dissertation proposal by temi rose 2/20/02
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE: THE PROBLEM STATEMENT
A National Perspective
Art in Academia: Valuing Aesthetic Cognition
Technology in Education: Ethical Considerations
Art and ritual.
Learning, Change and Democracy
Rationale for this Study
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW
Introduction: Weaving a Web
Art in Schools: Theory
Justice, Responsibility and Care
Conversational Reality
Motivation and Learning
Adult Education
Action Research: Methodology and Principles
Art in Schools: Practice
Technology in Schools
Conclusion: Seeking an Articulation
CHAPTER III: METHOD
The Site
The Participants
Data Sources
Procedure
Researcher's Role
Data Analysis
APPENDIX I - THE STATE GUIDELINES FOR TECHNOLOGICAL
EDUCATION
APPENDIX II - THE STATE GUIDELINES FOR ART EDUCATION
APPENDIX III – LETTER FROM RESEARCHER TO THE CAMPUS
LEADERSHIP COMMITTEE
APPENDIX IV– FROM THE FINE ARTS ACADEMY COORDINATOR:
E-MAIL INITIATING CONTACT WITH RESEARCH COMMUNITY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
CONVERSATIONAL REALITY
John Shotter’s explication (1984, 1989, 1993a, 1993b) of the dynamics of
conversational reality and social ecology provided a practical-theoretic for
this action research study. Shotter’s premise was that people recreate
and reinforce, invent, and invest in their reality, through the co-creation
of conversations with others. Shotter was influenced by Vygotsky’s (1962,
1971, 1993) assertion that language is the tool culture uses to create itself.
In an action research study, the researcher's goals include social change. It
is my view that social structure depends on mental and emotional habits (Dewey,
1916). If I were to influence social structure, I would only succeed if I could
influence how participants in the change effort were thinking. In Thought and
Language (1962) Vygotsky delineated a process of the origination of thought.
In Vygotsky’s view, not only thought, but culture, emerges as a result
of dialogic interactions.
The first subsection will examine one aspect of Vygotsky's thought in greater detail, the Zone of Proximal Development, and what opportunities and limitations apply when change agents wish to fully utilize the potentials of this zone.
The Zone of Proximal Development
Vygotsky’s perspective was popularized in the United States when Jerome
Bruner, an educator of creditable achievements in educational change efforts,
published Acts of Meaning (1990). In this book, Bruner interpreted Vygotsky’s
concept of the Zone of Proximal Development by creating the co-constructivist
metaphor of scaffolding to describe what an educator's role might be in a learning
interaction. Unfortunately, the way the two metaphors do not connote nor do
they elicit the same relationship between the learner and the educator. Bruner’s
definition of scaffolding conveyed a constructivist view of education: knowledge
is a co-construction. The educator's role is to hold the structure steady with
scaffolding while the student develops concepts and practices within the basic
structure and scope provided by the teacher. This is significantly different
from Vygotsky’s description of the Zone of Proximal Development. In Vygotsky’s
description, the ZPD is a potential, a form of understanding implicit, or tacit,
in the learner, earned through prior experience and ready to be actualized,
articulated through participation in a dialogue with a person of greater facility
in the domain. According to Vygotsky, the result of the dialogue is circumscribed
to some degree by the prevailing cultural assumptions embedded in the linguistic
and procedural concepts, however, the dialogue elicits strength already present
in the learner. The value-add is in the articulation, the creation of communicable
schema.
The difference between Bruner’s and Vygotsky’s perceptions is crucial, especially when applied to adult education and working with peer teachers, as was the case in the present study. If the change agent, the person in the role of expert, or consultant, anyone perceived in the moment as having more information or knowledge, scaffolds a peer, the learner loses the opportunity to struggle for self-definition and self-determination in conceptual re-structuring is much less likely. If the consultant, on the other hand, takes Vygotsky’s explanation as a working definition, she perceives the client as capable, as having developed an awareness that is waiting for articulation through a negotiated conversation, in which meaning-making and relationship co-develop.
I have found Bruner’s scaffolding metaphor to be useful when the task is to relay stringent procedures. However, I agree with Freire’s (1973, 1989) position that when teaching and collaborating with adults and peers, an educator is bound to guard against assistencialism. Freire defined assistencialism as a surreptitious element in our pedagogical ideology that allows the educator to assume a superior position in relation to students. This superiority, when it manifests itself as assistencialism, does not appear to be in any way cruel, rather, it appears to be kind, helpful. Freire insisted, however that an assistencialist position humiliates the student and is a form of cultural oppression that makes true democratic practice impossible.
The metaphor of scaffolding implies that the learner does not have the internal
resilience and strength to create meaning. Vygotsky’s concept of the ZPD
connotes a subtle responsibility for relational care much closer to Shotter’s
descriptions of conversational reality than to Bruner’s explication of
scaffolding.
In any case, an assumption of weakness, no matter how well intentioned, can
backfire during a social change effort, by subtly furthering individual feelings
of inadequacy and a sense of disempowerment. The literature on critical pedagogy
(Apple, 1979, 1982; Giroux, 1981) masterfully delineates how ideologies in education
can disempower members. Rather than concentrating on any metaphors or assumptions
of weakness, a social change agent is attempting to build confidence and courage
in herself and the clients so that their collaborative struggle for individual
autonomy and mutual understanding will not be subtly sabotaged by subliminal
reinforcements of inferiority and inability.
The next subsection in this section on conversational reality continues to examine the work of John Shotter but this time from the perspective of another of his intellectual inspirations, the work of Ilya Prigogine.
Co-creating Futures
Shotter (1993b) further developed his concept of conversational reality into
a more diverse and complex dynamic he called social ecology. Shotter defined
social ecology as the inter-relationship of a plethora of intersecting conversations.
Shotter's social ecology construct is reminiscent of Kurt Lewin’s (1935,
1936, 1948, 1951) formative field theory of psychology and social dynamics.
Lewin, considered the originator of action research, proposed that individuals
were embedded in fields where forces acted on them and within them. A social
change agent’s responsibility, in Lewin’s terms was to analyze the
forces acting on individuals, ameliorate forces acting negatively, and support
those forces tending toward cooperation. Lewin’s theories will be discussed
more fully later in this chapter.
Shotter reported that his concept of social ecology was greatly influenced by Prigogine’s work on chaos and complexity. Prigogine (1979, 1984, 1985, 1988, 1996) in turn credited Henri Bergson as inspiring him to reinterpret time. Shotter contended that Prigogine's chemistry theories could be applied to social systems. Prigogine's descriptions were applicable to all living systems. In order to appreciate fully Shotter's concept of social ecology, we will briefly explore Prigogine's contributions to theoretical and practical science.
Prigogine won the Nobel Prize in 1977 for his work in chemistry. I was able to interview Prigogine as part of this study on May 14, 2001, in his office at UT, Austin. The first thing that Dr. Prigogine said to me at the start of the interview was, "The question I have always been interested in is this: Are we in it or not?" What he meant and continued to explain was that theoretical positions had been taken in the interests of objectivity that led to fallacious mathematical and philosophical stances. Educational researchers have argued the same position, that objectivity applied to human systems may not be the interpretive mechanism that will allow us to understand the potentials and affect change.
According to Prigogine, in all living systems, where the factors are greater than two, every moment is qualitatively and quantitatively different after every interaction that takes place in the system. Equations concerning process must take into consideration that the foundation, the context of the process, will be changing during the course of the event. It is no longer possible to consider a beginning state that leads directly to an end state. In Prigogine’s view, every initial state holds within itself a multitude of factors that have greater or lesser statistical probability of occurring. Although in most cases a process will stay within a range of possible outcomes determined by initial conditions, process behavior is unpredictable. This is similar to Vygotsky's description of the ZPD, where the culture binds and controls the possibilities but only so much, after that, the interactions make many new things possible.
A correlative understanding is Prigogine’s concept of the arrow of time. The arrow of time is the mathematical, chemical, and philosophical concept of the uni-directionality of time. Prior to Prigogine, mathematicians, chemists and physicists used theoretical computations based on what is known as the reversibility of time. Obviously, in our human experiences, time is not reversible. Prigogine’s breakthrough was incorporating a human-centered understanding of development through the uni-directionality of time into a scientific analysis and description of natural processes. As Prigogine described it, the arrow of time concept requires researchers to take into consideration change over time. For instance, when an action research study begins, the researcher has an agreed upon set of purposes with the host organization. As the work progresses, because the work is part of life and as Prigogine has shown, every life process builds on itself, the researcher must continuously build into her work an awareness of incremental change.
Living systems have inherent patterns and will follow those patterns until an anomaly is introduced. After the introduction of a new phenomenon the system will fluctuate until it finds a new sustainable pattern and then will continue to grow. I believe that we will see evidence of this type of growth in social systems because social systems are living systems, aggregates of individual lives interacting, creating larger, living systems.
The next subsection in this section on conversational reality will discuss systems theory in more detail.
Systems Theory
Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1975) was a refugee from Nazi Europe who came to live
and work in the United States. Working in biology, using assumptions similar
to Prigogine’s, Bertalanffy developed the organismic theory, the theory
of open systems, and general systems theory (Davidson, 1983). Systems theory
described the internal consistency of systems, their interrelationship with
other systems, the self-regulatory nature of living systems, and the freedom
inherent in growth processes. Bertalanffy showed how the smallest alteration
in the pattern of a system’s process could lead to enormous alterations
in the system. Lorenz’s (1993) famous example was based on his experimental
computer models of weather patterns. Lorenz claimed that, when a butterfly flapped
its wings on one side the earth, some time later, on the other side of the earth,
a storm emerges. This statement refers to systems theory’s poetic recognition
of the connectedness of all activity. All systems in which human beings are
participants are affected, not just superficially but radically, at their root,
on ontological, definitive levels, by every spoken and non-spoken act. "A
sensitive dependence on initial conditions" was Bertalanffy’s description
of how system dynamics function and it was also a guiding principle I was able
to use to help me remember that small, caring, relational, discursive activities
could bring about significant change.
Most action research projects, including this one, take place in large organizations. Schools are complex organizations. How can an action researcher control this environment? She cannot and it is important to remember that the goal is not to control the situation, but to affect circumstances in such a way that conditions arise that in turn give rise to change. Any interaction can be thought of as an initial conditions. Instead of trying to bring the whole school into the project, a researcher can move as delicately as a butterfly and, if Bertalanffy, Prigogine, and Lorenz are correct, the school will be affected. It is not necessary to control a system in order to affect it, it is only necessary to participate. Participation is an axiom of democratic commitment held and articulated by Lewin (1948) and Arendt (1963) and many others. The goal of action research is to increase the possibility of social, egalitarian harmony, which is also the necessary environment and basis for democratic practice. Action research and the work of Kurt Lewin will be more fully discussed later in this review.
In this section we have discussed a several aspects of conversational reality, the zone of proximal development, the fact that the future is unwritten and our embeddedness in interaffecting, living systems. The final subsection in this discussion will be on the analysis and interpretation of conversations.
Relational Discourse Analysis
Two theorists have influenced my understanding of the analysis of particular
conversations, Diane Schallert and Paul Ricoeur. A small part of each of their
theoretical frameworks will be presented in this section.
Schallert’s research on classroom discourse provided an methodology for analyzing how meaning is made in educational conversations. Schallert found that certain conversational moves are likely to end conversations while others seem to promote further exploration. In the research of this dissertation, I was aware that in the moment, at the site, on the telephone, and in e-mails, I was affecting the course of the action and the meaning making of the group involved in the change process. My goal was to remain as aware as possible of the manner of my conversational contributions. My premise was that conversation was the ground from which the co-creation of change would emerge. My hope was that I would be able to gently manipulate my conversational role in order to create a feeling of personal acceptance and aid in removing perceived barriers to the change effort. Schallert’s analytic procedures will be utilized in analyzing the e-mails and the informal interviews. These procedures are discussed more fully in the methods chapter.
Ricoeur (1986, 1991, 1992) evolved his way of reasoning from an ecclesiastical training in hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is an ancient form of textual analysis often described as biblical exegesis. The premise was that holy texts required ongoing interpretation. Ongoing interpretation was necessary because human conditions change and though holy words remain holy, their application to changing human circumstances must continuously be reinterpreted. Ricoeur has developed hermeneutics beyond the exegetical.
Ricoeurian hermeneutics refers to a type of analysis that is also a synthesis. Ricoeur illustrated a way of interpretation that could be called conceptual ecology. He showed again and again how concepts that at first appear to be polarized come together when thought of as a dynamic, a wholistic synergy. He called this type of analysis the hermeneutic circle. The hermeneutic circle begins with a particular stance, an understanding, a statement, or a concept. When that stance is communicated, it takes on a form. The meaning of the communication reaches out to a listener, or a reader. The listener, reader, interpreter is also reaching out towards the meaning. Where the reaching called expression meets the reaching called comprehension, Ricoeur called the horizon. Ricoeur’s hermeneutic circle is a description of the process that underlies Shotter’s conversational reality theory. Conversations are co-creations wherein the participants are stretching themselves. Conversations are hard work.
Summary: Conversations Just-in-Time
Shotter, Vygotsky, and Prigogine proposed an interactive view of reality. In
this view, a variety of personal perspectives are not inimical to a healthy
human environment but rather conducive to a vital social ecology. Conversations
play a pivotal role in social change because they can create new initial conditions
in the mind and heart conducive to change. The future is not only affected by
the way we are with each other in the present, it is actually created by how
we are with one another. In fact, Prigogine, Shotter, and Vygotsky seem to imply
that even the smallest human interactions might be able to influence the events
taking place in the larger system of understanding and activity.
We are all frightened of change to one degree or another. However, as Harrison pointed out, learning can mitigate fear. Conversations that focus on articulating knowledge build confidence in the conversants, freeing them to engage in further experiences and further articulations. The change agent's role in this view is to manifest sensitivity, to respond to the subtle hints people share when they are ready to engage in discussion. The consultant’s primary roles are listener and responder and her primary focus the response-ability to provide just-in-time learning. The fear that conversation is not enough is ever present. But it is my assertion that educators can trust conversation, ally ourselves with Vygotsky in his view that language is the preeminent tool for social development.
The following section will continue the discussion of relationship, care, and conversation, focusing on individual, motivational, and relational stances that can influence individual development. next