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Brinkmann and Kvale (2010) posit these 10 criticisms of the qualitative research interview in their text, InterViews: Learning the Craft of Qualitative Interviews.  

The qualitative research interview is NOT:

1. scientific, but only reflects commons sense. 
2. quantitative, but only qualitative. 
3. objective, but subjective. 
4. scientific hypothesis testing, but only explorative. 
5. a scientific method, because it is too person dependent. 
6. trustworthy, but biased. 
7. reliable, because it rests on leading questions. 
8. intersubjective, because different readers find different meanings. 
9. valid, as it relies on subjective impressions. 
10. generalizable, because there are too few subject. 

Kvale, S., & Brinkmann, S. (2009). Learning the craft of qualitative research interviewing. Thousands Oaks: Sage Publications.

A few choice nuggets from Jay Lemke's 2000 article, Across the Scales of Time: Artifacts, Activities, and Social Meanings in Ecological Systems:

“We might say that it is a semiotic articulation of a person’s evaluative stance toward interactions.” (p. 283)

“Our ontogeny recapitulates their phylogeny, up to a point. But only up to a point, and less so as developmental pathways come to be guided more by social interaction and culture-specific semiotic information supplied after birth.” (p. 284) ← Lemke probably won a bet with this one, “I’ll bet you can’t sneak ‘ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’ into a peer reviewed journal article.”

“...even take a reflective perspective in the activity and see our own role in it; that is, we can frame a separated “me” from the viewpoint of this new dynamical “I.” Reflexivity is itself an instance of heterochrony.” (p. 285)

“Traditional macrosociology has resorted, after the manner of Latour’s “centers of calculation,” to assembling statistical data and to recognizing that it does so in a positioned way.” (p. 288).

Should anyone still be ignorant as to the reason of the perpetual divide between educational researcher and education practitioner?  

I’d be hard pressed to find a single classroom teacher that would make it through the first two pages.  Consequently, I’ll summarize the entire piece for the layman before proceeding:

The human experience exists of multiple and intertwined systems which interact over differing timescales.  

Done.  And, you're welcome. 

The idea to consider time scales across ecosocial systems is an extension - or variation on the work of Karl Weick presented in his piece, Educational Organizations as Loosely Coupled systems, published in 1979.  Lemke, however, approaches the loose coupling of systems from a chronological perspective rather than from an organizational one.  The end result is the same:  Education is complex and there is no way - seemingly - to be able to anticipate or account for all interactions.  Lemke (2010) states, “We cannot study such a system from more than a few of the many viewpoints within it, and we honestly do not expect all these viewpoints to fit consistently together.” (p. 288) whereas Weick asserts, “Loosely coupled worlds do not look as if they would provide an individual many resources for sense making…” (p. 13) which is to say that indirect parts of a system are extremely challenging to understand.  

The adiabatic principle and heterochrony are fancy ways of communicating something that most educators who have been in the classroom for any significant period of time understand instinctively: Sometimes the things we do in the short term have little to no consequence on the long term (adiabatic principle), and sometimes long-time established (or large scale) issues have immediate impact on the short-term (heterochrony).  An example to the former would be an explanation or instruction given by a teacher which - for whatever reason - does not result in consequential learning by a student, and in the former a large system reform which requires changes in pedagogy.

The application to the educator is that one must seek awareness of both the small and short scale events as well as the large and longer term events and consider their impact on the learning of an individual.  Simultaneously, the educator must also consider how these events act in systems - both as parts of smaller systems themselves, but also as parts of larger systems.   In the case of the classroom teacher, the chief concerns are the events and systems operating most directly on the student.  

With my own PoP, the aforementioned example of heterochrony is apt.   The NGSS is a large scale reform, expected to have both far-reaching and long-term consequences.  The standards, themselves, though are such that adherence to the intent of the NGSS has immediate consequence for pedagogy (heterochrony).   Which is the entire reason why it is a problem in the first place:  while most educators have no problem with the long-scale shift towards inquiry based teaching, more concept-based and skills-based learning and assessment, in the short-term, they are faced with significant challenges to what they are already doing in the classroom.

Lemke, J. L. (2000). Across the scales of time: Artifacts, activities, and meaning in ecosocial systems. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 7(4), 273-290.

​Weick, K. E. (1976). Educational organizations as loosely coupled systems. Administrative science quarterly, 1-19.

Consequently, any change seen in student performance data over the course of one year may very well be the result of cultural, attitude, or other shifts within the environment, not necessary a direct result of a curricular change.  To gauge the overall value of a curricular change, one would have examine students pre- and post- k-12 schooling - a period of at least 12 years - and would also need to have a control group of ‘old curriculum’ students assessed in the same time period.

Sadly - as many teachers would be quick to tell you - educational reforms tend, themselves, to have a lifespan shorter than 12 years.  Those ideas which were at once seen to be the next greatest idea in improving standards, personalizing learning, incorporating technology, and increasing academic achievement are quickly replaced by the next best idea.  To the educator, it seems as though a few basic ideas have been recirculated and regurgitated with new vocabulary every so many years, as the next generation of doctorates and educational researchers find their voice.

This vicious cycle stemming from the mismatch of the 12 or 13 year education span of k-12 students, and the successions of repackaged and regurgitated education reforms, speaks at once to both the challenges of chronology in education as well as the systems nature of education.  Indeed, education an endeavor which must consider both the time spans upon which it exists, and also the multitude of systems in which it is intertwined.    ​​

Firstly, Mertens piece is one of the general nature of paradigms, and they aspects of those paradigms which we might consider.   For each of the four paradigms presented, Mertens identifies and describes the epistemological, ontological, axiological and methodological roots.  These terms represent the nature of knowledge, reality, ethics, and procedural components of the paradigms.  While he explains in some detail each of these four characteristics, I appreciate particularly the table he has provided which concisely summarizes each.  In a very generalized way, one is lead to feel that as one shifts from positivism, to constructivism, to transformative and them pragmatic, there is a gradual shift away from the paradigms and methods of what would be known as the ‘hard sciences’.   This is to say that post-positivism takes a stance more similar to that of the hard science (and Mertens alludes to this with a discussion of aristotle and others) where all of reality can be known and defined precisely, whereas transformative positions itself such that reality is mostly relativistic.  

The second takeaway from the reading was way each aspect of the paradigms were intrinsically connected.  That is to say, one could not take the ontology of postpositivism and interchange it with that of the pragmatic paradigm, for in doing so each of the other aspects epistemology, methodology, etc. would also change.    Consequently, a research is pressed to understand the paradigm through with they are pursuing their study because it will have an affect on nearly all aspects of their research.

The third key point was, specifically, the importance placed on ethical considerations in each of the research paradigms.  Though the paradigms themselves may approach the ethical considerations in slightly different ways, it’s clear that the ethical considerations have a significant impact on the research design in each of the paradigms.  Mertens describes this specifically, but also alludes to the ethical nature or implications throughout the discussion on paradigms.

The challenge to teachers (and to researchers) is to take that which is at once obvious and undeniably true - that each student is unique and brings a singularly unique experience, disposition and set of their own systems belongs into interaction - and construct a new system which honors the uniqueness of the parts, but still remains a broadly applicable system itself.   This challenge is multiplied by the general tendency of political systems to group and categories constituents, and develop top-down approaches which can be legislated in expedient manner.    

Cilliers, Garcia and Lee would likely concur that any system developed need be flexible, and take into consideration the multitude and diverse factors influencing the process of learning for each individual.  This is, at it’s core, the idea of personalized learning which - with the increasing capabilities accessible through digital platforms - is gaining increased attention.  The personalized learning movement has as one of its underlying beliefs, that every student is capable of learning, that if children’s unique dispositions are valued and encouraged, they will all attain high levels of achievement.  This growth-mindset orientation is the opposite end of the spectrum of the deficit mindset orientation.  Some argue that with the increased access to technology - which allows for greater access to a more diverse set of resources, and adaptive technologies - the dawn of a truly personalized learning experience is upon us.  Of course, in this context, the access to and student’s literacy of the digital platform becomes one more facet to consider in the understanding of intersectionality.  

Cilliers, P. (2001). Boundaries, hierarchies and networks in complex systems. International Journal of Innovation Management, 5(2),135–147.

Garcia, S.B. & Ortiz, A.A. (2013). Intersectionality as a framework for transformative research in special education. Multiple Voices for Ethnically Diverse Exceptional Learners, 13(2), 32-47.

Lee, C (2010). Soaring above the clouds, delving the ocean's depths: Understanding the ecologies of human learning and the challenge for education science, Educational Researcher, 39, 743- 755. DOI: 10.3102/0013189X10392139

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