Author: Simon Moreno Parra

How can impact storytelling skill development be facilitated for young environmental leaders from remote areas of Colombia, considering economic and geographic barriers?

Week 1 Journal, Unit 4

David said something I’ve been thinking about. What is the goal of research? To move from assumption to understanding. It’s not about being a problem solver, because in many cases it won’t work. This interests me because it forces me to look at my research question with a different focus, with a different perspective.

And really, I do my best research when I have genuine curiosity. There are feelings that are powerful and difficult to explain, such as passion. For me, curiosity and passion go hand in hand.

The best presentations I’ve given in past years have been the ones that sparked the most curiosity in me. I can’t force myself to make a topic interesting; I don’t know how to make something boring become interesting. But what I can do is turn a topic over in my mind until I find something that catches my attention, a thread to pull. I imagine it like examining a Rubik’s cube—you keep turning the problem, rotating the cube on all sides, until you see something compelling. From there, you start pulling the thread, and everything gains momentum.

Being honest about this allows me to stay curious, and in the end, it allows me to speak with interest and, I believe, to convey that interest to others.

Now, my current research question generates empathy in me, but not curiosity. It’s too abstract, with too many angles. I can’t find the thread to pull. However, there are smaller aspects that catch my attention and that could potentially evolve into new research questions. These are:

• How to design a rhetoric course focused on practice rather than theory, but still with academic grounding.
• How to use skill-learning models from fields such as Olympic athletes and performing artists to learn communication skills. What has science said about learning in sports, and how can that be applied to rhetoric?
• How to make virtual presentations more interactive and engaging.

I like the idea of iteration. I like seeing how artists revisit an idea again and again, combining and repeating. I want to do the same with interventions; in fact, I have to.

Something to keep in mind for my next intervention is information collection. I need to triangulate data without recording participants. So far, I have:

• My own perception
• Audience perception
• Perception of people regarding an exercise

Is there another way to measure research results that does not rely only on perception?

Questions for Tim, the librarian:

• Information on pedagogy in communication and public speaking, debate
• Books on pedagogy in skill learning

Edit: something really important, I want to systematise the way I approach to make a creative presentation/workshop, I already kinda know how I do it, but I’ve never reflect and write it down, I’d like to have a rout the next time I wonder: how do I make an appealing speech?

I just came out of an interview with a stakeholder. It didn’t go as well as I wanted.

I was nervous; I hadn’t been nervous in a while. I spoke in a tangled way, that didn’t happen to me last year.

I only had half an hour. I gave context that apparently wasn’t necessary. If I don’t explain context, people get lost, but if I give context they already know, I sound condescending.

I need to learn to be more to the point. More to the point, more to the point. Clear about what I want. About what I want to ask. Two stakeholders have already told me this, and it embarrasses me.

It was really good to have been able to do interviews from the start of the semester; otherwise, I’d be worse off now.

They told me they would put me in contact with someone else and send me documents. Honestly, I feel culturally suspicious, is this just a polite way to dismiss me, or is it really going to happen? If they haven’t sent me anything in a couple of weeks, can I write to them again? Funny to see me this dubious about myself.

I see this like when I trained for debate: I have to focus on one small part and improve it.

In this case, it’s:

1. Learning how to do an informational interview.
2. Being precise and clear about what I want to ask, rehearsing more.
3. Doing more interventions to be clear on what I want.

It’s not easy to do this in another language, on a new topic, with a different culture.

In the end, as with everything in communication, it all comes down to preparing and rehearsing, rehearsing, rehearsing. I didn’t rehearse.

I’d like to read all of these. Hoping to remember them, I’m posting them here.

1. How can the voices of ethnically marginalized communities be effectively supported to have greater  impact in London’s environmental and climate decision-making processes, in ways that respect their diversity?
2. How can debate skills be taught in a personalized, student-led way to indigenous and Afro-Colombian youth in classroom settings, ensuring the learning process is not standardized and that diverse cultural forms of argumentation are preserved without imposing a single dominant discourse style?
3. How can applied rhetoric skills be developed to historically marginalised communities?
4. How can applied rhetoric skills be developed through an educational tool to historically marginalised communities?
5. How can the training in applied rhetoric  be developed in a way that supports the agency of historically marginalized communities? 
6. How can the developing of applied rhetoric skills support the agency of historically marginalized communities in process of
7. How can applied rhetoric skills be developed in a way that supports the agency of historically marginalized communities in process of narrative change?
8. How can applied rhethoric skills be developed by historically marginalized communities to strength their agency in narrative change process?
9. How can the exercise in applied rhethoric skills strength human rights narrative change processes lead by historically marginalized communities
10. How can applied rhethoric education support historically marginalized communities that take part into human rights narrative change processes related with human rights?
11. How can applied rhetoric training strengthen the agency of historically marginalized communities in London*  to influence environmental narrative change processes? (or Colombia I don’t know yet)
12. How can the learning process of rhetorical skills be improved in a way that respects diversity and strengthens social agency of historically marginalized communities?
13. How can rhetorical skill development be improved to respect diversity and support the participation of historically marginalized communities in environmental narrative change processes?

Can rhetorical skills development support the participation of communities in narrative change? Because, honestly, I don’t know. Forcing the inclusion of “how can” at some point feels non-critical in my research. Just the exploration of whether these skills can improve participation is research itself.

I’m overcomplicating things again, so I’m going to change my process. Here are some quick updates.

What I’ve Read So Far: Four Key Texts

1. University of the Arts London (2022) Impact Storytelling: The Ecosystem, The Evidence and Possible Futures. UAL Storytelling Institute. This helped me understand what a “storytelling ecosystem” means. It also established a gap in the field: many people in this area need training in storytelling skills.
2. Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o (1986). Decolonizing the mind. This book helped me realize that the role of transformative education is to give people the confidence to change their reality, which really resonated with me. I also gained clarity on my own relationship with when to write in Spanish versus English.
3. McNiff, J. (2013). Action research: principles and practice. London: Routledge. This was a game-changer. I hadn’t understood what action research was, why reflecting and journaling were relevant, or why it was necessary to act. Acting is necessary because it reveals questions that can’t be answered through reading alone. Also, many important problems aren’t being addressed by academia because it’s often siloed into purely bibliographical research. I only have a background in paper-based research; I’ve never gotten my hands dirty. I want to change that now. I also realized that my perspective on research has been positivist up until now. I thought I couldn’t interact with my research communities because it would bias the research. Now, it seems that interaction isn’t just desirable but necessary. Otherwise, the “object/subject” distinction creates relationships that I’m not interested in.
4. Rappaport, J. (2020). Cowards don’t make history: Orlando Fals Borda and the origins of participatory action research in Colombia. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press I’m currently reading about how action research was applied in Colombia and transformed into “participatory action research.” This movement is what gave birth to sociology in Colombia, and in it it has been specially relevant. It’s truly surprising that I’ve ended up in an action research master’s program. It almost feels like more than a coincidence.

What I’ve Done So Far

• I stopped conducting interviews. I came to a very important conclusion for myself: for now, I need to separate art (storytelling) from my work. My priority is to find a job that doesn’t make me feel alienated and leaves me time to create. In the first semester, I was obsessed with finding a job where I could be creative, but now I’m not sure if that’s what I want. I prefer stability (but not like the one that law can provide me, which is a really high cost, as it offers no peace of mind).
• I’ve changed my research question: The subject isn’t storytelling anymore, it is “How can applied rhetoric skills be taught in a personalized, student-led way to historically marginalized communities without imposing a single dominant discourse style?” It’s clear how my readings have pushed me toward education.
• I created a survey to start offering rhetoric workshops. This has been discouraging because I was hoping for at least 50-60 responses and so far I only have nine. Perhaps the community I was interested in (international postgraduate students) isn’t interested in studying communication skills during the summer.
• I’ve divided my blog into essays and journaling. I want to write more developed ideas, but that is stopping me from journaling, so I decided to divide my blog into two. Essays help me start conversations with others and build a portfolio, while the journal texts are specifically for engaging with UAL tutors.

What’s Next?

• Find a community or space where I can apply my workshop/intervention. I’d like to do this in a physical space, not online. I’m honestly anxious and scared about this because I don’t know where to apply it during the summer, and I can’t wait until the semester is over.
• Journal more often, now that I understand the point of it. I also didn’t truly understand why iterative interventions were important until I read McNiff’s text.
• Improve how I communicate my research. Richie’s tutorial gave me this structure, which I want to practice:
  • Area of interest
  • An outline of what I don’t know
  • An indication of how I plan to intervene
  • A summary of the question

Struggles

• I became overloaded last week and had to stop working on my job and research for a couple of days. I don’t want to take a vacation or travel until I have something more concrete.
• I don’t know how to access the communities I want to reach.

I’ve been a research subject twice in the last two weeks. I participated in a psychological social study and an audiology study. I find them a good comparison because one is strictly medical, and the other bridges the social sciences.

• Both were conducted within the framework of research by prestigious UK universities.
• The psychological one was a group study; it involved playing and interacting with others, while the audiological one was individual and involved testing my left ear.
• Both lasted an hour and required over half an hour of commuting. Both paid me for participating.
• I enjoyed the psychological one, so I didn’t mind the commute in the end.
• I found the audiological one exhausting and somewhat uncomfortable; it made me feel objectified at some point. My ear also hurt the next day because they inserted a plug too deeply into my right ear. That night, I was slightly regretting having taken part in the study.
• Moreover, the audiology test required me to stay still for 30 minutes in front of a screen while they monitored my pupils. I couldn’t move much, and the lack of movement stressed me out.

It was useful for me to see how researchers behave when they’re with their subjects. The most interesting behaviour for me was the process of the consent forms, maybe because I’m currently struggling with how to ask people to sign them. Sometimes, it doesn’t even make sense to me to ask for a signature especially for some interviews. I feel it might scare people and make them less open to talk. Luckily, I’m starting to notice that in this country it’s quite common to be asked to take part in research, so maybe it’s not a big deal.

My attention was mainly focused on how they were going to ask me to sign the consent form and how it was structured. I expected the medical consent form to be more rigorous and “serious” than the psychological one. I think that’s a bit sad, because it might imply that I see medical research as more serious than social sciences. Although many factors can influence how the consent process is carried out (who explained it, who wrote it, their background), and I can’t draw general conclusions, I was surprised by how structured and informative the psychological consent form was. In contrast, the medical one was clear, but the document seemed less “formal” or “research persuasive.”

Should I pursue the same aura that I felt in those studies? That is, to not being fully aware of what the research is about and just obbeying and doing what they told me I have to do as a subject? Feeling that I cannot fully know what they want to extract or learn from me. It’s okay to feel extracted as a research subject?

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Notes on Jim Parsons’ Paper

Now I can connect this to “An Introduction to Action Research and Its Ethical Practices,” a paper by Jim Parsons.

(If you Google this name, chances are that you’re going to find Sheldon Cooper’s images and think the actor was a psychological researcher. After five minutes you’re going to find they are not. God, I hate The Big Bang theory).

He mentions that, since Action Research implies the researcher is an insider, the logic of other research ethics might not apply. That’s important for two reasons:

1. In my first intervention, I was unsure whether I had to participate in the conversation with the other participants or stay silent and try to be as invisible as possible.
2. I never considered that these two studies might not be comparable to mine. They’re not; the dynamics are different.

Parsons mentions five ethical principles for Action Research. I’m not going to explain them here, just comment on my own notes about them.

1. Minimize harm

He says teachers are in loco parentis, which makes sense with children, but does that apply in a postgraduate course? I had the same question when I was a lecturer back in Colombia. I felt paternalized by people 15 years older than me, they were asking me life advices. Usually, what I thought was: ‘I know what Aristotle said about rhetoric, but I have no idea how to behave in life. Why are you asking me that? I’m 26, you might be 37, wtf’. It’s interesting to think that in all contexts, teachers have a role of care. Why? At some point, I saw myself as just a bridge for specific knowledge.

2. Informed consent

I like that he mentions there are cases where asking for signed informed consent doesn’t make sense, like when a professor is researching in their own class. I see it this way: he might inform them, but asking 32 people to sign forms every time is not practical.

To me, there are cases where it also makes no sense to ask for a signed form, for example, when findings won’t be published (even in blogs), or when there’s no specific research question as a framework. I’ve take part of casual non formal interventions in CSM two weeks ago, I didn’t signed any form and I didn’t think it was necessary.

3. Anonymity of subjects and information

No comments, I agree.

4. No deception in data gathering (lol, this one is important)

My only reference for social research had been positive psychology and Gesell boxes. I’m glad to know I don’t have to act like a covert researcher and can be transparent about what I’m looking for. That’s one of the main takeaways from this reading for me.

5. Right of withdrawal

He says it doesn’t make sense to let students withdraw from classroom-based research. I disagree, logistical problems don’t justify removing the right to withdraw. It’s not the same as the written consent form. Even if there’s no harm, denying someone the option to withdraw denies their agency entirely.

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Final thought: I didn’t understand the concept of the “Zone of Accepted Practice” he mentions.

I saw this today, it blew my mind: https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSBRofhbS/

It’s a series of animated sketches about the misery of corporate life. Unfortunately, it’s in Spanish and there’s no translation. Still, it makes me happy that it’s made only in Spanish. In the end, it makes me feel more confident about what we can produce in Latam.

I like it because it’s funny, absurd, and satirical. I’d like to do something like that. The guy who published the video has clips explaining how he made it. Since it’s made with plasticine, I thought it was two minutes of stop motion, and I thought, “I can do that” (I can’t). Later, he explained that he digitized the plasticine and animated it in Blender. What is Blender? I asked and that’s when I fell down a rabbit hole.

I know Blender is complicated, so I found it funny that, for a moment, I seriously considered spending lots of thime time learning -again- how to use a program (Premiere Pro, After Effects, Notion (?), Adobe Fresco, Audacity, Audition, Procreate…). Never again. I’ll iterate with what I have at hand, and that has to be enough.

To apply one’s imagination is to learn how to start small and to deliberately restrict one’s own ideas in order to make the leap and begin to create.

Tutors told me things that made perfect sense regarding how to engage with key actor for my research. I’ve done this before, this isn’t new to me, and yet, here I am, making all kinds of rookie mistakes.

They told me: “Put your interviews in your calendar.”

Obvious, right? And still, I showed up a whole day later to one interview because I had written the wrong date. What’s wrong with me? I wouldn’t make that kind of mistake at work.

They told me: “Have a short answer prepared about your project, in case someone asks.”

Of course. And still, last week, after what I’d say was a really good interview, the interviewee surprised me by asking about my project: he wanted to connect me with other artists. I didn’t expect that. My response? “Eh, uh… my research is… eh, just starting, and it’s about… eh… *mumbling in Spanish*, yes.” I completely fumbled.

They told me: “Read your interviewee’s books beforehand”

This one was my favourite one because it sounded less obvious than the others. I used to think: If I’m interviewing someone, it’s because I want to learn about their work, it’s not a problem if I am not an expert in their work, right? Well, I had an interview with someone I had been trying to talk to for a month. I might only get this one chance. At the half of the interview I realized I was asking her things she had already answered in her book. More than making her uncomfortable and unread, my concer is that I could have gone deeper. The conversation could have been even more concrete, straightforward and action-based.

I missed that chance. Now I might have to wait until September -after summer- before I can speak with her again.