Mike,
I've been pretty religiously documenting my observations through old fashioned
field notes and tape recording interviews and transcribing them myself. Since
I'm also running a reading and writing group at my site, a community center,
I've been balancing the participant-observation with
observation-participation. I've also been writing reflective memos. So, I've
got plenty of data. At some point, however, mid-stream (it's been five
months)one has to try to start making sense of it all, don't I? That's when I
start bangin my head against constructs that don't quite fit or are so loosely
constructed as to not be all that helpful. Now, I don't want to make data try
to fit theory do I? Either the data has to go or the construct modified.
About the "organized discoordination" you mentioned. In afterschool programs,
at least the ones that I've visited in the course of my professional life (as
opposed to my academic life -- I have a job that's not in a university), what
seems chaotic or discoordinated often is very deceptive. To me there is a
flow at programs that is quite different than the ways that other
institutions, such as schools, are organized. Time isn't segmented, for
example, in the same way. I think there is a strong cultural element, as
well, that shapes how things feel or run at some of the programs I've
observed. Sometimes, however, the skills that go into making an organized
chaos -- programs that are kid-noisy, comfortable, safe, and valuable
experiences for young people are not the skills that go into writing proposals
and courting funders. So, programs (and children) often go without certain
things that could build upon or enhance community programs (like, simply, art
materials). Sorry to preach.
Hey, thanks for keeping up the thread.
Sara
Sara
>===== Original Message From xmca@weber.ucsd.edu =====
>Sara-- When you become that kind of participant oberserver in
>an organization, learning to go with the flow, the costs of
>deviating from the flow in various ways, etc. all need to
>be documented on an ongoing basis. Old fashinoned field notes
>or talking into a tape recorder every evening at 6pm for half
>an hour is one way to go.
>
>I am more and more fascinated by the study of the organized
>DIScoordination of institutions whose official function is to
>coordinate. The afterschool hours, chaotically thought about
>as they are, have long seemed to me a fruitful place to work.
>mike
Vanderbilt University &
Partnership for After School Education
New York, N.Y.
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