Lancaster PhD – Page 29 – Silence and Voice

Why Do Theoretical Foundations Not Require Evidence?

I am now on to reading some of Donald Schon’s work, specifically the first chapter from his Educating the Reflective Practitioner: Toward a New Design for Teaching and Learning in the Professions. I have liked his work for some time, though have never read it, per se, for a class.

I am starting to wonder how people such as Schon, Wenger, Foucault, or Ortega y Gasset conceptualize or theorize about the world and how we make meaning out of it, and then the rest of us who engage in research rely on them for guiding frameworks and theoretical foundations? Few of that class of thinker provides much research-based evidence for their work, though in some way they get tapped to be quoted without their having to support their work in the same way that one who writes for peer review needs to do. While we can point to some being philosophers (and thus there is the result), I am not sure that Wenger or Schon would ordinarily fit into that classification.

I wonder if there is anything that explains how or why that happens?

Ortega y Gasset and Pragmatism as an Episode of Constructivism

Still reading the Cook and Brown (1999) Bridging epistemologies article from yeseterday. Would have gotten it completed today (even though I taught at Pace University in the Doctor of Nursing Practice Program today, where I am co-teaching NURS 840: Teaching and Learning in Advanced Practice Nursing), but I had a request for more revisions for an article that is scheduled to be published later this year. The problem—the revisions are a RUSH, and due by Sunday.

Farewell weekend 🙁

Anyway, one of the items in Cook and Brown is their assessment of interaction with the social and physical worlds comes from Jose Ortega y Gasset, one of many great thinkers I have never read (though I did just order his book of essays, History as a System, after the authors made several references to it). I was particularly touched with this:

Ortega abandoned the frame of the abstracted, analytic thinking self and throughout his work approached questions of epistemology, action, etc. from the perspective of ‘myself within this context.” For Ortega, what we can know and what we can do are not discoverable through an abstract Cartesian though experiment, but are products of ongoing concrete interaction between “myself” (or “ourselves”) and the specifics of the social and physical “context” or “circumstances” we are in at any given time (p. 389).

I really like the emphasis on the individual bringing meaning to this or that experience based on the context, and while this is generally considered American Pragmatism, I am now wondering if pragmatism is merely another frame of constructivism, just captured in time? In another way, is pragmatism an episode of constructivism?

Quote interesting this writing about my doctoral studies each day . . .

Bridging Epistemologies

I am reading what is turning out to be a more interesting article than I thought from its somewhat misleading title:

Cook, S. D. N., & Brown, J. S. (1999). Bridging epistemologies: The generative dance between organizational knowledge and organizational knowing. Organization Science, 10(4), 381-400.

I am now struggling to understand their model of knowledge and knowing:

Next Research Project Ideas

This is my first foray into sharing my doctoral journey, specifically through my decision to share my 5-10 minutes a day of writing about my process and thinking as per my program’s recommendations in our current module (and which I discussed here and here). I hope that reflecting aloud may be helpful for others who are considering this for themselves—either as a model for what can be done, or as a suggestion for what to avoid (the challenges or the process of sharing here itself).

I have to begin thinking about my research ideas for this module, which is entitled Development of Professional Practice. I really like this concept, and think it is more than fitting that I am developing this practice, and exploring it in my own life, here, where my colleagues (both current and future) can join me on the journey.

As I am beginning to formulate my ideas for this mini-project (around 3800 words, +/- 10%), I am going to consider some of the concepts that interest me, as I think some brainstorming is in order:

identity and learning
autoethnographic inquiry (both as a researcher and as studied in others who engage in this)
exploring various personal identities, and the transition from one to another
transformative learning
reflective practice related to constructivist / critical frameworks
individual identity development and self-definition within communities of practice
juggling of identities as a process of personal learning

Will have to play around with these, and see what feedback my cohort offers.

PhD Process Reflections

I have received such helpful feedback based on my posting yesterday, “Reflective Journal for My Doctoral Studies – Do It Online?,” that I think I shall begin, somewhat carefully, sharing my daily thoughts about my journey through the process (or at least the current module). I will try to do this with political care (not mentioning colleagues by name, not giving away everything in the program, etc.) that will focus on my own developing thoughts in this process, rather than the process itself.

Of course, writing as if some of this can be considered independently is ridiculous; that is one of the things I am noticing based on our intense reading of some of Wenger and Lave’s earlier works around social learning / networked learning / communities of practice. In some ways this all makes a lot of sense, in that the very process of thinking about even writing about this publicly, with my own community’s feedback and guidance, is part of the process itself.