Week Thirteen Pre-Post CECS 6010

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I found the Warren and Gratch article to be very interesting. And I am not saying that just to earn points. The concept of Critical cine-ethnography seems to be an interesting way to deal with many of the problems that are encountered with research. of course, it is not perfect, but taking the time to make sure that the researcher is considered part of the environment rather than an intruder seems very effective. At least to someone like me that is skeptical of traditional research methods that seem to be so unrealistic at times. Also, I love the idea of examining bias and being honest turning a critical lens on subjectivity by taking a reflective attitude. Personally, I think we need more of that in research.

In The New Constellation reading this week, Bernstein is examining Foucault and his views on critique as a philosophical ethos. I think I understand this to mean how we investigate history and the way we became who we are. Bernstein also looks at Enlightenment blackmail, and he seems to not be very happy about the whole idea, even though I am not quite sure exactly what that entails. Of course, Bernstein points out how many of Foucault’s critics end up frustrated and confused when they examine these areas, so I am guessing that I am not the only one a bit confused by this whole topic.

In The Restructuring of Social and Political Theory reading for this week, Bernstein is covering a lot of ground and is obviously even taking the title of the book from this section. But in all honesty, I had a hard time following most of it. After a while, there are so many names and concepts that I only have a vague familiarity with. Bernstein writes with an assumption of deep understanding of anything he touches on, something that I think you probably need multiple degrees in before you understand. I am hoping that the meeting time Monday can shed some light on this for me. Or maybe I am just tired from a busy weekend 🙂

Week Twelve Pre-Post CECS 6010

CECS 6020/6010

So I think I went into this week’s readings thinking that since we looked at quantitative papers last week, that we would see more qualitative this week. But the numbers still slipped in there in several! Not that I have a problem with numbers – they have their place. I just feel like I get more insight into the subjects of a research study when I know more of the why behind their responses. Some interesting studies, although a few were over topics that I have no background in so I was a bit lost on some of it.

In all honesty, I don’t think I have really learned that much about my professors over the past few weeks just by looking at one paper each. I am currently taking classes from Norris and Warren, but I feel that I know much more about them by having been in their classes. The papers I read from them really didn’t seem to add or take away from that knowledge, so I am assuming that the one paper I have read from others will not tell me much about them either. I think I have discovered something about one research topic per professor, but I know they all have more than that. So I will probably need to read much more from each one to really get a picture of who they are.

The Wang article on Foucault seems to be different than the others. I can’t seem to find Wang on the list of faculty in the LT department. So I am guessing with our past interactions with Foucault that this article was one to read and learn from. But it is also one of those articles that basically says “this is what I am saying. But not really. Or maybe so.” Wang is basically examining where others get Foucault wrong. That much I understand. The part I am unsure of is whether Wang presents an actual answer, or if he is just thinking through something that he is unsure of. At the very end, he seems to be suggesting that we not overturn power, but seek to transform power relations into powerful subjects. I am guessing this is the essence of the productive power that he speaks, but overall the point is still unclear to me.

Week Eleven Pre-Post CECS 6010

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This week we are looking at a sampling of our professor’s publications. Since this is going online, I don’t know if I want to put anything public about what I think about them :). Actually, I did enjoy reading all of them, even though they did not all fall in my main areas of interest. I noticed that some were very quantitative, one was qualitative, and the other was more of a meta-analysis.

I’m not against numbers and statistics, but when all of the information in a study gets broken down into pure numbers, I often feel like I am missing something. It is just hard to know what factors are behind those numbers. I think that is why I lean more towards a qualitative paradigm. I don’t mind breaking down research responses into categories and codes to see where the numbers fall, but I still want to know what is behind those numbers.

Another thing I want to do with my future research is to hire a good editor! I am not a good editor, but I can see in all of them typos that I would want to catch before publication. I know that is impossible – I worked for a publishing company that had 4 English majors reading everything before it went out and all of them still missed stuff. So I guess I shouldn’t worry too much about it – maybe in the future it will all be digital and we can just send out edits to update all documents in a flash.

Week Ten Pre-Post CECS 6010

CECS 6020/6010

In this week’s reading. Bernstein is looking at the contrasting angles of modernity and postmodernity that some seem to pull out of the works of Habermas and Derrida. Bernstein’s point is that these angles should be read as an allegory of the modern / postmodern condition, one that can not and should not be reconciled. They are eternally locked in a struggle of otherness with each other. They have irreconcilable differences that form a “New Constellation” to guide us as we discuss ever changing elements of life. At least, that is what I think he is trying to say. We should embrace the problems of reconciling modernity with postmodernity rather than smooth them out.

One of the concepts that caught my attention was the concept of Otherness as explored by Derrida. Not that there really is enough here to really give me a total picture of what it is, but the issues of how we are different and what that does to us… seems to be played out extensively on social media all the time. I just wonder what theorists are doing with social media, since it seems to be giving us many more windows into the minds of others than we had access to in the past.

Habermas is looking a lot at classifications of speech acts. Once again, I think I get the individual parts when I read them, but struggle to put the whole together or to be able to summarize what I have read. Basically I get that it is important to look at how we are communicating so that we can (as accurately as possible) communicate what we intend to.

Week NinePre-Post CECS 6010

CECS 6020/6010

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.

Week Eight Pre-Post CECS 6010

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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.

Week Seven Pre-Post CECS 6010

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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.

Week Six Pre-Post CECS 6010

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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.

Week Five Pre-Post CECS 6010

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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.

Week Four Pre-Post CECS 6010

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Quite a bit of material to dig into this week. The articles were very interesting to me as they hit on what I do for a living. Bonner’s article was a great look at the need to bring cognitive theory into instructional design. So many students think that all online classes are the same, and probably rightly so in that they really are all about tasks and getting people trained… ummm… “educated” quickly. Bonner is advocating for a mixture of the best of both worlds in the situations where they are needed, and I really see the need for that in modern instructional design. How many more times can we do the whole “read a chapter, answer a discussion questions, respond to two other students, take a multiple choice exam, lather, rinse, repeat” cycle in our classes?

Ertmer was also a great article to read, as she was exploring behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. Bringing these three together into a balanced view of instructional design is always difficult. I think most good instructional designers mix the best of all three at the appropriate times, whether they realize it or not. But when you intentionally try to find a good balance it often gets confusing, so this article would be a good reference. As someone that naturally leans towards constructivism, it is good to see what I can do to balance that out with other valid instructional theories.

Bernstein in this book, or at least this chapter of the book, is attempting to prove that social sciences are real sciences.  Even though I have a background in Geology, I have been a bit more open minded about what counts as Science. If it can be studied, I consider it Science. I know that many scientists look down on the Social Sciences – I heard it often in my undergrad courses studying to be a grade school Science/Art teacher. But I have never had a problem classifying the Social Sciences as real Science, so I didn’t find too much to dig into in this chapter. Not that it is a bad chapter, but written more for possibly someone that is more skeptical or questioning than me on the topic.