This article considers the impact of new technologies on the adolescent experience of live, literary theatre. Drawing together the work of theorists in literacies, new technologies and audience studies, together with brain research, and the results of a focus group of four secondary students who have seen four plays at Canada’s National Arts Centre, it examines the consequences of young people’s immersion in digital culture and the new mindset that often results. The expectation of instant access to data, inter-connectivity, stimulation and control can make it difficult for adolescents to decode the metaphorical aspects of a theatrical performance. The article concludes that language arts and dramatic arts educators have a key role in teaching students how to decode—and therefore enjoy and appreciate— a play.

The Power of a Small Green Place is an ethnographic case study among the volunteers and urban wilds of Ottawa’s Fletcher Wildlife Garden (FWG). Through the conceptual lens of the geographical concept of place – with its wide range of physical, relational and deeper meaningful considerations – this urban wildlife habitat project emerged as a place of profound significance. Volunteers working to create and maintain the FWG’s diverse habitats benefit from opportunities to engage in physical outdoor activity, establish social connections, make contact with the natural world, find deep personal satisfaction and meaning, and experience healthier and mutually beneficial relations with nature. This case study fills a knowledge gap in geography regarding the significant relationships that can emerge between people and the land they work with, thereby contributing to geography’s “latest turn earthward” examining practices and relationships of cultivation with the land. The case study also contributes to a growing interdisciplinary dialogue on human-nature relations and their implications in the context of future environmental and societal uncertainties.

This research brings together two concepts that are often depicted as polar opposites. Sutton-Smith (2001) however suggests that the opposite of play is not work, but depression, and moreover echoes other scholars in reclaiming play as an essential human expression, even for adults. This study, therefore, argues that, given the precarious wellness territory our workplaces are in, something about work is not working. It is furthermore proposed that, given all the evidence of the therapeutic potential inherent to play, there is indeed something nutritious at play in play. Despite these well-supported arguments, play remains hidden away in the academic shadows of more serious industrial psychological preoccupations. Surprisingly, the same conspicuous absence is even mirrored in Positive Psychology, a bustling field that claims to celebrate glee, fun, and happiness (Seligman, 2002a). Entitled “An autoethnographic exploration of play at work,” this dissertation leans on the metaphor of “exploration”, or more specifically, exploratory play. This results in two distinct yet interwoven dimensions to the research study. Firstly, the research approaches the phenomenon of play and play-based methods in workshop contexts through the lived experience of the researcher. Secondly, the research project in itself is conceptualised as work, and the methodology of autoethnography is conceptualised as a playful approach to this work of conducting research. Aside from widening the research scope, this also appropriately matches research methodology to the research domain. Aside from being about play at work, this research also is play at work. Autoethnography, as a recent development in qualitative research, remains unconventional and somewhat controversial in the South African social sciences. Autoethnography, as an offspring of ethnography, offers a method to reflexively incorporate the researcher’s own lived experience in the study of culture as a primary source of rich phenomenological data. Instead of minimising the emotive and subjective, this research amplifies and celebrates it. Given a fair degree of unfamiliarity in terms of autoethnography as well the accusation of being overly self-centred, the experience of the researcher is then complemented by the views of a number of co-creators to the culture being studied. This is done through external data-gathering in the forms of a focus group as well as number of semistructured, dyadic interviews. While therefore leaning more toward postmodern themes, this research also incorporates what has been termed analytical autoethnography (Anderson, 2006), wherein the researcher is a full-member of the setting being studied, is portrayed as such and is committed to theoretical analysis. This study can therefore be summarised as an autoethnographic case study that balances evocative and analytical styles (Vryan, 2006) while emanating from the philosophical assumptions of interpretivism and subjectivism. Internal realities and meaning-creation are thus emphasised rather than the received views of positivism. The central research question being explored is how play and play-based methods promote work-related well-being. To answer this question, firstly, play and play-based methods are explored, both from a theoretical and practical point of view. From within workshop (pedagogical) contexts, the play-based methods considered throughout this study include metaphor and story, creative-arts-based play, physical-body play and also the uncelebrated yet essential methods of icebreakers and games. A preliminary taxonomy is proposed for play-based methods to offer description and to facilitate reflection and learning. Descriptive elements in this taxonomy include interactive vs. solitary, competitive vs. cooperative, motor-sensory vs. cognitive-mind, participative vs. vicarious and rule-bound vs. improvisational. Building on this exploration of play-based methods, the second aspect explored in more detail has to do with the more internal and subjective experiences of participants, or players, if you like. These experiences are then related to prominent concepts encountered in Positive Psychology to, by proxy, understand how they relate to work-related well-being. Significant themes that emerge from this include play as fun, play as mind-body integration, play as authenticity, play as community, and play as stress-relief and resilience. This is then woven into a creative non-fiction, in accord with a trend in qualitative research called creative analytical practices (CAP) (Richardson, 2000). This creative non-fiction, detailed in Chapter 4, forms a key autoethnographic output that animates all these themes in a way that is accessible, evocative and playful. Chapter 5 complements this chapter with an in-depth exploration of the research journey as a confessional tale. While adopting the metaphor of hiking in mountains (exploring nature), this confessional tale clarifies the research process and incorporates an in-depth analysis of the themes, both in terms of research data as well as literature. This is supported by a number of separate appendixes, including interview transcripts, depictions of the interview analysis as well as a number of photos from the field. In terms of its uniqueness and unconventionality, this research joins in the choir of related work to incorporate more contemporary research genres into the social sciences in South Africa. By doing so, it opens up doors to phenomena that simply resist being studied with the ontological and epistemological assumptions of conventional modern science. Furthermore, the effect and impact of this research is that it provides accessible and practical ideas as to how a synthesis of play and work can help us renew and rejuvenate our work and workplaces. That is, how we can come alive in the work contexts that risk becoming sterile, clinical and inhuman in the wake of Taylorist reductionism and efficiency. Given that state of work and workplace, and the productive and therapeutic potential in play, indeed, we are too busy not to play. / Thesis (MCom (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2012

Through this Peace and Conflict Studies autoethnography, I relate my stories in relationship to the First Nations lands and peoples of Northern Manitoba within the context of Child and Family Services. The stories identify relationships between social work interventions and peace-building interventions with examples of my contributions to the structural violence of colonization through assimilation, and my interventions that are consistent with peace-building to reverse the assimilation of colonization. The theories of structural violence, colonization, assimilation and genocide provide the framework to tell the anecdotal stories to identify the complex relationships. My stories describe my emotions of inner conflict and turmoil as I identify the day-to-day challenges ingrained within the system to build peace by reversing the tide of removing children from their families, communities, cultures and identities. The stories also identify some successes of peace-building by strengthening and unifying families and communities in response to experiences of colonization.

This study was an autoethnography about inquiry learning and teaching through extraction and construction of meaning from experience. Using a collaborative autoethnography methodology I explored experiences in my past with others in the field through a “critical friend” Blog, to unpack what may have enabled me to value inquiry-based teaching as a physical education teacher. I created narratives from my autoethographic data and again shared them with my Blog members, inviting critical responses. Over an eight month period I created a community of learners with purposefully selected colleagues working in an International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme curriculum school in the Middle East. I shared my narratives with my colleagues in order to support, question, connect or contrast my personal findings. Through our dialogues we came together to unpack our understandings of learning, who we were as learners, teaching, who we were as teachers and inquiry. As a community of learners exploring our experiences and perceptions, our understanding of constructivism evolved. This study revealed the tensions that exist between what teachers know about learning for meaningful understanding and the disabling learning and teaching environments they are and have been a part of.

The purpose of this autoethnographic study was to examine three questions: (a) how did my view of myself as a non-Aboriginal educator change as a result of teaching in an Aboriginal cultural context, (b) how did my teaching philosophy and pedagogical approach change as a result of teaching in an Aboriginal cultural context, and (c) how did my sense of community and relatedness to the people I interacted with change due to increased cultural awareness and exposure to Aboriginal cultures? Data from my time in my teacher education program and teaching in Klemtu, BC was collected, and Mezirow’s (1997) transformative learning theory was used to analyze the shift that I made in these three areas. Finally, recommendations were made to teacher education programs and future non-Aboriginal educators who choose to teach in Aboriginal-run schools.

This study was an autoethnography about inquiry learning and teaching through extraction and construction of meaning from experience. Using a collaborative autoethnography methodology I explored experiences in my past with others in the field through a “critical friend” Blog, to unpack what may have enabled me to value inquiry-based teaching as a physical education teacher. I created narratives from my autoethographic data and again shared them with my Blog members, inviting critical responses. Over an eight month period I created a community of learners with purposefully selected colleagues working in an International Baccalaureate Primary Years Programme curriculum school in the Middle East. I shared my narratives with my colleagues in order to support, question, connect or contrast my personal findings. Through our dialogues we came together to unpack our understandings of learning, who we were as learners, teaching, who we were as teachers and inquiry. As a community of learners exploring our experiences and perceptions, our understanding of constructivism evolved. This study revealed the tensions that exist between what teachers know about learning for meaningful understanding and the disabling learning and teaching environments they are and have been a part of.

This narrative inquiry dissertation explores stories from three students over a two-year trajectory as they develop into language educators in diverse contexts. The study begins in a teacher education course focused on technology for language teaching in English as a second language (ESOL) and foreign language education (FLE) classrooms. As instructor, I implemented a digital storytelling (DS) project with the pedagogical goal of supporting the much-needed practice of reflexivity, and specifically, reflexivity of intercultural competence (IC) and culturally-responsive pedagogy (CRP). The DS, as an autoethnographic multimodal narrative activity, provided a creative outlet for undergraduate and master’s level students to explore their own cultural background or intercultural experiences. In this study, I re-story the experiences related to the DS project and follow my former students, now teachers, to explore how personal narratives promote or support reflexivity of critical multicultural concepts or practices. I combine and juxtapose multiple perspectives based on observations, data from the student-authored DS and reflections, and in-depth interviews. Using a critical-based autoethnographic approach, I add my own instructor-researcher narrative. The resulting descriptive and interpretive narrative inquiry accentuates complexities, invites conversation about the critical and reflexive potential of DS or personal narrative, and contributes pedagogical and methodological insights into teacher training via the “meaning-making” story process and the innate accessibility of learning through stories.

This thesis portfolio presents an autoethnographic account of a prison educator engaged in a research project that explores creative approaches to arts, prison education, work and training in custodial settings. The position of the researcher is located in-between and across professional practices including arts in prisons, prison education, work and training environments, which have conflicting agendas that, nevertheless, share the same institutional space. Policymakers and management bodies regulating these professional practices expect education and training to contribute to reducing reoffending. Procedurally, the research process was precariously balanced between, on the one hand, performing to measures of quality based on the requirement to reduce recidivism, and on the other, crude outcome measures driven by a utilitarian marketization of prison education that includes course completion rates calculated on the basis of minimum contact time. This broader context created an uncertain and constantly shifting context for the research, which began with my search for an effective creative practice in a Performing Arts Department (PAD) and ends in a Functional English classroom (FEC). Conceptually, the research draws on the What Works debate (McGuire, 1995; Brayford et al. 2010), which continues to create a disjuncture between policy and implementation resulting from unrealistic assumptions that arts and education programmes in prison might prevent reoffending, with evidence relying solely upon randomisation, reductive causation and numerical calculation. It also draws on desistance theory (Maruna, 2001; McNeil, 2006), which argues that desistance from crime can be understood as an indirect process, rather than an event. From an examination of my efforts to implement and develop creative approaches to education via autoethnographic tools, including fictional performative writing, I argue two main points. Firstly, the autonomy required by the creative prison educator engaged in an advanced research project re-positions the professional in a particular relationship with the bewildering processes of power, protectionism and performance management in the criminal justice system. Secondly, and as demonstrated through fictional performative writing, I argue that research methods engaging voices from the frontline of educational environments, can reveal seemingly small details relating to the challenges and possibilities of creative education in prisons that, nonetheless, have significant implications for developing productive and innovative approaches to desistance from crime. Moreover, from this grounded, yet restricted position, I speculate how such approaches might extend both creativity and creatively beyond the validation of this doctorate qualification.

How can you as a planner tackle messy realities without losing sight of possible problematic outcomes of what you put in practice? This study explores the value of everyday frictions as a resource for phronetic planning, i.e. the ability to make situated ethical judements of what is ’better’ or ’worse’ in a particular setting. The intent is to offer a situated gaze of frictions from the perspective of a civil servant of the well organised and innovative municipality of Botkyrka in the metropolitan area of Stockholm, Sweden. From this outset, an autoethnographical methodology from a poststructural approach, is used to explore the frictions that the author has experienced as a practicing planner. The study shows that frictions can be used as 'weak signals' to identify possible tricky consequences of the creation and the staging of planning 'simplifications'. Based on this insight a 'seismological' approach to planning is proposed. The argument is that planning practice should on the one hand utilize frictions when they arise and, on the other hand, actively challenge existing 'simplifications'. To achieve this, practical tools are offered to 'evoke', 'narrate' and 'diffract' on frictions and 'trickster-objects' within the constraints of the planner’s role as a municipal civil servant. / Denna avhandlings syfte är att utforska skavningars möjliga värde som resurs för praktisk klokhet inom svensk kommunal planeringspraktik. Med praktisk klokhet avses förmågan att göra situerade etiska bedömningar om 'bättre' och 'sämre' på ett reflexivt sätt i ett visst sammanhang. Studiens teoretiska ram utgörs av poststrukturell subjektteori och arbetet bygger på en metodologisk ansats grundad i autoetnografi. Avsikten är att erbjuda en situerad ’inifrån blick’ om vardagliga skavningar i planering i en svensk kommunal förvaltningskontext baserat på författarens egen yrkespraktik från en kommun. I analysen framkommer att skavningar ofta kan uppstå när planeraren ikläder sig i grunden motsatta sätt att uppträda som planerare; i studien identifierat som en central, entreprenöriell och kommunikativ persona. Det som då sker är att olika idéer om ‘hur saker funkar’, olika typer av praktiska tekniker för att uppnå uppsatta mål och olika etiska ramverk om vad som är 'rätt' införlivas och 'krockar' inom planeraren. En slutsats är att skavningar kan ses som ’svaga signaler’ för att förnimma eventuella problematiska konsekvenser av de 'förenklingar’ som av nödvändighet görs inom planeringspraktik. En medvetenhet om sådana signaler kan bidra till en beredskap om existerande konfliktytor som den kommunala organisationen kan adressera i sin planering och verksamhetsutveckling. Den typ av planerarroll som har bäst förutsättningar att inrymma skavningar är en central persona, men för att den möjligheten ska realiseras krävs att skavningar uppvärderas som en av flera komponenter för att stärka planerarens bedömningsförmåga. I ljuset av studiens lärdomar tecknas ett utkast till vad som benämns en ’seismologisk’ ansats till planering. Argumentet som förs fram är att planeringspraktik å ena sidan bör tillvarata skavningar när de väl uppstår, och å andra sidan aktivt utmana existerande 'förenklingar’. För att uppnå detta föreslås exempel på praktiska verktyg som planeraren och organisationen kan använda för att 'framkalla', '(åter)berätta' och 'diffraktera' kring skavningar inom gränserna för planerarens ansvar. / <p>QC 20171017</p>