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

Sat Nov 3 16:11:44 PDT 2018

Thank you!
I can't wait to begin reading -- Beth

On Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 7:07 PM Wagner Luiz Schmit <wagner.schmit@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dear Valerie,
>
> I am amazed that you manage to that kind of stuff in the Japanese academy.
> Not a small feat for sure.
>
> I wish you lots of success.
>
> Wagner
>
> On Sat, Nov 3, 2018 at 7:46 PM ウィルキンソン ヴァレリ <vwilk@inf.shizuoka.ac.jp>
> wrote:
>
>> 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:
>>>
>>>    1. The first chapter of Thinking and Speech
>>>    https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/words/ch01.htm
>>>    2. Marx's Method of Political Economy
>>>    https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1857/grundrisse/ch01.htm#loc3
>>>    3. And they should read Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific
>>>    Revolutions
>>>
>>>    https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/us/kuhn.htm
>>>
>>> Who 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
>>>>>>> <https://maps.google.com/?q=2900+Bedford+Avenue+Brooklyn,+NY+11210&entry=gmail&source=g>
>>>>>>> Brooklyn, NY 11210
>>>>>>> <https://maps.google.com/?q=2900+Bedford+Avenue+Brooklyn,+NY+11210&entry=gmail&source=g>
>>>>>>> -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
>>
>

-- 
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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