This submission sets out a narrative of how a practitioner in the field of education identified and implemented the changes required, both in research methodology and in practice, in order to answer the question ‘how do I improve my practice?’ (Whitehead and McNiff, 2004) while remaining true to a personal value system by not teaching or researching in ‘a living contradiction’ (Ibid: 5) where a value system and a practice are not working in harmony. This submission chronicles a self-study journey to improve practice by identifying and reflecting on the changes required to improve that practice when ‘teaching’ ten-year-old pupils historical enquiry online. The narrative demonstrates how a practice can be reconceptualised and illustrates the outcomes of that re-conceptualisation. The particular practice in question was set within the context of technological advances in the Internet over the last half decade: in the early research the pupils used the Internet as an online encyclopaedia while in the later stages of the research they used the Internet as a means to access online authoring sites on the read-write resource Web 2.0. The journey of change follows the practitioner from teaching historical enquiry within a classroom setting to that of teaching historical enquiry within an online authoring site, called a wiki. To achieve those changes many key concepts (that had informed teaching practices at the beginning of the research journey) had to be deconstructed and subsequently restructured using an alternative design. The learning process was one of the key concepts teased apart and reconstructed using Wenger’s ‘communities of practice’ approach as a template for designing a small community of practices. It was the emerging small community of practices on the wiki that developed into a new perspective on how to promote the learning process most effectively in an online context. The submission also narrates the ontological dimension to the journey where the practitioner’s key personal values were used in the change process to create a living theory. This value driven methodology created living standards of judgement. The submission identifies, then critically reflects on, the two voices representing the significance of the developing perspectives of the writer as researcher and as practitioner. It then uses journal entries, articles and interviews to follow the practitioner journey from perspective point one to perspective point two. It reflects critically on the change process being experienced and the growing confidence that emerged as the practitioner and researcher voices began, in combination, to challenge accepted practice and develop a new single voice that impacts upon both the professional context and the field of educational theory. It leads to the acceptance of some of Wenger’s assertions that underpin his notion that meaning is negotiated in communities of practice and examines the changes in thinking that eventually led to this model being interpreted as a reference point only and to the suggestion of a new perspective on the learning process. The contribution to knowledge is, then, to be found in this new perspective of what is meant by a community of practices and the learning processes it generates with reference to teaching historical enquiry skills to ten-year-old pupils on an online authoring site called a wiki.

Mentshlichkeit – Yiddish for the ‘art of being a good hu(man)’ - is offered as an invitation to participate in practices that may have the power to dispel the haunting of a ‘hegemonic masculinity’ (Connell 1995). Inspired by ‘Action Research’, what Reason & Bradbury call inquiry into the ‘quality of our acting’, the author uses futuristic narrative, interwoven with discussion and dialogue, to see if it is possible to reflect and act generatively, as a man who is mindful of feminism’s challenge that ‘the personal is political’ (Reason and Bradbury 2001). Within a post-modern discourse, the author heads towards the irony and discomfort to be found in a text that explores goodness and masculinity in the same breath. But he is not alone, like some hero on a quest – rather he is inspired by the voices of challenge and support he hears in the course of his roles in diverse communities: as a Jew, a facilitator/consultant at Roffey Park Institute and a father. It is my intention to playfully invite you into this story; to see if it moves you, if it usefully meets your own experience and helps you consider your own action, within the paradoxes and dilemmas you face. Too often we can disappear within the words we write. It is my intention to ‘show up’, and as a man to meet the challenge of feminism, to live within this territory and act with some awareness of its contours. The characters in this story are inspired by the people I encounter, who remind me I am not ‘selfmade’, and that we men, in the words of Philip Corrigan, may usefully ‘re-member our bodies’ (Corrigan 1988). Ultimately this is a human-scale story, designed to provoke good conversations. I look forward to hearing what you would like to discuss.

[Abstract]: This research responded to calls in the literature for more studies into subjective components of student stress as well as for innovative studies of appropriate counselling interventions. An innovative, individualised, body-mind intervention was offered to university students experiencing emotional stress overwhelm. Integral to the intervention was an extensive list of feelings, representing the approach-avoidance structure of the motivational system. Feelings qualitatively differentiate emotional experiences, and the list was found to be useful for identifying the feelings around emotional experiences. It was proposed that how one thinks about feelings is a key to resolving emotional stress and would facilitate the flourishing of life.There have been recent calls for development of first-person methodologies for investigating experiences, and, since the intervention was individualised, analysis of the unique data set took a narrative interpretive approach. Narrative data, evoked by the feelings list, were interpreted to formulate students’ “stories of stress” then analysed to study their stressful emotional experiences.This study demonstrates an innovative method for resolving emotional stress. Feelings were identified clearly, prompting students to think differently about emotional experiences. The study also demonstrates a method for researching those experiences of emotion. Analyses of consultants’ notes highlighted inter-connections and relationships between feelings and experiences throughout clients’ life-stories. Analyses of the data demonstrated a way of making sense of “emotional stress” and how the use of the feelings list could facilitate an individual’s thinking differently about experiences and resolving personal issues. For the participants of this study, feelings of grief and guilt were identified more than feelings of fear of loss for the issues discussed, suggesting that student's behaviours were motivated more by guilt than by fear. The study concludes with a discussion of how the research contributes to the counselling field and with suggestions for continuing research.

The purpose of this project is to explore aspects of a design that makes an electronic key feel precious toa user. The goal is to find information that is useful when designing electronic keys and to serve as partof the research in the project Precious Keys. Several prototypes and designs were created and evaluated,each over a period of several weeks. The designs each had different prominent aspects that were theorisedto carry preciousness and these aspects were analysed during the evaluation process. The designs werethen compared and iteratively improved upon in order to explore each aspect properly. The result showedthat function, visual appeal, fiddle-friendliness, history with the key and friction had the most impact onperceived preciousness. Creating the key with your own hands proved to be the most effective way tocreate preciousness through history. The aspects “unity” and “augmentation” were also discussed butcould not be proven to have an impact on perceived preciousness. In line with presented theories, thisstudy shows clear relations between aspects of design that have a positive impact on the perceivedpreciousness and electronic keys. It is even possible to grade these in terms of most impact to least impact.The study also has shown that first-person research is arguably a good method to research the topic. / Syftet med detta arbete är att utforska designaspekter som gör att en elektronisk nyckel känns värdefull för en användare. Målet är att hitta information som är användbar vid design av elektroniska nycklar och att låta detta arbete fungera som en del av forskningen i projektet Precious Keys. Flera prototyper togs fram och utvärderades, var och en under några veckors tid. De olika utformningarna hade olika framträdande aspekter som enligt teori skulle kunna bidra till att nycklarna skulle kännas värdefulla, och dessa aspekter analyserades under utvärderingsprocessen. Prototyperna jämfördes sedan och förbättrades iterativt för att utforska varje aspekt ordentligt. Resultatet visade att funktion, estetik, hur tillåtande nyckeln var att leka med i handen, erfarenheter med nyckeln samt friktion hade störst inverkan på upplevt värde. Att med egna händer skapa nyckeln visade sig också vara den erfarenhetsaspekt som hade störst inverkan. Aspekterna ”enhetlighet” och ”patina/föråldring” diskuterades också men kunde inte bevisas ha en inverkan på upplevt värde. I enlighet med uppvisad teori är det möjligt att koppla resultatet från denna studie till värdeskapande design-aspekter hos elektroniska nycklar. Det går även att se till vilken grad olika aspekter anses ha en effekt. Studien har även visat att förstapersonsforskning kan användas för att undersöka ämnet.