Representing Reality in the Social Studies of Science

Potter, J. (1996) Representing reality: discourse, rhetoric and social construction. London, Sage.

Science would like you to think "that everyone's knowledge claims are assessed by essentially the same impersonal criteria" which lends to the idea that "scientific status is gained through merit rather than patronage or social position." (18)

Riiiight.

I like Potter's  (well, Collins', really) example of the gravity-wave controversy as a confirmation of Rorty's formulation that: "no interesting epistemological difference could be identified between the pursuit of knowledge and the pursuit of power." (36) Science is constructed.

As it is constructed by humans situated within unique social realities, scientific inquiry will result in "homologies between the structure of knowledge and the structure of society", meaning that scientists "will be literally rediscovering or redescribing the structure of their society in their test-tubes and cloud chambers." (38) Scientists "are also involved in processes of selective ironization and reification as they assemble an account" (39).

I'm thinking it might be a good idea to delve into the history of efficacy studies in CALL and link it up to
Potter's argument on interest theory.....

Lego Therapy for Undergrads!

Now THIS is a midterm.

#BSawhill needs to be cloned and injected into about 5 or 6 disciplines that I can think of off the top of my head...

Literature Review: To ti or not to ti?

I'm torn.

I have to admit to LOVING having scanned everything I am reading for lit. review / dissertation. Using Acrobat, I can highlight, add notes, have searchable text, and my scribblings can be immortalized in my PDF and tucked away nicely in Mendeley, searchable and all!

BUUUUT.....

I can't really synthesize anything beyond that, which I find VERY annoying. There is no way I am going to keep links I saw, gaps I realized, etc. straight in my dysfunctional brain.

I am going to credit J.L. for giving me the novel-to-me thought of the potential of using Atlas.ti for facilitating the lit. review process. I don't remember whether she was explicit about it or whether I just noticed it as she was taking us through her data, but it led me to feed "literature review in atlas.ti" into the gaping jaws of the Google, which then gave me this article straight from Atlas.ti, as well as this PDF on using NVIVO for the lit. review. I agree with the premise that the act of formulating arguments and research questions from a body of literature mirrors the qualitative data analysis process. You read, reflect, and  interact with the literature, identify themes, compare and contrast ideas and strands from different works, and construct arguments with links to supporting evidence in the literature. What's not to love?

Thinking that I had just made my life infinitely easier, I plugged a PDF into Atlas.ti. I was excited when I saw my highlights made in Acrobat show up on the PDF in Atlas.ti...then less excited when I noticed that my embedded notes did not make the cut on the import. Then, I got to thinking about all of this wonderful mental light that would play colorfully upon these documents, and how I was going to save it in something like Mendeley...Holy qualitative quandry, how AM I going to export ANY of this into something durable?

Now what do I do?
What would you do?
What do you think?

J'aime la groupie du technologue

I am fortunate beyond words. Ma chérie amour is not just out of my league, but my galaxy. There's a Michel berger song for that:

 

I have gone from thinking "mais Dieu que cette fille prend des risques...amoureuse d'un égoïste" to realizing that "elle m'aime, elle m'adore. Plus que tout elle m'aime, c'est beau comme elle m'aime." I know that "elle me suivrait jusqu'en enfer et même l'enfer, c'est pas grand-chose". I look at the track of 15 years and learning how to dance everything from a pas de deux to a pas de neuf, and I can't wait to see that the next 35 bring!

Exercises de style...version 80s

Phil:

Look at me, you never look at me,
Ooh, I've been sitting, staring, seems so long.
But you're looking through me
Like I wasn't here at all.
No reply, there's no reply at all.


Bill:

If I looked all over the world
And there's ev'ry type of girl
But your empty eyes seem to pass me by
And leave me dancin' with myself.

Saldaña 4-5

Resonant Saldaña quotes in 4-5:

"Second Cycle coding methods, if needed, are advanced ways of reorganizing and reanalyzing data coded through First Cycle methods." (So when would second cycle coding NOT be needed?)

"Pattern Coding develops the "meta-code" -the category label that identifies similarly coded data. Pattern Codes not only organize the corpus but attempt to attribute meaning to that organization."

"Sometimes we become overwhelmed by the magnitude ofour studies and thus need to intentionally focus the parameters of our investigation in progress to find its core. Forcing yourself to select a limited number of various ideas that have emerged from your study encourages you to prioritize the multiple observations and reflect on their essential meanings."

Codeweaving "as a heuristic to explore the possible and plausible interaction and interplay of your major codes."

"...rest assured that discussing one thing at a time keeps you focused as a writer, and keeps us focused as readers. After you've discussed each element separately, then you can begin your reflections on how these items may connect and weave complexly together."

More Saldaña

Saldaña, Jonny (2009). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. London: Sage. (chs. 1 and 2)

I liked Saldaña's description of the "reverberative nature of coding"...the idea that "the qualitative analytic process is cyclical rather than linear." (45) I liked that Saldaña embraces almost a play with coding but at the same time eschews "employing too many methods for one study (such as ten First Cycle coding methods) or integrating incompatible methods." (47)

Is this why I am having trouble with coding? Saldaña mentions that "some research genres, such as discourse analysis, may not employ coding at all but rely instead on detailed transcription notation and extensive analytic memos about the data", yet I think that even DA and CA folk would admit to coding, would they not? Perhaps for different reasons and as a means to zero in on things, perhaps?

And I CAN "develop new or hybrid coding methods or adapt existing schemes, customized to suit the unique needs and disciplinary concerns of [my] study. (60) But perhaps when I get my "sea legs".

Perhaps now just a few shout-outs for what I liked/thought made sense. We could work on any of these I liked...not so much the ones toward the end of First Cycle:

 

FIRST CYCLE CODING METHODS

• Grammatical Methods
  
  • Attribute Coding (as a management technique as Saldaña suggests)
• Elemental Methods (many seem to come fron GT)
  
  • Structural Coding (because if you have a structure to apply, this would make a versatile template, no?)
  • Descriptive Coding (easy to conflate these two...I may use them too interchangeably, but I think the essence behind them is a good template for any similar approach)
  • In Vivo Coding...was shocked last semester to see that this sprung from GT, because I felt it liberating to use in ethnography.
• Affective Methods (for the most part I am uncomfortable with these because I think they are too tricky to use...ethically is not the word I want, but effectively as a good researcher, but I find that...)
  
  • Versus Coding (may be useful for DP because you can identify discourse that form mutually exclusive divisions, the necessary binaries for the type of deconstruction DP is good at.)
• Literary and Language Methods (not feeling anything here)
  
• Exploratory Methods (I thought maybe Holistic Coding, but the others seem so quantitative to me, I decided to stick to the elementals...
• Procedural Methods (Procedural coding methods are prescriptive. 'nuff said.)

 

SECOND CYCLE CODING METHODS

"advanced ways of reorganizing and reanalyzing data coded through First Cycle methods"

• Pattern Coding ("They are a sort of meta-code." Could be used to discuss what discourse is doing. Could be helpful!)

 

Helpful nuggets of wisdom from Saldaña:

The "top ten" list: would thiese be what I ultimately "go Jeffersonian" on?

"If you find yourself unable to start at the beginning, then begin with the conclusion"

"You can't see the frame when you're in the picture."