Category Archives: Theory and Frameworks

Only Shades of Gray

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This post may trigger some readers as it discusses a sensitive topic.

These days, I notice myself getting more caught up in news stories.  I think it might even be at the point where I annoy people- well, at least my partner who brought my, ahem, possibly obsessive, behavior to my attention.  As usual, I blame it on grad school- I just can’t stop thinking about things!  The story that happened most recently is a hot button topic or even a trigger for some people, but I want to talk around it, so bear with me.  As mentioned before, I live in Eugene.  Recently it has come out that there was an “alleged” sexual assault involving a young woman and three young men from the University of Oregon basketball team.  The story has been a bit sensationalized in the news and most of us probably know more details than we should about the story, but suffice it to say, it is very complicated, with a number of conflicting bits of information and the police decided there was not enough evidence to charge the males with any crime.  I do still read the local paper (yay for me! I live in a town that still has an independent daily paper!) and followed the story as it spun out. I have two college age daughters, I am female, I was involved in rape prevention programs when I was in college (and yes, we did just bluntly call it that in the early 90’s)- I am a human being who wants everyone to be treated with dignity and respect and for the world to be a safe place! Let’s just say- I care.

In my (maybe obsessive) thinking about this story, I had a couple of thoughts that I trace directly to my newer academic perspective.  A photo from the paper, with a young woman holding up a sign stating “I live in a rape culture” really struck me and I started to think about what that really means.  As I become more enmeshed in a socio-cultural perspective, I look at the world differently than I used to, and I wish there were spaces I had to really talk about things like “rape culture” in frank ways.  There is so much going on here- the ways our culture talks about sex and sexuality and the ways it portrays it.  The way bodies are displayed in advertising and how songs and television and movies show relationships seems to blur boundaries. What does personal responsibility look like for all parties (and how do we start that conversation without it sounding like victim blaming or slut shaming)?  The way our culture glorifies sports figures and seems to have a separate code of behavior for them is tied in to this particular scenario too.   And then there is the whole issue of rape and consensual sex.  One of my insights from this latest story is that I believe we need a better, expanded vocabulary around these concepts.  While most of us intellectually know that rape is not “just” a stranger forcing someone through violence or threat of violence to engage in sexual activity, I think that emotionally, that is how most of us think of it.  When you add in underage drinking, previous sexual relations between the individuals, and a sense that “this is what college parties are like”, the waters are muddied. This does not excuse wrong behavior, but I think it lets people feel that they have not committed a wrongful act.  The young men say they thought it was consensual- and the sad thing is, I believe them, they probably did think so.  They do not see themselves as rapists.  The messages they get from the culture they are surrounded by are confusing enough when you aren’t 19 and drunk. The story is just sad from start to finish, and 4 people’s lives (plus their families and friends too!) are forever changed by one night of lack of clear communication and awful choices.

So, the question becomes, how do we change this culture to one that is not a “rape culture”.  How do we have visions of equality and safety for all that are brought in to reality? How do we change the ways we talk about sex and sexuality, in the moment and out of it? How do we change our beliefs that if someone isn’t saying “yes” it means “no”? If the dominant image we hold of a rapist is someone holding a knife to their victim, the individuals at a party who are pressuring someone won’t take on that label and recognize the consequences of their actions.

I am ready to help bring that world into being!

It’s a bird! It’s a tweet! It’s an utterance!?!

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Seven months ago I joined Twitter. Now I want to reflect on that decision.  In my post I claimed that Twitter has changed language use and what I meant by “language” at the time was what I would call grammar, or certain rules that we have in place for language. Today, seven months later, I still support that general claim.  However, I don’t think Twitter has changed the wider use or rules of language; instead, what it has done is create a language and rules within Twitter that may or may not work outside of that interface. For instance, it would sound rather peculiar if we actually said “RT” or “MT” when we shared or modified someone’s ideas aloud.

What I mean is that content within Twitter is tied to a specific context, the Twitter interface, and is therefore contextualized. The content, however, is not tied just to the interface but is also tied to the person who originally posted the tweet. Any Twitter user knows what happens next. The tweet gets responses sent directly to the original publisher, it gets re-tweeted by a person to all of their followers and/or it gets marked as a favorite.

As soon as this process begins the content starts to become decontextualized. The idea or content embedded within the tweet also becomes a dialogue opposed to the monologue that it started as. The difference, of course, between monologue and dialogue is that there is one voice in the former and multiple voices in the latter. What I find interesting, though, is that tweets can move from a monologue to a dialogue back to a monologue if we think of a monologue not only as having one voice but also as internalizing an idea and making it our own.

What I am describing is a theoretical approach to an issue, the thoughts of which originated after reading a blog post by James Hayton. He wrote,

“…because everything is limited to 140 characters, conversations about complicated topics become reduced to soundbites devoid of any subtlety of meaning. I write a 1000-word blog post on skill development in writing, and I get a 140-character reply saying ‘get words down and worry later’. It makes me want to beat my head against the desk.”

How can I write about Twitter and linguistics and discourse analysis all in one blog post? Consider a tweet an utterance. Better yet, pretend you’re a linguist and refer to it as an utterance proper.

photo-5

If we were to analyze tweets, what would we define as an utterance? As the picture shows, every utterance proper is responsive and anticipatory. It responds to a previous action or idea and anticipates an answer or justification. We can think of the entire diagram as one utterance so it’s not solely the original tweet, but also the ideas that came before and the responses to that tweet. The utterance changes only when the theme or topic changes.

My reflection after seven month comes down to this: As an academic I can overthink and evaluate the whole process. However, Twitter is a tool that has many benefits when properly used. It has a language of it’s own that one must learn and internalize but once that language is internalized you can gain meaningful connections and participate in meaningful conversations.

If you can make me question my beliefs, you may be on to something

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I want to write about Science Pub again this month, but this time I am going to focus on my own experience as a learner.  I don’t attend these events every month, but as a person interested in science literacy, I feel like I should go more often.  I happened to be free again for the April one, so decided to go. The topic was also one of personal interest to me- “Finding Our Way Through the Controversy over Genetic Engineering in Agriculture: The good, the bad, and the righteous.”  Before we start, I will own up to my own biases, I am, in general, opposed to most things like GMO’s. Now, some of this is a knee jerk, liberal, environmentalist bias- I will be honest.  However, I was not really sure what the talk would cover, besides the title, and I thought I would be open minded and listen to what the speaker had to say. I have not done extensive research on this topic, and my information all comes from popular press type media- magazines, newspapers, attending local events about food issues, and such, so I thought, as a person who identifies as educated and rational, I should hear more from someone who actually does research in this field.  One more disclaimer though- the talk was being given in Eugene, Oregon, at a local, independent venue that hosts lots of music, dance, and benefit types of events, as well as the monthly Science Pub, so I did assume that it would at least be a balanced discussion.  However, as we were finding seats, my partner did say that he was surprised I wanted to come as I would probably just hear a lot of things that made me mad. Hmm….

The evening started out with a pretty broad overview of the issue of genetically modified organisms (GMO’s).  The speaker structured it in three parts as things he felt the field had gotten right, “bad calls”, and then delved in to the more emotional aspects.  And, I did learn things.  My experience with GMO’s is on the controversial end, inserting genes that make plants able to withstand more pesticides and such, but I didn’t realize the variety of ways this technique is used.  For example, I had not heard about it being used to suppress a single gene that was already in a plant to make it more “suitable” for purpose. The example for this was how a gene in Ash trees can be suppressed to decrease the amount of lignin in the plant, so it can be used more efficiently as a biofuel source.  I could see some value in this- I know corn as a biofuel source is not sustainable, and we need other options if this more renewable energy source is going to be developed.  And then he told stories about some of the ways plants can be augmented genetically that don’t throw up as many red flags for me.  He talked about research on the East Coast to insert a gene from wheat into Chestnut trees to hopefully protect them from extinction due to the devastation caused by the blight they suffer from. The speaker stopped at this point and asked the audience how many people would support that kind of use of GMO’s and only one person raised their hand to vote “no” (I didn’t raise my hand for either, because I felt like I needed to think about it more- but I was leaning “yes” myself).  Then he talked about crops like “golden rice” where the scientists are inserting genes in staple crops often grown in developing countries that make them a richer source of beta carotene, which would have serious, positive effects on curbing blindness due to high rates of Vitamin A in these areas.

At this point, the speaker had me questioning my own black and white views on the topic, which is probably what most educators, particularly when talking about controversial issues (hey Laia!!!), hope for in their audience.

If only he had stopped there. Unfortunately, his next topic was about how is was unreasonable to expect labeling of foods around GMO, and it started to feel like he was defending the GMO industry.  He talked about how it would be an unfair burden on the companies to keep food sources separated to prevent cross-contamination, be too much work for the infrastructure of food transportation and such, and raise food prices too much for those who are already living more subsistence level. This last one felt almost like a slam on the audience, as most of us present could truthfully absorb higher food costs, if it came to that, but that our “demands” would be a hardship for others. And then he ended by showing a pair of videos. The first was of a protest in the Philippines, where a group of local people tore down the fence around a plot of “golden rice” and pulled it all up to stop the experiment. The second was of a spokesman from some rice research institute reacting to that event. And the speaker was telling us that the only reason the local people were participating in the protest was because of outside environmental groups “like GreenPeace” telling them that it was dangerous.  It may be my own biases, but it felt like propaganda!  Furthermore, it came across as possibly insulting to the local Filipinos, who may have come to their own conclusions about the matter- lots of indigenous groups around the world take on large corporations from their own beliefs and understandings of issues, and their own desire to preserve their way of life and their local environment.

Sadly, I left feeling more righteous in my beliefs than when I arrived. I did come, with what was my best attempt at an open mind. And, the speaker did have me for a while- I was willing to question some of my assumptions. I was willing to sit with some of the “grey” between the black and white I normally see.   A question from the audience might best sum up the night. A professor at the community college here asked about how, as science educators, they could educate people about these types of issues, where people tend to base their opinions and actions more on their feelings than information. And the speaker flat out said that you just can’t.  It was like he has given up even trying to have a rational dialogue with people who held different beliefs than his own.  However, I think he almost had it. If he had stopped his talk after the part about the science and research, more people would have left that night, more open minded on this topic. Remember, only one person said “no” about the Chestnuts- and this is Eugene! Yet, when he got to what felt like his own personal, political agenda, most of us went back to our corners, entrenched in our righteousness.

Yet, I am trying to hold on to what I was thinking from the first part of his talk- maybe there are some aspects of GMO’s that I am open to learning more about, and debating- and (gasp) maybe even allowing “in my backyard”.  And, from his mistake, I think I have a better understanding of how we can, as science educators, keep dialogue going. It is not hopeless!

PS- and if you remember my blog post from last month- I will say that a lot more women participated in the Q & A this time, although it seemed like most had points to make based on their own beliefs than questions about the science. More data needed to understand this! I guess I will have to go again next month…

You know you’ve been in grad school too long when…

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It is official, I have been in graduate school too long. It has started to change the way I think about the world!

Last night, I was at a local Science Pub event. This in and of itself, might trigger the “nerd” label for some people, but as a fairly educated person before starting this PhD, and living in a liberal, college town, lots of types of people attend these events now.  Science Pubs are almost trendy these days. Our local one is often standing room only, and takes place in a venue that is used frequently for concerts, fund-raisers and shows of all kinds.  Even the name of the venue is cool- Cozmic Pizza- you can have pizza and a beer and listen to smart people talk.  Not a bad way to spend an weekday evening.  Also, the topic was not even that fringe- “You Are What You Eat: The Evolutionary Importance of Diet in Mammals”.  The talk was given by a local professor, Dr. Samantha Hopkins, who is in the Geology Department at the University of Oregon. While her work is often in paleontology, she is a self-described “mammal geek” and her talk was peppered with lots of funny anecdotes and plenty of cute photos of mammals (none of which my partner would agree to let me get as a pet… sigh…)

All of this was a pleasant experience. I learned a few things, laughed a few times, and enjoyed a glass of Kombucha. However, it was during the question and answer phase that the wheels in my head started spinning.  While gender issues in science are not a particular area of study for me, it does come up in my department on a fairly regular basis, and both my daughters are just starting to explore gender issues through courses in their own college experience, so it is on my radar. Yet, it took me a bit to realize, “hmm… so far, all of the people who have asked questions are guys” and I thought, “I am going to pay attention to this and see if it continues.”  It is probably no big surprise to anyone that it did continue.  Out of around 12 questions (I didn’t start counting until I had my observation, so I had to make a best guess about the total number), only 2 were asked by women, much later in the Q & A session. To make matters even sadder, one of the women qualified her question by stating “this is probably a dumb question” as she asked it.  So, I did a scan of the room, and while I did not do a full head count, it seemed that pretty close to 50% of the audience was female.  Furthermore, this was a completely free-choice experience, in a social setting, with alcohol available to loosen social inhibitions, and the topic was even more focused on biology- an area females typically express a slightly higher interest in than males.

While I may have previously made an observation like this, and possibly gone on a slight feminist rant about it, what was truly surprising to me was my next thought.  Where my mind went next was “it would be pretty easy to design a research project to explore this more in depth.” We could have people do gender counts when people walk in the door and then keep track of how many questions were asked by each (notice I am also consciously using gender as opposed to sex, as we could only make a best guess by appearances, without doing a more involved study- grad school is teaching me so much about so many things!).  We could compare this data across different locations, different topics of Science Pubs, we could try to look at different age groups- there are all kinds of interesting questions to explore! And the fact that I now think of more explicit ways to explore them, instead of just a curious observation, was a sign to me that I just might have been in grad school too long.

PS- and the next sign was that my first thought about it this morning was, “and I could write a Blog post about it”!

My name’s Michelle and I’m a book-a-holic

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I have 248 books in my house. Yes, I counted and no, that doesn’t count borrowed books. Topics range from travel to fiction to mystery to cookbooks to books on learning theory and biology. Obviously, I love to read. It should be a requirement for us as graduate students because we read a lot. Some of my books are like comfort food, comfort books I guess. When I need to escape into another world, I’ll pick up a book and read it cover to cover in a weekend and enjoy every word my eyes consume.  And it feels like a guilty pleasure.

 

I’ve read a handful of my books more than once. For academic books I find myself re-reading chapters more than the entire book. Yet every time I re-read the pages I notice something new. It’s as though I’m reading through a different lens. And that’s because I am. I started exploring this idea when our theory group was reading Dewey’s Democracy and Education. Dewey writes, “’Reason’ is just the ability to bring the subject matter of prior experience to bear to perceive the significance of the subject matter of a new experience” (pg. 146). What Dewey means is that we see an event in connection to a larger framework, that by habit we see things through different lenses.

 

Our theory group is currently reading Acts of Meaning by J. Bruner. Bruner states so eloquently, “Books are like mountaintops jutting out of the sea. Self-contained islands though they may seem, they are upthrusts of an underlying geography that is at once local and…a part of the universal pattern. And so, while they inevitably reflect a time and a place, they are part of a more general intellectual geography” (pg. ix).

 

This is the second time I’m reading Acts of Meaning and I’m simultaneously reading Maps of Narrative Practice (M. White). It wasn’t until I picked Acts of Meaning up for the second time that I started realizing the similarities between it and White’s book, nor had I previously recognized how much White built on Bruner’s theory. I’m now reading both books through a different lens all to create the geography that underlines my doctoral research. I would encourage everyone to re-read a book. Who knows what you’ll discover this time around.

Finding Meaning in Reflective Research

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To follow on last week’s discussion of vygotsky, another central tenet of Vygotsky’s work is that in order to understand development (and therefore learning), the researcher has to observe it in the process rather than in its products.  He faulted the standard methods of psychological research of his day for focusing too much on training subjects to do particular tasks and then using those tasks to study cognition and development.  His basic claim was that by the time the subject had mastered the task, the researcher had missed the development and learning and was now documenting some sort of fossilized action instead.  He suggested alternative methods for creating conditions where learning, particularly the appropriation of meditational means and the development of concepts, could be brought into observation by the researcher working closely with research participants.

Those methods could be the subjects of future blog posts, but given last week’s topic of documenting personal sense making and how standardized ways of learning, testing, and research are not effective in generating or documenting personal sense, it’s interesting today to think about what sort of changes to research it would really take to arrive at rigorous ways of documenting the development of personal sense, including the role of emotions, values, beliefs, and biography in that development.

It seems that in part this kind of research itself still requires a substantial paradigm shift for researchers to stop “chasing” results/outputs as the key to understanding learning and to start encouraging this very chase itself as the subject of research.  In our theory group right now, we are reading Jerome Bruner’s Acts of Meaning. Bruner outlines where the cognitive revolution veered away from being able to really understand the road map where development takes place, especially given the role of emotional patterns and their relationship to reflective states of mind.  Bruner suggests that meaning cannot be pre assigned, so, like Vygotsky, he believes that meaning itself cannot be measured as an outcome of learning, but that learning can be seen in the process of making meaning.  He suggests further that meaning making is different from information processing. This does not discount the importance of understanding how human beings process information.  It does mean that education and learning have to be more than simply the business of training humans to use the tools that are necessary for life. Meaning, rather than knowing, should be the business of education as the ultimate way of “being.” This is very similar to Dewey’s arguments about the purposes of education in leading development.  Like Dewey and Vygotksy, Bruner is talking about cultural shift in education, but also in research.

Bruner turned to the exploration of how everyday thinking tools (or meditational means more accurately) were appropriated for complex meaning making that included both public, shared meaning and personal sense. In Acts of Meaning, he describes the role of narrative, especially jointly constructed narratives, in shaping individual biography and identity over time.  Retelling, re-narrating our experiences is in essence a reflective exercise in personal sense making, which also generates both public and shared meaning under the right circumstances. It is an exercise that brings to bear the very problematic of the so-called transformative education implicit in many of the other texts our group has been reading: the subjectivism, situatedness, and relativism circling human thinking and action and challenging the role of cognitive research. Accounting for such relativism and subjectivism not as gibberish or nonsense but as essential characteristics of human development, learning and behavior is to recognize the construction of meaning as transformative not authoritative. With that in mind, not only learning is a reflective state of mind but research itself should also be. What would a reflective research encompass? Perhaps it would be the type of research where its applied and flexible methodology consists of mediational means that lead to and promote a larger joint reflection between participants and researchers, allowing for a true dialogicality that moves quickly beyond the search for understanding of “fossilized” actions to the kind of active transformation of the research and learning situation that people like Dewey, Freire, and Vygotsky call for.

Such paradigmatic shift in the view of education and education research is nothing short of a “philosophical” debate between philosophy and science, our customary ways of knowing and seeking knowledge and how they came to be. The positivist characteristics of today’s research hindering the possibility for true dialogicality reflects nothing less than the human need to find some absolute truth and find it quickly. We can’t stand not knowing, not being able to trace down a beginning, middle and end for everything under some logical explanation. Embracing subjectivism and relativism as important pieces of the puzzle is recognizing there is no absolute truth when it comes to the human mind; it is to decrease the role of logic in favor of increasing the role of wonder in the process of knowing. This requires a cultural shift to assign reflective states of mind as the valued goal of education and research concerned with meaning making. Everything else would fall into place. Logicality can be unidirectional and give us tools for information processing, but dialogicality can’t. It requires exchange of reflections into retold narratives for it is the only way to unravel meaning making and acts of meaning.

Thanks to Susan O’Brien for her significant contributions to this post!