The nature of our endeavour

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The nature of our endeavour?

• Sally Fincher
• itp Disciplinary Commons
• Third Meeting 9th December 2005

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The story so far
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Explored institutional context

• Me, my background, my colleagues
• Sort of University/Department I teach in
• Sort of students I teach
• Sort of expectations (standards)
• Sort (and size) of class
• Sort of space

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Started to explore disciplinary context

• What language I teach? (Why?)
• Which textbook I use? (Why?)
• Who gets to choose?
• What can I change?
• Why would I change it?
• What influences my decisions here?

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Documenting our discoveries

• Portfolio construction
• The problem of artefacts

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Research artefacts Angwandte Chemie
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Angwandte Chemie

• a typical paper is about three pages long.
  Almost one page contains experimental detail.
  Half a page is endnotes. The body of the article
  is then about one and a half printed pages, of
  which roughly a third consists of graphics

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Angwandte Chemie research results

• The authors speak, as chemists today do, of
  molecules that they do not see, but for which
  they have excellent indirect evidence I have
  written of this incredible process, and the way
  that the chemists necessity to move
  simultaneously in macroscopic and microscopic
  worlds forces chemists to use a mixture of
  symbolic and iconic representation of
  compounds/molecules
• Roald Hoffman (2002) Writing (and Drawing)
  Chemistry in Jonathan Monroe (ed) Writing and
  Revising the Disciplines, Cornell University

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Angwandte Chemie research artefact
A particular feature of Angwandte Chemie is the
mandatory inclusion at the end of any
experimental paper is an Experimental Section,
detailing procedures for the experiments carried
out
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Experimental Section
This is a general statement that, in effect,
states that anyone, anytime, anywhere who treats
the same ingredients in the same way as I did,
will make the same chemical compound
- and yet, it is based on a single empirical
study at one specific time and in one specific
place
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Not researchers were commoners

• Not abstraction
• Not generalisation
• Specific, particular

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Situation a familiar power

• To cook rice correctly requires not only
  patience and skill but an abstract conception of
  an idealized form.
• So what I turned to for help was the basic
  artisanal sense of task. Make it simple by making
  it particular what can I do with this rice, this
  rice pot, this need, this temperament?
• The problem, I gradually realized, was that I
  wanted to simply follow a set of instructions,
  whereas what was required of me was to establish
  a close working relationship with a particular
  cooking vesselmy personal rice pot.
• (Thorne Thorne, 2000)

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Our artefacts

• Dont think recipes think ricepots

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