When looking back in old files for writing my methods chapter I ran across
the following (long) excerpt from a "course report" written in 1990, after
an Aarhus symposium with Ference Marton (phenomenography), Amedeo Giorgi
(phenomenological psychology) and Jean Lave (cognitive anthropology). In
the report I play with making myself a subject/ /informant to each of the
approaches, what follows is the Lave part of it.
It may not be much of the kind of self-reflection that Angel has been
doing: Rather I think it is interesting how by borrowing some of the
Lave&Wenger terminology I manage to write close to some burning stuff
without being very specific...
Eva
*****************************************************************
Reflections on the symposium: "Qualitative studies in learning"
Aarhus, May, 28th-30th, 1990
******* excerpt from the "Lave section" ************
I must confess that it was irresistible to try to use the conceptual system
of Lave and Wenger on my own situation as a learner. It is such a
reassuring thought to see oneself as an integral part of something more
extensive, as a newcomer in a community of practice. At the same time the
task is difficult. It is hard to capture the experience of learning by
legitimate peripheral participation, and easy to get involved in abstract
structural descriptions of the arena and its contingencies. On the other
hand the task might be too easy. There is a temptation to fit everything
into this conceptual system, even what actually does not fit.
_Legitimate peripheral participation at the Department of Educational Research._
Becoming an educational researcher, is indeed a process of learning by
legitimate peripheral participation. Research certainly is a sociocultural
practice, even if its main products may seem to be words, words, words and
only remotely changes in other areas of sociocultural practice, which must
be seen as the ultimate purpose of educational research. Research is a
craft of concepts.
I have now been a legitimate peripheral participant at the Department of
Education for a period of four years. In my case the legitimacy first took
the form of employment as a research assistant, and only later the form of
being admitted as a doctoral student. Both forms occur normally as initial
forms of membership within the community of the department, though probably
with differential effects on participation. Working on a project I have had
opportunities to learn in settings natural to research, that I would not
have had otherwise. During these years I have gone through a process of
transformation, inevitably developing the knowledgeable skills appropriate
for a member of the educational research community. My professional and
personal identity is in a process of transformation, called learning.
As a newcomer I was in a position where I could use knowledgable skills
brought with me from other communities of practice to make contributions,
even if I initially had little responsibility for the whole. My experience
as a mother and my teacher education made it easy to learn to interview
children. My art education had trained my abilities as a designer, in a way
that made it natural to take up software design. I knew some programming in
LOGO, which was possible to connect to what I needed to learn about
programming in other languages. Learning to program is not one of the
general activities at the department, but there were structuring resources
available: computers, books, software editors. Not least important was the
runnable code of programs developed by my predecessor. Programming, for me,
has been an area where learning has been constantly structured by the need
to produce usable products while learning.
More generally important, though, has been to grow into the research
activities of the department. I have learnt about what educational research
consists of, what it can do, who makes it and who funds it. Part of this
learning has been arranged formally in courses, thereby being potentially
separated from its context of application. Other parts are physically there
to be learned from the spatial and temporal structure of the department:
Who occupies which room, who comes and goes when and where, who works with
whom, who teaches or has taught which courses, and who initiated them.
There are resources like computers and libraries, that are used in new ways
as one enters the culture of research.
The activities of the department have more or less regular features that
constitute structuring resources for learning: seminars and coffee breaks,
periodical applications for funding and occasional dissertation ceremonies.
The dissertation, for example, serves as a model for how results of
student's work is presented and debated in appropriately scaled down
versions at all levels. And as the language and organization of a
dissertation is entered by participation in earlier examinations, as well
as by being a spectator at the recurring ceremonies, the language and
organization of a thesis is reproduced on a smaller scale in papers at
various levels, as well as being explicitly studied in concrete exemplars
in courses. The apprentice learns the whole symbolic system of various
forms of reports and papers by producing or using instances of the system.
There are the artifacts of the craft of research: theories, models, methods
and metaphors. These are also the artifacts of the reproduction of the
community: schools of thought born and developed within the field. At the
informal end, lunches and coffee breaks constitute the sociocultural
setting of the less formal aspects of the community. Here the stories about
successes and failures are told, and thereby laid open to be used by
students for self-evaluation. Model stories for the identities of
educational researchers are told in the form of concrete biographies. Ideas
are debated to their extremes, in a way that never gets on paper.
The membership structure of a university department is complex. It contains
highly diversified positions and forms of participation. There are full
members performing specialized tasks of administration, research or
teaching, as well as members performing combinations of these tasks. There
are the secretaries, legitimately peripheral to research, but arranging its
necessary preconditions. There are streams of undergraduate students, who
are legitimately peripheral, but rarely participate in the sociocultural
practices of the community. Among researchers there are newcomers,
relatively new doctoral students as myself. There are oldtimers, people who
got their degree. Some of them are supervisors of a number of doctoral
students. There are also oldtimers without a doctoral degree, heavily
involved teaching in the undergraduate programs or the programs for
educational practitioners. And there are a few grand-oldtimers, professors
whose graduated doctoral students in their turn supervise new doctoral
students. These are the generations of the community. Being a relatively
young department, it has barely gone through one such life-cycle. Its first
professor, who retired at about the same time as I came into the community,
is still a quite active participant in what might perhaps be called another
form of legitimate peripherality.
Being a research student means being involved in the inner reproduction of
the community in somewhat the same fashion as the apprentice is involved in
reproducing the community of his or her trade, newcomers gradually taking
over responsibilities of teaching, research and planning. I have been able
to see my future around me in several alternative versions and stages,
including the labour pangs of finishing a thesis, and the struggles of
trying to get time for ones own research between the duties of teaching. I
have also seen ways to get stuck, and some of the ways out, as individuals
leave the community to go into other fields of activity. These are some of
the possible identities produced in the community.
The apprenticeship at the Department of Educational Research as a doctoral
student takes on various forms, depending on the extent of employement. I
have been in a position where my apprenticeship, and my own research, have
been formed by my employment as a research assistant at a project running
on a quite long term. Others perform a variety of short term tasks at the
department and are left relatively on their own with the research for their
thesis. Yet others legitimately participate very peripherally in the life
of the community, which taken together with the potentially school-like
situation of taking courses may lead to a low degree of participation in
the working life of the research community.
The relation between master and apprentice is formalized in the system of
supervisorship. Each doctoral student has to have a supervisor, who is a
professor or an assistant professor. Supervision is not only a formality.
The supervisor normally plays an important role in the learning of the
apprentice, especially in the writing and rewriting of the thesis. However,
other masters and other masters' apprentices, are also important. The
crafting of concepts is a highly collective enterprise.
Master and apprentice have a joint interest in the knowledgable skills of
the apprentice. The reputation of a professor is naturally affected by the
quality of the theses he has supervised, as well as by the quality of
research projects under his scientific leadership. This also applies to the
community as a whole. It is in the interest of the community to maintain a
high standard in its production of research and teaching. This does not
mean that there are no conflicts. There are conflicts inherent in the
reproductive cycle of the department. Not all doctoral students can become
professors, or even researchers at the department. These conflicts are
expressed in the competition for internal and external economical
resources: appointments and research funding. Conflicts do not take the
form of suppression of the newcomer's access to knowledge. This is in
accordance with the academic tradition of free access to opportunities for
learning. If the structure of the sociocultural practices at the department
has any effects of sequestration, these are of a much more subtle nature.
Paying attention to certain things, necessarily means that other things
receive little attention.
The external and internal demands take their toll on each member of the
community. Being a doctoral student it is easy to get overwhelmed,
overawed, and overworked. Then it may be a comfort to realize that
legitimate peripherality is important for developing constructively naive
perspectives or questions.
nununununununununununununununununununununununununununununununununununununununu
Eva Ekeblad
Univ. of Gothenburg, Sweden Goteborgs Universitet
Dept. of Education & Educational Research Institutionen for Pedagogik
Box 1010
S-431 26 Molndal, SWEDEN
e-mail: eva.ekeblad who-is-at ped.gu.se
Tel: Int +46 31 773 2393 fax: Int +46 31 773 24 62
nununununununununununununununununununununununununununununununununununununununu