more ecovalid

From: Mike Cole (mcole@weber.ucsd.edu)
Date: Fri Dec 24 1999 - 13:26:25 PST


Bill continued in his next note (the entire essay is worth reading!):

 There is an unresolvable tension between ecological validity and
investigation that is similar to trying to pin down where an electron is --
there is an uncertainty principle -- one cannot pin down where the thing is
at any point because in doing so one also influences where it is going --
the act of developing one perturbs the other. I think making the
investigation into an intervention by nature just makes this relationship
between validity and investigation/intervention more explicit, more open
for examination.

Amen-- I was thinking of the uncertainty principle in reading the first
part of the note, Bill.

An issue I am just starting to come to grips with: People discount UC student
descriptions of details of interactions with kids. They want trained,
"objective" (theory free!) descriptions or else. But the undergrad's, I
think, have a privileged position in their observations because without
their participation, the activity would not exist! Its somehow different
from, say, Yrjo's change lab work in (say) the postoffice, because the
post office will exist after the researchers leave, changed perhaps. But
the changer labbers do not constitute the system itself.

So, a different kind of dillema which also seems to make the relationship
between validity and investigation/intervention more open to examination.
mike



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