Ripped From the Headlines

Let me preface this with a disclaimer: It's been a hectic 28 hours since leaving class, including leaving my power cord in class, an early morning phone interview, and a relatively crazy cross country trek right into the winter wonderland of the New Jersey Pine Barrens.

For my reflection I had initially planned to grapple with my own theoretical leanings in an attempt to better address the final small group question from class about epistemology and the possible views of technology. This is something I need to do especially since I struggle with theory as evidenced by my positivist gaffe in class. (I take small comfort in the fact I didn't to truly embarrass myself by attempting to discuss post-modernism.) I will definitely come back to the question because I think there are some interesting things to unpack about constructivism and technology. I've already started to sketch that out, but for the sake of meeting the deadline and other responsibilities here are a couple of other things that have crossed my mind since class.

While waiting for my flight to board I stumbled across an article by Rob Walker "Why One Man Watched Every Episode of ‘Law & Order’ and Took Screenshots of All the Computers" on Yahoo Tech (which in of itself is a bit surprising since I've not associated Yahoo with much of anything in recent years.) It got me thinking about how technology is such a part of our lives and it can be re-purposed as both a tool and data source.

Walker writes about how visual artist, Jeffrey Thompson watched all 456 episodes of Law and Order - in order - and took screen shots any time he saw technology.  What really stood out for me was Thompson's description of the television show as an inadvertent database of how we view and use technology. It got me thinking about other ways in which technology (and of course the NSA) is cataloging our ideas and beliefs without us paying much attention. To connect this to class, it was interesting to see Dr. Lester's example of how Pinterest can be used as a research tool. In fact everyday Pinterest users are conducting research and using the platform to code their data! Viewing what is seen as a social platform as a source of knowledge might even open up certain doors for data collection. As an example, I'm sure there is something to be learned about how elementary school teachers view social studies by looking at the teaching boards they make and what they chose to pin - I'm just not sure what that might be or how this study might look.

On a different note - I've been thinking about my attempt to define qualitative research with the what/why example and I don't think I did a great job of expressing what I was trying to say. I understand the caution needed when attempting to pose qualitative why questions. Let me see if I can use an example to express more of what I meant when speaking about the "Why" of qualitative research by using Annette Lareau's research on family social status and schooling.

In her book "Home Advantage" Lareau took a truly qualitative approach to look how student's home lives and the attitudes of parents about education affected children's academic success. Through in depth interviews with parents, teachers and students Lareau began to develop a picture of possible reasons for the involvement - or lack there of - of parents in their children's education, reasons that couldn't be quantified. She didn't set out to answer any specific why, but to learn more about the attitudes, values and beliefs of her participants regarding education. She didn't specifically ask parents why they helped or didn't help their children with school work or why they treated teachers in a certain manner - but her analysis was insightful. Through her thick description a picture of why students from affluent homes might tend to do better than their less affluent counterparts began to emerge. (She does position herself in the study and it is open to bias.)

I don't know if this makes my view of the What/Why divide more clear. Maybe what I meant to say was that quantitative research helps to identify certain What's of education and qualitative research helps to capture certain attitudes, values and beliefs which can aid in unpacking specific findings and in the development of theories about why things occur? I still need to toy with this some more to really sort it all out, but hopefully I'm not as far off base as before!

Thanks for making it through this - I'll be more coherent in the future! As your reward here's a Vic Pic for the night:

Victor is none too pleased with IU's season thus far. Or quite possibly he's just irked I've put a scarf on him. You can decide.