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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