"Content Clouds as a Methodology"

I've used content clouds as an instructional methodology but never thought about their use as a research methodology. Cidell's (2010) notion is so simple, so true to what I've asked my students to do in analyzing primary documents or research why did I never think to apply it to my own research?

When I taught M300 the multicultural education course here at IU I spent some time on how social class might influence teacher's perceptions of their students. One of the most detailed, telling works on this subject is Jean Anyon's work "Social Class and School Knowledge." The work is long and sadly I didn't trust my undergraduates to fully engage with the entire article. So I got creative and divided the reading into segments based on the type of school presented in Anyon's detailed ethnography. With each reading I included a Wordle. We began class by examining un-labled Wordles and identifying from them the goals, curriculum and environment of each learning site. We then attempted to identify which Wordle would represent the school we wanted to attend. We shared and discussed the different components of the reading relating her work back to our earlier analysis of the Wordles. This proved to be a particularly powerful experience and I can't help but think that striping the articles bare helped to emphasize the differences between schools. It proved to be an effective tool for analysis. (This worked much better than the time a colleague and I collaborated to create a series of lessons on the Clinton Impeachment and decided to include a Wordle on the Star Report.)


(Which school would you like to attend?)

 

Cidell provides two main cautions about commonly used words and how the word counts are relational (p. 521). I probably should have taken out words like teacher and school since these were prominent throughout each example above and distracted from the nuances of the Wordles.  Analysis of the word cloud should also be detailed. Looking at the nouns doesn't give much detail (with the exception of book or textbook in the Wordle on the right). For the examples above, I find it interesting if you look at the different verbs present - or even the presence of verbs in each!

Cidell (2010) also suggests the possibility to using Word Clouds and assigning the results to not only geographic locations, but possibly to demographic information. I wonder how Anyon's article might have differed is she was able to process her interviews and observations through a Wordle? If Anyon had a cloud would it have enhanced her work? Or possibly diminished it by removing her from the data? Her work is so powerful much of this is due to the thick discription of her field sites and participants. I'd like to think that this would have enhanced her description (if that is even possible!)  Cidell implies that word clouds are tools, but I think it's important to again emphasize that tools should be an enhancement of the research process not a substitute. 

This whole thing has my head spinning with ideas! So with my interest sparked I decided to place part of the transcripts I'm currently working with into TagCrowd.com and see if what I've determined to be trends in the interviews is picked up by the word cloud...Result to follow.