Well, I am not sure what to blog on this week. I finally finished what I was originally supposed to read, but it seems that the class instructions were changed without any notice. I just finished reading this morning what was originally up there for part 8, which was part III of Bernstein’s Restructuring and the article by Savenye & Robinson. Now that I looked back in Schology, it lists some other chapters that I have not read yet. If you make changes like that, please let us know – once I start reading, I really don’t look back at the reading list until I am ready to blog. Although, I thought we already read the rest of Chapter 2 in Habermas? Man, I am confused.

Well, I can only comment on what I read. The Savenye & Robinson article is a good article on qualitative research. I think I will understand more of it when I get to so some actual qualitative research. So this article will be a good reference when I get to that stage. The article seemed to also be calling for more acceptance of qualitative research, which has probably happened to more of a degree since the article was written.

The chapter that I read in Berstein was just… confusing. It seemed to be about different issue of what it means to be a human, what it means to exist, etc. Lifeworld was brought into this chapter.. That is about as far as I got in understanding it. But I guess I will be re-reading it in the future at some point? Maybe then I will understand more. Now off to try and get caught up on what I was supposed to be reading all of this time.

Still reading Habermas from the online source, because my second attempt at ordering a copy has disappeared. Is there a Habermas thief in the postal system? Because those are the only things that ever not arrived after I ordered them. This has nothing to do with the readings, just had to vent somewhere.

Habermas is spending a lot of time talking about lifeworld, so honestly I had to Google it to get a better handle on it. So the Habermas view of the lifeworld consists of social and cultural meanings that people experience together. So, in a way it is a relativistic constructivism of some kind? Two people come together to create a lifeworld based on their own experiences to help come to understand each other. That is, at least, what I think I understand so far. There are some deeper layers to it that Habermas gets into that obviously I still need to come to understand.

The great thing about this chapter of Habermas is that he gives a great summary of everything he has been talking about in past chapters in the last paragraph of page 253. He also seems to connect his other ideas to the lifeworld concept as he summarizes, but I will really need to dig into these more before I grasp them better.

The Alexander article was a fascinating read, although I’m interested to see how it is discussed and dissected in class. I understand that he is creating a compromise theory between the warring factions of two paradigms. I get the basic idea of using the best of both, but I am not sure if I fully get how all of the pieces fit together. I loved the next to the last paragraph on page 214 (the one that starts with “Viewed in this light”). I quoted that one on Facebook and got into some interesting discussions about truth and even human evolution in the future. So overall I think that article touches on some topics even larger than research and paradigm. An interesting read.

Digging into these articles this week, I found them all interesting. Dated, of course, but interesting. The problem I am just mainly running into is the mid-semester wall. So much to read that it all starts to run together. I really do enjoy reading this kind of stuff and digging into the literature, but just got a little tired. So if my blog is a bit weak this week, I apologize in advance.

So the first article by Ely is a critique of research designs. Seems like it will serve as a good reference for me to come back to and see how any studies I do fit into the overall picture. Good break down of each, good analysis, a bit dated by now, but still seems to have a good structure for organizing educational studies. Also contains a good amount of practical examples and case study type parts to help see how these categories work out practically.

The next article by Ross and Morrison looks at Experimental Research Designs. It seemed to blend in a bit with the other articles, but I do remember that it explored different experiment designs and some of the pitfalls of each. There was also a good section with a step-by-step guide for novice researchers designed to help us figure out how to start a research study. That will also come handy in the near future.

The third article by Richey, Klein, and Nelson is about studies in instructional design and development. Since I work in this field during my day job, I was a bit more familiar with the content covered here. There was a lot of stuff that I learned there, also. But those large charts were a bit hard to cross-reference with the studies. I guess if you need to find some information someday on a particular topic, that chart will help you track down some specific literature. Another good reference.

I really enjoyed reading the research article for this week’s readings – and not just because it is about Twitter. I am a huge fan of emerging technology, but what really fascinated me is that it was a practical application of Habermas, Bernstein, and Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions theory. I think I tend to be more practical minded, and looking at how these apply to an actual research study was very helpful. There is still much about Learning and Teaching as Communicative Actions theory that I need to fine tune. I think I get the basics (just don’t ask me to recite those from memory just yet!), but there is still more I want to learn about the practical application of those to learning as well as research.

Bernstein was looking at incommensurability and otherness. I get that incommensurability is basically just the idea that different people can see the world in different ways, and that it is impossible to say which way is right. At its core, I think he is saying that we need to engage with the Other – thoughts outside of our own understanding – to truly know what we believe for ourselves. If we have only had exposure to one or two sets of beliefs, then we really have no way to know what else is out there. How can we know what is really true? This sounds a lot like what I did in my teens and twenties on my religious pilgrimage to get to where I am now – I decided to read every religious scripture I could get my hands on to see which one I thought was true. I read the Bible, Apocrypha,  Qu’ran, Vedas, teachings of Buddha, Taoist scriptures, and several other writings, secondary sources, and minor writings. There is still much I want to read, but I am now more satisfied with where I am in my journey now that I have had a look at a lot of what there is out there. There is probably more to the concept that Bernstein was digging into than this, but I look forward to learning about that as we discuss in class.

So the article by Prawat & Floden shows that constructivists agree on outcomes but not on the process to get to those outcomes. That is new to me. While I tend to be a constructivist, I have never considered that there are disagreements over the best process. And apparently, the mixed process doesn’t work. I think I understand the basics of these different approaches to process, but I need more understanding of them before I figure out which one I subscribe to.

I am not really sure that I understand much of what Bernstein is trying to get at in this week’s reading from The New Constellation. He just seems to amble and twist through so many ideas, speaking of two narratives and specters of Nietzsche and then Habermas gets drug in there and soon I am not sure what his point is with this chapter. Hope that one will make more sense after class.

Of course, in The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory, Bernstein is still arguing for the acceptance of social sciences as real sciences, and deconstructing different arguments and critiques that surround that issue. Like I have said, I have no problem with social sciences being treated as a real Science (even if there are special cases to be considered as Bernstein discusses), so I still feel that I find myself often going “great, what’s next?” to most of the points.

Habermas is dealing more with how to convert our language into actions. He works his way through meaning and validity and ends up examining validity claims. A lot of this revolves around his explanation of how people reach understandings. I guess coming to an understanding with someone is much more complex than I thought it was. It seems to be something that you know has happened but often can’t explain. Or maybe that is why it takes Habermas so long to explain – there is a lot more going on than most of us realize. Or maybe it is just that I don’t understand much of what he is saying.