reading about doing CA

In between working on my own writing this week I have taken some time to read over the (inspiring) work of others. This has been useful for getting my head back into CA ways of thinking and writing. I'm listing three favourites here.

Austin, H.,Dwyer, B., & Freebody, P. (2003). Schooling the child: The making of students in classrooms. London; New York: RoutledgeFalmer.

Francis, D., & Hester, S. (2004). An invitation to ethnomethodology. London; Thousand Oaks; New Delhi: SAGE Publications.

Silverman, D. (1998). Harvey Sacks: Social Science & Conversation Analysis. New York: Oxford University Press.

early career researcher program

Today marks the end of a busy week. I finished teaching rounds supervision, made some progress on my journal article for language and education, and completed an application for the early career researcher program at the University of Ballarat. The latter provides an opportunity to work up publications and to "get up" an application for a small research project. Twelve people will be selected.

Actually, just completing the "expressions of interest" form enabled me to consider where I am currently at in terms of my development as a researcher. Something that I have noticed is that post-Phd is a critical time for beginning researchers. Some seem to move ahead quickly, and others not so. Most of my friends who don't work as academics can't believe it i.e. isn't the hard slog over now? Nuh! It is just beginning.

writing away

I have spent much of this week working up an article for a journal. i am drawing on my phD research so the writing comes relatively easily. I mention this because I don't think that writing out of a PhD necessarily IS easy. certainly, many people that i know haven't written much out of their PhD.

I am writing for one journal -Language in Education. I have taken as my focus many of the taken-for-granted interactional resources that I determined and described in my PhD study of independent writing. at the moment, the article seems to be shaping up quite well. writing the article has taken me back to my PhD thesis. I haven't looked at it much since finishing my thesis, however, today i found several sections of writing that i thought were very good. they also reminded me of the struggles i went through when trying to frame up my thesis. hopefully, i can now drawn on that writing to get a journal article finished.

what to do next?

Lectures have finished and my marking is done. My desktop is visible once again and I have begun planning my priorities for the six weeks before semester 2 begins. So far I have a list that encompasses the following:
to write a journal article based on one of the analyses chapters from my PhD
to write a proposal for a CA conference next year
to write a proposal for AARE
to revamp teaching materials for the unit that I will teach next semester
to organise my portfolio for an application for promotion

That's it so far. a modest list?

marking

I have almost finished marking students' assignments. Five to go. All up it has been an interesting experience for me. There are 124 students in first year so the marking of each assignment takes time. I especially like the last assignment because, although it is a demanding one, most students do a good job of the analysis of talk and interaction.

There were some great transcripts and some excellent analyses of these. For me, the detailed attention to classroom talk provided a nice balance to the prescriptions that current literacy programs involve i.e.the ways in which teachers and students bring about lessons was a salient reminder that participants in lessons bring them about, not programs.

Home talk was also well addressed by those students who chose to focus on this. Some great little snippets of talk were gathered, for example, talk at bathtime, talk when cooking the evening meal, and talk about the day's doings.

Well done everyone. Have a well deserved break.

on blogging

thanks to those students who spoke to me during this week, about my blog. it was good to get feedback about the usefulness of the blog. interest in the blog led me to suggest that students could set up their own blogs, since some seemed to think that they couldn't! after feedback about my blog i will definitely use it to greater effect in the future ie. let students know about it at the beginning of my units of teaching.