Elaboración propia Proceso de toma de decisiones

16 October 2012. Memo #37mc/cc – main concern/core category

I know I have only described patterns of behaviour so far and now I need to explain them theoretically. Is enculturating the general ‘problem’/the main concern? Is cultivating the core category? Is cultivating a stable pattern joining data together? Cultivating processes seem to be everywhere: people have to be ‘cultivated’ as do relationships and opportunities in order to enculturate (‘cultivate’) academic literacy in students. If these assumptions are correct then cultivating would resolve the main concern of enculturating. It doesn’t quite fit. If enculturating is the main concern – what does enculturating in relation to staff look like though? Do learning advisors enculturate staff to their

services/role/identity?

Perhaps the link/s between categories is strategies for enculturating? Is strategy a stable pattern joining data together? Strategy and tactical behaviour are everywhere. Are they? How might the categories be arranged to work as mechanisms and tactics for enculturating? Might strategic behaviour somehow be part of the core category? If so, how would strategic behaviour (what behaviour exactly?) process/resolve the main concern? If strategy somehow processes the main concern, what might be the main concern?

Through theoretically sampling and selectively coding new data for the three

categories and their properties and simultaneously writing memos, I began to realise my categories were all about learning advisors’ work and the way in which they carried out that work. Yet I could not identify a core category. In preparation for a group workshop/discussion in November 2012 where I planned to ‘test’ the emergent categories and theoretically sample for new data from amongst a group of learning advisors who had not previously participated in the study, I wrote the following

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overview. The brief paper prepared for the group workshop/discussion is included as Appendix D.

November 2012: Overview emergent categories

A significant concern of learning advisors is to assist students to become full participants in the academy by becoming academically literate. There is a clear expectation that students will be stakeholders in their own learning and take ownership of it. Learning advisors work with students to enculturate them to academic literacies. Advisors are responsive to individual need and tailor the level and type of service to the needs of individual students.

Positive relationships play a key role in enculturating students to academic literacies. It is necessary to connect with students and staff in order to establish the conditions favourable for enculturation. Enculturating is conditional upon establishing the ‘right’ relationship with students and staff. These relationships are described as professional, with clear role boundaries and are responsive to the individual.

Learning advisors also express a concern for making sure that services are accessible to students and that they use them; to achieve this end they cultivate. Advisors employ a variety of strategies to market services to both students and staff. To be successful in this endeavour, advisors need to manage perceptions, including dispelling myths about their services, and project an expert and credible professional identity. Cultivating is a strategy for enculturating: advisors must cultivate others and their own professional identity so that students and staff use their services.

At the group workshop/discussion, I wanted to check out my categories and their properties for relevance and fit among a group of learning advisors. I was also keen to clarify the main concern because I was becoming increasingly unhappy with the category enculturating. Furthermore, I was interested in finding out if and how learning advisors talked about being strategic and what that meant. Additionally, I

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wanted to gather more data to help identify the core category, because without a core, my grounded theory would lack relevancy and fail to work (Glaser, 1978).

Analysis of the group workshop/discussion data confirmed existing categories and properties and highlighted advisors’ strategic approach to their work, but added nothing new to the mix. Despite discovering nothing new about existing categories or strategic behaviour, analysis did reveal learning advisors’ main concern to be the broader issue of carrying out their work effectively rather than enculturating. Unfortunately, analysis did not advance my understanding of the relationships

between the categories nor identify the core category. What I had achieved to this point was a conceptual description of what learning advisors did when carrying out their work and a set of memos about some strategies they used to help them carry out that work. I had little idea about how the categories related to each other and what part strategy played in the mix. The lack of a core category made me nervous about my ability to integrate the emerging grounded theory and I had few ideas of where to take analysis from here. Glaser (1996) advises the “growing pains of being scattered,

somewhat confused … and the attendant regressions” (p. xiii) must be tolerated, but I found confusion and regression hard to tolerate. I reread core classic grounded theory texts (Glaser, 1978, 2001, 2011) and read a selection of classic grounded theory studies (Glaser & Holton, 2007; Martin & Gynnild, 2011) to help me find out what to do next and how.