Discuss whether the
authors’ depiction of inquiry jibes with your understandings of how social
science research works
9 comments:
Andrea Woodard
said...
I did find Biesta and Burbules’ discussion of the process of inquiry to reflect what I know about problem-solving as well as the scientific method. While reading I felt that some of the language was overly complicated to describe something that is usually already well-known to the reader of such a text. However, the insights provided on Dewey’s views of both the process and the terminology did seem new to me. Several of the ideas that stood out as important include: -- When the conceptual operations (theorizing/reasoning) do what they ought to do to the existential operations (the actual transformation through research), the inquiry can be called a successfully warranted assertion (p. 65). "Truth" is not a meaningful term when discussing the result of inquiry, and "knowledge" is just a confusing idea within pragmatism. -- Intelligent action in the social domain must take into account the subjective nature of human action and relationships because social "facts" do not exist independently of the humans and their relationships and purposes (p. 77-78). -- Educational practice is pivotal to educational research because it is the source of the problems to be researched and also the final test of the effectiveness of our warranted assertions (p. 79).
It seems that Dewey does make a dichotomous distinction between existential operations and conceptual operations. How does this fit into his “blurred lines” personality? Does the text provide meaningful insight into the reason for such a distinction?
Dana Brookover- Much of this chapter resonated with my knowledge of educational/counseling research. Research should be transparent- systematic inquiry made public- and allow for others to replicate or expand on it, refute it, or take it in another direction. Research comes from the idea that: the "widest possible range of application is the means of deepest verification." It reminds me of reading I had for my Theories class about many psychoanalytics not wanting their theory to be put to the test in research studies.. how could their theory (conceptual operation) be tested without existential operation? Many time again we learn correlation does not equal causation, that a hypothesis cannot be "proven", etc., and this reading emphasized the same idea: "the more we can share in the experiences of others, the more resources we will have for dealing with our problems, and hence the more intelligent our collective problem solving will be (or at least can be)." It is about having examples of times when inference was warranted, having "intellectual instrumentalities" that can be used as "input" in new inquiries. Additionally, I liked how the chapter ended with stressing the importance of educators as researchers; this speaks to the need to connect practitioner and researcher to make research relevant. This article also suggests that an educational researcher will never be out of work!
Yingying: Dewey again made his argument that “knowledge” does not exist in the framework made by scientists but rather between human purpose and consequences, which lead to the points that educational practice is the “the beginning and close ” of all education inquiry and “the final test if value of the conclusions of all researches”. The message here is that the way we might know if research is valuable is through practices by practitioners and then act to the consequences. This also interesting supports what Dewey said: “the method of inquiry can only be criticized, improved and validated in and through the process of inquiry.” My question is, researches are often times made to generalize a piece of information or theory in order to apply to a larger population, yet education practices can be very different from one classroom to another classroom, from a student to another student, which requires that piece of “information” to be very small/specific. Is this really a conflict between research and practice?
Cat here: Biesta and Burbules correctly anticipated that their description of the process of inquiry (investigate the nature of the problem, try out a strategy, and so on) feels awfully familiar. But what feels unfamiliar is that the result of inquiry may not necessarily take us somewhere “else.” They write that “when the process of inquiry results in a warranted assertion, this assertion is not a description about how the world out there is, but is always a description of a relationship between our actions and their consequences” (bottom of p. 71). They describe a special temporality of knowledge (knowing?), which we started to discuss last week, but to me this also feels like a special locus of knowing.
Yingying brought up a great point about the compulsion to generalize. Could it be that language of social science research, particularly words/phrases such as “implications for further research” or “implications for practice,” are injecting a degree of humility? Is it enough?
A few years ago I was immersed in research on young people’s concepts of infinity. Some researchers attempted to structure a rudimentary stage theory (talk about generalizing!), but it simply didn’t hold water. It was as if their findings -and mind you they were really fascinating- couldn’t quite take them “beyond” their initial questioning.
Dewey describes inquiry as requiring action based in the practice of the social science, which jives with how I envision social science research. He also notes that researchers seek out indeterminate situations in order to advance the research, which fits for me. In a sense, this is how we’re developing our niche as experts.
I was struck by Dewey’s contention that the social scientist needed to be liberated, and in this way, help us to examine whether our chosen inquiry is leading us in a direction we want to proceed. We must begin with the end in mind, as my old supervisor would say!
I also enjoyed how Dewey stated that educational practice is “an art that can be informed by science, that is by the outcomes of educational inquiry.” Counseling lives in a gray area that is unique for each practitioner/client/setting/time period, and yet we strive to use evidence-based practices to be ethical and effective practitioners. I am concerned that some of the practices I use today, although evidence-based, may be shown in future to be detrimental or less than helpful (like debriefing after trauma in war vets). As Dewey says, there is no ‘there there’, no perfect state to arrive, just new unique problems to work on. I'm not sure if I'm applying this right, but I'm thinking that I am a product of my time, being embedded in a time-space continuum, and that's the best I can do?
Dana’s answer about bridging research between practitioner and researcher jives with how I view things as well. I wonder how Dewey would view collaboration and interaction of disciplines to define an inquiry and put it into action. I don't think it's reasonable anymore to say the practitioner acts alone, or perhaps, even that they should.
I really liked the explanation of inquiry vs. research, I think mostly because, in my mind, it is the things we are curious about that lead us to our research questions. According to Dewey, taking action on our curiosity, or hypotheses, allows them to become "warranted assertions" (p.68). Inquiry involves solving problems, while research seems to involve creating new knowledge (p. 57). I agree with Andrea about inquiry seeming to be strongly related to the scientific method. I also appreciated the viewpoint of the "educational practitioner" being "the central figure in the practice of education," as I feel this can be easily forgotten when research is concerned (p. 79). This statement reminded of the research-practitioner gap that we have discussed, and how easy it is for research to be conducted without actually considering the reality of the implementing the research findings in practice. I hope there are better strides made towards collaboration among researchers and practitioners, especially, in higher education, both of these are often demanded for educators.
Natural inquiry and social inquiry, the idea of how we know what know research or what to learn is an interesting topic. "The natural starting point for inquiry is the situation in which there are conflicting habits, the situation in which we do not know how to respond." (Biesta, 2003, p.58). Conceptually, what "distinguishes inquiry from trial and error is the fact that the transformation of the situation is controlled or directed by means of reflection or thinking." (Biesta, 2003, p.59). The existential meaning of inquiry about the fundamental connection between logic and inquiry is duality of sorts. The cloud/rain or smoke/fire logic example (p.62) of the presence of significance in inquiry shows the human connection between examples that are natural. Just because there is a cloud does not necessarily mean rain and and just because there's smoke doesn't mean there is fire but there is an existing relationship that requires further inquiry to find truth of matter. The ideas of meaning, verification and truth in context bring further philosophical thought. Verification meaning the activity of making something true (Dewey, 1907, p.66). Yet, Dewey reminds us to not forget the correspondence tween ideas and reality as functional correspondence.
So, do we have natural curiosity about ideas that would come about if we were lone beings? Or do the sparked curiosities of life result from social interaction? Need or necessity? Interesting debate.
Hi! Preeti Kamat here. The authors have provided greater insights into the realm of inquiry through this chapter. And yes, I found out that their depiction of inquiry is close to my understanding of how social science research works. Particularly, I would agree with the author on the following points: It has been possible to reduce the complexity of the subject matter of physical inquiry by separating it out from the influences of the wider sociopolitical context. A similar move with respect to social inquiry is impossible because that social inquiry has to do with social problems. If the social problems are separated from sociopolitical influences, they would immediately cease to exist. Hence the social domain is more complex than the domain of physical inquiry. Also it is interesting to note the crucial difference between the transaction of particles and transaction of human beings. Human beings respond to the meanings of the actions of their partners in interaction. Considering “the subjective nature of social facts” in social domain, I would also agree with Dewey’s argument that in genuine scientific inquiry the frame of reference is nothing more than a hypothesis, something that itself needs to be questioned and examined. I also liked the way Dana highlighted the authors’ point of view on the role of educators as investigators (researchers).
Andrea Moreau When looking at Dewey’s theory of inquiry and how it relates to social science research I found the notion that knowledge isn’t only acquired through the solution of problems. Dewey does explore how knowledge is gained through learning things you didn’t know before, but the author argues that is not the only way to gain knowledge. As the author states, “ we do learn something about the relationship between our actions and their consequences when we solve the problems we encounter in an active, experimental, and reflective manner” (Biesta and Burbules 67). What I take away from this quote is that knowledge is acquired just by the sheer act of inquiry. You do not need to find a solution to the problem in order to gain knowledge. This idea of knowledge accumulation reminds me of the process of scientific inquiry. The essence of research is to discover through a process answers to questions you do not know. More often than not, a researcher finds null results at the end of an experiment. Obviously, the research didn’t learn anything throughout the process. They gained knowledge of how an experiment didn’t work. While writing this blog post the Edison post keeps coming to mind, “I have not failed. I just found 10,000 ways it wouldn’t work”. I just love this quote because it is the essence of inquiry of knowledge. Just because a solution to the problem was not found over 10,000 times, doesn’t mean knowledge wasn’t gained during the process.
9 comments:
I did find Biesta and Burbules’ discussion of the process of inquiry to reflect what I know about problem-solving as well as the scientific method. While reading I felt that some of the language was overly complicated to describe something that is usually already well-known to the reader of such a text. However, the insights provided on Dewey’s views of both the process and the terminology did seem new to me. Several of the ideas that stood out as important include:
-- When the conceptual operations (theorizing/reasoning) do what they ought to do to the existential operations (the actual transformation through research), the inquiry can be called a successfully warranted assertion (p. 65). "Truth" is not a meaningful term when discussing the result of inquiry, and "knowledge" is just a confusing idea within pragmatism.
-- Intelligent action in the social domain must take into account the subjective nature of human action and relationships because social "facts" do not exist independently of the humans and their relationships and purposes (p. 77-78).
-- Educational practice is pivotal to educational research because it is the source of the problems to be researched and also the final test of the effectiveness of our warranted assertions (p. 79).
It seems that Dewey does make a dichotomous distinction between existential operations and conceptual operations. How does this fit into his “blurred lines” personality? Does the text provide meaningful insight into the reason for such a distinction?
Dana Brookover- Much of this chapter resonated with my knowledge of educational/counseling research. Research should be transparent- systematic inquiry made public- and allow for others to replicate or expand on it, refute it, or take it in another direction. Research comes from the idea that: the "widest possible range of application is the means of deepest verification." It reminds me of reading I had for my Theories class about many psychoanalytics not wanting their theory to be put to the test in research studies.. how could their theory (conceptual operation) be tested without existential operation? Many time again we learn correlation does not equal causation, that a hypothesis cannot be "proven", etc., and this reading emphasized the same idea: "the more we can share in the experiences of others, the more resources we will have for dealing with our problems, and hence the more intelligent our collective problem solving will be (or at least can be)." It is about having examples of times when inference was warranted, having "intellectual instrumentalities" that can be used as "input" in new inquiries. Additionally, I liked how the chapter ended with stressing the importance of educators as researchers; this speaks to the need to connect practitioner and researcher to make research relevant. This article also suggests that an educational researcher will never be out of work!
Yingying:
Dewey again made his argument that “knowledge” does not exist in the framework made by scientists but rather between human purpose and consequences, which lead to the points that educational practice is the “the beginning and close ” of all education inquiry and “the final test if value of the conclusions of all researches”. The message here is that the way we might know if research is valuable is through practices by practitioners and then act to the consequences. This also interesting supports what Dewey said: “the method of inquiry can only be criticized, improved and validated in and through the process of inquiry.”
My question is, researches are often times made to generalize a piece of information or theory in order to apply to a larger population, yet education practices can be very different from one classroom to another classroom, from a student to another student, which requires that piece of “information” to be very small/specific. Is this really a conflict between research and practice?
Cat here:
Biesta and Burbules correctly anticipated that their description of the process of inquiry (investigate the nature of the problem, try out a strategy, and so on) feels awfully familiar. But what feels unfamiliar is that the result of inquiry may not necessarily take us somewhere “else.” They write that “when the process of inquiry results in a warranted assertion, this assertion is not a description about how the world out there is, but is always a description of a relationship between our actions and their consequences” (bottom of p. 71). They describe a special temporality of knowledge (knowing?), which we started to discuss last week, but to me this also feels like a special locus of knowing.
Yingying brought up a great point about the compulsion to generalize. Could it be that language of social science research, particularly words/phrases such as “implications for further research” or “implications for practice,” are injecting a degree of humility? Is it enough?
A few years ago I was immersed in research on young people’s concepts of infinity. Some researchers attempted to structure a rudimentary stage theory (talk about generalizing!), but it simply didn’t hold water. It was as if their findings -and mind you they were really fascinating- couldn’t quite take them “beyond” their initial questioning.
Rachel Regal
Dewey describes inquiry as requiring action based in the practice of the social science, which jives with how I envision social science research. He also notes that researchers seek out indeterminate situations in order to advance the research, which fits for me. In a sense, this is how we’re developing our niche as experts.
I was struck by Dewey’s contention that the social scientist needed to be liberated, and in this way, help us to examine whether our chosen inquiry is leading us in a direction we want to proceed. We must begin with the end in mind, as my old supervisor would say!
I also enjoyed how Dewey stated that educational practice is “an art that can be informed by science, that is by the outcomes of educational inquiry.” Counseling lives in a gray area that is unique for each practitioner/client/setting/time period, and yet we strive to use evidence-based practices to be ethical and effective practitioners. I am concerned that some of the practices I use today, although evidence-based, may be shown in future to be detrimental or less than helpful (like debriefing after trauma in war vets). As Dewey says, there is no ‘there there’, no perfect state to arrive, just new unique problems to work on. I'm not sure if I'm applying this right, but I'm thinking that I am a product of my time, being embedded in a time-space continuum, and that's the best I can do?
Dana’s answer about bridging research between practitioner and researcher jives with how I view things as well. I wonder how Dewey would view collaboration and interaction of disciplines to define an inquiry and put it into action. I don't think it's reasonable anymore to say the practitioner acts alone, or perhaps, even that they should.
Erin Hanley
I really liked the explanation of inquiry vs. research, I think mostly because, in my mind, it is the things we are curious about that lead us to our research questions. According to Dewey, taking action on our curiosity, or hypotheses, allows them to become "warranted assertions" (p.68). Inquiry involves solving problems, while research seems to involve creating new knowledge (p. 57). I agree with Andrea about inquiry seeming to be strongly related to the scientific method. I also appreciated the viewpoint of the "educational practitioner" being "the central figure in the practice of education," as I feel this can be easily forgotten when research is concerned (p. 79). This statement reminded of the research-practitioner gap that we have discussed, and how easy it is for research to be conducted without actually considering the reality of the implementing the research findings in practice. I hope there are better strides made towards collaboration among researchers and practitioners, especially, in higher education, both of these are often demanded for educators.
Natural inquiry and social inquiry, the idea of how we know what know research or what to learn is an interesting topic. "The natural starting point for inquiry is the situation in which there are conflicting habits, the situation in which we do not know how to respond." (Biesta, 2003, p.58). Conceptually, what "distinguishes inquiry from trial and error is the fact that the transformation of the situation is controlled or directed by means of reflection or thinking." (Biesta, 2003, p.59). The existential meaning of inquiry about the fundamental connection between logic and inquiry is duality of sorts. The cloud/rain or smoke/fire logic example (p.62) of the presence of significance in inquiry shows the human connection between examples that are natural. Just because there is a cloud does not necessarily mean rain and and just because there's smoke doesn't mean there is fire but there is an existing relationship that requires further inquiry to find truth of matter. The ideas of meaning, verification and truth in context bring further philosophical thought. Verification meaning the activity of making something true (Dewey, 1907, p.66). Yet, Dewey reminds us to not forget the correspondence tween ideas and reality as functional correspondence.
So, do we have natural curiosity about ideas that would come about if we were lone beings? Or do the sparked curiosities of life result from social interaction? Need or necessity? Interesting debate.
Hi! Preeti Kamat here. The authors have provided greater insights into the realm of inquiry through this chapter. And yes, I found out that their depiction of inquiry is close to my understanding of how social science research works.
Particularly, I would agree with the author on the following points:
It has been possible to reduce the complexity of the subject matter of physical inquiry by separating it out from the influences of the wider sociopolitical context. A similar move with respect to social inquiry is impossible because that social inquiry has to do with social problems. If the social problems are separated from sociopolitical influences, they would immediately cease to exist. Hence the social domain is more complex than the domain of physical inquiry.
Also it is interesting to note the crucial difference between the transaction of particles and transaction of human beings. Human beings respond to the meanings of the actions of their partners in interaction.
Considering “the subjective nature of social facts” in social domain, I would also agree with Dewey’s argument that in genuine scientific inquiry the frame of reference is nothing more than a hypothesis, something that itself needs to be questioned and examined.
I also liked the way Dana highlighted the authors’ point of view on the role of educators as investigators (researchers).
Andrea Moreau
When looking at Dewey’s theory of inquiry and how it relates to social science research I found the notion that knowledge isn’t only acquired through the solution of problems. Dewey does explore how knowledge is gained through learning things you didn’t know before, but the author argues that is not the only way to gain knowledge. As the author states, “ we do learn something about the relationship between our actions and their consequences when we solve the problems we encounter in an active, experimental, and reflective manner” (Biesta and Burbules 67). What I take away from this quote is that knowledge is acquired just by the sheer act of inquiry. You do not need to find a solution to the problem in order to gain knowledge. This idea of knowledge accumulation reminds me of the process of scientific inquiry.
The essence of research is to discover through a process answers to questions you do not know. More often than not, a researcher finds null results at the end of an experiment. Obviously, the research didn’t learn anything throughout the process. They gained knowledge of how an experiment didn’t work. While writing this blog post the Edison post keeps coming to mind, “I have not failed. I just found 10,000 ways it wouldn’t work”. I just love this quote because it is the essence of inquiry of knowledge. Just because a solution to the problem was not found over 10,000 times, doesn’t mean knowledge wasn’t gained during the process.
Post a Comment