My initial project idea is to observe points of positionality-related thinking during weekly crits in my Intro to HCI course (see previous post).
I thought this could be done by looking at the recordings (which unobtrusively happen in class anyway) of the students’ crit presentations and performing an inductive thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006, 2019).
However, one main concern of mine was that this would be too much of a data analysis task. I already thought of directly coding the videos to avoid transcription time (Clarke, Coates and Jordan, 2021); however, the dataset would still be large and challenging within the module scope.
Reading around, I thought that perhaps an affinity diagramming approach (Lucero, 2015) might be more appropriate (which emphasises identifying video moments with post-it notes as opposed to finding rich themes during immersive reading, cf. thematic analysis). Or, framing the activity as simply from my own diary of teaching observations (Hanington and Martin, 2019).
Following the first group tutorial and planning alongside the ethical action plan, a few other tweaks to this initial idea arose.
One idea was to observe only 2 or 3 select groups who volunteer to be part of the research. Beneficially, this means that the students from whom I identify points of positionality-related thinking would be those who are happy and would not feel uncomfortable sharing this information. A limitation would be that they are likely the most confident, keen students, introducing a bias into my findings. However, as a qualitative project in the scope of the module, it is okay to simply acknowledge this.
- I’m also considering whether to just observe two crits, one without the positionality wheel, and one later when it is introduced, to see if the use of this introduces changes.
A key piece of feedback was to use an observation sheet to provide criteria for what I am observing. This would mean that, instead of an inductive approach, a deductive approach could be used to be more concrete about which points from students’ critique presentations show positionality-related thinking. This would be more objective, capturing less of my own interpretation of what constitutes positionality-related thinking would come from me, and my own positionality. It would also be more ethically sound to show that I am trying to observe moments where people reflect upon and bring forth their own positionality in relation to the design task, and not moments where students just make mention of their characteristics.
Teaching observation forms have been used widely across different settings. Nonnis (2021) created observation forms for teachers to capture moments of social play amongst autistic children. Pahome (2024) developed an observation sheet for students to observe spruce trees. However, whilst widely used, there is little specific guidance on how to design observation sheets – and little tailored to the challenge of identifying positionality-related thinking.
Thus, for the next step of my research, I need to look more closely into the literature on positionality, to create some working criteria of what “positionality-related” thinking is, and to operationalise it in my context.
References
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2006) ‘Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology’, Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), pp. 77–101.
Braun, V. and Clarke, V. (2019) ‘Reflecting on Reflexive Thematic Analysis’, Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4), pp. 589–597. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/2159676X.2019.1628806.
Clarke, S.O., Coates, W.C. and Jordan, J. (2021) ‘A practical guide for conducting qualitative research in medical education: Part 3–Using software for qualitative analysis’, AEM Education and Training, 5(4), p. e10644. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1002/aet2.10644.
Hanington, B. and Martin, B. (2019) Universal Methods of Design, Expanded and Revised: 125 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions. Expanded and Revised. Beverly, Massachusetts: Rockport Publishers.
Lucero, A. (2015) ‘Using Affinity Diagrams to Evaluate Interactive Prototypes’, in J. Abascal et al. (eds) Human-Computer Interaction – INTERACT 2015. Springer, Cham (Lecture Notes in Computer Science), pp. 231–248. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-22668-2_19.
Nonnis, A. (2021) Playful E-textile Sonic Interaction for Socially Engaged and Open-Ended Play Between Autistic Children. PhD Thesis. Queen Mary University of London. Available at: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/83072.
Pahome, D. (2024) ‘Observation sheet – an essential tool for facilitating learning’, Romanian Review of Geographical Education, XII(1–2), pp. 5–16. Available at: https://doi.org/10.23741/RRGE20231.