RE: Units of analysis (was: Interaction/Artefacts/People)

From: Helen Beetham (H.Beetham@plymouth.ac.uk)
Date: Wed Aug 16 2000 - 05:10:16 PDT


Bill

Thanks for expressing your personal experience wrt research and educational
intervention. It has so many echoes for me. I feel translucent with borrowed
clarity.

One question:
How does activity theory differ from systems analysis? I've always felt the
latter to be about closed systems, objectively analysed (the
researcher/designer/interventionist gets to define what's inside and what's
outside the 'system'). I've always assumed CHAT values to suggest
participative research, acknowledged commitments/situativities, multiple
perspectives, contested boundaries of inside/outside, and open-ended
possibilities for change.

Helen

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Barowy [mailto:wbarowy@lesley.edu]
Sent: 16 August 2000 12:05 AM
To: xmca@weber.ucsd.edu
Subject: Re: Units of analysis (was: Interaction/Artefacts/People)

At 10:41 AM -0600 8/15/00, Katherine Goff wrote:
> but i assume you are talking about something quite large -
>by that i mean that you are working with a team of researchers,
>i remember you writing about working at the level of school systems
>previously.

Hi Kathy,

I am still working on reading through carefully the dancer/dance thread that
occured while I was away -- as it stimulated issues that are brewing in my
own work, and it picked up threads that were left dangling with the unit of
analysis discussion when we were reading JW's book.

>anyway, i am wondering if an individual researcher (or more specifically,
>a teacher/researcher) can be the container that bounds the study
>bringing her/his personal history, embodied cultural constraints, belief
>systems, perspectives, willingness and/or ability to notice some
>"observations" and not see others, tolerance for multiple systemic
>understandings, etc.
> and this person may be transformed by the process as much (probably more)
>than any other participants in the study.

I wish to respond to your question boldly, and without authority, "yes" and
with some qualifications. One of the observations we are to reconcile
with theory is that people can pick themselves up from one place (arena,
behavior setting) and go to another, entering into the latter changed from
how they entered the former, through their interactions with other people
and things in the former. It may be that all they take with them are
themselves, and so if one wishes to understand human activity, how people
and things come together to interact in a setting, historically conditioned,
one irreducible element of analysis is the individual. Transfer theories
seem to stop the analysis there, and the subsequent analysis focussing
solely on what happens within the individual mind has not been sufficient to
explain how people interact. Transfer, when isolated to the individual
mind, and observed with techniques shaped by theories of individual
cognition, doesn't happen. Of course I recognize the quote of Vygotsky in
"Mind as Action" (p27). The example of hydrogen and oxygen becomes fragile
in the hands of a former atomic and molecular physicist, and as arrogant as
I can be, I would change the wording with two insertions, one an adverb:

"(s)he will never succeed in explaining the characteristics of the whole, by
ONLY analyzing the characteristics of its elements."

I've been attempting to understand human development using Alfred's way of
diagramming things (and Yrjö's of course). Function circle diagrams are
very powerful in helping to recognize the interactions of an individual with
other people and things, because of their visual form, that unlike text, is
highly nonlinear. The eye can pass quickly along paths of interaction,
examing disparate paths that connect to and from what has traditionally been
considered the processes of cognition "in the head" (IntrA). Not unlike
system dynamics modeling, one can quickly develop a complex web, especially
if one chooses to diagram something like a soccer game. (When I think of
trying to diagram such a game, the best I can do is I imagine a tall and
wide wall of computer monitors running animated diagrams, to capture the
dynamics -- wild!)

Using Alfred's framework for thinking of the researcher-participant-observer
situation you pose, one wonders what are the differences in the IntrA
processes of the individuals that shape their perceptions, and their actions
in a common experience. First, the fine grain of individual IntrA
structures are historically conditioned with the unique experiences of each
individual, and the large grain are historically conditioned with the
patterns of their culture -- common experiences, language, operations,
rules, etc. Second, when the semiotic function circle is diagrammed, lets
say for a microgenetic episode, each individual occupies a unique place in
it, and differences in attention, and perception, and action, appear in the
diagram. One person notices something another does not, not only because
of what they "know" but also because of what position he or she occupies
uniquely in the semiotic ecology. Completing the function circle, what one
has seen, processed, and done affects what one sees, processes and does.
Boldly I would like to say that what one "knows" is what one sees, processes
and does, and since this requires other elements to complete the function
circle, what one therefore "knows" is also always a function of what other
people and things are present in the interaction. This definition is an
attempt to capture knowledge not as something static, but as something
dynamic, embedding it in performance.

(Thanks -- I've been wanting to express this, and you asked just the right
question to pry it out of me!)

To turn to your first comments, my prior work on "project best" was not with
a team of researchers -- but with other educational professionals
(curriculum coordinators, teachers, technology coordinators) in two school
systems. So, yes, there was a team, but not one of activity theory oriented
researchers. I am trying to carve out what is a methodological framework
for a participant-researcher who is often working with others who are not
researchers, for educational change projects in which the leading activity
for many or most participants is not research, and that whoever is the
researcher can coordinate with what can be put under the broad umbrella of
"activity theory". The latter criteria is important as this provides ways
to make comparisons with other activity theory research -- Yrjö's work in
which the triangles are mediating come to mind -- with the aim of
understanding the causal relations between interventions and the systemic
transformations that remain. Other threads of participant-observation that
I have opened up place me in a less priviledged positions in the
participant-observer continuum than project best, and in one the education
intervention project has been 'completed', with only my peripheral
participation. Yet with a well formed methodological framework, I seek to
draw upon these other cases for theoretical insights, and address the issues
of what are systemic transformations, i.e. what are the changes in
interactions among people and things, what are the preconditions for their
emergence, and how such transformations persist and sustain, both in
individuals and things and their collectives.

Qualitative case study methods have been applied to these situations,
however, Mirriam (Case Study Research in Education : A Qualitative Approach)
describes the use of qualitative case approaches primarily for theory
building and locates these close to grounded theory. With activity theory
as a lens to focus the observations and interactions of a
participant-observer, the methods and techniques will be different, from
that which starts without theoretical orientation. For example, while case
study work, that seems to assume the researcher to be theory-free, at least
as a default, seems to build on the maxim 'document everything'. Theory
focusses the inquiry more finely, and the interactions between the
participant-observer and other project participants may be more 'invasive',
for lack of a better word. In 'the making of mind' p62-63 Luria discusses
the methodoligical and ethical issues with experimental work shaped by the
expectations of the researchers, and his methods and field work differ from
what Mirriam describes. I am seeking to conduct research in coordination
with activity theory, not building theory from the ground up, but in
extending and building upon extant theory to explain situations and guide
interactions in those situations.

So for me, (as an example of the transformed researcher) ultimately, the
unit of analysis has become the ensemble of interactions among people and
things (in short, "activity"), and this becomes quite problematic in its
extant -- just imagine the complexity of the semiotic function circle
webbing, if you wish to include the historical conditioning leading up to
the presence, structure (traces) and interaction of any artifact and person
in an episode. Mind boggling! A major problem is how to bound the study.
Yet, in the interactions in any episode, although many are contingent upon
the traces of prior interactions, there are many that are not interesting.
For example, in participating on xmca, most people are probably using the
qwerty keyboard, even though, for historical reasons, it slows how fast they
can type compared to a dvorak keyboard, and this in turn affects how much
they can type, how much others have to read etc., but it is unnecessary to
include in the description the historical development of the keyboard
layout.

Diagrammatically Alfred leaves a way out with ExtrA process that lump
cultural processes together and glosses over their fine grain while leaving
temporal contingencies intact-- and Yrjö has provided a way of revealing
some more of the large grain: community, rules, distribution of labor, with
the tradeoff of glossing over some of the temporal fine grain that is
captures in the semiotic function circle referents.

Defining a research study pragmatically around an intervention project puts
additional limits on the research, partially by inclusion of some of the
indigenous boundaries -- a specific time interval, a certain amount of
funding, a finite population of people, etc... although the caveat remains
that each one of these is permeable to interactions -- in education the
classrooms we teach in may be have been built before we were born, teachers
often purchase materials with their own money to supplement the school
budget, and kids, teachers, principals and superintendants come and go.

And I must go make dinner -- but thank you, Kathy, for encouraging me to put
into exposition some of these things I have been struggling with.

Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Lesley College
29 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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