Martin wrote,
>And
>I'd like the people I worked with to read what I've written and say, 'yes,
>that's right, and we now understand a little better what we were trying to
>do, what went wrong, and what we can do next.' A narrative (I hope) can
>do this in the way that a quantitative analysis, for example, can't.
I'm amazed how differently my students (future teachers) and I read the same
articles I assigned to them. For me, the papers, which are mainly based on
ethnographies, are full of "thick descriptions" and provocative ideas. For
my students, many of the papers are boring, full with unnecessary jargon and
intellectualizing. This is not a new observation, for sure.
Any text is embedded in broader dialogues and practices. Text is only a
visible part of an iceberg. Moreover, it is visible only if the other huge
invisible part (i.e., dialogues and practices) is woven in the reader. One
of the good examples of this point is our current discussion of preferences
in qualitative versus quantitative analysis.
One of the reasons I like the 5th Dimension projects is that it involves
undergraduate students in practices and dialogues, for which academic texts
can be reflective and trasformative.
What do you think?
Eugene
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Eugene Matusov
Willard Hall#206G
Department of Educational Studies
University of Delaware
Newark, DE 19716, USA
phone: (302) 831-1266
fax: (302) 831-4445
email: ematusov who-is-at UDel.edu
web: http://www.ematusov.com
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