In September '98 Eugene Matusov wrote:
"In my view, the specificity of the unit of analysis should not be limited
only by research goals but also by practical goals of the researcher (e.g.,
getting grant, improving schools), discourse of the academic and
non-academic communities, and so on. I think such construct as "unit of
analysis" has no less practice-based ecology than any other human
constructs."
Jim Wertsch wrote something that closely followed:
"I think that ANY research enterprise, unit of analysis, and so forth is
part of an ongoing dialogue and is hence motivated (and gets its meaning
from) its dialogic position."
The discussion turned to "interaction" some time later, and Alfred Lang wrote:
"I understand, the discussion began with the question
of whether the use of the word "interaction" should include objects or
artefacts or should be restricted to people and Mike arguing the former.
I would not like to fight over the word, however, we certainly are in
need of a word including both. "Entity" might be a (not entirely
satisfying) candidate. Like Mike I tend to use the word interaction for
the process of influence of anything that can have effects upon
anything else discernible. It might be restricted to processes of a
non-necessary and not fully contingent (as I say, semiotive) character.
But almost negligible are cases of things having effects at all where
influence is not mutual, even if sometimes quite onesided (such as e.g.
in gravity systems of large and very small masses). The reason is that
artefacts and persons, physical structures and people, in general, make
each other up in the long run. The term transaction appears to be aptly
used in cases of interaction that leave one or both interactants
changed (including moved in time and space); because this is the basic
process in all evolution: biotic, individual, or cultural, in
particular...
...I think you would soon find, that both people and many artefacts would
not exist as you find them or would be quite different, if they had to
exist without interactions of the kind you had your view on in the
first place. The conclusion, of course, is that you could not
understand either of the two classes of entities without understanding
the other and also the kind of process binding then into one system of
common evelution. So you have to investigate on the basis of a
conception bringing them together into one single conceptual system.
The real differences then might gradually arise out of observing their
behavior within the single conception embracing both parts and their
evolving, of their forming one type of system and yet being
nevertheless so different and even apparently self-sustainded that in
their interaction they would, each as an exemplar or token, complement
and drive each other."
And as King Beach more recently points out:
"Essentially there is no agent-action distinction in dependent origination,
and agency is vested in the relation as it develops. Thus persons and
social organizations bring each other forth. This does have some
interesting implications for what might be appropriate units of analysis..."
So I struggle not with "unit of analysis", but with something more concrete -- how to bound a research study that draws upon the conceptual systems of chat and semiotic ecology, that threaten to pull a study quite thin as one considers "interactions" that ripple across people and artifacts, sometimes seemingly without end, and with the complexities these conceptualizations bring, and the many analysis units and scales of time they do span.
I have taken this tack: To bound a study around a research question that occurs in coordination with the conceptual systems, and phenomena within practical reach. The coordination with the conceptual systems situate the study within the ongoing theoretical dialogues, and a study may be further bounded by situating it within other dialogues concerning issues that have practical relevance to society. Within a study, one can form "cases" and these can be built up with the aid of qualitative case study methodology, although traditionally case studies in education have not included intervention on the part of the researcher or others, and so there is some work to be done linking case studies to "design experiments", "transforming experiments", and the like.
While reading a 1995 King Beach article in MCA, curiously enough while in Vermont, Ana, I began thinking of the following form of case -- a transforming project:
- involves the mutual participation of subjects of the research study, who may not be conversant with the conceptual systems.
- is not an experiment in the traditional scientific sense, in that it does not test a theory with highly controlled circumstances, and unlike Bronfenbrenner's notion of a transforming experiment, may not involve the 'systematic alteration and restructuring of existing ecological systems". Being systematic would involve designing the experiment with deliberation in "eliminating, modifying, or adding elements and interconnections" and this is impossible to do when subjects are co-designers or sole-designers of the project.
- does intend to, and if successful will, change the structures and processes of ongoing activity, enacting changes in what Barker terms behavior settings.
- can encompass 'natural' ecological units (influence by Barker and Bronfenbrenner) such as the educational intervention *projects* that are supported by temporary funding (grant, contract), and hence come with some manageable, if not sharp, temporal, subject-ive (i.e. school system, classroom, company, town, etc.), and economic boundaries. This type of project is an existing (natural) category within society comprising somewhat bounded interactions and transactions. Within educational technology, the appearance of new things and people that enable new interactions often occur with a project.
- the analytic focii of the case are the altered interactions among people and things, especially what transacts (new behavior settings, new artifacts), and possibly what transgresses (Alfred -- would you unpack further the latter?)
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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