This thing goes here!

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square tiles with shapes insideThis is an attempt to position myself in my field of study. As a ‘thing’, my thoughts and conceptions need to be connected and placed in relationship to other thoughts and theories. Not as an oval peg needs to be re-created in order to fit into a round hole as Pratt (2008) would suggest, but as a round peg fitting into a square hole. As I locate myself within research – ontologies, epistemologies, current researchers, methodologies, methods and production – it’s an attempt to find my fit, look for gaps, as well as create gaps. This is what it means to get positioned.

There are tensions within this positioning and in the forced relationship, but it needs to be done. In the end, it can be, as Dr. Amy Farrell Morneau noted in class, a way to find a novel way of doing things and that’s okay! I need to discover where to say, NO – this theory or methodology doesn’t fit for me, it won’t help me make sense of what I’m hoping to research, it can’t get me closer to understanding the core beliefs about where my research is located. But, it’s equally important, as Pratt (2008) contends, to be okay in the tension between qualitative and quantitative research, between story and study. It doesn’t need to “be an issue of ‘either or’, but an issue of ‘both-and'” (p. 505).

When I first read the article by Pratt (2008) Fitting Oval Pegs Into Round Holes, I was adamantly against the need to ‘fit’. I contest the inherent power structures of publication metrics as a measure of valid academic ‘labour’. I oppose the very idea of adapting qualitative work into the framework of quantifiable, sequenced and tightly framed writing formats. But when it comes to sharing my academic voice, there needs to be a balance to consider – publish and be published means fitting the writing to the audience, as Greer suggests, using ethos, pathos, and logos. Ideas worth building on.

I spent the afternoon digging into ontology, epistemology, theories and theorists in order to formulate a genealogy or history of theorists that have influenced my thinking. Although this list is not complete an is in a DRAFT mode, it is a beginning from which I can build.

    1. Socio-constructionist ontology
      1. Not techno-utopianism or Techno-determinism but rather socially constructing objects and artifacts on which to converse and reflect
    2. Epistemology
      1. Constructivism – Piaget;
      2. Socio-historical Constructivism – activity theory Vygotzky
      3. Constructionism – Seymour Papert
      4. Situated cognition – Brown, Collins, & Duguid, 1989;
      5. communities of practice – Lave & Wenger
      6. Connectivism – Seimens, Downes

Frameworks

    1. Networked participatory cultures – Mimi Ito, dayna boyd, Henry Jenkins, Sherry Turkle
    2. Semiotics – Roland Barthes – signs, signifiers, affordances
    3. Affinity Spaces – James Paul Gee – semi structured, osmotic spaces, identity structures
    4. Campfires in Cyperspace – David Thornburg; campfire, watering hole, cave metaphors

References

Greer, R. R. (2011). Reporting results to a skeptical audience: A case study on incorporating persuasive strategies in assessment reports. The American Review of Public Administration, 41(5), 577-591.

Pratt, M. G. (2008). Fitting oval pegs into round holes: Tensions in evaluating and publishing qualitative research in top-tier North American journals. Organizational Research Methods, 11(3), 481-509.

Image attribution: Photo by John Moeses Bauan on Unsplash