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Browsing University Libraries by Department "Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education"

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    Adjust your own oxygen mask before helping those around you: an autoethnography of participatory research
    Steketee, Abby M.; Archibald, Thomas G.; Harden, Samantha M. (2020-09-03)
    Background There is a need to unpack the empirical, practical, and personal challenges within participatory approaches advocated to optimize implementation. The unpredictable, chaotic nature of participatory approaches complicates application of implementation theories, methods, and strategies which do not address researchers’ situatedness within participatory processes. As an implementation scientist, addressing one’s own situatedness through critical reflection is important to unearth how conscious and unconscious approaches, including ontological and epistemological underpinnings, influence the participatory context, process, and outcomes. Therefore, the aim of this exploratory work is to investigate the heretofore blind spot toward the lived experience of implementation researchers within the participatory process. Methods We developed an integrated research-practice partnership (IRPP) to inform the implementation of a gestational weight gain (GWG) control program. Within this IRPP, one investigator conducted a 12-month autoethnography. Data collection and triangulation included field notes, cultural artifacts, and systematic timeline tracking. Data analysis included ethnographic-theoretical dialogue and restorying to synthesize key events and epiphanies into a narrative. Results Analysis revealed the unpredicted evolution of the GWG program into a maternal health fair and three themes within the researchers’ lived experience: (1) permeable work boundaries, (2) individual and collective blind spots toward the ontological and epistemological underpinnings of implementation paradigms, and (3) maladaptive behaviors seemingly reinforced by the research culture. These themes contributed to the chaos of implementation and to researchers’ experience of inadequate recovery from cognitive, emotional, and practical demands. These themes also demonstrated the importance of contextual factors, subjectivity, and value-based judgments within implementation research. Conclusion Building on extant qualitative research guidelines, we suggest that researchers anchor their approach to implementation in reflexivity, intentionally and iteratively reflecting on their own situatedness. Through this autoethnography, we have elucidated several strategies based on critical reflection including examining philosophical underpinnings of research, adopting restorative practices that align with one’s values, and embracing personal presence as a foundation of scientific productivity. Within the predominant (post-) positivism paradigms, autoethnography may be criticized as unscientifically subjective or self-indulgent. However, this work demonstrates that autoethnography is a vehicle for third-person observation and first-person critical reflection that is transformative in understanding and optimizing implementation contexts, processes, and outcomes.
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    One Hundred Years of Agricultural Education at Virginia Tech
    Vines, Karen A.; Hillison, John H. (Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education in association with VT Publishing, 2018-11-16)
    In 2018 the Department of Agricultural, Leadership, and Community Education (ALCE) celebrated one hundred years of agricultural education at Virginia Tech. The initial mission of the department, founded in 1918 as the Department of Agricultural Education and Animal Science, was to educate agricultural teachers to work in secondary education in rural communities. This mission has evolved and expanded over the decades to include preparation of Extension professionals while developing new programs designed to meet the ever-changing needs of rural and urban communities alike. The interviews presented in this volume tell this story through the unique perspectives of fourteen former and present students, faculty, and administrators. Taken together, these interviews bring the department’s history to life while also using the past as a springboard into a future that undoubtedly will be characterized by continued change grounded in ALCE’s ongoing commitment to excellence.