I did find though that the act of writing and then more
recently re-reading my last blog on AoLs really helped cement newly acquired knowledge in my mind, so if for no other reason I thought I’d give it another
shot in reference to my latest pitfall! Today I am having a bit of an internal battle
with some thoughts regarding research so I thought why not just go for it and
let them out, apologies in advance if this turns into a rant, I can feel it
building up.
It is of course essential to back up practice with theory and
researching in and around a subject aids this excavation of existing knowledge.
I love this process; I enjoy drawing parallels between disciplines and finding
them in unlikely places, noticing how other practitioners share my methods or
agree/disagree with my principles. What I have always struggled with is
extracting and selecting what is most relevant, what best backs up what I want
to say and what is worthy of use in my writing. I start to see relevance
everywhere in the most obscure topics and want to use everything in my work.
Whilst I know there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in the formulating of opinions
there is a question of validity in the referencing of theory and the ‘good
student’ part of my brain kicks in and I suddenly become worried about what is
acceptable, whether my point is valid or if I have flown off in an unrelated
direction. I then find it almost
impossible to stand back and organise my thoughts and findings into some kind
of useable format.
This then leads directly into the next issue of when do you
call enough, enough when it comes to researching around a particular topic? I am
currently looking for theory to back up my AoL titles and I often find that the
reading of one article will lead into a related and equally relevant piece of
literature, this pattern then repeats exponentially and I honestly believe I
could go on forever if I don’t eventually reign it in, but how do you know when?
What if I miss out on the most relevant
and informative reading material ever because I stopped too soon. J Is it just me or does this process then turn into a form of academic
procrastination? I don’t like to formalise my thoughts by actually beginning to
write because I know my opinions might change, or I am concerned about the
quality or relevance of my reading material or in all honesty I feel as if I am
no clearer about what I want to say than when I started.
So…here I find myself, I’ve read about everything from
educational reform in the Punjab to the postmetaphysical thinking of Habermas
and Gadamer, from the methods of Laban and Barteneiff to a software developers
take on best practices for teaching Python as a programming language. Am I
ready yet? Maybe I’ll just read one more book and then I will begin…
