Reducing the social: thinking differently about smallscale research

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Reducing the social thinking differently about
small-scale research
Tamsin Haggis University of Stirling
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Small scale research

• What are the issues?
• Whats complexity theory?
• How might complexity help us to think differently?

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iPED website (2006)

• Pedagogic Research is recognised internationally
  as an important and exciting growth area for
  higher education. It is, however, an area that
  poses a challenge to all those working in higher
  education since it forces a shift in our
  understandings of academic identity

Inquiring Pedagogies Research Network http//www.c
oventry.ac.uk/researchnet/d/393
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And a lot more besides.

• Cultural assumptions
• Assumptions about knowledge
• Research procedures, habits of analysis
• Academic hierarchies
• Historical approaches to the study of teaching
  and learning in HE

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Some challenges in (conceptualising) small-scale
research
cross-sectional abstraction

• The boundary of the case
• Legitimation/claims
• links to other studies/generalisation
• Relationship to theory
• Using quotes (authenticity)
• Role of the researcher

theme
narratives
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Some responses

• Re-define notions of reliability and validity
• trustworthiness and authenticity
• Introduce elements seen to be missing
• Power, gender, class
• Undermine/question basic premises
  (post-structuralists)
• validity is the researchers mask of authority
  (Lather, 1993)
• Practical action
• Research based on specific value positions. Eg.
  feminist, emancipatory, participative approaches

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Other issues science?

• Knowledge generated by researchers and then
  applied (Geelan, 2003)
• Bassey big research and practitioner
  research (2003)
• Big research
• aims to produce general statements about some
  aspect of learning (big ideas)
• Practitioner research
• gives practitioners insights into what they do
• (tests big ideas in local settings)

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More questions/problems

• Many current conceptualisations avoid certain
  problems
• we dont want to be scientific anyway
  (power/class/ gender is more important)
• research funders only want one kind of research

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More questions/problems

• Power v. relationship between small scale studies
• How to theorise context specificity?
• New framings new means of blinkering and
  stereotyping
• Eg gender, ethnic minority

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Questions about underpinning ontologies

• Encouraging teachers to conduct classroom
  research to find local solutions to global
  problems has been a widely discussed issue in
  educational sciences
• Renda, 2006 (iPed conference 2006)

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Problems conceptualising and researching
difference, specificity and context

• The conclusions reached in this case study may
  not be generalisable, at least in detail, to
  other institutions. Even so, it is argued that
  lessons can still be drawn which can illuminate
  how we think about policy development and
  implementation. (Newton, 2003)
• Two stories should be read as indicative of the
  experience of all ten volunteers, but space
  precludes covering them all (Bamber, 2002)
• Although we are duly circumspect about
  generalising from case study analysis, a number
  of issues are raised that have wider
  implications, and might be offered as fuzzy
  generalisations (Bassey, 1999)

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Something to unearth.?
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The shapes of classical geometry are lines and
planes, circles and spheres, triangles and cones.
They represent a powerful abstraction of reality,
and they inspired a powerful philosophy of
Platonic harmony. Euclid made of them a geometry
that lasted two millennia, the only geometry
still that most people ever learn. Artists found
ideal beauty in them. Ptolemaic astronomers build
a theory of universe out of them. (Gleik,198
794)
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The shapes of classical geometry are lines and
planes, circles and spheres, triangles and cones.
They represent a powerful abstraction of reality,
and they inspired a powerful philosophy of
Platonic harmony. Euclid made of them a geometry
that lasted two millennia, the only geometry
still that most people ever learn. Artists found
ideal beauty in them. Ptolemaic astronomers build
a theory of universe out of them. But for
understanding complexity, they turn out to be the
wrong kind of abstraction. (Gleik,198794)
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Clouds are not spheres, Mandelbrot is fond of
saying. Mountains are not cones. Lightening does
not travel in a straight line. The new geometry
mirrors a universe that is rough, not rounded,
scabrous, not smooth. It is a geometry of the
pitted, pocked, and broken up, the twisted,
tangled, and intertwined. (Gleik,198794)
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Problems conceptualising and researching
difference, specificity and context

• The conclusions reached in this case study may
  not be generalisable, at least in detail, to
  other institutions. Even so, it is argued that
  lessons can still be drawn which can illuminate
  how we think about policy development and
  implementation. (Newton, 2003)
• Two stories should be read as indicative of the
  experience of all ten volunteers, but space
  precludes covering them all (Bamber, 2002)
• Although we are duly circumspect about
  generalising from case study analysis, a number
  of issues are raised that have wider
  implications, and might be offered as fuzzy
  generalisations (Bassey, 1999)

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Prevailing epistemologies similarity categories,
key factors and deep structure
cross-sectional abstraction
theme
narratives
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What gets left out?

• What isnt amenable to description in terms of
  variables and categories
• What isnt amenable to some form of counting or
  measurement
• Differences between things
• Original contexts
• 3 Whats not deemed to be key
• 4 Time and process
• 5 The impossibility of discerning causality

cross-sectional abstraction
theme
narratives
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1 2 Eradicating the difference of local
contexts

• Less-easily disciplined situational factors may
  nonetheless be crucial
• In making something functional
• In making something meaningful
• Not trying to get a complete picture but
  reducing differently
• Problems with the conceptualisation of context

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Conceptualising context
Adults in a post-92 university
Each adult has their own set of contexts
Theme relating to adults in a post-92 university
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Does the theme relate to adults in this
particular group, or to characteristics of
this type of adult?
Adults in a post-92 university

• Usually presented as referring to individuals
• These adults are all motivated by career
  prospects rather than
• This university setting, in the context of
  current political and cultural agendas,
  encourages these adults to talk about learning in
  terms of career prospects'

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Understanding individual experience?
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3 The search for key aspects of phenomena

• a desire for centre in the constitution of
  structure
• Derrida in Thomas, 2002

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4 Time and process

• Processes constitute the world of human
  experience from nature to cognition to social
  reality. Yet our philosophical and scientific
  theories of nature and experience have
  traditionally prioritised concepts for static
  objects and structures.
• Seibt, 2003

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Complexity a different way of looking
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Complexity

• Three types of scientific enquiry
• Problems involving very limited numbers of
  variables (Newtonian mechanics)
• Problems involving millions or billions of
  variables can only be approached by the use of
  statistical mechanics and probability theory
  (Disorganised complexity)
• An area in the middle a substantial number of
  variables, but with one crucial difference

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Organised complexity

• Much more important than the mere number of
  variables is the fact that these variables are
  all interrelated these problems, as contrasted
  with the disorganised situations with which
  statisticians can cope, show the essential
  feature of organisation. We will therefore refer
  to this group of problems as those of organised
  complexity
• Weaver, in Johnston,
• 200147 (italics in original)

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Dynamic systems and emergence

• multiple systems, embedded in each other
• systems are open
• materially, energetically
• far from equilibrium
• continual flow of energy and matter
• each has a large number of components
• interacting at a local level (only), in response
  to the environment
• interactions are non-linear
• Multiple, recursive feedback loops
• multiple interactions through time result in the
  periodic emergence of particular forms of order
• which benefit the survival of the system
• what emerges cannot be tracked to antecedents
• no central, or linear, determining causative
  mechanism

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• (Dynamic systems) solve problems by drawing on
  masses of relatively stupid elements, rather than
  a single, intelligent executive branch. In
  these systems agents residing on one scale start
  producing behaviour that lies one scale above
  them ants create colonies urbanites create
  neighbourhoods simple pattern-recognition
  software learns how to recommend new books
• Johnson, 200118

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• Cities have no central planning commissions that
  solve the problem of purchasing and distributing
  supplies How do these cities avoid devastating
  swings between shortage and glut, year after
  year, decade after decade? The mystery deepens
  when we observe the kaleidoscopic nature of large
  cities. Buyers, sellers, administrators, streets,
  bridges and buildings are always changing, so
  that a citys coherence is somehow imposed on a
  perpetual flux of people and structures. Like the
  standing wave in front of a rock in a fast-moving
  stream, a city is a pattern in time.
• Holland, 1998, in Johnson, 200127

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An unfathomable determinism, or no determinism
at all?..

• Untrackable interactions through time
• Too many, too fast multiple feedback loops
• No underpinning structures
• No gene-like causes, only constraints
• Emergence a free act of creativity
  spontaneously arises as a result of the
  interactions (has adaptive function)

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A dynamic system has

• A particular starting point in time
• (sensitive dependence on initial conditions)
• A particular history of interactions through time
  
• Resulting in emergences specific to that system
• Multiple presents at any one point in time
• Embedded within other dynamic systems
• A dynamic coherence which is in continuous
  formation
• An identity, a sense of itself
• It is, in some important ways, always unique
• The system transforms larger system interaction
  patterns

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Three types of context

• The dynamic system which is the focus of the
  analysis
• Selected group(s) or institution(s) which the
  focus system is embedded within
• 3. Selected larger group(s) or culture(s) which
  contain the previous two systems

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System trajectories
Context 1
Context 2
Context 3
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Conceptualising difference, specificity and
context

• Complexity theory challenges the nomothetic
  programme of universally applicable knowledge at
  its very heart it asserts that knowledge must
  be contextual
• Byrne, 2005

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A complexity framing for research

• Position
• Role
• Conditions, interactions and effects within
  specific systems
• Causality
• Processes through time
• Multiple levels of scale simultaneously