Methodology for this Thesis

Philosophical Approach – Pragmatism

The philosophical approach of Pragmatism - that the function of thought is as an instrument or tool for prediction, action, and problem solving (Peirce, 1935, James, 1898) - has inspired my work and specifically been employed in the production of this thesis. It has guided me to gather my work practice, discover those aspects which have made the greatest contribution and attempt to link them to theoretical perspectives through the thesis web site.

Methodological Approach – Autoethnography

Although it is clear that the approach I have taken is of autoethnography, there are variants, and my approach has been closest to that defined by Ellis (2004) - “research, writing, story, and method that connect the autobiographical and personal to the cultural, social, and political”. Although I set out to describe and look critically at my experience, there is also the deliberate attempt to find theory in this thesis, and a move from my tacit theories to those articulated in the analyses, [A1], [A2], [A3] and [A4], published with this thesis, where the intent is to provide reliable tools to other designers. I hope that this desire and the positive outcomes of much of the practice I have been engaged in will counter the criticisms levelled at auto-ethnographers as "unscientific, or only exploratory, or subjective" (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005, p8).

The five factors described by Richardson (2000, pp 15-16) for evaluating  such work are used here to justify my position, and for you the reader to judge my success as set out in table 2.

Table 2: Richardson's factors for evaluating autoethonographic work

Specific Method

Designing the thesis web site

From the outset, the processes of gathering, categorising, reflecting, selecting and presenting were identified as knowledge and information management tasks, which from the author's perspective demanded a content management system (CMS). The practice of designing such a system was aligned with the author's experience and ambition, offering not only a vehicle for development but also dissemination and participation. The structuring, semantic tagging, work-flow, language translation, accessibility, visual design and multimedia features of the Plone CMS were seen as appropriate for the task based on experience using this CMS for the websites of key relevant professional organisations in recent years - Ultralab, Core Education UK and the National Archive of Educational Computing.

Gathering the evidence

The first step was to enter the events in my practice using the 'Event' content type in Plone and collecting these in the Portfolio section. Each event consisted of a title, summary, description, start and end date for each of the elements of my practice. I chose to be broad in scope, creating an auto-biographical account which is more complete than required for this thesis, but allowed decisions on relevance, importance and contribution to made through a second pass. An important consequence of this process was the positive effect of building a rounded account of my life experience leading to a holistic picture. The outcome is a list of around 400 items of practice.

Categorising the evidence

Each entry was tagged as belonging to one of seven categories that emerged from considering the kinds of practice I had engaged in:

1. education - events in my formal lifelong education;
2. employment - posts held;
3. project - research and development projects undertaken;
4. professional - positions of professional activity, e.g. societies, examination, advice;
5. conference - participation in conferences;
6. publication - papers and other media published formally;
7. teaching - activity where my rôle was to teach others.

Adding reflections and selecting key contributions

To create a manageable portfolio for assessment of this thesis, a selection of events was made that seemed to offer potential for the development of a doctoral thesis through a process of reflection. These events were edited to include a paragraph or more of reflection, identifying the key elements within them that influenced the development of my design practice and assessing the contribution made in what were frequently collaborative activities. As well as clarifying the nature of my contribution, I assessed the proportion of it in crude percentage terms.

From these items, a further selection was made to shorten the list to form the basis of a claim for examination. These items are tagged 'claim' and show with a white background and bold text in the portfolio timeline as shown in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Claim items highlighted in white on a timeline of my professional practice

Each of these items has been shared with the original key collaborators, where possible, and they have formally agreed to my judgment of contribution. This process was followed as part of registration for this degree and is submitted to the Board of Studies for Research Degrees as one of the conditions of registration.

On reflection, I consider the estimate of my contribution in percentage terms to be too limited, and in future would propose the use of more qualitative terms ranked as:

• leader;
• one of a pair;
• member of small team;
• critical friend and
• member of large team.

Identifying originality, impact and importance

A final process of identifying the originality, impact and importance of the items of practice on which I based the claim was undertaken and referenced to evidence. In some cases the practice was very public and on the large scale and may be readily judged for these factors by other academics and practitioners in the field.

The outcome of this process forms the basis of the Claim made in that section of this thesis.