¶ … faculties merge: Communicating change" by Hughes (2007) is a poorly written qualitative personal account; the result of a "learning journal" containing subjective interpretations that has no discernable generalizability to others. After reading the article in its entirety, I am left with several questions. Given that this "research" was published in a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal, it is difficult to understand, exactly, how Hughes' (2007) article contributes to any body of knowledge in the sciences.
For example, Hughe's (2007, pg. 25) writes that it is the goal of the paper to provide "subjective experiences of change communication." The reader is left to wonder "who cares?" For the following reasons, the Hughes article is one of the least developed, least generalizable and poorly written peer-reviewed journal articles that I have read. This article represents well the importance of maintaining high academic rigor in academic journals that this "research" simply fails to achieve. In fact, this article can scarcely be labeled "research" at all.
While Hughes (2007) provides a framework for research, the result is less than effective. The language that Hughes uses is both grammatically incorrect and confusing. The confusing language is not due to complex subject matter, but, rather, the seeming lack of understanding regarding the concepts presented by Hughes (2007). By suggesting that the author's "unique" approach to offering subjective experiences as part of some larger "storytelling...
27) notes that he kept a "learning journal." Hughes provides an unnecessary paragraph long explanation of what a "learning journal" means, yet fails to ever explain what "ICT" means.
This is not a small oversight; Hughes (2007) makes many and frequent references to "ICT" throughout the article, yet fails to not only define "ICT," but also goes the extra distance by refusing to even identify what the acronym ICT means. Vandervert (1988) writes of the importance of operationalizing and identifying terms in academic research and scholarly literature. Unfortunately, we are left to wonder what ICT means from a lack of term definition. For example, Hughes (2007, pg. 29) writes that "the communications orthodoxy is changing as we begin to understand the role of ICTs in terms of communications in general and more particularly communicating change. However, Hughes does not provide any elaboration to this statement and bounces to another subject entirely. Hughes sentence structure inhibits a "flow" the article and abrupt changes in subject from one sentence to another, from one paragraph to another, are par for the course. For precisely these reasons, Hughes (2007) article is a confusing amalgamation of off-topic research, irrelevant academic studies and tenuous connections between his personal experiences and the importance of "change communication." While Hughes (2007, pg. 25) writes that his "paper offers [his] account of…
