Last night, we had our second ER session. To start with, we recapped postivist v interpretative research. We looked at the rationales of about 7 research projects and tried to place them on a continuum. My group’s notions of where the respective projects fell was at such wide variance with those of others in the class, that I seriously doubt my ability to tell positivist from interpretative. Back to the drawing board.

We then had a guest lecturer in the form of Gareth Alcott M.A. Having recently completed his MA, he came to discuss his approach to his ER assignment and, by extension, his dissertation. It became abundantly clear that it is essential to get the ER assignment absolutely right, since it is pivotal to the dissertation. If, for example, I finally home in on a question at the end of my ER assignment and then later have an epiphany about what I really want to write about for my dissertation, I will have to redo the work done in the ER phase. Not a prospect I relish.

Gareth gave us some very helpful guidelines, which I will record in more detail in a separate post. Two that stand out however, are:

• Start keeping track now of material that will be used and the references
• Find a core article

I have been doing the former with my Learning and Teaching assignment – an approach I adopted some time ago. It was, therefore, encouraging to find that the approach had worked for someone else.

With regard to the latter – one of my classmates was complaining to me just last week that she had found an article for her L&T assignment that said exactly what she wanted to say. Last night we both realised that she had inadvertently found her core material, and were able to look at her predicament more positively as a consequence.

The main message I took away from the session was that it is essential to find a subject I am passionate about, since I will be spending a great deal of time and effort on the subject. So I asked myself, what am I passionate about?

Since it is unlikely that I will be able to find a way to work chocolate into the material, the alternatives are:

• Adult learning
• Informal learning
• Lifelong learning
• Social media – especially blogs
• Relevance – do schools teach kids what they need to know when they go to work?

Of these, I am most passionate about the final topic, but this is very much on a personal level. Bearing in mind that I am not a school teacher, my passion is entirely related to the future of my own sons. It is difficult to imagine myself being able to adopt a sufficiently professional detatchment.

I foresee a fair amount of time spent in discussion with a tutor!