Hanne Kirstine Adriansen

Studying the making of geographical knowledge: The implications of insider interviews

The article addresses the issue of being a ‘double’ insider when conducting interviews. Double insider means being an insider both in relation to ones research matter – in the authors’ case the making of geographical knowledge – and in relation to ones interviewees – our colleagues. The article is a reflection paper in the sense that we reflect upon experiences drawn from a previous research project carried out in Danish academia. It is important that the project was situated in a Scandinavian workplace culture because this has bearings for the social, cultural, and economic situation in which knowledge was constructed. The authors show that being a double insider affects both the interview situation and how interviews are planned, located, and analysed. Being an insider in relation to ones interviewees gives the advantage of having a shared history and a close knowledge of the context, and these benefits outnumber the disadvantages. Being an insider in relation to ones research matter makes it difficult to contest hegemonic discourses and tacit values and ideas. Recommendations on how to handle the double insider situation are given. The article concludes that for analytical purposes, it is useful to separate the two roles, but in reality they coexist and are intertwined.

Two ways to support reflexivity: Teaching managers to fulfil an undefined role: ‘A problem cannot be solved at the same level of thinking that created it’ —Albert Einstein

A current challenge to public managers is the lack of a well-defined role. How can masters programmes prepare managers to live up to an undefined function? In this paper we argue that the lack of role description enhances the need for reflexivity and we show how it is done at Master in Educational Management (MEM). MEM provides the participating managers with a new language that can give them a critical distance to the overload of expectations they meet at work; and MEM teaches participants to translate this new language into practice. The pedagogy used for this is labelled ‘experimental management’. This requires participants to conduct experiments in their own organization, to reflect on and analyse their experiences with concepts from the curriculum. While the new language and the experimental teaching format are difficult, participants learn a reflexive practice that can enable them to live up to an undefined role.

Using student interviews for becoming a reflective geographer

This paper presents a case for interviewing students as an effective yet complex way to integrate reflexive practice into teaching and research. Even though many human geographers are accustomed to conducting qualitative interviews in various contexts, it is not straightforward to interview ones own students. This paper addresses three issues: implications of doing insider interviews; ethical issues of interviewing students where power relations are at stake and using visual co-constructions as a means of levelling the analytical power of the insider interviewer. We show how student interviews have enhanced our reflection-on-action and give recommendations for prospect student interviewers.

Experimenting with Practice – A Monstrous Pedagogy

Abstract Purpose Teaching executive courses always raises the challenge of how to deal with the tension between theory and practice. The present chapter analyses the use of experiments in practice as a pedagogical approach to deal with this tension in Master’s programmes. Design/methodology/approach The empirical data comprise eight qualitative interviews with former students, exam papers and participant observations during the course ‘Experimental Management Practice’ over a period of five years. Findings The course requires the participants to experiment with their (managerial) practice and make these experiments the learning material and stepping stone for formulating problems in new ways. We argue that it is fruitful to make a distinction between practical problems and knowledge problems, and that playful shifts back and forth between the two forms of problems can provide learning. We also argue that it is important to observe the distinction between the role of the manager and the role of the student in order to meet ethical challenges, inevitably raised by experimenting with practice. Finally we argue that the experimental teaching practice can be conceptualised as a monstrous pedagogy, as the pedagogy creates a liminal zone with hybrid characteristics. Research limitations/implications The chapter provides new conceptualizations of the tensions between theory and practice based on our experiences from one degree programme. It would have been interesting to study other executive programmes and which pedagogy they use fort dealing with this tension. Practical implications Many Master’s programmes draw empirical data from the students’ own practice into the teaching. We argue that using experiments is highly useful to identify some of the general challenges inherent in analyses of one’s own practice. It does not solve the tension between theory and practice but creates new challenges, potentialities, dilemmas and insights. Originality/value We suggest using ‘monstrosity’ as an umbrella term for ‘hybrid’ and ‘liminality’ of the complex relations that are at play in further education of practitioners. We compare the idea of the monstrous to the notion of educating ‘reflected practitioners’, and we argue that in a situation where the public manager is expected to define his/her own role, we might be better off educating a ‘monstrous practitioner’ instead of a ‘reflecting’ one.

Life-history interviews

Time line or life line interviews can be used for a number of different purposes. In this paper, however, I will focus on the use of time line interviews for life history research. The paper is written against the backdrop that there is a gap in the literature on ‘how to’ do time line interviews. Many researchers write that they have used a time line, but there is very little explanation of what this entails. Hence, the purpose of this paper is the fill this gap by describing how to conduct a time line interview and analyse the implications of this tool for the outcome of the interview.

Faciliterede studiegrupper for nye studerende

Projektets indhold  Med det formal at forbedre studiemiljoet og mindske frafaldet ivaerksatte vi et projekt, der omfattede de 260 nystartede studerende tilmeldt det forste af fire semestre pa kandidatuddannelsen i paedagogisk psykologi.  Den baerende ide var facilitering af studiegrupper. En studerende tager rollen som facilitator og styrer en studiegruppes faglige og sociale aktiviteter pa en made, sa alle deltagerne involveres.  Vi gav en kort introduktion til facilitering i forbindelse med introdagene og hjalp med at danne studiegrupper. Vi tilbod derpa hele argangen en todages workshop i facilitering. Ca. 1/3 af de studerende deltog, men med repraesentanter fra mere end ½ af studiegrupperne.  Efterfolgende deltog 96% af de studerende ”hver gang” eller ”ofte” i disse studiegrupper. 57% af grupperne brugte facilitering ”hver gang” eller ”ofte”. Projektets virkning  Malt pa trivselsparametre fra Aarhus Universitets studiemiljoundersogelse 2007 forbedredes studiemiljoet pa fem af syv faktorer: Andelen af studerende, der foler sig som en del af et storre faellesskab pa studiet, blev fordoblet (fra 21% til 43%). Og andelen af ensomme studerende faldt fra 19% til 6%.  Frafaldsprocenten fra forste til andet semester faldt fra 7,5% til 5% (malt som forskellen mellem antallet af tilmeldinger til undervisningen pa forste (modul 1) og andet semester (modul 3)).  I en interviewundersogelse sagde de studerende, at facilitering af arbejdet i studiegrupper fremmer effektivitet, faglighed og fokus. Faciliterede studiegrupper ser ud til at oge den faglige og isaer den sociale integration.  I sammenligning med det oprindelige udviklingsprojekt om facilitering af studiemiljo i foraret 2009 (Ravn og Adriansen, 2009) var VIP-arbejdsindsatsen nu mere beskeden (112 arbejdstimer + 40 til evaluering), og skabte sa ca. den halve effekt malt pa trivselsparametrene.

geography of peace

An important aspect of the 1979 Peace Treaty between Egypt and Israel was normalisation through cooperation. However, this has proven difficult; especially the ‘Arab street’ has been against the collaborative activities. After the Arab Spring, it has been questioned whether the Peace Treaty would be upheld. In order to understand the future of the Egyptian-Israeli peace, this paper uses a geographical approach to examine why agrarian cooperation between the two countries has succeeded when other areas of cooperation struggle. The paper draws on different fields of research – agrarian politics in Egypt, notably land reclamation, and the political economy of The Peace Treaty. These are combined through a geographical gaze focussing on the production of landscape and the construction of space/place. Agricultural cooperation took off when it began to concern desert agriculture. For Egypt, cooperation within this field could be justified through existing discourses of agrarian development by transfer of technology and know-how. For Israel, training courses in particular served as a means to normalisation through image politics. It is concluded that the (spatial) conditions for agricultural cooperation were unique. Thus, despite its continuation, agricultural cooperation in itself holds little hope for the future of the Egyptian-Israeli peace politics of cooperation.