HOT MESS of a blog post...skimming advised! 8. 28.13

Discourse Analysis Blog post for 8.28.13

Chapters 1-3: Discourse Analysis as Theory and Method by Marianne Jorgensen and Louise Phillips

                Either this reading is dense, or I am – YIKES!  There were so many new terms and theories upon theories… I am hoping that taking some notes will bring things more into focus for me.  I don’t usually use my post as a place to take notes, but I think I need to today so that I come away with some sort of understanding.  I really did not get this!

                In the first chapter, the authors talk about how the 3 approaches (Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Theory, Critical Discourse Analysis and Discursive Psychology) are similar.  According to Jorgensen and Phillips, they all have common views of language and subject and are “critical” forms of research (meaning that they look at power and are interested in social change).   All 3 approaches also began in social constructionism.   On page 3, the authors go into some of the key differences among the approaches. The approaches differ in the scope of discourse – “do they constitute the social completely, or are they themselves partly constituted by other aspects of the social?” – and in the focus of their analysis.   All 3 see the ‘subject’ as being created in discourses.

Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Theory

-          Discourse constructs the social world

-          Meaning is not permanently fixed – changing constantly as we change our discourse

-          Discursive struggle is a key word in this theory – different discourses struggle with one another to dominate – to create HEGEMONY

-          Follow’s Foucault (individual is determined by structures)

-          Discourse IS the world

-          Really about theory development and don’t have methods

Nodal points –  a privileged sign – all others are defined in relation to the nodal point

The field of discursivity- All the possibilities that the discourse excludes.  It denotes all possible, but excluded constructions of meaning.

Elements – signs whose meanings are not yet fixed…have many potential meanings (polysemic)

Closure – a temporary (never definite) stop to the fluctuations in the meaning of the signs.

Moments – all signs in a discourse (knots in the net – different positions)

Articulation – every practice that establishes a relationship between elements and changes the identity of the element.

Floating signifiers – elements that are open to a variety of possible meanings.

L and M  - look at analyzing HOW the structure (through discourse) is constituted and changed.

Do not distinguish between discursive and non-discursive phenomena – physical objects exist but we understand them through discourse.  We give these objects meaning through our discourse.

Power isn’t something people have, but it produces the social interactions – power creates knowledge, identity and how we related to others.

Society is partly structured – but only partially and temporarily...

We act like society exists in totality…and speak about it in totality.

Discourses decide positions people will take up (as subjects)

People can shift in a variety of positions.

Individual is not a “whole self”.

Master signifiers within identity – like gender or race.  Through discourse, behavior is determined within the signifier.

“Identities are accepted, refused and negotiated in discursive practices.”  Identity is social.

P. 43 for summary points on Laclau and Mouffe’s Discourse Theory

Group identity functions in a similar fashion as individual identity

Group identity is understood as a reduction of possibilities.

The logic of equivalence and logic of difference?

Groups come to be through discourse.

Theory and abstract phenomena

Critical discourse analysis

-          How discourse constructs the social world

-          Fairclough – discourse is only one of many social practices

-          Fairclough – looks at change. 

-          Fairclough – intertextuality – how texts draw from discourses of other texts. 

-          New discourses come about because of combinations of various elements from different discourses.

-          People as master and slave of language (Roland Barthes)

Five common features of CDA – p. 60

1)      The character of the social and cultural processes and structures is partly linguistic-discursive

-          Social change takes place through discourse of everyday life

-          Discourse is visual, written, and spoken

-          Multi-modal texts

2)      Discourse is both constitutive and constituted

-          Discourse is social practice that constitutes the social world and is constituted by social practices.

-          Discourse reflects and shapes social structures

-          Discourse is a form of action that is situated in a particular context (historical and social)

3)      Language use should be empirically analyzed within its social context

4)      Discourse Functions Ideologically

-discourse creates unequal power relation

- CDA – wants to look at how discourse keeps status quo and unequal power relations.

5)      Critical Research

-          Committed to social change.

-          Takes the side of oppressed groups

Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis – 3 Dimensional Model

Principles of discourse:

1)      Language use as social practice – discourse is both constitutive and constituted

2)      Discourse is understood as the kind of language used within a specific field

3)      Discourse is used as a count noun – a way of speaking that gives meaning to experiences from a particular perspective (ex. Feminist discourse)

Three dimensional model

1)      It is text (speaking, writing, visual)

2)      It is discursive practice

3)      It is social practice

Main aim is to look at the links between language and social practice

General purpose of the model is to provide an analytical framework

Intertextuality – refers to the conditions whereby all communicative events draw on earlier events.  Influence of history on a text.

Interdiscursivity – is a form of intertextuality

Manifest intertextuality – texts draw upon other texts – by citing them.

 

OKAY>>> This is a piece I can actually talk about and not ‘note about’.

 

I loved the examples on pages 82 and 83.    I could both see and understand the differences in the Sheffield advertisement and the Newcastle University advertisement.  I thought it was interesting that the first was really about changing the status quo and the second was more about maintaining the status quo.   The first advertisement felt more “manipulative “ and less “true” to me, and the second was more straight forward it seemed.  The first was focused on identity formation and the relationship between the school and the individual and the second was just laying out qualifications of the applicant.

 

Discursive psychology (this was covered in the first chapter)

-          Looks at specific language instances and how language is used in social interaction.

-          Looks at social consequences of language use

-          “Discursive psychology is an approach to social psychology that has developed a type of discourse analysis in order to explore the ways in which people’s selves, thoughts and emotions are formed and transformed through social interaction and to cast light on the role of these processes in social and cultural reproduction and change.”

-          People are products of and producers of discourse (This makes much more sense to me than talking about constitutive and constructed for some reason!)

Discourse analytical approaches agree with the following:

-          Language doesn’t reflect a preexisting reality

-          There are many discourses and meaning changes between them

-          Patterns of discourse are both maintained and changed by discourse

-          Have to look at contexts in which language is being used to look at how they are maintained and transformed

-          In line with Roland Barthes’ idea that people are both masters and slaves of language

-          Discourse is fully “constitutive” BUT embedded in historical and social practices

 

Foucault

-          Major player “someone to quote, relate to, comment on, modify and criticize”

-          Archaeological phase vs. genealogical phase

-          Archaeological – rules that determine what is meaningful and true in a particular context

-          Knowledge is not just a reflection of reality

-          “the historical rules of the particular discourse delimit what it is possible to say”

-          Theory of power/knowledge

-          Power creates social world – determines dominate ways of talking and being (pushes out alternative ways)

-          No universal truth to access

-          “Truth effects” are created in discourses… Truth is “understood as a system of procedures for the production, regulation, and diffusion of statements”.

-          Genealogical – links truth and power in this phase (how is discourse organized to give pictures of “truth” or “falseness”?)

Rogers et al:

                This one was better – maybe because of the foundation laid in the first 3 chapters.  I saw some repetitive ideas and concepts.

                I bought Courtney Cazden’s Classroom Discourse book – mainly because she  and Marie Clay (RR) did some work together.  I need to find the article they wrote together.

I understand that CDA is concerned with who has power and privilege and how language use contributes to that.

I am not sure I understand this…(along with everything else)…p. 368 – another shared assumption is that one of the most powerful forms of oppression is internalized hegemony – which includes coercion and consent…this made me think of internalized homophobia…but maybe I am WAY off beam here!

 

The description of Fairclough’s framework was more clear for me here – or was it the reinforcement I needed?

Analyst has to describe relationships between texts, interaction, and practices.  The analyst then has to interpret the configuration of discourse practices.  And the analyst has to describe how social practices are changed and transformed.   TEXT – DISCOURSE- SOCIAL PRACTICE

(I am wondering if this framework could be used to look at RR practice – there is spoken and written text…there are particular ways of speaking – how language is produced, consumed and reproduced.  And there is definite social practice).   I guess I need to understand it first!

 

Ok, another something I understand  - I thought the authors did a good job of explaining the process of how they went about reviewing the data bases – yea for transparency! (p. 372)  They were also very clear in their analytic procedures.

A shift toward interactional data is occurring (not just textual data).

p. 377 Discusses a topic we have touched on in class – how much does context matter. For CDA, context is huge and analysis of interactional data should extend beyond the actual interaction and should include the historical and societal influences.  Conversational analysts, on the other hand, only look at interaction! 

I also understood this call for additional research – “More research is needed to investigate how shifts in discourse patterns can provide educators insight into the ways I which people of various ages learn.”  And, a call for more work in CDA focused on the primary grades.   And, I also see how research on historically oppressed groups needs to happen WITH them instead of ON them.  This statement made me think of Ann’s research and how she is going to great lengths to do the work WITH others.

This made me think of Reading Recovery “CDA can be sued to trace changes in discourse patterns over time and across contexts – changes that we might refer to as learning”…as the discourse patterns of both the child and teacher change over time in RR.

Data:

                For my data project, I would like to analyze a Reading Recovery lesson.  It is an old video (4 or 5 years), but is really interesting.    The little boy I taught had really severe speech articulation issues, and he and I constantly had to work to communicate.    I taped him often during his lesson series, because I was trying to find “the way in” to teach him to read and write. I would watch the videos and share them with his classroom teacher, who was also trying to figure him out.   Luckily, this little boy was a motivated and capable learner who took an active role in learning to be literate.  I have watched it so many times because he is just so fascinating to me.  I would like to look at it through another lens and feel like it would be an appropriate piece of data for this project.   

                For the text piece, there was a recently written newspaper article on the Reading Recovery program in Savannah, GA.  I thought it would be good since it is on the same topic and is recent.

 

DA Blog post for 8.22.13 - Words and Minds - Mercer

Discourse Analysis

8.20.13

Words and Minds – Neil Mercer

            I am not sure where to start talking about this book…I loved it, and have recommended it to several people I work with.  It is completely connected to both of my research interests of teacher/student interaction and teacher professional development.

            This quote on page 6 was one I underlined … “Language is designed for doing something much more interesting than transmitting information accurately from one brain to another: it allows the mental resources of individuals to combine in a collective, communicative intelligence which enables people to make better sense of the world and to devise practical ways of dealing with it.”  This made me think of what we are trying to accomplish in Reading Recovery – with students and with teachers.  In lessons with students, the teacher and student engage in literacy activities (reading books, writing stories, manipulating letters to make words).  There is a great deal of conversation about the text being constructed and about the actions required to do the construction.  RR students are invited into a new literate world by the teacher, and they learn to engage in a new medium.  In Reading Recovery professional development, teachers think and talk about a student and teacher as they engage in a live lesson.  Together, the teachers are trying to make sense of what they see the student doing, how the teacher is instructing, and what else might be tried.   In both kinds of interactions (student/teacher, or teachers discussing) there is no direct “transmission” … the power in what is happening lies in the interaction of all those involved.  The term “interthinking” is perfect for describing what occurs in Reading Recovery interactions – “joint, co-ordinated intellectual activity which people regularly accomplish using language” (p.17).   The term “cumulative talk” also connects to these interactions, particularly those between teachers (p. 31).  In their conversations behind the one way mirror, the teachers try to make sense of what is occurring in the lesson by building “on each other’s contributions, add(ing) information of their own, and in a mutually supportive, uncritical way construct shared knowledge and understanding” (p.31).   In my experience, it takes a while for teachers to come to this point where they are sharing and building on talk of one another.  And, over time as teachers become more comfortable with one another, there is a “criticalness” that begins – not in a bad way, but in a supportive way.  Teachers become better practitioners when they have honest conversations about teaching interactions and think through the results of their teaching decisions.  Sometimes, this involves a “critical” comment from a peer. 

            The section on “The Given and the New” was particularly interesting for thinking through Reading Recovery student/teacher interactions.  Clay, the creator of Reading Recovery, talked a great deal about helping to connect new information to known information.  The entire lesson structure/procedures is built upon this premise. The student reads familiar books first in the lesson and gradually builds to a new book at the end of the lesson.  When working with words and letters, new letters are introduced in an array of known letters.  New words are built from the base of known letters.  This is very empowering for struggling readers, who often experience everything as NEW and have become passive learners because of the overwhelming nature of so much new.  Over time, students begin to look at new info and think, “What do I know about this?”.  Most of the time, there is ‘known’ within the ‘new’.  In RR, we do “recaps”, “elicitations”, “repetitions”, “reformulations”, and “exhortations” (p. 52-55) – we try to think through the HOW something is done, rather than just the WHAT of doing (p. 55). 

            I underlined this quote on page 60 – “ A third way in which we create community is by creating grammatical links between phrases or sentences, so that the meaning of a long stretch of language is achieved by the relationship between these smaller units, and not just the meaning and organization of words within them”.   Though I know the author means this is a completely different way, it reminded me of what we do in lessons with kids to help them control new language patterns.  Often, kids come into RR with home language that is very different from “book language”.  I haven’t met a 6 year old struggling reader who says “What shall we do?” and yet, they are confronted with that kind of language in early reader text.   We do a great deal of language rehearsal in RR so the child can begin to control the language orally before they are expected to pick it up from the print.  We also chose books to build on patterns.  If “Here comes” is a new phrase for a child, we pick books that have that phrase. Each book the child reads in the lesson has that phrase so that it becomes familiar, controlled, and understood.  In this way, the new becomes the given and the child is able to move on to other unfamiliar phrases.   I like the quote by Bakhtin (p. 66) – “we do not learn words from dictionaries, we take them from other people’s mouths”.  This is absolutely what we are doing with RR kids by introducing them to new book structures.

            On page 98, the author discusses “exploratory talk” – “that in which partners engage critically but constructively with each other’s ideas.  Relevant information is offered for joint consideration.  Proposals may be challenged and counter-challenged, but if no reasons are given and alternatives are offered.  Agreement is sought as a basis for joint progress.  Knowledge is made publically accountable and reasoning is visible in the talk”.   Reading Recovery talk among teachers (and sometimes students) involves exploratory talk too.  Teachers are often asked questions about why they made a particular decision and they are asked to provide their rationale.  Teachers may explore a particular line of thought and find evidence in the actions of the student, and then may consider an alternative explanation and find evidence to support that view point.   This quote connects too (p.99) “In exploratory talk, control is a matter of constant negotiation, as speakers offer contributions which may, if partners are persuaded, determine the subsequent direction of collective thinking.”   This happens in conversations behind the glass – teachers argue and support their arguments, teachers disagree, and teachers are challenged.  Out of these arguments come new understandings.  More is said about exploratory talk on pages 102 and 103 – “a dialogue happens in which differences are treated explicitly, as matters for mutual exploration, reasoned evaluation and resolution.  To engage in exploratory talk, with its explicit reasons, criticisms and evaluations, participants must not be primarily concerned with protecting their individual or joint identities and interests, but instead with discovering new and better ways of jointly making sense.”

            The section on Community also describes RR (p. 106).  The resources the author describes are available within the RR community – a history, a collective identity (local, national, international), reciprocal obligations, discourse (“technical language … is of immense value to people who share the relevant knowledge” – p. 108)).   The discussion of Communities of practice (p. 116) was a nice review.  On page 117, the author talks about how new members are “apprenticed” into the community by exposure to models and their use of the technical discourse.  This happens for both RR teachers and children.

            I will post this now, and may post more about Development through Dialogue later!

ATLAS

Because I was familiar with ATLAS from the Advanced Qualitative Research class, working with it again in this class was not a problem.  I enjoyed exploring Atlas again as I worked on my second Skill - builder, using ATLAS ti to conduct a literature review.  Because of this opportunity to interact again with ATLAS, I solidified my previous understandings and developed new ones.  I want to use Atlas to organize my resources and projects in other classes in the fall.  The experience was great with Atlas.  We helped one another in class, and we had Ann to consult with if we had major issues.  I think it was important to have both the expectation to use Atlas and the support with Atlas.

Last blog post for Digital Tools 8.6.13

 

Reading Reflections:

PLD – Chapter 9: Writing and Representing Findings

            This class, and especially this text has given me lots of new ideas to consider.  I use PowerPoint often, and have used it to think through an organizational project for a paper, but I’d never considered it the way the authors describe.  Love the example of the virtual prison.   I am looking forward to Doug’s presentation tonight to talk about Scrivener.  It looks really useful.  It sounded a lot like ATLAS, in terms of how you can house lots of data sources.  The difference to me seemed the ability to capture web data.  I am sure it will all become clearer after class tonight.

            I think it is interesting that the authors talk about researchers being hesitant to experiment with alternative or public forms of research.  I can most certainly understand that.  It reminds me of what you said about waiting until you had gotten tenure.

            I am wondering about the referenced “public performance” of Lester and Gabriel’s research.  What was that?

            I absolutely loved reading about the young adult novels that are written, crafted, and constructed using multi media.  I think so many more kids would come to text if there were a variety of ways to interact.  I think texting has done so much to bring kids into literacy. We, as educators, need to use the tools they value instead of trying to have them value the tools we value.

            P. 19 – What are “unperformed performative texts?”

            I looked at Wesch’s you tube videos on digital ethnography.  Very interesting.   I didn’t have a chance too, but I would like to look at the 1000 Voices project and Singapore Dreaming too.   I did look at Rebecca William’s Prezi.

            I like the sentence near the conclusion of the chapter – “Because paper-based journals are rarely read outside of academia, there is no need to re-examine how we invite the larger populace to make sense of and engage with our research findings.”

 

Woo – Engaging new audiences: translating research into popular media

            This article was very thought provoking, and made me consider how I might attend to crafting a presentation of findings to particular audiences.   I have thought about this, obviously, with papers – writing to professors, writing to friends, etc.  But, I haven’t thought about research findings and how to reach a wider audience.

            Woo makes some really good points in this article – on page 324 she says “ It was important to us not to scare away mainstream audiences, who might balk at any hint of intellectual heaviness in a medium that they normally associated with entertainment.”  I think there is this uncomfortable distance between theorists and practitioners.  Theorists don’t value the practitioners (and see their work as less worthy) and practitioners don’t see the relevance of the work theorists do.  We had this conversation in DP about teachers not reading research, and I think that is very true for a number of reasons. The most important reason, is due to all the tasks they are juggling. I know many, many, excellent and dedicated teachers who work from the crack of dawn until late in the evening (maybe slightly martyrish) planning lessons, writing I.E.P. plans, attending parent conferences, preparing for evaluations, buying heaters for kids homes (I could go on and on here) … they might have the best of intentions to be up on the research, but it is lower on the totem pole of responsibilities of many of their tasks.  I think teachers can come part ways, but so too, can researchers.   Perhaps if researchers considered their audiences more, and considered what they want to accomplish with the research (“if the aim of research was to effect social change”) we wouldn’t have a 50 year gap between educational “research” best practices and classroom practices (this is the gap Allington estimates).

            Clay bridged the gap with her work in Reading Recovery.  Her dissertation question asked how early it could be determined that students’ literacy learning was going astray.  When she determined, through hundreds of observations, that you could see students falling off after one year of instruction, she was encouraged to design an intervention to cope with that “going astray-ness”.  She once again observed lessons – only this time focusing on proficient readers.  What were they doing strategically that “poor” readers weren’t?  After those observations, and in concert with educational practitioners, she designed Reading Recovery.  Millions of kids across the world have benefitted from her ability to link theory and practice. 

            I appreciated this quote too … “I am always puzzled to read in the press how much more weight people seem to afford to corporate leaders’ opinions than to the opinions of educators when it comes to education policy”.  That is SO true!   People who haven’t set foot in a school since they attended, taught a child to read, or ridden a school bus are “experts” on education and know how to reform it.  I get so tired of all the talk from people who have no idea what schools are like now.

 

Class Reflections:

I enjoyed listening to Doug talk about Scrivener.  Seeing examples through his dissertation was more helpful than just reading about it in text.

I loved the 200 countries in 200 years and Ann’s documentary.  There is so much potential in using alternative methods of displaying and presenting information to reach wider audiences.  

I completed my evaluations and offered thoughts about class there. This was a great class; I learned a lot and am open to working with many new tools that I was introduced to.  Thank you for all your feedback on blog posts and projects and for designing a great course.

 

Discursive Psychology Blog post for 8.6.13

 

 

Stokoe, Hepburn, Antaki - Beware the Loughborough School of social psychology (2012)

 

The examples in this article – of how Discursive Psychology can be helpful in practical settings, really rung true for me.  I especially connected with the example of working with clients in a residential setting.  The researchers were able to identify specific selections of talk that confused clients.  They were able to isolate the examples and present the information to the staff members in the hopes that their language could change and clearer communication with clients could take place.  

This is precisely the kind of thing we do in RR.  We use a one way mirror and conversation about talk to accomplish a similar goal.  We are looking at interaction and how the interaction impacts the child’s literacy processing.   Teachers often do the very same kinds of things as were described in this example – offering the child a choice between two books, and then after the child makes a choice, not really listening and instead making another comment or asking another question, so the child is then unsure of the choice.  When we do those sorts of things often, we do not contribute to the child being a facilitator of her own literacy development, we put the kid in a passive and receptive place instead of as an “actor’ which is our ultimate aim.

 

I see so many connections with DP and RR.  Writing the Lit Review paper will help me sort it out even more!

 

  

Attenborough and Stokoe (2012) - Student life, student identity, student experience

 

I really liked this article and thinking about how you can use really different data sources all dealing with the same topic, but different groups of people.  Have never considered a study organized that way!  And, who would have thought of using Marginalia to investigate student identity?  Makes perfect sense, but really novel.  It is also interesting to me that analysis of this sort - of bits of talk, the details of talk really do let you get to the bigger picture of something like identity.

 

A similar thing happens in Reading Recovery.  We look intently and describe the best we can, what we are observing with how a child is interacting with text and "performing literacy".   The specific interactions between teacher and student prompt discussion about bigger picture issues -like fluent reading, the development of phonological awareness, comprehension, and efficient searching through visual information.  Teachers take the happenings of a lesson and apply it to their own practice, their own interactions with students.

 

What the authors found in the data is really similar to what we talked about in class last week - that it isn't acceptable to identify your own strength...it isn't socially acceptable to brag or seem like you have a lot of knowledge.  So, we down play it or identify it in someone else.  I see the kind of minimizing and downplaying of the importance of tasks too.  I overhear conversations of the undergrads in my 430 class.  It is almost a "face saving" tactic in class I think.  When you don't really understand something, it is easier to say the task, or the article, or whatever is pointless than to say you don't get it.

Discursive Psychology Blog for 8.5.13

Lester and Paulus – Accountability in public displays of knowing in an undergraduate computer-mediated communication context

            I thought this article was interesting for a number of different reasons.  One, I have the students in my reading 430 class write reading reflections prior to each class.  These reflections have a very similar prompt.  I have asked them to share their reactions, beliefs, or experiences related to the topic.  I have found that they tend to write summary statements in academic prose instead of responding to the prompt.  I write back to each one of them, and I intentionally comment on the aspects of their writing that connect to the prompt.  It seems that over time, with this type of interaction and with me continuing to describe my expectations of the posts in class that the students begin to summarize less and connect more in the way I requested.   It would be very interesting to look at those posts and see if that is truly happening.  Talking about change again…. It would also be very interesting to see if similar script formulations, vague comments, and “I don’t know comments come up”.  Secondly, I found this interesting in thinking about RR training.  One of the things that makes it so challenging is that teachers do have to make their understandings public.  We discuss a great deal – both theory and practice as we watch behind the glass lessons. Teachers make statements about knowledge and are challenged to support them – even when they are novice in the intervention and haven’t much reading of theory or teaching of children under their belts (so to speak).  The concluding comments of the article made me consider this – the vulnerability of making your knowledge public.   

            In the article, you mentioned that you had only analyzed the blog posts and were using the other data in other projects.  What are those other projects?   

            I am also wondering why so few (2) extracts were included and discussed.  Was it due to limitations of/from the journal?  I thought those included were very demonstrative of a number of rhetorical devices, but was shocked when I read the Conclusion heading.  I was anticipating that more extracts would be discussed.

 

Varga & Paulus – Grieving online: Newcomers’ constructions of grief in an online support group

            Reading these articles has made me think about how I might want to investigate written talk … instead of naturally occurring talk.  There is a current debate in RR land right now.  Many trainers want to use more technology in the training and they are getting lots of push back from other trainers who don’t want to change the training model because it has been successful.  I remember doing gobs of reading on reading theory in training and then discussing those readings in small groups and in relation to live lessons.  I wonder how blogging prior to class could have contributed to my understanding…and I wonder if that is an experience that could be explored using discursive psychology.  Prior to reading these two articles, I hadn’t considered anything but naturally occurring talk.  But, now I am wondering if there is a different and equally interesting direction to take.

            I thought the paragraph explaining why you didn’t need approval or permission to have access to the data was important and interesting.  We’ve been talking about that so much in DT, it was nice to see an actual study addressing those issues.

            In the conclusion, when you are talking about future research, you talk about the experiences of lurkers in on-line grief forums and the possibility of doing more research on them.  Because they are lurkers…whose presence is somewhat invisible, how would you get access to them?  How would you go about investigating their experiences?  Seems like an interesting idea, but I was unsure how you would find them!

 

Canfield – Dissertation proposal: The discursive construction of language learning in multiuser virtual environments

 

            This proposal was the most difficult of the three (Price, Johnston, Canfield) for me to understand.   I am not sure if it was the writing style, or the content, or the fact that I am reading it last on a late Friday afternoon…

            I thought his definition of “research” was really interesting – “Research is in essence an exercise in (re)presenting reality (Potter, 1996) by producing constructions from a particular position.  This axiological stance turns away from foundationalist values of ‘validity, reliability, rules of evidence, and decision criteria’.  I believe that as I am actively engaged in the fabrication of the claims of this study, I can only offer one of a plethora of potential stances (Potter & Wetherell, 1987)”.  He goes on to say that “… all researchers, myself included, fundamentally traffic in versions of the world that are grounded in their own epistemic and ontological views (Edwards, 1997a, p.45).    I agree with much of what he said, but it read pretty radical!

            Canfield talks about interpretive repertoires, ideological dilemmas and subject positions (which I read/wrote about in my 1^st article critique) as tools within critical discursive psychology.  Those are not ONLY in CDP, correct? My article was not concerned with “critical” discursive psychology, but addressed those concepts.

            I thought he really spelled out his search process, his process of analysis and was most specific about how many related dissertations, articles, text etc. that he found as a result of his searching. He didn’t mention using a research journal or interacting with others as part of his study.  I am assuming that he didn’t engage in those aspects, or he would have mentioned them.

            I hope when he comes on Monday, that he will talk about how he includes artifacts in the environment as part of his “discourse”.  I wasn’t very clear on that.

 

Digital Tools Blog Post 8.2.13

Reading Reflections:

PLD: Chapter 8: Analyzing Image, Audio, and Video Data

             Whether I choose to look at RR TL Professional Development or teaching interactions between a Reading Recovery teacher and student, audio data will be important to me.  Last night in our DP class, J. Johnston discussed his choice to use audio instead of video and said, in essence, video was more intrusive than audio and could potential change the nature of the interactions between participants, and that using video comes with the assumption that you can capture it all.   Hearing his rationale and thinking through my potential studies in relation to his comments has made me think audio is probably the way to go for me.

            Also in DP, we’ve talked about how the data is actually the recording and NOT the transcript.  Joshua talked about listening to the recordings over and over so that he could make decisions about what to transcribe.  This will be very important for me in either study I decide to undertake.  On page 4 of the chapter, the authors say, “Analysis of recordings has typically, though not always, involved converting the media files into some form of textual representation (through transcription), and rarely, if ever, includes going back to the audio or video sources throughout the analysis process.”  Going back to the source will be part of my plan when I conduct my research.

            I don’t think I will use video as part of my study.  If focusing on RR teaching and lessons, the child would be a big part of the study, and I think it would be difficult to get permission to do a study with an already vulnerable ‘struggling’ reader. Also, I think the camera would be intrusive.  I have video-taped many lessons through the years (in an effort to improve my teaching) and kids have always been fascinated by the camera, often attending to it throughout the lesson instead of the books and writing they were meant to do.  Also, as Joshua mentioned last night, looking at the talk is interesting in and of itself.  Much can be learned from examining language interactions. Pictures might be interesting.  Pictures of the kid reading, writing, or working at the white board might be interesting.  Also, pics of kids and teachers working together – I am not sure though.  Parents and districts are pretty cautious when it comes to those things.

            On page 15, the authors talk about waveforms.  I have never even considered such a thing!  I can certainly see how that might be helpful in either of my studies – as it would capture nuances of sound – when there is laughter, or high/low volume of speech, etc.   In our behind the glass conversations, there are many moments of laughter, some silences when we are trying to figure out what is going on with a student, some excited talk etc.  These would be interesting to attend to, particularly if I use discourse analysis or discursive psychology.

            I don’t think that coding directly from media files would be appropriate for what I am interested in doing.  I want to think about the talk and what it is doing in the interactions.  I could make notes of what I am thinking as I am listening, but to really focus in on the interactions, I would need a careful transcript.

 Cidell – Content clouds as exploratory qualitative data analysis

            I have NEVER considered content clouds as part of an analysis, but it sounds really interesting. If I look at RR TL training, I could look at it at various regional training centers and use content clouds to compare language interactions across the 3 locations (we are back to the comparison thing again – leftover from DP class).  It is interesting to me to think about the differences in emphasis across the regions.  Different training centers, though all affiliated with RR, and bound by the same standards and guidelines, have slightly different emphasis in content.  I know our group at GSU tends to talk a great deal about language structure and how that impacts an emergent reader’s process.  In my experience in interacting with other TLs across the county, this is not an area of focus for them.   It is even possible to look at content in conversation from different parts of the world, as RR is implemented in NZ, Australia, England, Canada etc.   Including content clouds as part of the data might be a possibility!  This quote seems relevant, “… place matters: the same issue or topic is discussed and understood in different ways across the country and even across a region.”  In the article, they are talking about transportation, and green buildings, but the idea that talk changes from place to place certainly connects with RR training across the world.

Class Reflections:

            I enjoyed seeing Nalani’s demonstration of Dragon Dictate.  As I was watching this I was thinking of all the students I worked with who had reading and writing difficulties.  Had I had something like this in my classroom, I could have made writing much easier for them.  They could have dictated a story in writing that could have been transcribed and then they could have used that writing as reading material.  Considering the funds special education has, this would have been a rather inexpensive option.  I do think I would like to look into this for transcription – just to have another option. It would relieve me a bit with typing.

            Karen, digital Samantha, and I had good conversation and exploration of the content clouds, the meaning of the visual data around teaching on pinterest and listening and discussing the various soundscapes.  When we talked about how cloud contents could be used, Samantha thought about preliminary coding and Karen thought the actual image might be good to use in presentations or as part of a cover sheet for a project.

            I also appreciated the information on the audio/video data within Atlas.  I went to Ann’s workshop this summer, but having another pass with it was helpful.   It is pretty incredible that Atlas has the ability to allow for that much data storage and manipulation. I am becoming more and more comfortable with Atlas.