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Journaling: Identification of challenges and reflection on strategies
Abstract and Figures
To identify the challenges associated with using journaling as a method of data collection and to offer strategies for effectively managing those challenges.
While journaling can be used for a variety of reasons, in the context of this paper, journaling refers to the process of participants sharing thoughts, ideas, feelings and experiences through writing and/or other media. Journaling is used in phenomenological research studies to record participant experiences in their natural contexts.
The findings are based on the experiences of the researchers during a qualitative study that explored the experiences of lesbian mothers and used journaling as one method of data collection.
This is a methodological paper.
Three main challenges affect journaling as a method of data collection: poor participation, feeling exposed and staying on track. Six strategies to promote participation in journaling are: coaching participants, limiting the journaling period, providing follow-up contact, promoting comfort, ensuring safety and providing clear content expectations. Each strategy is discussed and methods of implementing the strategies are offered.
Journaling as a method of data collection has long been accepted as a valid method of accessing rich qualitative data. By acknowledging the common challenges associated with the process of journaling that are experienced by the participants, researchers employing this data collection method can promote constructive and valuable participation.
Further research examining participants' experiences of journaling as a method of qualitative data collection would be useful in determining challenges, barriers and benefits of the method.
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... Mood journaling applications are digital tools designed to help individuals track their emotions, reflect on their experiences, and gain insights into their mental health. 5 Here are some of the best mood journaling apps available, along with their features and benefits, as shown in Table 1. Mood journaling can be a powerful tool for self-reflection and emotional growth. ...
... • Daily mood tracker: By using simple emojis in a likert scale (1)(2)(3)(4)(5)(6)(7)(8)(9)(10) or using color codes to log mood daily. Reflecting the feelings and finding the correlation with specific events, interactions and thoughts. ...
... The third data source, my diary, was used to capture my interactions, thoughts, assumptions, memories, conflicts and dialogues with people in the teaching and personal setting (Makaiau et al., 2015;Hayman et al., 2012). In addition, my diary included personal creative writing. ...
Immigrating and becoming a teacher in a new country is challenging and brings with it a necessity to shape personal and professional feelings, assumptions and practices. Challenges, and the necessity to shape these elements, also happen when changing suddenly from presential to remote teaching. Major shifts can challenge educators to question their educational paradigms and adapt their praxis to a new educational system. This thesis is about my journey of immigration to Aotearoa New Zealand from Brazil and my journey teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic, including the effect these shifts had on the way I enact my teaching, my praxis, as a physical education (PE) teacher. Using a self-study methodology with elements of bricolage to support the research design, I sought to examine the ways in which my teaching in a primary school were influenced by and adapted to a new cultural setting and education system. Data sources included teaching artefacts, journaling, personal history through narratives and meeting with critical friends and supervisors. Using thematic analysis of the data suggests that divergent points, such as (1) language, (2) feeling of belonging, (3) understanding of praxis, (4) pedagogical strategies and (5) personal assumptions influenced and shaped my praxis and, therefore, the way I enacted my teaching. By engaging with praxis as a theoretical framework and a way to understand my actions, I came to understand that I adapted my praxis due to the new contexts. I also had to shape the way I teach both in a macro and micro pedagogical context because of the divergent topics found in this research. Ultimately, this thesis illuminates the way I built my praxis as an immigrant teacher, teaching both face to face and online, and offers suggestions on how to support other teachers migrating to new countries and starting their journey as educators in a new cultural and teaching context.
... Journaling allows purposeful thinking and careful examination of different experiences. It can encourage writers to extend an awareness of their ways of thinking, of events, or even of their instructional approaches (Hayman et al., 2012;Lindroth, 2015;Zulfikar & Mujiburrahman, 2018). After each of the eight monthly PLC sessions, the three teachers and two coaches who consented to participate in activities outside the PLC time were asked to complete reflective journal submissions which invited reflections on their classroom practices and interactions with their colleagues in the PLCs. ...
Dual language programs have the potential to promote social justice and have documented positive outcomes for students, particularly students classified as English Language Learners. These programs have been increasingly growing in popularity across the nation. While they can provide prime spaces to promote equity in schools, scholars have growingly voiced concerns about rising inequities, elitism, and bias in these programs, particularly impacting minoritized students. This call has led to increased attention to the programmatic goal of sociocultural competence, which helps students practice continuous self-reflection, develop a sense of themselves and their relation to others as cultural participants, and seeks to respond to the cultural needs of minoritized students. This case study with collaborative tenets focuses on a 6-8th grade interdisciplinary dual language teacher professional learning community (PLC) exploring sociocultural competence. It uses the Framework for Approaching Professional Learning Communities Interculturally as a lens to explore six qualitative data sources collected during PLC meetings with seven teachers and two coaches. Specifically, the research sought to address three main areas. The first is to understand how middle school teachers at La Unidad Middle School, a long-running dual language program in the northeastern U.S., conceptualize and foster students' development of sociocultural competence. The second is to explore dual language teachers' perceptions of their professional competence related to sociocultural competence after participating in a PLC. Finally, to investigate the professional learning community processes that teachers and coaches perceived to be the most impactful for promoting their professional competence. The contributions of this study are conceptual and practical since it provides insights into how educators conceptualize, implement, and support this multifaceted construct; additionally, it explores PLCs as vehicles for teacher learning and continued development of practice in a dual language context. The findings suggest that it is imperative to recognize that sociocultural competence is not developed in a vacuum for each student but rather is closely connected to class and school environments. Furthermore, for teachers to promote sociocultural equity-driven humanizing environments, their schools and districts must create the same environments for teachers.
... The next issue was the student teachers' lack of confidence when writing reflections (Brown et al., 2011;Snyder, 2011;Hayman et al., 2012;Butani et al., 2017). This was due to the student teachers' inability to connect theory and practice, which demotivated them and made them see reflective writing as a burden rather than a valuable tool that could help them teach and learn (Nambiar and Thang, 2016). ...
This study aims to examine the depth of the reflection written by the Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) student teachers while undertaking a course in the TESL programme. This study employs a case study design in which the data were analysed qualitatively. The reflective entries of student teachers were collected, and the data were analysed using content analysis method. There were 32 student teachers in their sixth semester in a teacher education university in Malaysia who participated in the study. They were taking a pedagogical course that prepared them for their teaching practice. This study made use of the instrument reflective journal entries. The document analysis was used to analyse the data obtained from the student teachers’ reflective entries. The assessment of their written reflective entries made use of Kember et al.'s (2008) four-category protocol. The majority of the student teachers demonstrated that they achieved only the second level of the depthness of reflection, which is “understanding” followed by “reflection”, “non-reflective” and “critical reflection”. The findings of this study implicate the need to strengthen the reflective process and writing in the teaching and learning process and the student teacher’s professional development.
... However, the benefits of journaling can be difficult to quantify in a timely manner, especially given the significant time and effort individuals invest in the process. People often feel that maintaining a journaling habit is challenging when it requires substantial time and effort at the end of the day or over a period to recall events and emotions [5]. In this context, digital devices like smartphones, with their prevalence and ubiquitous nature, can play a crucial role in assisting with the logging of daily activities. ...
Journaling offers significant benefits, including fostering self-reflection, enhancing writing skills, and aiding in mood monitoring. However, many people abandon the practice because traditional journaling is time-consuming, and detailed life events may be overlooked if not recorded promptly. Given that smartphones are the most widely used devices for entertainment, work, and socialization, they present an ideal platform for innovative approaches to journaling. Despite their ubiquity, the potential of using digital phenotyping, a method of unobtrusively collecting data from digital devices to gain insights into psychological and behavioral patterns, for automated journal generation has been largely underexplored. In this study, we propose AutoJournaling, the first-of-its-kind system that automatically generates journals by collecting and analyzing screenshots from smartphones. This system captures life events and corresponding emotions, offering a novel approach to digital phenotyping. We evaluated AutoJournaling by collecting screenshots every 3 seconds from three students over five days, demonstrating its feasibility and accuracy. AutoJournaling is the first framework to utilize seamlessly collected screenshots for journal generation, providing new insights into psychological states through digital phenotyping.
... Journaling can be a place of iterative reflection that occurs outside of spoken interaction with the researcher (De Costa et al., 2022). Following Hayman et al. (2012), who argue that participants may feel more comfortable to share written reflections on sensitive topics, I adopted a journaling protocol to supplement the interviews and observations (see Appendix E). Participants completed the journaling prompts before our interviews, which allowed us to discuss what they wrote. ...
Drawing on the methodological framework of nexus analysis and theoretical foundations regarding the reentextualization of language ideologies, this dissertation examines one US university writing center’s language statement as it seeks to decenter English-dominant standard language ideologies and to promote inclusive language practices in the center. In particular, this study highlights how four writing center consultants interpreted and appropriated the statement in diverse ways. Data sources included documents related to onboarding and training, extended semi-structured interviews about consultants’ prior experiences with language difference and consulting practices, audio-recorded observations and field notes of hour-long writing consultations, participant journals, and post-observation reflection interviews. A poststructural, multi-scalar discourse analysis revealed tensions between policy and practice, as well as several profiles of ideological negotiation within the consultants. Discourses valuing competition, excellence, and expertise at the university level came into tension with discourses of relationality and collaboration within the writing center. In response to requests to correct clients’ grammar, consultants developed and revised practices that reentextualized their past experiences with language diversity as well as the center’s policies about
language.
... While the method is like content analysis in document analysis, the hermeneutic research pays attention to the participant's emotions and moods while experiencing study abroad, thus aligning more with a phenomenological approach (Giacomini et al., 2000). Previous studies have used reflective journals to record participant experiences in their natural contexts (Hayman et al., 2012). The reflective questions were based on models of cultural competency explained in the theoretical framework (Cross et al., 1989;Sue et al., 1996). ...
This article explores the transformative potential of Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) in leadership learning, tracing the game's evolution from the 1980s satanic panic to its current mainstream popularity. We highlight practical applications in educational settings and address critiques related to game mechanics and historical biases. By integrating D&D (or other Tabletop Role‐Playing Games) into leadership curricula, practitioners can leverage engaging narratives to cultivate leadership skills and prepare students to navigate complex, real‐world scenarios.
Background
Depression is a common pregnancy complication yet is often under-detected and, subsequently, undertreated. Data collected through mobile health tools may be used to support the identification of depression symptoms in pregnancy.
Methods
An observational cohort study of 2062 pregnancies collected self-reports of patient history, mood, pregnancy-specific symptoms, and written language using a prenatal support app. These app inputs were used to model depression risk in subsequent 30- and 60-day periods throughout pregnancy. A selective inference lasso modeling approach examined the individual and additive value of each type of patient-reported app input.
Results
Depression models ranged in predictive power (AUC value of 0.64–0.83), depending on the type of inputs. The most predictive model included personal history, daily mood, and acute pregnancy-related symptoms (e.g., severe vomiting, cramping). Across models, daily mood was the strongest indicator of depression symptoms in the following month. Models that retained natural language inputs typically improved predictive accuracy and offered insight into the lived context associated with experiencing depression.
Limitations
Our findings are not generalizable beyond a digitally literate patient population that is self-motivated to report data during pregnancy.
Conclusions
Simple patient reported data, including sparse language, shared directly via digital tools may support earlier depression symptom identification and a more nuanced understanding of depression context.
This chapter conceptualises research as a nonlinear journey influenced by a myriad of potential contextual forces. That journey is merely one facet of a researcher’s life, comprising experiences that occur at specific times, places, and circumstances; experiences that should be regularly recorded to provide a source of information for continual reflection. The contextual complexities surrounding the journey emerge because the researcher is human (influenced by their own contexts and identity as a researcher) undertaking research on, with, or about other humans (influenced by their own contexts, identities, and roles) and/or the handiworks they produce. Importantly, the researcher is not the sole owner, shaper, and experiencer of their research journey, others will exert influence and share an interest in its outcomes. Achieving convincing research outcomes benefits from pluralist systemic thinking: pluralist - envisaging multiple potential pathways the research could follow; systemic - understanding contextual influences, feedback, and feedforward. Importantly, the researcher is not the arbiter of what counts as convincing, that role resides in the various audiences/stakeholders with and for which the researcher aspires to share research outcomes. In this light, planning plays an important yet limited role, because some influences, constraints, and opportunities cannot be anticipated at the outset.
A clinical application of assessment methods adapted from qualitative research is described. Specifically, data were collected via ethnographic interviewing and journal writing before, during, and after intervention in a case of adult aphasia. The data were categorized to provide insight into contexts of communication, social relationships, and feelings about life with aphasia. By analyzing the reports of the client and significant others over the course of treatment, changes in social participation and psychosocial well‐being were documented. These descriptive data provided a socially valid and consumer focused method of tracking outcome in this case.
Introduction to a collection of writings for students and teachers on journal writing in adult education.
This article describes personal document research and proposes its use as an alternative research method that includes the voice and experience of the research participant. By juxtaposing the personal diary and case record of a welfare mother, the qualitative data generated challenge the icons of professional objectivity, case record accuracy, and factuality. The exclusion of the woman's voice by research design or statistical abstraction disqualifies an alternative version of facts from being known or from entering into public policy debate over such serious social policy issues as poverty and child neglect. Personal document research bridges the gap between practitioner and researcher by offering a research method more in line with social work’s traditional clinical values and social activist concerns.
The act of “talking to oneself” is an important component of learning, and of seeking balance, direction, and meaning in life.
This article describes the first stage of a multistep project that examined whether and to what degree journal writing provides information about students' achievement of desired learning outcomes in diversity training. Participants were 18 communication sciences and disorders graduate students enrolled in a 2-course, interinstitutional, Web-based instructional sequence derived from experiential learning models. Examples of written reflections from student journals used in the first course illustrate how students applied course materials to their personal and professional experiences. Results suggest that journaling is a viable approach to assessment and that the content and level of reflection in student journals may provide evidence relative to specific learning outcomes and levels of achievement.
Qualitative research in counselling and psychotherapy has largely been based on interviews carried out with clients and therapists. However, other approaches to qualitative data collection are possible. The present paper uses a diary design to explore the connection between what goes on in therapy sessions, and client activities and experiences in other contexts. Clients and counsellors kept diaries about significant aspects of therapy sessions, while clients also kept diaries about new and different experiences in other contexts in their lives. Ethical and practical issues involved in the use of diaries are discussed, and the methods that were employed to analyse diary-based data are described. The types of findings that the study generated are presented, along with discussion of their implications for research into client experiences of therapy.
Focusing on the social environment as well as the individual should both enhance our understanding of HIV transmission and assist in the development of more effective prevention programs. Networks are an important aspect of drug injectors' social environment. We distinguish between (1) risk networks (the people among whom HIV risk behaviors occur) as vectors of disease transmission, and (2) social networks (the people among whom there are social interactions with a mutual orientation to one another) as generators and disseminators of social influence. These concepts are applied to analyses of data from interviews with drug injectors in two studies. In the first study drug injectors' risk networks converge with their social networks: 70% inject or share syringes with a spouse or sex partner, a running partner, or with friends or others whom they know. Qualitative data from interviews with injectors in the second study also show that the social relationships between drug injectors and members of their risk network are often based on long-standing and multiplex relationships, such as those based on kinship, friendship, marital and sexual ties, and economic activity. In the first study the vast majority of injectors, over 90%, have social ties with non-injectors. Injectors with more frequent social contacts with non-injectors engage in lower levels of injecting risk behavior. Risk settings may function as risk networks: injectors in this study who inject at shooting galleries are more likely than those who do not to rent used syringes, borrow used syringes and inject with strangers. Since the adoption of a network approach is relatively new, a number of issues require further attention. These include: how to utilize social networks among drug injectors to reduce risk through peer pressure; how to promote risk reduction by encouraging ties between injectors and non-injectors; and how to integrate biographical and historical change into understanding network processes. Appropriate methodologies to study drug injectors' networks should be developed, including techniques to reach hidden populations, computer software for managing and analyzing network data bases, and statistical methods for drawing inferences from data gathered through dependent sampling designs.
