PHENOMENOG-L: The email list of the Phenomenography Interest Group

Welcome to the phenomenog-l electronic mail list (NOTE: the last letter in the list name is the letter, "L", not the numeral "1" -- and it does not matter whether capital or lower case letters are used to spell out the list name).

This list was started for the Phenomenography Interest Group (PIG), a group centered at the Queensland University of Technology and comprising staff and research students from Queensland University of Technology, Griffith University and the University of Queensland who have an interest in the qualitative research method known as phenomenography. It has now spead to the extent that all over the world (and,especially Australia, Scandinavia, the UK and the USA) active workers in the area of phenomenography subscribe to and contribute to the list.

The list is run for the community of those interested in phenomenography by Geoff Isaacs from the University of Queensland's Teaching and Educational Development Institute (g.isaacs@mailbox.uq.edu.au). He makes no claim to phenomenographic expertise -- it is a function of the list itself to put those in need in touch with "experts".

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Any mail messages sent to: phenomenog-l@mailbox.uq.edu.au will be broadcast to all subscribers.

To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message to majordomo as before. This time, the message in the BODY of the text should read:

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In most cases YOU NEED NOT INCLUDE YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS. If you are subscribing from the email address to which you want the list to send messages, then you need not include your email address in the message (that's why it's shown in angle brackets in the model). The same applies to unsubscribing. Provided you are unsubscribing from the address the list has for you, you do not need to include your email address in the message.

Correspondence about (as against to) the list should be sent to its administrator, Geoff Isaacs (g.isaacs@mailbox.uq.edu.au) .

The way the list is set up allows many discussions to take place at the same time. Thus it is important that you make the subject heading for your message clear, concise and simple. For example: a subject heading of: "Students' conceptions of radioactivity" tells the person scanning the headings exactly what the topic is. He or she may then ignore or pursue this message, as desired.

Secondly, the list now serves as a means for the community of phenomenographic researchers in Australia to stay in touch with each other and with each other's activities.

Finally, the list now serves the same purpose for the world wide community of phenomenographic researchers as for the Australian community. Indeed, this has become the MAIN function of the list...

The list will thrive only to the extent that subscribers contribute to it and respond to the contributions of others. Contributions might be announcements, questions, requests for assistance, requests for comment on partly thought out ideas or strongly held opinions, drafts of articles or grant applications and so on. It is up to you....

There have been cases in the past where "threads" (lines of discussion) from the list have been taken and reproduced elsewhere. Some list members have objected to this, feeling that contributions to the list should be private to list subscribers. I do not wish to enter into the legalities, moralities, rights or wrongs of this discussion. HOWEVER, my suggestion is that anyone posting a message to the list which they do not wish reproduced elsewhere should start the message with:

*** PRIVATE -- NOT TO BE REPRODUCED OUTSIDE THE PHENOMENOGRAPHY LIST ***

This puts a moral imperative on list members to keep this message strictly among themselves.

Biorn Hasselgren, from Gothenburg, has some excellent pages about phenomenography at his "Land of Phenomenography" site.

Judy Norris' QualPage covers qualitative research generally (including links to Biorn's "Land" and the information about this list):

Geoff Isaacs