Hi Doris,
I know another person who teaches people how to teach ESL at the Monterey
Institute of Foreign Studies who had Carspecken on his dissertation
committee (at Houston?) and who also speaks highly of him. I value Habermas
and his name occasionally surfaces on xmca. As to knowing Habermas'
communicative theory of action in depth, I'd have to agree with you but
Carspecken makes it quite graspable -- almost easy -- perhaps because he
doesn't go into all of the examination of the historical and theoretical
roots of questions of philosophical, logical, social and linguistic theory
the way Habermas does. Also nobody I know credits Habermas with being a
good writer although I found "The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity"
emminently readable. I think the first chapters in Carspecken's book are as
good an intro to Habermas as anything Thomas McCarthy or David Held has
written and one can't help but be impressed by his implementation of the
theory in terms of a practical research strategy/methodology.
I'd love to hear more about how you view/use this other theoretical
tradition and any thoughts you might have about its relation to CHAT/AT and
Vygotskyan orientations. There seems to be some kind of information sink
between the two theoretical directions and it's amazing to me that Habermas
didn't seem to be aware of Vygotsky given the importance of his critique of
Piaget and Kohler's stages of moral development to his own theoretical
genesis.
Paul H. Dillon
----- Original Message -----
From: <DGeorgiou@aol.com>
To: <xmca@weber.ucsd.edu>
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 7:59 PM
Subject: Re: Interview method question
> Thanks, Paul, for mentioning the book of my former professor. I dared not
> suggest it because very few people know Habermas's theory of communication
in
> depth. But Phil Carspecken's book is wonderful not only for those who need
> guidance in conducting interviews but also for his own critical
qualitative
> research schema which I have used in my own work. He was trained in
England
> and we are lucky to have him back with us.
>
> Doris.
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Feb 01 2001 - 14:24:52 PST