Required texts: none
0. Review:
Kincheloe, J. L. (1991). Teachers as researchers: Qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment. London: Falmer Press. Ch. 2: Connecting knower and known: Constructing an emancipating system of meaning.
?This chapter begins in a way which provides a useful review of topics we have examined in previous Blocks, and then links these topics to a conception of critical inquiry. Kincheloe contrasts the Cartesian dualist view of the world with a constructivism that sees knower and known as essentially linked. From this latter view, "the traditional methods of educational science have often reduced our understanding of educational reality." Kincheloe addresses the issue of "the relationship between researchers and what they are researching" and moves from this to a discussion of the various levels of tacit knowledge that can be drawn upon. Feminist researchers provide "a new perspective that attacks the traditional deference to authority, to science as a form of power" and critiques its claims to be a value-free, non-ideological activity. Critical constructivist research focuses instead on drawing participants -- teachers, in Kincheloe's case -- into the research enterprise, and into forms of research that are action-based and action-directed, involving "emancipation" as one of their products. Kincheloe links this to Giroux' notion that schooling should foster critical literacy: "development of the capacity for self-criticism of the historically constituted nature of one's consciousness." Kincheloe argues that action research involves this kind of reflection. Viewing schools as constructed realities, benefiting some groups and not others, follows closely from recognizing that "[i]nquiry and the knowledge it produces is never neutral but constructed in specific ways that privilege particular logics while silencing others." Researchers must always take a position - or, more accurately, become aware that they have always already adopted a position from which to conduct their work. Recommended.
Week 1. The Analysis of Social Settings
Nespor, J. (1990). The jackhammer: A case study of undergraduate physics problem solving in its social setting. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 3, 139-155.
A university physics class is the setting analyzed here, though "setting" is used here in a sense a little different from Latour and Woolgar's (below). Nespor focuses not on the physical layout of the setting, but rather on the culture of the small group itself, and the way the "problem-solving" groups that emerged within the physics class embodied ethnic, class and gender divisions of the culture at large, so that "students construct their selves, status, and gender identities." Nespor attends to the organizational setting in which a physics problem is "solved," and argues that problem solving is not a process that goes on solely in the heads of individuals (the dominant cognitivist interpretation) but that "cognition is 'distributed' or shared across people, tools and contexts": cognition is "situated." Required.
Latour, B. & Woolgar, S. (1986/1979). Laboratory life: The construction of scientific facts. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ch. 2: An anthropologist visits the laboratory.
Bruno Latour is a French sociologist whose analysis here of the Salk Institute is a wonderful example of what the sociology of science can accomplish. The subtitle of Latour and Woolgar's book shows that they adopt a constructivist perspective, and in one of their chapters they trace the career of a polypeptide from the status of only speculation, through its achievement of the status of certainty, till it finally loses the status of fact and is deconstructed again into a hypothetical entity.
The chapter reproduced here reports on the special kind of "field" that is the scientific laboratory, and it thus provides an example of an analysis of a complex social setting. It begins with a useful discussion of a topic dealt with by several of the readings for Block 2: the way the researcher "steers a middle path between the two extreme roles of total newcomer (an unattainable ideal) and that of complete participant (who in going native is unable usefully to communicate to his community of fellow observers)." Latour and Woolgar grasp the laboratory as a place where written documents are ubiquitous, along with a wide variety of "devices" whose main function can be interpreted as "inscription." In line with the theme with which we begin this Block, Latour and Woolgar defend that claim that the phenomena with which laboratory participants deal are "thoroughly constituted by the material setting of the laboratory" (p. 64, original emphasis). "[I]f our observer was to imagine the removal of certain items of equipment from the laboratory, this would entail the removal of at least one object of reality from discussion." Laboratory apparatus can be understood as "reified theory." But the material setting, an essential feature of science, is easily forgotten, and very rarely receives mention. L & W examine this paradox in more detail. Their conclusion is that "[a] laboratory is constantly performing operations on statements; adding modalities, citing, enhancing, diminishing, borrowing, and proposing new combinations." This literary production is highly valued (and highly expensive, costing between $30,000 and $60,000 a paper) because by its means laboratory participants convince other scientists -- and one another -- of the existence of matters of fact. Required.
Week 2. Relationship between Researcher and Researched
Lather, P. (1986). Research as praxis. Harvard Educational Review, 56, 257-277.
Patti Lather describes an approach to research where researchers and researched engage in "a democratized process of inquiry characterized by negotiation, reciprocity, [and] empowerment." For Lather, emancipatory research "goes well beyond the action-research concept proposed over thirty years ago by Levin" because "the vast majority of this work operates from an ahistorical, apolitical value system which lends itself to subversion by those 'who are tempted to use merely the technical form as a means of engineering professional teacher development'" (p. 263). (Lather's point here should be considered in the light of Kincheloe's critique of instrumental reason, cf. next reading.) Feminist theory and research suggests an approach to research where research design involves reciprocal disclosure on the part of researcher and researched, and where theory-building is collaborative. Recommended.
Kincheloe, J. L. (1991). Teachers as researchers: Qualitative inquiry as a path to empowerment. London: Falmer Press. Ch. 5: Purposes of research: The concept of instrumental rationality.
In this chapter Kincheloe articulates with passion one kind of criticism that has been leveled at empirical-analytic research from the critical-interpretive camp. He characterizes empirical-analytic research as involving only an "instrumental rationality" that simply attempts to find means to achieve taken-for-granted ends, without asking where the ends come from and whose interests they serve. The focus is on "the measurable results of particular strategies." But "[r]esearch based on instrumental rationality fails to comprehend the importance of the existential conditions in which problems take shape" (p. 88). And when "[r]esearchers strive to understand systems of causal laws and the ways the variables relate to one another [this will often] lead to a perspective which assumes that certain variables may be manipulated to achieve certain outcomes. Control and thus conformity are deemed desirable and rendered possible by such research orientations" (p. 89) Kincheloe traces this "focus on means (the achievement of efficiency) rather than ends (an understanding of educational purpose as it relates to political and philosophical questions concerning the nature of a good and just society)" as it has been manifest in the history of training for educational administrators. He ends with some suggestions about how researchers can conduct critical action-oriented research, and how teachers can incorporate this kind of research into their teaching. Required.
Week 3. Evaluation of an Interpretive Account
Mishler, E. G. (1990). Validation in inquiry-guided research: The role of exemplars in narrative studies. Harvard Educational Review, 60, 415-442.
Elliot Mishler (whose chapter on transcribing we read in Block 2, and whose book on interviewing I have recommended) here addresses the difficult topic of validation. Mishler argues that validity in the social sciences cannot be guaranteed by use of proper procedure or standard rules: it is not simply a technical problem. Mishler garners support for this claim in recent moves away from the positivist "storybook image of science" as requiring "an abstract and severe 'logic'" (p. 417): many people now recognize that scientific inquiry involves craftwork, and much of its knowledge base is tacit and unexplicated. Mishler also notes the changing views of validity amongst empirical-analytic theorists like Campbell and Messick: validation is now seen as involving theory and interpretation.
Inquiry-guided research projects -- where the course of the investigation is modified in light of what is discovered -- "are not designed as experiments, and do not 'test' hypotheses, 'measure' variation on quantitative dimensions, or 'test' the significance of findings with statistical procedures" (p. 435). Mishler draws upon Kuhn's work to suggest that "exemplars" -- "concrete problem-solutions" -- can support claims to trustworthiness. He gives details of three exemplary studies in narrative research. Each of these displays the primary text analyzed, specifies analytical categories that represent a significant characteristic of the text at a more abstract level, and builds theoretical interpretations on structural relations among categories rather than on variables. Required.
Packer, M. J. & Addison, R. B. Evaluating an interpretive account. In (Eds.) M. J. Packer and R. B. Addison, Entering the circle: Hermeneutic investigation in psychology. Albany: State University of New York Press.
Here Ritch Addison and I explore some approaches to evaluation of interpretive accounts, and consider their status once one abandons any "foundational" conception of validity: one that sees knowledge as grounded in objective facts, or in formal principles. We consider and reject the suggestion that an interpretation is just a hypothesis (at least if the latter is taken as "a guess," as Popper suggests) with a fancy label, locating interpretation within the hermeneutic circle that fore-knowledge (also referred to as "pre-understanding") pitches the researcher into. We suggest a way of thinking about the truth of a theory, or statement, or claim, or interpretation, that does not appeal to some kind of correspondence test. Then we consider four approaches to evaluation: "namely requiring that an interpretive account be coherent; examining its relationship to external evidence; seeking consensus among various groups; and assessing the account's relationship to future events" (p. 279). We conclude that, judged against a traditional notion of truth and validity, one that seeks some kind of procedure of evaluation (like a comparison of p and alpha) each of these will seemed flawed. But viewed as reasonable checks, all of which require interpretation for their application, and none of which can guarantee certainty, they provide as good an approach to evaluation as we will find. Required.
Caputo, J. D. (1987). Radical hermeneutics: Repetition, deconstruction, and the hermeneutic project. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Section from Ch. 10: Science, rationality, and play. (pp. 214-222.)
In a course dedicated to research "method," it seems only right that these be among the last words: "any account of scientific rationality must see that in its finest hours -- in moments of crisis and discovery, of revolution and progress -- reason requires a moment of free play and intellectual legroom (Spielraum). We do not destroy the reputation of reason with this talk of the play; we just tell a more reasonable story about it." Required.
Week 4. Other Articles of General Interest:
Lieberman, A. (1992). The meaning of scholarly activity and the building of community. Educational Researcher, 21, 5-12.
Ann Lieberman is a Past President of AERA. This article was her presidential address in 1992, and she used the occasion to talk about questions she felt are not raised in the traditional research canon: "What is knowledge? And whose knowledge counts as legitimate? What do we really mean by collaboration and colleagueship? Who should drive the agenda for change? Us? Them? How can we talk about universal truths when there are such enormous differences in schools? What do we do with schools that for complex reasons of history, culture, and context, don't or can't change? Do we tell them what to do? And does that do any good? How do we explain and listen to the competing voices of teachers, principals, and community? Whose reality do we act on? Can we explain what we are seeing or doing without embedding it in its own specific context?" (p. 6). Lieberson suggests that "[t]he role of the academic is no longer that of the dispassionate observer, but rather that of an insider and an outsider at the same time: one who dares to 'speak the unspeakable,' because she must document what she sees, but also one who cares deeply and passionately and empathizes with the problems of practice" (p. 10). But "[t]he organizational structure of the university, reflecting the values underlying it, has limited our ability to do interdisciplinary work, team research, and team writing and, in so doing, has inhibited the building of a professional community of our own, as well as one with schools" (p. 11). Recommended.
Kaestle, C. F. (1993). The awful reputation of education research. Educational Researcher, 22, 23-31.
You may be entertained as well as informed by this broadside against the current state of educational research. Recommended.
SCHEDULE FOR BLOCK 7
Week 1: The Analysis of Social Settings
| Reading |
Nespor, in coursepack Latour & Woolgar, in coursepack |
| Lecture/ Discussion | Introduction to Block 6: Social settings as "constitutive"
Two approaches to setting: 1: Material setting: space and place 2: Culture as setting |
| Homework |
|
Week 2: The Relationship between Researcher and Researched
| Reading |
(Lather, in coursepack) |
| Lecture/ Discussion |
Relationships between theory and practice: Action research Participatory research Emancipatory research. |
| Lab |
|
| Homework |
|
Week 3: Evaluation of an Interpretive Account
| Reading |
Packer & Addison, in coursepack Caputo, in coursepack |
| Lecture/ Discussion | Validity in interpretation
Knowledge in interpretive research Retrospective overview of interpretive research |
| Lab | Putting the Blocks together
Future directions |
| Homework | Complete your Block 6 Project Report |
Block 6 Project Report due
| Report for Block 6 Project | Please include:
(a) an introduction and overview (b) summary of your interviews analyses (c) summary of your conversation analyses (d) setting analysis (e) summary and conclusions |