A glimpse into the stumbling-around-in-the-dark process that is my effort to build a research project from the ground up (continue at your own risk)
So! Over the last six months or so, since I got the Fulbright, many people have asked me what I am going to be doing in Slovenia. The easy answer, and the one I still give to people who ask me what I am doing in Slovenia, is research on the Slovene approach to mountain education. Ok, so research on how Slovenes teach and learn about the mountains that shape their topography and cultural identity. Ok...but what the hell does that really mean?
In an effort to avoid doing any of the aforementioned research today, I am instead going to try to explain to anyone who has the fortitude to keep reading what exactly I mean when I say that I am doing research. (For the experienced academic, read: procrastinator, the trick here is that I can spin this not directly-related-to-my-research blog post, in my head, into a productive exercise as I will, inevitably, better understand where my research sits by describing it and explaining it to you.) This is a good thing and part of the dance of keeping yourself moving forward on a project without always having the will to look the beast in the eyes. Also, in many ways, Fulbright is more about cultural exchange than it is about final deliverables and this blog, in which you readers are learning more about Slovenia than you probably ever would otherwise, is contributing to cultural exchange. So really, this blog post might be more important to my Fulbright than any research I could be doing right now instead. (See, it's easy and fun to convince yourself of things and procrastinate 😜.)
Ok, back to it. I think that one of the challenging parts of describing what "doing research" actually looks like on the day-to-day in a foreign country is that doing research on a topic in a way that you hope will generate publishable findings means thinking about it, writing about it, and talking about it with other researchers in a weird specific way. This also means that explaining what you are doing to other people can be challenging, or at least, unsatisfactory. In effort to dispel some of this feeling, I am going to present one of my current outlines of where my research stands.
These outlines are how I organize my ideas to try to expose holes in my thinking and show me where I need to go next. I generally try to use the most simplified version of an idea that I have at that time for each outline bullet. This first outline was an attempt to simply describe what I feel as though I can confidently state about the current context I am studying. Though the actual information included in the outline may seem obvious or simple in a bad way, that obviousness is actually a good thing. This is because I wrote this outline after a thorough going over of all of the journal articles, book chapters, and reports that I have collected on environmental/outdoor/geography education in the Alpine countries or in mountainous areas globally, the Slovene education system where it related to those topics, and Slovenian mountain education programs specifically. From there, the idea was to write an outline of ideas, starting as wide as I can go and ending as specifically as I can, that I have solid sources for. In other words, this is an outline of what I think I can currently confidently state is true about my research topic. In theory, this reveals to me what is not known and, thus, where I should focus my research questions.
In an effort to avoid doing any of the aforementioned research today, I am instead going to try to explain to anyone who has the fortitude to keep reading what exactly I mean when I say that I am doing research. (For the experienced academic, read: procrastinator, the trick here is that I can spin this not directly-related-to-my-research blog post, in my head, into a productive exercise as I will, inevitably, better understand where my research sits by describing it and explaining it to you.) This is a good thing and part of the dance of keeping yourself moving forward on a project without always having the will to look the beast in the eyes. Also, in many ways, Fulbright is more about cultural exchange than it is about final deliverables and this blog, in which you readers are learning more about Slovenia than you probably ever would otherwise, is contributing to cultural exchange. So really, this blog post might be more important to my Fulbright than any research I could be doing right now instead. (See, it's easy and fun to convince yourself of things and procrastinate 😜.)
Ok, back to it. I think that one of the challenging parts of describing what "doing research" actually looks like on the day-to-day in a foreign country is that doing research on a topic in a way that you hope will generate publishable findings means thinking about it, writing about it, and talking about it with other researchers in a weird specific way. This also means that explaining what you are doing to other people can be challenging, or at least, unsatisfactory. In effort to dispel some of this feeling, I am going to present one of my current outlines of where my research stands.
These outlines are how I organize my ideas to try to expose holes in my thinking and show me where I need to go next. I generally try to use the most simplified version of an idea that I have at that time for each outline bullet. This first outline was an attempt to simply describe what I feel as though I can confidently state about the current context I am studying. Though the actual information included in the outline may seem obvious or simple in a bad way, that obviousness is actually a good thing. This is because I wrote this outline after a thorough going over of all of the journal articles, book chapters, and reports that I have collected on environmental/outdoor/geography education in the Alpine countries or in mountainous areas globally, the Slovene education system where it related to those topics, and Slovenian mountain education programs specifically. From there, the idea was to write an outline of ideas, starting as wide as I can go and ending as specifically as I can, that I have solid sources for. In other words, this is an outline of what I think I can currently confidently state is true about my research topic. In theory, this reveals to me what is not known and, thus, where I should focus my research questions.
- Mountain ecosystems have outsized importance due to the high levels of freshwater they supply and extreme biodiversity they contain.
- There are global threats to mountain ecosystems, and thus, mountain culture from climate change and economic shifts.
- Increasing and improving the education of people in mountainous areas and the education of other people about these mountainous areas is seen as a key ingredient in conserving/preserving the threatened places/people/ideas.
- This is true, regionally, in the Alpine countries, and locally in Slovenia.
- Slovenes have a DEEP connection to their mountains
- Though they do not cover the whole country, the mountains in Slovenia are one of the essential ingredients in the Slovene identity.
- This can be seen through their folklore, pride in the successes of mountain athletes, love of hiking and being out in the mountains, and their tallest peak, Triglav, being on their flag and needing to be climbed for someone to be a "true" Slovene
- Slovenes understand the importance of the connection between their montane identity and education
- There are many educational programs, for young and old, that focus on mountain skills, knowledge of mountain history/culture, geographic knowledge/skills, and natural history knowledge in mountain settings
- QUESTION that remains is what does this system of mountain-oriented education programs look like as a whole?
- What is the breadth of learning topics/goals/outcomes, what are the common threads between programs, what defines the Slovene approach to mountain oriented education? What are the thought processes for practitioners who actually facilitate the mountain oriented education programs? CAN WE DEFINE A SLOVENE APPROACH TO MOUNTAIN ORIENTED EDUCATION THROUGH IMPROVED UNDERSTANDING OF PRACTITIONER MOTIVATIONS? What does this tell us about how successful the Slovene approach is proving to be in times of change?
o Ecology/natural history is an increasingly significant part of this narrative
§ Triglav National Park really leading the way here (I THINK) with interpretive efforts and community/youth outreach
So this is a solid place to leave off for where I currently am. Where I begin to insert questions into the outline is where I can no longer confidently describe how things are. This is where the design of the research process that will hopefully allow me to confidently answer those questions begins. How to best approach answering those questions? I am working on that and will let you know when I know!
If there is interest in this post, I can put up a more detailed outline of potential research questions and methodologies but I will hold back on that because it contains more jargon and is probably less interesting to most folks.
I’d read it!
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