hey all,
So i’ve been thinking about this notion of (some of) us co-authoring a paper about our experience(s) in Winnipeg. Recall that I and 4 others co-authored a “meeting report” about KTSI’2008, which we had published in Implementation Science. Thinking about new(er) possibilities for us, I thought of 2, well actually, 5 possibilities.
The first would be for a group of us to emulate that KTSI meeting report: essentially, a descriptive paper that outlines how/why we did what we did. A second possibility would be for a group of us to write a more reflexive piece, something that moves beyond description by embracing our own subjectivities, our own situatedness (as students, persons, learners, KTers, etc). Initially, I thought it would be cool to integrate these two possibilities together: a meeting report with a reflexive component. But, in thinking about how to involve as many of us as possible in opportunities for authorship, writing more than one paper makes good sense, and it also keeps each paper cleaner, so to speak.
An extension of this second possibility (and where the 3rd, 4th, and 5th possibilities lie) is in the idea of writing a series of reflexive papers about our Creating Safe(r) Space activity. For instance, I might think of calling dibs on the Happy Discensus thread: I’d take the lead on describing the issue (climates of consensus, the risk of silencing others, the discomfort of discensus), reflecting on how we addressed this issue (referring to our flip charts & dialogue), and also how Ian responded to our immersion into the issue (recall he thought it reflected our junior, subordinate status as trainees). I imagine that a paper like this could be “poly-vocal” in that a handful of others (how many is the million dollar question, and depends on interest, time, etc) … a handful of others could contribute their own reflexive pieces that describe how they felt/experienced our dialogue about Happy Discensus (and thus earn themselves co-authorship). An Implications/Considerations for Others section could synthesize and wrap us the paper.
Other papers in the series could attend to issues of Principal Principles in KTTC-W, Who Made Who in the KTTC(-W), and/or Envisioning Ourselves as KTTCers.
If we did proceed with a whole series of papers, we might consider making one of them an “anchor paper” wherein we and our context are more fully described; the other papers could then cite that anchor paper. (Maybe the mtg report paper could serve as our ‘anchor’?)
(I’m almost done my post!) I just wanted to say too that I was a part of the original planning committee’s debriefing teleconference yesterday, and for those of you who were not, you might like to know that the minutes will be circulated within the week, but more specifically, we talked about how the new steering committee will 1) need to meet soon, and 2) spend much of its initial energy on sorting out issues of governance, such that 3) the activities for each of our 4 group goals perhaps lag a touch behind the more pressing issue of getting our structures in place. That said, for any of us interested in writing either a mtg report or a reflexive piece about our KTTC-W experience, time is of the essence in terms of capturing our memories of our experience(s) … thus, i’m throwing this out sooner than later. (I think this is very do-able!)
Okay, that’s it for now: some seeds are sown; let’s see if any take root.
Happy Wednesday; be well.
Ryan
Robin Urquhart 8:37 pm on September 14, 2011 Permalink
More good news – I just noticed that the article has also received “Highly Accessed” status on the Implementation Science website. Congrats everyone!