:

Dressler, R., & Dressler, A. (2019). The methodological affordances and challenges of using Facebook to research study abroad. Study Abroad Research in Second Language Acquisition and International Education, 4(1), 126-144.

 

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Research Outbound: Personal and Professional Insights

My one month stay in Hamburg is coming to a close. What a full month it has been! I had both personal and professional goals for this trip. Here are a few of insights.

Personal: I wanted to get to know Germany as it is now. Germany has changed so much since I last stayed here for an extended time. This shouldn’t surprise me, but just as my parents spoke of a Germany that was radically different from the one I encountered in my first stay as an adult; so is the Germany of now different from the Germany from when I was 18. I have caught many of the changes in my visits over the years, but the diversity I see in the city now more closely resembles the diversity in Calgary.

I wanted to improve my German. From a language standpoint, I still marvel at what I know and what I don’t know. Some conversations flow smoothly and others hiccup on an ill-chosen word or a lapse in recall of a word I should know. I have expanded by vocabulary with regards to academic language, but similarities across words in similar categories reminds me of a joke my Dad used to tell: cabbage, carriage, garbage – what’s the difference? For me it is: Antrag, Vortrag, Beitrag. I have to stop and think before I use each word that I have chosen the right one! I watch non-native speakers of English deliver talks in English, while I am still frightened of my first talk in German. It still hasn’t happened since talks in English are valued here, but one day I will convince someone to let me and then the fun will begin.

Professional: Writing up my reports for this trip were a chance to put together a list of activities I intended to do and didn’t, intended to and did, and didn’t expect to do, but did. I tried to be open to opportunities that arose and as a result, I met with four professors I hadn’t anticipated meeting, took in two talks I hadn’t planned, and encountered more documents than I had ever envisioned when I proposed a document analysis.

I hope to return again, soon, to Hamburg. As I have mentioned to many whom I have seen, one goal of this trip was learning the right questions to ask. So, when I return, I would like to visit a preparation class (Internationale Vorbereitungsklasse), guest/co-teach, and conduct a workshop on research methodology for graduate students. On a personal level, I hope to bring along a colleague or family member so they too can see how interesting Hamburg and the University of Hamburg are.

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Update: International Symposium on Bilingualism 11 Limerick, Ireland

As an update to my post from last week, I have returned from my conference and networking trip to Ireland. Here are a few highlights

  1. I was able to meet with someone from the Study Abroad office and learn about the structure of their education program and international programs. The challenges are similar – their students are in a fixed program and it would take some creative thinking to accommodate an international experience such as Teaching Across Borders (TAB). However, I don’t see this as a stop sign, rather than a time to yield and reflect.
  2. I presented on some initial research on blogging, as a preparation for future research on the use of the Ning blog for reflection during the TAB program.
  3. I networked with several scholars in applied and educational linguistics.
    1. I learned that my research on the linguistic landscape of the classroom is being read by graduate students at a university in Israel.
    2. I reconnected with Aiofe Lenihan, the person who had originally said “You should come to Limerick some day” and learned about her research on Facebook and how it overlaps with mine.
    3. I discussed future research ideas with Francis Hult, who was the external examiner on my dissertation committee and the person who introduced me to nexus analysis and linguistic landscape analysis.
    4. I learned that Bernard Spolsky is doing a series on language policy management in former colonies. His work on Brazil makes a helpful addition to the body of work that colleagues and I are looking at in our comparative study on conceptualizations of diversity between Canada and Brazil.
  4. On top of all of this, I had a chance to experience Limerick. The conference providers arranged Irish dancers at the Monday evening BBQ, I toured the town and King John’s castle, and enjoyed the friendly hospitality of the local people.

It was a full and rewarding trip. I look forward to traveling to Ireland again some day with more time to see the countryside.

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Visiting Professor – Faculty of Education, University of Hamburg

For the month of June I have the above title. With funding from the Werklund School of Education, Office of Research and the University of Calgary’s Office of Internationalization, I have embarked upon this short research stay with a few flexible goals in mind:

  1. get to know the people and place of the university, the faculty and the structure of higher education, in particular, pre-service teacher education in Hamburg and in Germany
  2. hold some preliminary meetings and document analysis to see if a larger comparative project examining how Canada and Germany prepare teachers for refugee education
  3.  deliver two talks
    1. one on linguistic diversity in education in Canada
    2. one on the teaching across borders program and how its design is informed by research
  4. take a trip to Limerick, Ireland to attend and present at the International Symposium on Bilingualism and to network with scholars in applied and educational linguistics

Ok, this is starting to look like more than a few goals. There are also the future goals, such as considering whether to suggest Limerick as a future TAB placement or making connections for a research agreement with Uni Hamburg.

What can I share from my first full week in Hamburg:

  1. June is indeed a lovely time to come, the university is well-suited a short walk from parks and the Alster. I have been warmly welcomed, provided with an office and access to printers, etc. A colleague has explained aspects of the train system I can’t figure out from the internet and the Guesthouse is an amazing gathering place for visiting scholars and their families.
  2. a meeting with school officials was arranged and they spent an hour with me. I learned so much about the deliberate efforts to prepare teachers and set up a strong response to the wave of refugees that have come, recognizing the unique need to deal at times with illiteracy, trauma and interrupted schooling.
  3. the talks are still to come, but I attended one and was delighted by the interest students showed in the topic
  4. the trip to Limerick is on Sunday and the talk for Monday is prepared. Already I have a mental list of talks to attend and people to connect with.

The value of a trip like this is that people learn so much more in person than from afar and the connections they can make are valuable for any number of future endeavours. This is not my first time in Germany, but this is my first trip as a visiting scholar and my first residence abroad since I was 18. Despite the challenges of getting ready to go and making arrangements both professional and personal for while I am gone, I am optimistic that this trip will be worth the effort.

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Research update: Formative feedback research

In November 2015, I posted about two new research projects and promised an update as they progressed. Here is the update on one of them:

Investigation of Students’ Receptivity and Use of Formative Feedback in Online Graduate Research Courses – This is a collaboration with my colleague Dr. Man-Wai Chu and two research assistants Katie Crossman and Brianna Hilman. Our objective was to investigate how students react when peers and the instructor provide feedback to drafts of writing in a graduate course. In addition, we will explore whether they actually use this feedback in their final drafts.

We gathered data from one course that I taught in which students gave each other feedback on their writing for the course. They worked in groups of four so three peers looked at each draft and then I weighted in. Nine students consented to us using their papers as data so it was quite the task for Katie and Brianna to read and categorize each type of feedback and then look at the final versions of each paper of two assignments to see if the students actually used the feedback.

What did we discover? Students valued their peers’ feedback almost as much as mine as judged by the amount of each type their took up. We also discovered an important distinction: feedback can be surface-level (fixing typos, etc.), meaning-level (referring to ways to improve the content of the writing) and rhetorical (not requiring any changes, but encouraging or discussing the content). These distinctions helped us look at why students do or do not take up feedback and also revealed the peers are more likely to give surface-level feedback, which is necessary and saves the instructor from having to do it, but does not improve the writing as much as meaning-level feedback. It also leaves the question as to how much rhetorical feedback is ideal and how much is too much, since there is nothing the student is required or asked to do after they read it.

We assumed that if students got valuable feedback they would use it, but that was only true about 80% of the time. This leaves us wondering how to improve the uptake of the feedback that is given. Is it just a factor of time or are students often confused by the feedback they receive? We dove more into the literature and discovered work that suggests students need to be trained to give valuable feedback as well as trained in how to take it up. I did some training in the course, but I also made the assumption that graduate students know how to give it and then what to do with it when they get it. That assumption is not unique to me, so I think one valuable aspect that is coming from this research is the recommendation that training be more explicit and embedded in courses where students are expected to both give and receive feedback.

If you want to here more, we will be presenting at the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) conference in Calgary in October http://www.issotl.com/issotl15/node/172.

Update: the article was published here:

Dressler, R., Chu, M-W., Crossman, K., & Hilman, B. (2019). Quantity and quality of uptake: Examining surface and meaning-level feedback provided by peers and an instructor in a graduate research course. Assessing Writing, 39(1), 14-24, doi:10.1016/j.asw.2018.11.001

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Rejected!

I have written before about the “long road to publication” and “five things I have learned about writing”, but perhaps one of the hardest lessons I have learned to date is “Reviewer #2 is always right”.

There are many internet memes about the notorious Reviewer #2, the nemesis of the would-be author, who seems to wilfully misunderstand the argument of the article, require citations of literature that are irrelevant or suggest numerous edits while warning of the word limit. We have all had “that” reviewer and oddly, it is often the second reviewer in the list.

We are mentored not to take the comments personally: do the work, write a document to accompany the changes, and provide a rationale as to why or why they were not addressed. There is a form a blind dialogue that occurs as this document is mediated by the editor to the reviewers, to keep the identities of both parties on either side a secret.

We have all (except for the newest among us) been a reviewer. It is part of the service we render to the academy. Yet, I would hope that we keep our own experience with “reviewer #2” in mind when we write our responses. I would hope that we strive to explain ourselves with respect for the person who will be receiving the comments, writing as though that person were sitting across the table from us.

Despite my previous experience with reviewers and being a reviewer, I was shocked and unprepared for a recent article submission experience a colleague and I had. We submitted an article to a journal we had chosen based on considerable research into the aims and scope and a look at sample articles on similar topics. We sent a query to the editor as to the suitability of our article based on an abstract and it was received favorably. So, we sent off our manuscript and were delighted when we received a response of “accept with revisions”. There was a considerable list of desired revisions, but we were asked to submit within 30 days, which gave us hope that a publication was forthcoming. We addressed all of the concerns from two reviews in a table format and highlighted them in the revised article for easy of reading. The response from reviewer # 1 came quickly. A few small changes were required. We did those and awaited reviewer #2. Approximately one week later we heard from the editor that reviewer #2 felt we hadn’t addressed the changes and therefore the recommendation was “rejection”.

What? That’s it? We were stunned. We grieved, we complained, we regrouped. We asked our colleagues for advice. Although many had never heard of such a turn of events, a few had. We wrote the editor for an explanation and what we learned was that she had to guard her relationship with her reviewers such that there would be no recourse, no third reviewer, no editorial override. If Reviewer #2 said “rejected!”, there was nothing to do, but lick our wounds and move on.

This incident is too fresh for me to convey all of the learning that will come from it, but for the time being I am reminded that editors value their reviewers and if they have to pick sides, it will be the side of the reviewer. As someone who reviews as well, I in turn, need to have the humility to realize the work and effort authors put into their work and their revisions and remain aware of the great responsibility the role carries. Meanwhile, my co-author and I have resubmitted to a different journal. The waiting game begins again.

Update: the article was accepted and published in the second journal:

Tweedie, M.G., & Dressler, R. (2018). Visual aids as response facilitators in dialogue journals. Language and Literacy. 20(2), 125-143. doi:10.20360/langandlit29182

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Writing is like doing a jigsaw puzzle

A conversation in the hallway created the spark for this blog post. A colleague of mine mentioned that she thinks of doing a jigsaw puzzle as a metaphor for writing. Together we fleshed out a more complete metaphor.Here is how it goes:

  1. The edges – some people love doing the edges of a puzzle. The straight lines provide structure that allows the puzzler to know everything is falling into place. The same goes for writing – some people like the beginning. They outline their argument and organize the data so that they know they can begin and those steps are in themselves a beginning. However, some people leave parts of the border unfinished because they know that straight edges are not always obvious and that searching for them can be frustrating or unfruitful. It is better to wait until part of the puzzle is done and the edges surface. In the same way, some writers leave the outline in a rough form, knowing that the process of writing will inform the structure of the paper. The original outline sometimes gets reordered, in the same way one sometimes ends up moving a large chunk of border to where it fits better.
  2. The middle – while I have never heard anyone say they love the middle of the puzzle, I have encountered those who love taking on the most challenging part – sky, for example. They notice the subtle differences and enjoy the challenge of trying to make pieces fit based on their shape. These people are similar to those who relish the argument or discussion section of the paper because they like to make sense of data or big ideas that surface in the writing. However, just as some puzzlers get frustrated and leave the toughest parts for last, some writers try around the discussion and conclusions in an attempt to get as much structured or straightforward writing done first. That would be me!
  3. The end – someone is always holding on to a piece of the puzzle in order to be the one who puts in the last piece. With great satisfaction it is placed and the final work admired. Most writers gets a great sense of satisfaction in completing an article, although I haven’t seen anyone argue over who gets to write the last edits or even less, format the article for submission. (These people must exist). There are also those puzzlers who, as soon as the puzzle is done, mourn its completion. They wish they could prolong the enjoyment that comes with doing a jigsaw puzzle. The completion of an article can have the same effect. The submission may signal the end of a project, a collaboration, a relationship with the participants

… until the revise and resubmit comes back!

 

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Curriculum development: A learning curve

This past semester I was tasked with curriculum development: taking two face-to-face undergraduate courses and adapting them for online instruction. One was an introductory course on literacy that had inquiry groups as a part of the structure. The other was a course on interdisciplinary learning which revolved around a large unit plan project.

In some ways I felt well-prepared: I have previously taught a number of online graduate courses and I had previously taught the literacy course face-to-face. This previous experience was helpful in providing me with familiarity with the course content (in the one case) and online pedagogy, which is somewhat transferable from the graduate to undergraduate level. I started with the assumptions that it is possible to adapt these courses such that they meet the same learning objectives and have the same degree of rigour as their counterparts. I knew that some of my students would have connectivity challenges (some because they lived rurally, others because they were on international placements) and I had to wrestle with planning the synchronous online sessions at a time that met the waking hours of several times zones, but those problems were foreseeable, but not predictable, so I did my best to plan for them, but knew I needed to be flexible and adaptable when problems arose.

I also had the luxury of planning time, so I was able to do a number of things in the summer that made the course design and execution easier. I contacted past instructors of the course I had not taught before to discuss with them the successes and challenges they had had and to ask them to envision teaching the course online. This proved helpful for envisioning the course, but also resulted in collegial connections which I benefited from while teaching. I contacted the Teaching and Learning Office of my university and arranged for a tutorial on producing screen capture video. Having someone walk me though new software is my preferred method of digital learning and from there I was able to create several videos during the semester.

The test of curriculum development is in the running of the course. Looking back, I would say that the planning I did paid off. There were however, unanticipated problems that stemmed from assumptions the students and I had that didn’t match. In the case of one course, the second year students viewed online learning as a self-paced correspondence course and, in the first two weeks, oriented themselves toward completing the assignments, not co-constructing knowledge among peers, as was my assumption. Although I had placed information and expectations into the discussion board of the learning management system (LMS), they had gone straight to the content section and grabbed the course outline only. That had been sufficient in their previous uses of the LMS in their first year face-to-face courses, but I had not anticipated it as our online graduate students are well-versed in online learning after the initial course. It took repeated messaging by both of their online instructors in the first two weeks to orient them toward the discussion board. Lesson learned: the expectation of co-construction of knowledge in the discussion board needs to be communicated in advance of the course (and opportunity we had as we had met with them in the summer). Students in both courses struggled with expectations around what to write in the discussion board. The temptation to write at the level of encouragement, rather than critique was strong. Lesson learned: my colleague David Scott blogged about what makes an educationally valuable  academic discussion board post and I shared that with the students.

Having adapted these two courses and taught them both this fall, I look forward to the opportunity to teach them again, improve upon them and expand my repertoire as an online instructor. I will be taking my lessons learned and including them in the preparatory workshops we have when we meet the students the summer before the courses.