October update
UT Blog 06-10-21
Forgive the tardiness in the blogs but with the weight of the research, full time work, care responsibilities and family commitments have all combined to put things that should not be put on the backburner, on the backburner.
So this blog arrives with more personal news that I hope will frame the current thinking and writing that this blog direction may take up. I’m now pursuing the PhD full time and looking for a side of teaching when/where I can get it (if anyone knows of any!)
I realised that my draft proposal was not positioned where it should be for this level of research, so I did something about it and started to put the energy into them, this need a freeing up of time and space so hence those decisions, the goal is to gain a teaching role so to do this one must facilitate the research to add to my 30 years’ experience of the more practical side of photography in order to hopefully gain one.
It’s been a couple of days now and I’ve certainly made more headway with the proposal than I would have done previously, looks like the decision is starting off being proved correct, that’s a big tick for the claim, evidence and warrant approach to research so far then.
Lot of my previous problems can be sorted by answering the question:
“What is it that you want to find out?”
Turns out it’s a surprisingly difficult one to answer fully, reflecting on why this is, I surmise it’s because I’ve got myself caught in previous traps and ideas about what can/can’t be researched and where it fits in the marketplace.
So I’ve stepped back and actually had the time to think and to react to thought processes and ideas, more so than I have in the last 30 years, which is quite the revelation!
Next steps are to quantify what I want to research, answer its relevance and see how it is situated in the current climate of thought and education.
This will lead onto to answer the biggest question that I struggle with, which is:
“Does it make an original contribution to knowledge?”
What a big question that is and one which is not easily answered, not quickly in my mind, think it’s almost like those questions that only others can I answer like:
“How am I seen? And “What does this work say?”
Thinking about teaching and learning it’s very reminiscent of how photography is edited. (I’ll clarify by saying that I’m using that statement in the context of choosing and positioning of images rather than the more widely used context of the photoshopping of imagery)
When you choose an opening (establishing image) you nail the story, meaning and context to the flag post, saying that this is what this is about. Or do you? If someone comes along and says that they think something else about that image/story/work, then have you done it wrong? or are they wrong? Or are you both correct.
It’s an interesting one about the uses and communication of photography, the understanding of images in socio-economic, geographical, sociology and/or psychology terms..
And there we come full circle back into my proposed PhD subject! Feel like this might be the story of my life going forward, which I’m actually looking forward to !
As every blog needs an image and as I’m exploring the ideas of visual literacy, this concept of an image came up in some research, it struck me as something other than visual literacy and touched upon ideas of capitalism, glocal, age, supply and entitlement rather than sole visual literacy but I will try it here and see. I’ve reshot it here rather than photoshopped it so it may have less/more effect, but we’ll see, let me know your thoughts, ideas and anything else (especially round the image.)
Thank you for reading.
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