seems to me there is something related about Jay's narrative sketches of
a future assistive environment, and the questions about methods, in terms of
visual perspective, or, an apparently unreflective dependence on the visual -
certainly in the visually-dominant dream of the future, but
also in Mike's post, he makes reference to the spectator:
>
>The Phil Jackson versus us viewers of Bulls games, example, for example,
>reminded me that the word "theory" has its origins in a Greek word
>for spectator, evoking the spectator/participant distinction, which
>works for some parts of what is being discussed. But Jackson is somehow
>"in between" since he is not on the floor playing, but next to the
>floor "coaching" which is some mixture of teoria and praxis, and a
>praxis of its own, etc.
and then Graham also invoked visual metaphors:
>And also out of my experience that, as I work with observations and
>recordings and interviews with students in classooms, reading, re-reading,
>seeing new things, seeing connections, themes, - the methods I plan to use
>in future studies emerge as possibilities and opportunities, rather than as
>theoretical positions.
...and I was thinking about a couple of articles
one by Donna Haraway (1992_Situated knowledges_
and by
philospher David Levin (1992?)_The Hegemony of the Visual_
where both authors consider how vision is historically constructed,
in such a way that it is "natural" to "believe" that sight is a reliable
perceptual skill;
and their arguments are quite clever, I msut admit. Which leads me to wonder,
if the primacy of the visual is thrown into question, what does this do for the
validity of the witness?
Ethnography ceases to make sense, for example.
seems to me the idea is not to 'prove' our
excess-theories(hypotheory/hypothesis)
but to ask better questions about what we do, what are the tools of the
trade anyhow? and what if this re-visit to the logic of methodologies and
the trust in numbers
amounts to little more tail-chasing?
diane
end-note anecdote: during my first yr as a gradate student I was introduced to
"methodologies" in education, and there were two areas: qualitative and
quantitative, and what I should have asked, but didn't, and so do now,
is "Only two????!!!!"
"Every tool is a weapon if you hold it right."
Ani Difranco
*********************************
diane celia hodges
faculty of education
university of british columbia
vancouver, bc canada
tel: (604)-253-4807
email: dchodges who-is-at interchange.ubc.ca