A review of:
Sakai, S., Korenaga, R., & Sakai, T. S. (2015, March 15). Learning to become a better poet: Situated information practices in, of, and at a Japanese tanka gathering. https://informationr.net/ir/20-1/isic2/isic30.html
Abstract
Objective – Describe mundane information behaviours among Japanese poets within a group poetry gathering.
Design – Direct observation (with recording) of participants in situ with an ethnomethodological approach.
Setting – A 12-month series of utakai, gathering of tanka poets to recite and discuss their poetry.
Subjects – Typically 6-7 amateur poets
Methods – Sakai et al., all new to the process of writing tanka poems and attending utakai gatherings, observed and recorded 12 gatherings over a 12-month period. Each recording was reviewed in detail, with information behaviours coded by the researchers. They then conducted a thematic analysis of the coded results, identifying normative patterns of behaviour the group of poets engaged in. With the ethnomethodological approach, no effort was made to fit the observations to a per-existing model or theoretical framework. Instead, the behaviours were examined in the context of the goal of the group: to learn to write better tanka poems.
Main Results – The researchers observed a variety of information behaviours undertaken by the group. Most of the behaviours were observed to be collaborative, with participants asking each other questions and receiving answers, or working together to identify better vocabulary or phrasing for a specific poem. Some participants engaged in an information seeking cycles as individuals, for example consulting a dictionary for the definition of a term, but the individual behaviours were noted to happen within the context of the group. Someone consulting a dictionary did so while it was not their turn to provide feedback, and shared the found definition later when it was not disruptive.
Conclusion – Analyzing the behaviours within the context of the group’s goal of learning to write better tanka poems, the researchers identified two broad categories of mundane information behaviours the participants engaged in. For understanding the work of others, participants consulted a variety of external sources and shared the results with the group, and engaged in a clarifying question and answer feedback process. For offering advice to others, less experienced participants chose to raise concerns without a clear path towards improvement, while those with more experience and skill engaged in collaborative dialogue to find an improvement together. The behaviours were not highly structured, and there were no formalized rules that participants followed. Moreover, the behaviours were collaborative within the goal of the gathering, with information behaviours happen “simultaneously, sequentially, and orderly.” The behaviours of the participants were shaped by the norms demonstrated by the group through their mundane activities both individually and collaboratively.
Commentary
Psathas (1995) identified five major variations of ethnomethodology. Of these, the approach the researchers adopted the fourth, which Psathas described as “the study of work as it is carried out/accomplished by the parties/incumbents of particular oriented to categories within and as parties of a describable/referable/locatable set of practices which may be identifiable as an organization, unit, company, bureaucracy, or what have you.” The group of tanka poets attending the utakai form a group by their unified purpose of learning to write better poems, and also through their shared adoption of information behaviour norms in their collaborative work. It is this work that the researchers focus their attention to, and situate the information behaviours within its context.
This study was evaluated with the CASP Checklist for Qualitative Research (Critical Appraisal Skills Programme, 2024). The researchers do not explicitly state their research questions, but their objective of describing the information behaviours that contribute to the work of the group is clearly defined and situated within the literature, and the qualitative nature of the study was appropriate to that goal. While the authors note their departure from the similar social constructivist approach, the ethnomethodology provided a unique viewpoint and supported the aims of the study. The authors note the limitations of their recruitment practice; with tanka poetry being one of the main literary genres in Japan, it is widely practised by many different groups with differing aims and processes. While the participants may not constitute a truly representative sample of tanka authors, they are typical of the majority. The process of collecting the data was clearly documented, but the coding and thematic analysis was less clear. While the presence and relative experience of the researcher to the participants was discussed during the explanation of the ethnomethodological approach, the positionality of the researchers or their potential impact on participant behaviour while conducting the study was not discussed.
The authors mention their use of consent for observation and recording of the participant group, and the group’s nature did not indicate significant ethical concerns around consent or participation. The authors did note that they had used pseudonyms for the participants referenced in the paper to preserve their privacy. No mention was made of any ethical oversight for the study. Most of the analysis and conclusion focused on the results of the thematic analysis with anecdotes from the utakai as illustrative examples. Given the limited discussion of the coding and theme identification, coupled with the limited number of themes discussed in the paper’s conclusion. it’s unclear how rigorous the analytical process was. It is possible that the themes were not supported by the coding, the coding and themes were not comprehensive, or that relevant results were left out of the paper. Because of the difficulty in anonymizing the recordings, it is understandable for the researchers not to have published them. However, they did not provide anonymized transcripts or coding keys, so the adequacy of the support for the conclusions is unknown, and the study is not reproducible. If one assumes that the analysis was conducted appropriately, the findings identified in the paper’s conclusion seem appropriate, and directly address the study’s goal of describing the normative information behaviours of the participants as they work towards the shared goal of becoming better tanka poets.
The final evaluation criteria from the Checklist is the question of the study’s impact. While the authors note that the study may have implications for our understanding of the phenomenon of communities of practice, they state that “the relationship between communities of practice and ethnomethodology is yet contentious.” No other potential applications of the research outcomes were noted, and no future lines of inquiry were identified. Of specific note, no benefit of this research was identified for the participants of the study or the furtherance of their shared goal.
I found the approach taken by these researchers to be a stark contrast to the formal models and theories of information behaviour like those analyzed by Robson and Robinson (2013). Even the Ellis model (1989, as cited in Robson and Robinson, 2013), the simplest model analyzed, identifies eight activities of which only three map to the behaviours and analysis conducted by Sakai et al. Adopting the ethnomethodological approach for the study allowed for the identification of behaviours within the social context of the utakai, but they exhibit significant overlap with the results one would expect with a constructivist approach and with fewer applications and avenues for future work. If one wanted to further understand the information behaviours undertaken to become a better tanka writer, one could study the work the poet conducts on their own, or the process of and evaluation criteria for publication of finished poems. To see whether the results may be generalizable, one could conduct a similar descriptive study of other types of literary practitioner gatherings. If one wanted to have a direct positive impact on a poet’s goal of writing a better tanka poem, the themes identified could be studied in comparison to measures like publication rates or personal satisfaction metrics in order to better understand how the utakai process produces its results.
References
Critical Appraisal Skills Programme. (2024). Qualitative studies checklist. CASP; Critical Appraisal Skills Programme. https://casp-uk.net/casp-tools-checklists/qualitative-studies-checklist/
Psathas, G. (1995). “Talk and social structure” and “studies of work.” Human Studies, 18(2), 139–155. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01323207
Robson, A., & Robinson, L. (2013). Building on models of information behaviour: Linking information seeking and communication. Journal of Documentation, 69(2), 169–193. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220411311300039
Sakai, S., Korenaga, R., & Sakai, T. S. (2015, March 15). Learning to become a better poet: Situated information practices in, of, and at a Japanese tanka gathering. https://informationr.net/ir/20-1/isic2/isic30.html