EasyBlog

Many years ago I read a cautionary article in a qualitative research journal by Steinar Kvale called "The 1,000 page question". In the article he was ruminating on what a person does with massive volumes of interview data. Picture the lonely PhD student chain smoking in a draughty garret above the railway junction with only the pallor of her comple...

Tommy is my eleven year old son who has just moved from a highly rated Church of England primary school in Winchester to the wilds of the Elementary in the American Embassy School in Delhi, where the 'uniform' is shorts, t-shirts, a cap and sneakers. At this early stage in the transition, he is a keen observer of the two different systems. "Mom, wh...

'Faking good' is the practice of showing yourself in a better light without much substance to back it. In academic terms, faking good is looking smart, intelligent and talented with apparently effortless ease. It is the comfy chino to the hardwearing tight jeans; the flip flop to the heavy mountain boot; the micro-wave dinner to the slow cooking of...

Don't you just love it at the start of a movie, when that quirky little Pixar lamp is twisting about and the smell of popcorn is wafting up, and you hear the line "From the team that brought you Shrek, here comes Shrek 2". It evokes memories of characters you loved and hated, recalls twists in the plot, and allows you to hope for the story to spin ...