the faculty i respect the most at our college are the ones who voluntarily take on the challenge of being a faculty advisor and engage the students in one on one educational and career counseling. there is a move afoot in the Army to formalize and systematize the mentoring “program” across the force, and I […]
Category: research
Cultural context in qualitative research: can it even be done?
A “critical friend” in the action research process is a trusted agent who gives deep insights from the outside into the nature, quality, and path of your introspection. They help keep you grounded, and offer triangulation points in the sense-making process as you grapple with your own questions and insights. They act as sounding […]
PAR Journal entry: initiating the “Force generation” project
this is the text of an info paper I wrote for our Deputy Commandant to send to the 3 and 4 star generals in charge of Army leader education and training. It describes the motivation for and purpose of our inquiry into “the education gap of force generation”, and lays out a methodology and strategy […]
participatory action research and the “scoping” problem
Some advice for a friend grappling with the difficulty of finding and keeping a tight focus of the issues emerging from his group research into sex discrimination in the workplace. I wish i could foloow my own advice and stay focused Phil: here’s a thought experiment: what would happen if you treated your research inquiry […]
Action research, personal journal entry 20090124
The first time I prepared this for an entry on our doctoral discussion forum , I constructed it inside Moodle (our discussion environment; its horrible), attached the file, pushed the upload button only to lose it in hyperspace when my Internet connection crashed. It was important enough to me to rework the piece, however and […]
Reflecting on personal learning environments: teacher as model student
At the last CTU residency, on the last day my breakthrough insight was to approach the research question on leader curriculum development at the Command and General Staff College from the perspective of giving voice to the students, who are professional military officers operating at the graduate level and fresh from combat experience in Iraq […]
A Reflection on the political process of defense acquisition
In other places , such as this discussion about acquisition reform, and Dr Paparone’s discussion of The Fallacy of Technical Rationality, we have seen commentary on the nature of the acquisition process. There is a strong case for it being political in nature. In any event, politics plays a large role in creating the process, […]
Edge.org: this should be interesting and challenging
Sigh: because i dont have enough on my plate to keep my attention fully engaged. Still, they have some powerful info from one of my heroes, Daniel Kahneman whose intellect spans the whole globe. “To arrive at the edge of the world’s knowledge, seek out the most complex and sophisticated minds, put them […]
Hearing the Voiceless- Part 2
In the ongoing conversation re: Action research into an entreprenurial curriculum for middle school and high school age students, one of our fellow students offered a detailed set of interventions based on the initial readout from the first exploratory meeting, a reported by the “insider”. While the ideas were excellent and interesting, I felt moved to […]
Hearing the voiceless
a friend of mine is starting a Participatory Action Research (PAR) project inquiring into an entreprenurial curriculum that has both enabled and disabled students in her classroom. From an email, she said: I met with the students who are disabled, and we had a discussion on their feelings toward working with their counterparts who are […]