Mikes comments regarding being 'a part of any solution to the problem' and
links between differing higher ed solutions are very close to a project
that I am bringing a chat analysis/guidance to and will present at a couple
sessions at aera 2000. This project is the partnership among a college and
elementary schools and is an experiment in developing changes within
traditionally bound activity systems (schools, college, environmental
advocacy organisation) through the development of work between the systems.
Just take Vygotsky's considerations of intersubjective-->intrasubjective up
to the collective perspective.
It's related to the discussion that Mike and I began and never finished on
xmca concerning ecological validity and participation (or not) in the
settings we study. The issue of ecological validity is how well the
inferences of the investigator can be 'validated' in the participants
perspectives.
beyond what i know of Mikes old published position (cole, hood, & mcdermot,
and bronfenbrenner) , to which I concur ( you gotta belong, you can't just
observe) , there are problems concerning the division of labor and what
roles the participant-observer can play, the outstanding demands on said
researcher especially combined with the already steep tasks of laying out
the cultural and historical conditions (although there is synergy with the
two) in the study.
It's compounded when 2 (hopefully soon to be 3) school systems are
involved. the researcher can't be everything/everwhere/everyone,
especially when he has to teach full time. (Should I give up -- considered
that *many* times...)
Solutions?
-- strategies as:
(1) sending co-participants texts constructed have advantages
(a) to inform the participants across the division of labor and
(b) to aid co-construction of a shared set of goals
(I hesitate to say shared object as my study is activity *between*
systems, and
object/system are not well formed)
(c) to improve ecol. validity by eliciting co-participant comments
(2) engaging co-participants as co-authors when they are not interested in
the theory (yawn) to improve ecological validity.
perhaps this could wait until the aera symposium, but I am thinking aobut
it now, as I am treating ecological validity on two projects
simultaneously, trying to kill two birds.
thought sending it would help me compose it. There is a fundamental
problem in all of this related to a recent mca article by Peter -- and
that is the other participants perspectives, to whatever extent that they
engage in the theory, become warped by the theory, and you don't finish
studying the same system you started out with. If Peter's comments of the
subjects learning across the duration of an interview sting the
investigator, as they indeed do, then those concerns across the span of a
multiyear project are very painful, especially with the lack of control
(that Herb Simons claims is possible in lab settings to preclude learning)
in settings conducive to achieving ecological validity. especially when
one of the goals is learning.
Fearless of sending working material as always....
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Lesley College, 31 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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