[Xmca-l] Re: What is science?: Where to start doctoral students?

Sat Nov 3 15:44:31 PDT 2018

Dear Beth,
I have spent my life in academia (At the Academy).  My first graduate school class was methods and resources.  That boils down to approaches and tools.  I personaly boiled it down to Information and Access.  In 2 short sentences: "How do you get to the information you need?  The coherent story of that is the research."  That time was the beginning of post-structuralism and feminism was on the rise.  New departments, new Faculties, new international exchanges.  I was defining myself as a Medievalist and Classicist.  At least I knew that I couldn't put "philospher" on my  "sheepskin" and besides there were too many words there already.  Many, many years later, I got the idea that I am a philologist.  Anyway, the academic tangle got worse. I entered my PhD program in Comparative Literature (2 Masters required).  

Some first problems in the doctoral class on research "methods."
Define "romanticism" "new criticism" "lebensraum" "aporia."  Each student was expected to give a report on their researches on a particular topic, which would definitely have a comparative, meta, cross, or trans perspective.  ((By the way, I liked "lebensraum" and think of it basically as context, culture, and so on. (What I need to be able to do my work and live my life!) But then I found out a couple of years ago that it was the biggest excuse  for Nazi expansion throughout Europe.  I suppose Alexander would have been delighted to know that there was a word like that by which he could take over the whole world.))

Since I got wrapped up in the Ionian Enchantment (Consilience E.O. Wilson) because I read Gregory Bateson's Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity, I was looking for a way to interpret literature allegorically with a scientific frame work.  In that process I became inevitably a GENERALIST and an allegorist. The best approach to life and literature (for me) is "the case study." A sound unit of analysis is the project. After I "specialized" in Thomas Malory's take on the Saracen Palomides compared to the Prose Romance (Old French) Palomydes I got on with my life as an English teacher in a Faculty of Informatics.  Jobs for Medievalists?  In Japan?  I have been wrestling with the challenge of framing  personal life facts and processes with the academic persona writing articles combined with teaching what "they" (interpret "they" as a group of Japanese academics on the board of directors of a Faculty in a National University) wanted me to teach along with what I believed needs to be transmitted/constructed "experientially" to/by students.  I have always had to deal with complexity, paradox, hypocrisy. routine, testing, evaluation in the daily administration of my duties, my personal finances, and the higher calling.  

You already have Kuhn.

Experience and Education (John Dewey 1938)
The Great Chain of Being (Arthur O. Lovejoy 1964)
Consilience (E.O Wilson 1998)
The Science of Qualitative Research (Martin Packer 2011/2016)

Everyone has to grapple with probablity and statistics, but "they" have put those researchers beyond the reach of the sociologists and humanist and soft sciences because specialization has taken its toll.  When I visited University of Alberta in Edmonton in 2007 I was delighted to meet the Chairman of the Graduate School of Comparative Literature.  He personally did not have any doctoral candidates to whom I could be introduced.  It turned out that we could not really have a connected conversation. It seems that admissions to the program were suspended as July 1, 2016 and I have to got to Transnational and Comparative Literatures in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies.  Every doctoral candidate has become an adult and citizen in an interaction with their own life and society. The measuring out of requirements and disseration work, in the sciences 3 years, in the humanities 3-7or8or9 years makes us quite different in our professional lives while still having to work together on committees.  

Two more books that I love and value:
The Book of Tea (Okakura Kakuzo 1906)
The Poem Itself (Stanley Burnshaw 1995)

I should say, "Don't get me started!"
Doctoral students need to talk to each other with a supervising professor who can critique, encourage, and challenge new direction.  We need creative and independent scholars who can hold their own in a relentlessly changing world.
It's really hard to keep my web site up to date.

Valerie Anne Wilkinson, PhD
Professor of Communication
Faculty of Informatics
The Integrated Graduate School of Science and Technology
Shizuoka University
email: vwilk@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp
tel.: 81(53)478-1529
WEBPAGE: 
http://www.inf.shizuoka.ac.jp/english/labs/society_detail.html?UC=vwilk
Most recent publication: Wilkinson, V. and Marsden, J. (2018) “Big Data Analytics and Corporate Social Responsibility: Making Sustainability Science Part of the Bottom Line”,Proceedings of the IEEE Professional Communications Society Conference, July 23 - 25, Toronto, ON, Canada.

------Original Message------
差出人："Beth Ferholt"<bferholt@gmail.com>
宛先："eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity"<xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>
ＣＣ：
件名：[Xmca-l] Re: What is science?: Where to start doctoral students?
日時：2018年11月02日(金) 00:29(+0900)
Great. Kuhn and Thinking and Speech are two of the few things on my list already and I’ll start reading the other two, sensible or no, now! Thanks so much, Beth

On Thursday, November 1, 2018, Andy Blunden <andyb@marxists.org> wrote:
Beth, much as a part of me would like to recommend the Preface to Hegel's Phenomenology, being sensible I would still recommend:
The first chapter of Thinking and Speechhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/words/ch01.htm
Marx's Method of Political Economyhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm#loc3
And they should read Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/kuhn.htmWho knows? You might be fostering an original thinker?
Andy
Andy Blunden
http://www.ethicalpolitics.org/ablunden/index.htm
On 1/11/2018 11:43 PM, Beth Ferholt wrote:
On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 10:09 AM Beth Ferholt <bferholt@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm starting to take the role of advisor on doctoral dissertations and wonder how best to begin to discuss "what is science?" with students who will need to respond concisely when asked about the rigor and reliability of their formative intervention, narrative and/or autobiographical studies.

I'm looking for an overview or paper that does more than argue the value of one approach -- something to start them off thinking about the issues, not immerse them in one perspective quite yet.

If not an overview then maybe a paper that contextualizes "rigor" and "reliability". 

Obviously this is an endless topic but do some people reading XMCA have some favorite papers that they give to their advisees or use when they teach a methods class?

Thanks!
Beth
--

Beth Ferholt
Associate Professor, Department of Early Childhood and Art Education;
Affiliated Faculty, CUNY Graduate Center
Brooklyn College, City University of New York
2900 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11210-2889

Email:bferholt@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Phone: (718) 951-5205
Fax: (718) 951-4816

--

Beth Ferholt
Associate Professor, Department of Early Childhood and Art Education;
Affiliated Faculty, CUNY Graduate Center
Brooklyn College, City University of New York
2900 Bedford Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11210-2889

Email:bferholt@brooklyn.cuny.edu
Phone: (718) 951-5205
Fax: (718) 951-4816
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