Category: Epistemology

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IMAGINATIONS

 

 

 

Sociological imagination

enables us to grasp the connection between history and biography. Wright C. Mills (1959) as cited in Henslin, J. M. (2015)  Essentials of Sociology:  A down-to-earth approach”  11th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.

 

Eisner: Educational Imagination

Erickson: Educational Imagination (in Moss et al, 2009, p. 504
“When I say a study has an educational imagination, I mean it addresses issues of curriculum, pedagogy, and school organization in ways that shed light on–not prove but rather illuminate, make us smarter about–the limits and possibilities for what practicing educators might do in making school happen on a daily basis. Such a study also sheds light on which aims of schooling are worth trying to achieve in the first place–it has a critical vision of ends as well as of means toward ends. Educational imagination involves asking research questions that go beyond utilitarian matters of efficiency and effectiveness, as in the discourse of new public management (see Barzelay, 2001), especially going beyond matters of short-term “effects” that are easily and cheaply measured.

Dialectical imagination

<class=”quote”>Dialectical imagination (Jay, 1973) is the ability to view the world in terms of its potential for being changed in the future, and hard-won ability in a world that promotes positivist habits of mind acquiescing to the status quo.”  p. 109
Agger, B. (1991). CRITICAL THEORY, POSTSTRUCTURALISM, POSTMODERNISM: Their Sociological Relevance. Annual Review of Sociology, 17, 105–131. https://doi-org.ezproxy.lib.usf.edu/10.1146/annurev.so.17.080191.000541

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Mirka’s validity and aporia

The credibility of research or findings might have more to
do with choices researchers make rather than established and
documented procedures. p.606

even the most rigorous implementation or direct application of textbook analysis approaches does not guarantee increased value of research, trustworthy conclusions, representativeness, or validity. Mechanical application of analytical steps and decontextualized implementation of analysis processes might still avoid the question
of responsibility and decision making, even though situatedness and complexity of analysis processes ask researchers to decide when, how, and why to begin and conclude analysis or other interactions with the data. p.607

“The decision to conclude data analysis is, therefore, always arbitrary and uncertain. There exists no exact way to know or illustrate when analytical processes are finished, saturated, and explanatory of the entire data set. Similarly, it is impossible to say when new themes, linguistic elements, discourses, or insights will no longer emerge or cannot be further identified. At the same time, there exists urgency to report the findings, publish, and write summary reports to funding
agencies. It is with uncertainty that researchers decide analysis does not need to be continued or no more analytical insights might emerge at the moment. This decision becomes even more challenging if researchers continue to interact with data and study participants after systematic or “official” data collection has ended.” p.607

 

Koro-Ljunberg (2010).  Validity, Responsibility, and Aporia. Qualitative Inquiry, 16(60). DOI: 10.1177/107780041037

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Politics, Neoliberal academy, and, and, and

I have been trying to stay away from politics, but it is a difficult thing to do–they sip through interactions with others. I hate it because it demands of me a political stance, and I resist it because I know the world is much more complicated than that. I could care less where I stand–I have become wary of choosing packs and having to conform to the conventions, expectations, and rules that come with its membership. I tried belonging–grew up as a Soviet, then later, I was a Christian; enough said–I do not like memberships.

…I am not a troublemaker, I am simply curious. And now, way beyond my passionate twenties, I no longer want to change the world–I just want to make it better, help everyone co-exist, find ways for everyone to get along and thrive somehow. Yet, Trump’s election broke me–I became so emotionally invested that the night Trump won, I felt dead. Specifically, what died was the part that believed in human’s virtue, respected opposing points of view. In its wake, I felt disgust, disbelief, disappointment with other fellow humans, and anger.  With time, the pain had subsided, but not the disgust, nor the constant awareness of my ethically problematic position as a Russian national and a permanent resident of the United States. Once again, I feel like I am forced to choose camps, and I refuse to do it.

When I became aware of the term “neoliberal academy” about a year ago, I knew in which camp I belong. My enculturation into the academic persona was easy–I am easily persuaded and sensitive to the affective power of the written word, and academic literature is no exception. When I read, I always search for the protagonists, the antagonists, for stances, philosophies, messages, and so forth; I like to know where I step next.

Neoliberal is bad. The principle of parsimony is impotent. Complexity and ambiguity are the answer. If I had a bow, I’d slap it on this neat package and put it on display to enjoy it.

Today, I question the evilness of neoliberal. What would my world, my time look like without the efficiency, the productivity of the neoliberal paradigm? Would I be able to reconcile my yearning for a simpler life on a small farm with my desire to be a part of bustling city life, the modern conveniences and comforts afforded by financial security? How do I work out the gravitational pull of adventure and cultural explorations through food and long-distance travel while I worry about the pollution I create when I fly or drive, or enjoy imported foods? I am as much a product of the environment as the producer of the environment. I am a phenomenon, and so is the neoliberal order, and the ecologies, and the species, and all the things, concepts, and events that I hate, love, or constantly interrogate in order to decide whether I should hate or love them.

I am entangled with politics and world orders, but I do not need to hate them, love them, or devote my life to changing or preserving them–I want to live in the moment, becoming with the world around me as it becomes with me. I do not want to be anxious about my employability after graduation–I want to stay curious and see where it takes us as a family.

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Epistemology as clothes

In the beginning of postqual, I realized that my epistemologies change as I progress through the day and perform the numerous roles as a mother, a wife, a neighbor, a friend, a student, a daughter, and so forth. I have been “sitting” on this discovery for over a month and made it my own. I asserted this belief since then several times and even came up with a narrative: “If I were not a postpositivist in the kitchen, my family would go hungry. If I was not an interpretivist with my husband, I would be divorced. With my kids, I am a constructivist. I have to be!” and so forth… Today, while driving home, I thought that I should call myself on these assumptions so I thought of a study:

Method: progress through the day and take note of what type of knowledge I typically encounter and what epistemological beliefs help me process the information, and in what way. I will create a map, then try to create an outfit, a costume (or at the very least, a hat, or an accessory depending on how strong the belief is) to represent (constructivism? already?) each belief.

If clothes help construct our identities and are the material part in our performativity, then why not tap into the potential or wardrobe research?

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Geological nature of autism research

Today, I “accidentally” came across an article by Marcelina Piotrowski “Writing in Cramped Spaces” (2017). Jenni had posted several other articles from the special issue of Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, 8(3) in the module “Doing PostQual I” and I became intrigued by the other articles in the roster.

Piotrowski’s writing is thorough, very well documented and organized. She is talking about cramped spaces and links medicine, literature, geography, ecology, art, and philosophy to  explain postqual and intersciplinary research. By doing so, she actually illustrated the concept with her own writing. On the highlighting index, this article received the brightest, most highlighted marks.

This read came at an excellent time–I struggled to start writing the lit review for our first POI study publication, and Piotrowski’s work helped me on two fronts: she began her writing with the discussion of disciplinary research–a direct hook to POI study, and explained why writing can become problematic. I  feel better, I can try putting that lit review together.  A post from earlier today captures some of my struggles as I try to figure out  how I am getting lost in exploration of the wildnerness of postqual and methological, political, and cultural dilemmas of educational research and yet, hearing my mom call me to dinner from three feet away. Of course I am having all these epistemological adventures in my head, without leaving the backyard!

Anyway, at the end of the article, when Piotrowski started pulling in ecology as an illustration of ecology as emploed by  Guattari, I thought about using geology and archeology to write about autsim. Autism is a multidisciplinary concept, but somehow, it is very much territorialized within each discipline. If you assemble all the plains of research together, you will end up with a very crude sculpture of Autism. I want to see if I can dig up some archeological artifacts buried in layers of sediment of research produced by multiple fields and their epistemological traditions. It would be cool to do a postqual meta analysis of autism research. Map it, take it apart. See at what point the division in to high and low autism came to be. The DSM wars, the methodologies used. It would be neat to take on geology or archeology as a guide because sediments are formed by the climate, geological, and biological activities. So I can at least map the climate of the culture, scientific methodological rock samples, and play with it some more to develop my methodology of inquiry as a parallel to geological and archeological research. I could do a survey of literature by year of publication. Tons of work, but maybe well worth it.

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Mixed and Mixology

I cannot get out of my head the recent round of interviews my department conducted for two new openings–one for the mixed method position, the other for quant. In a way, the event has made an impression on me…It brought the sense of urgency and with it the potential of generative anxiety, the good kind that motivates. Dr. Dedrick kept offering little comments on the process–receiving nearly a hundred of applications to finally narrowing the search down to a handful of candidates, arranging for the final interviews, flying the finalists in, showing them around, meeting the faculty, administrators, and students… I wonder if someone enjoys this… I panic just thinking about how one day I may be in this position… mixed methods would be amazing…

And then I think about how I fell in love with research methods when I took my first RM class as psych undergrad, then the second… they were quant classes, too. At USF, I discovered qualitative and philosophy. How I have grown. This semester I am taking advance measurement class, single case experiments class, and a post qual class, and all I can think about how different and yet, the same they seem. At least qual does not pretend that the researcher is not a crucial part of the study. Subjectivity is a feature, not a condition that needs to be kept in check… Last night Dr. Ferron explained the essence of the statistical approach to analysis in such easy, palatable terms (both Dedrick and Ferron do that–they make quantitative methods friendly somehow, not so sterile) that I must question why do we have so many purists in research methods? Of course, it is a rhetorical question–there is a great deal of culture in academic training among other things.

In stats, we compare our observed scores to theoretical curves to prove or to disprove our null hypotheses. We design our studies using the logic tied to assumptions of normality, homogeneity of variance, independence… then there is a neverending tug of war between type I and type II errors that must be balanced well enough to convince the others who (also thanks to their training) only loosely (empirically or theoretically, or somewhere in between) agree on thresholds between statistically significant and not significant  results. And what of the general convention of 0.05 alpha? Arbitrary, but widely accepted. The data conceived, then collected, then analyzed as a model–observed scores, true scores… some of the concepts are “squishy” (in Dr. Dedrick’s own words).

It is ALL so damn squishy!

Barad’s application of quantum physics acknowledges and celebrates the squishiness. I like it. So as I think about “mixed methods” designs, they are just like a trail mix–the chunks that never quite blend together. Within most designs, quant and qual carefully observe their methodological boundaries. The methodologies are preserved and limited by conventions and traditions that decide what a researcher can and cannot do. Researchers are obliged to stick with conventions or else be scrutinized in terms of rigor, validity, integrity. They must be bold enough to answer methodological examination from BOTH qualitatively and quantitatively oriented peers. The risks are obvious. But what of risks? RISK is a construct, it does not have to be a variable or a sure limitation of research. Does it? Just think: risk, too, is a highly subjective term. It is socially constructed, much like validity, objectivity, and other measures that weigh a study and pronounce its value. So what if it is dealt with reflexively? I have nothing yet, just an abstract vision (which is yet, somehow, seems solidified) of my future employment as a methodologist.

I should totally try and conceive MIXED methodology designs as a cocktail, liquid and blended, not mixed like the trail mix.

So what if I do a single case experiment but analyze it qualitatively AND quantitatively?

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My first impressions of Barad

Reading the first chapter of the “Entangled Beginnings.” OMG, I had to stop and write my first impressions out because her words are so profound. In the first portion of the chapter, as she rounds up her argument about how the Quantum Mechanics Theory is being used in other contexts, such as the play that features the meeting of two famous physicists in Nazi Europe. She makes an importnat disctinction between the purpose of the play and purpose of the actual quantum physics studies. Barad goes on to hypothesize why we as a race are so smitten with QM, and I now totally get it: we simply do not understand it, but are drawn to it because of its potential to explain the numerous messy connection, relations, structures that traditional science and qualitative methods cannot explain. Or even worse, due to political reasons:

“Public fascination with quantum physics is probably due in large part to several different factors, including the counterintuitive challenges it poses to the modernist worldview, the fame of the leading personalities who developed and contested the theory (Einstein not least among them), and the profound and world-changing applications quantum physics has wrought (symboized by the development of the tomic bomb)” p.6.

Because ” The interpretative issues in quantum physics (i.e., questions related to what the theory meansand how to understand its relationship to the world) are far from settled.” p. 6

Barad’s next point about how we just use QM concepts, though we do not even understand them, hits very close to home. This the question of rigor and integrity. This is why I raised my brown at Manning’s (very liberal) use of music theory when she first introduced the Minor Gesture, this is why Hein’s reference to sound as a molecular structure (which he, in turn, seems to have picked up from Deleuze) is misleading. I think in our pursuit of crossing interdisiplinary boundaries we forget to check facts or at least make an attempt to gain some expertise in the field we seek to incorporate in our studies. Great point, Barad!

She next brings forth the problem of analogical thinking that results in “unsatisfactory understandings of the relevant issues” This one cuts me deep because my sense-making strategy is amost exclusively dependent on creating analogies. Guilty as charged, for sure. So how do i change that?

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Scientists are like drunks

Vaillant, G.E. (1993). The Wisdom of the Ego. Harvard University Press.

“Social scientists tend to study what they can measure rather than what really interests them.  In this way, they sometimes resemble the proverbial drunk who searched for his car keys, not where he had lost them, but under the street lamp where the light was better.”  ch 5

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Awesome suggestion from Firefox, but leaves me wondering about my relevance as an authentic thinker.

An unexpected source of my profound source Mozilla Firefox suggested article and link to Quarts

A story about Claude Shannon

https://qz.com/1365059/a-universal-way-to-solve-problems-from-a-mathematical-genius/

”

Shannon’s reasoning, however, was that it isn’t until you eliminate the inessential from the problem you are working on that you can see the core that will guide you to an answer.

In fact, often, when you get to such a core, you may not even recognize the problem anymore, which illustrates how important it is to get the bigger picture right before you go chasing after the details. Otherwise, you start by pointing yourself in the wrong direction.

Details are important and useful. Many details are actually disproportionately important and useful relative to their representation. But there are equally as many details that are useless.

If you don’t find the core of a problem, you start off with all of the wrong details, which is then going to encourage you to add many more of the wrong kinds of details until you’re stuck.

Starting by pruning away at what is unimportant is how you discipline yourself to see behind the fog created by the inessential. That’s when you’ll find the foundation you are looking for.

Finding the true form of the problem is almost as important as the answer that comes after.”

What is interesting, is that Mozilla Firefox’s algorithm suggested this article based on my clicking in the past week (I typically do not do this due to lack of time and resist the urge to click Firefoxes suggestions because they are distractions. Yet, yesterday, I ended up reading an article about slow walkers and turned into a simulation for Dr. Richards. Today, I found this and several others. Should I be concerned that my journey as a researcher is not being overseen by a string of code (a very sophisticated, research-based code, but code nevertheless?). Should I perceive my thought development is unauthentic? Or is it merely technology-aided?

This ability of code to predict my interests to such a degree that I canNOT resist the urge to click the link contrary to my conscious decision, makes me think of how easily I can be connected to other readers and seekers of truth, and ultimately, it makes me feel unspecial, unoriginal, blah. Here I am contemplating the importance of thinking environments, creativity, human experience; I am reveling in own humanity, and boom! Here is the reality of human (my own) predictability fed to a machine as a formula and processed as suggestions that (most upsetting part) WORK!