Re:Individual and Community Analyses
vera p john-steiner (vygotsky who-is-at unm.edu)
Wed, 12 Nov 1997 08:57:51 -0700 (MST)
Martin and folks,
The issue of narratives vs. quantitative (and/or quantitative analyses)
is ever present among the work our graduate students are doing in their
classroom enthographies, Narratives are seductive for the reader and the
writer, they do make you feel there, part of an enfolding story, and they
are truer to the cultural aspects of what is being focused on than
quantitative studies. But people talk and learn, math or writing as well
as
construct their own
accounts of their experience. And those aspects are open to
quantification:, which may provide an additional window on the dynamics
of a process.
An example, we have
looked at different types of dyadic collaboration.
Interestingly, the more integrative and transformative a collaboration,
the more the participants finish each other sentences, co-construct
their thoughts. In the complementary collaborations. turn taking is
respected, co-constructed sentences are fewer. This is a small part of
the story, but it gives a quick glimpse of collaborative dynamics that
completes some aspects of the qualitative, narrative accounts.
Vera
---------------------------------
Vera P. John-Steiner
Department of Linguistics
Humanities Bldg. 526
University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131
(505) 277-6353 or 277-4324
Internet: vygotsky who-is-at unm.edu
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