Tag Archives: research

Into the Labyrinth of Postmodernism

18 Nov

postmodernismWhat constitutes knowledge? What constitutes reality? How do we come to know what we know?  Research is usually the tool that we use to describe and explain our reality but that is assuming that there is a reality to explain.

The social construction of reality and the role of language in creating this reality is what the postmodernist movement explores. Thinkers adhering to this paradigm question the existence of a reality and the notion of an ultimate ‘truth’ stating that whether we are talking about reality or truth, these are concepts that are prone to shifts and redefinitions based on circumstances and time.

Whereas positivists believed that an external objective world existed and attempted to explain it with ‘what’, ‘when’, or ‘how much’ questions, and interpretivist/constructivist researchers emphasized the subjective interpretive component of this world, asking ‘why, ‘How does’, and ‘what meaning’ questions, postmodernists question the scientific method itself stating that it is a tool of a specific time and culture and may therefore not be valid for today’s reality and truth. Postmodernist theorists call our attention to expose hidden values and assumptions underlying our questions and demand that we ask questions about our questions, to really look at the world through critical eyes as we engage in new ways of thinking, doing, and being.

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I've ever known ~ C. Palahnuik

Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everybody I’ve ever known ~ C. Palahnuik

Postmodernism is a concept that I have yet to fully grasp. As far as research is concerned, I appreciate the claims that postmodernism makes. Its call for us to question and be uncertain about absolute ‘truth’ and binary concepts such as ‘good’ or ‘evil’ , ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ is healthy in that it provides space for critical consciousness to operate and allows for different perspectives. If nothing else, postmodernism warrants us to re-imagine the grounds upon which we make judgment about what is progress, and provides us with an opportunity to be reflexive in our contributions.

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In the Shadows of Five Star Hotels

31 Oct

“…much of what was said did not matter, and much of what mattered could not be said.” (P.172)

BOOK-articleInlineBehind the Beautiful Forevers, written by journalist Katherine Boo, is set in Annawadi, a slum in Mumbai, stretching along the Mumbai Airport and hidden from view by a concrete wall that separates the indulgent from the destitute, the opulent from the deprived. Home to 3,000 residents inhabiting half an acre, this story could have easily taken place in Karachi, Pakistan, Nairobi, Africa, Cape Town, South Africa, or Mexico City (the top five slums in the world according to the United Nations – A report, that actually identified, Neza-Chalco-Itza, one of Mexico City’s many barrios, as the largest slum in the world with roughly four million people inhabiting it (UN Habitat, 2013).

The book is described as a narrative non-fiction however I would not hesitate to label it as an ethnographic studyethnography1 told in a novel-like-style. In the author’s notes, we learn that Boo spent 3 years conducting fieldwork in the slum. With the aid of interpreters, the inhabitants were interviewed repeatedly and where possible, Boo herself would have long conversations with some of the youth, pressing them to share some of their thoughts and impressions, and looking to archival research to check and re-check her facts, as she documented a detailed in-depth description of everyday life for the Annawadians.

In the telling of Behind the Beautiful Forevers, the author depicts an intimate and detailed portrait of a place and a people united by a desire to improve their lives and those of their loved ones at a time when the buzz words are global development, prosperity, and progress.

As I read the stories, I was reminded of something that always struck me whenever I crossed the streets in Asia and India. The Pedestrian Traffic Signal for WALK is a running man. runTo reach the other side safely, you often had to run. Each time I crossed the street, I would be reminded how this running figure truly symbolizes life in these continents where so many are running in pursuit of progress and prosperous opportunities.

Through her narration, Boo invites the reader to witness the lives of such a people. Lives that consist of a delicate balance between thriving and surviving, doing and dodging. A people with limited access to resources – slum dwellers – for whom necessity has truly bred innovation, where the rich’s rag is literally a poor man’s treasure. Because an objective observation, devoid of an observer’s pre-existing attitudes, is simply impossible, we, as witnesses, interpret the Annawadi’s life using our own previous experiences, preconceptions, and ideas, in our attempt to understand and give meaning to the events we have witnessed.

Research that commands our attention to the likes of Annawadians, aiding us to discover hidden insights, about others and ourselves, is a research worth pursuing. As I reflect on Behind the Beautiful Forevers and ponder ethnography as a research method, I am aware of the potential of subjectivity in interpreting and in the observing of a culture. The lenses through which I see the world of the Annawadians are my lenses, giving me an understanding and an interpretation of the Annawadi culture that may differ from the Annawadis’ own perspectives and interpretations.

As I read the book, I was distraught at the poverty and corruption that the slum dwellers have to face daily but I also marveled at the resilience, ingenuity, and resourcefulness of the Annawadians and all self-reliant urban dwellers. They have once again shown me how humans can adapt to the direst of circumstances. The more I thought about the book, the more I thought about my own reflections and attitudes about global development. In that sense, this ethnographic study taught me more about my own understanding and worldviews than about the slum dwellers of Annawadi.

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In pursuit of that one particular paradigm…

14 Oct

In today’s world, research is the tool we use in our quest for the truth. Its potential to provide us with new knowledge, one that can change how we understand others, and ourselves, is greatly increased when we, as researchers, are willing to be self-reflective and open toward the research process and the different ways of knowing.

After much reflection and many readings, I have come to the stance that to conduct good research in the social sciences, and especially in education, one cannot deny that both interpretivist and positivist paradigms have their place in our quest of knowledge and both have their limitations.

When conducting research, one’s paradigm, worldview, or belief system provides the framework that underpins how the research will be conducted, and how the data will be analyzed and interpreted. Both positivists and interpretivists are concerned with understanding the world, and enhancing their knowledge of it. While positivists believe that researcher and research are separate, and an objective reality exists outside and independently of those ‘creating’ it, interpretivists claim the opposite, declaring research and researcher as inseparable, and knowledge of the world as the result of our interaction and interpretation of it.

research-in-progressEducational research is complex because it not only involves human behavior and social interaction, but it also includes looking at various teaching approaches and learning strategies in educational settings. Educational research attempts to uncover solutions to practical problems in education and to do so has to include many disciplines in its analysis and study. Anthropology, sociology, psychology, and history all contribute to developing our knowledge of teaching and learning. If we really want to improve the relation between research, policy, and practice in education, we need an approach in which not only is the cognitive (quantitative) is researched but also the affective (qualitative) aspect of teaching and learning is taken into account.

As an educator, a researcher, and a student, I am not ready to choose one model over another. From where I stand today, I want to be able to draw upon multiple paradigms, use different methodologies, apply different tools, do whatever is needed, to encourage dialogue, and foster collaboration and exploration in the world of learning and teaching.

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I know This Much is True

30 Sep

Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known.
Parker J. Palmer

kitchentales“How can one know anything about one’s fellow man, if not speaking to him?” Asks the researcher of his colleague in Kitchen Stories/Salmer fra Kjøkkenet, a Norwegian movie about a Swedish research company’s attempt to optimize kitchen usage by sending over a team of Swedish researchers to study the habits of Norwegian single men. In particular, it is the story of one researcher, Folke, and his subject, Isak, and their engagement with one another during the research. Folke, in keeping with the positivists’ paradigm, is a neutral observer whose sole role is to collect data in a non-judgmental manner free of personal bias, opinion, or curiosity. Perched up high on his umpire chair, in a strategic spot in the kitchen, Folke, assumes that role as he silently monitors and carefully records Isak’s movements.

As the story unfolds, we witness human spirit soaring through as both the researcher and his subject, the observer and the observed, cause one another to change, and emerge with a new knowing that transforms them both. Through a tender friendship, Folke’s observations lose their neutral stance, to take on a deep empathy for his fellow human and Isak’s initial mistrust and abhorrence toward the presence of this man in his kitchen shift to curiosity and even a desire to be involved and supportive. What began as neutrality and observation in a kitchen is no longer confined to the kitchen as the two men gain deeper understanding of each other.

The movie depicts the researcher who dubs himself into believing that one can be separate from one’s subject and can learn all he needs to learn about the subject by simply observing it. This is parallel to Parker Palmer’s main ideas in his article on The Violence of Our knowledge: Toward a SpiritualMOT1.550.eenie_ity in Higher Education in which he points out that in our pursuit of objectivism, analytic, and experimentalism, we have lost what it is to truly know. In Palmer’s view, true higher learning involves a “healthy dance between the objective and the subjective, between the analytic and the integrative, between the experimental and what (he) will call the subjective.” He goes on to say that knowledge is not neutral. We, as a society, want to believe it is, and we attach it to facts and figures, but it is what we do with these facts and figures that proves that knowledge is far from being either neutral or objective. Palmer also writes that knowing – in this example the knowing is through research – is transformational, reciprocal, personal, and communal. This is well illustrated in Kitchen Tales in that the observer also becomes the observed – Isak, the subject, stops using his kitchen and observes Folke, the researcher, through a hole in the ceiling – and in the way that both the researcher and the subject transform one another. As the movie develops, we are witness to the development of a friendship between the two men that although had started out painkeep-calm-because-we-all-know-the-truthfully (Isak wouldn’t even answer the door,) becomes the focal point of the movie with the research activities being merely the means by which this relationship started and developed.

As I watched the movie, what became clear to me in that moment is how research across cultures and international borders is neither innocent nor simple. It has effects and consequences, it supports certain truths and denies others, it carries with it personal and social values, it affects and transforms… – but that will have to be a topic for another time and day.

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