Politics in Everything. Or Everything in Politics. (Correlations)

I thought of you all the other night while watching the first presidential debate. McCain and Obama were arguing over some military issue or other, and McCain turned to the moderator and said, "I just don't think Senator Obama knows the difference between a strategy and a tactic!" I'm hoping that by the end of the semester, no one will be able to say about me, "Marisa doesn't know the difference between a methodology and a method!" In the meantime, could someone remind me which of these a correlation is?
I think correlations can be useful in certain situations, as long as we acknowledge the holes in the data. It's not as definitive, which is fine with me. We could say this about any type of research, though. A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. The ways we choose to look at the world also blind us to many of its details. We're not EVER going to get the whole picture by using one type of research, and maybe not even by using several strategies. This might explain why none of us want to commit exclusively to one area of research. We recognize how limiting it will be, and yet we need to limit the focus to produce valid results. I wonder, does the choice of strategies and tactics affect the wartime reality of civilians on the ground? How will my choice of methodology relate to the experience of my participants? Maybe this doesn't apply so much to correlation....I could be thinking ahead to the section on experimental research....

Hope Floats

I think we're supposed to comment on past experience with Descriptive Research? I have to say I've avoided it like the plague. However, long ago and far away....during my undergrad psychology program, I was forced to take multiple statistics and SPSS classes, and psych labs where we created our own surveys and Likert scales and wrote up research proposals that would never be carried out. That was NOT the part of psychology that attracted me to the field. I also took another Master's level research class -- a good refresher, but it didn't last long. And now here I am.
Statistics make me cringe. It's not the math that has me gritting my teeth -- I can do math if I have to. It's the thought of all those living, breathing people getting transformed into faceless, inert numbers. I fear that the inability of statistics to display or interpret human expression will take the emotion and the experience right out of the ideas. Or maybe it's that I'm afraid that I'll forget who those people are. That I will forget how to display or interpret emotion.
I'm happy to say, David, Johnny and Joel went a long way towards calming my fears. They demonstrated how the numbers were just feedback and evidence, and that the relationships were still present and kept in mind. Just what I needed to hear. Particularly in David's connection to the teachers, students, and parents at his schools -- validated by their statistical approval of his work -- I found hope for myself. It is possible to employ some descriptive research methodologies, to reach those who hear nothing else, while still maintaining my emotional attatchment to the subjects and theirs to me. I can balance intuition and objectivity! The question is, do I want to?

on second thought

So I'm thinking I should have included critical theory in my paper. Let's pretend that one's in there too....

Moons and Junes and Ferris Wheels

As a trained counselor and experienced human rights activist, my attitudes and background probably place me in the far reaches of knowledge-gathering and -processing paradigms. While I can appreciate the clarity of objectivist perspectives, I find myself lost in negotiations and collaborations, in my mind, in personal relationship, in community, in culture, in humanity. Rather than hierarchy, I see spiderwebs.
I am one of those people that attach emotion and intention to inanimate objects. I have no problem naming my potholders, or petting the computer when it misbehaves. (It just needs a little attention!) I believe in my dog’s desire, like Pinocchio, to be “a real boy,” and I know that the mountains have stood witness to extraordinary change in their eons of existence. It’s a pantheistic thought process, really – I see life in everything. Just because presence is not quantifiable doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Much of the world we live in, tangible and intangible, remains unseen and unthought by human minds and hearts. My approach begins with this fact: I believe in fairytales.
Of course, fairytales and research don’t often go hand-in-hand. The stereotypical social scientist, I would guess, wants the facts, and nothing but the facts. Trust only goes to numerical data and statistical processing, not internal emotion and artistic expression. Do they read their children fantasy stories at bedtime? I grew up in a household full of art, art-making, music and instruments. My parents worked in the arts at a professional theatre during my early childhood, and I spent my afternoons trying on hats in the costume shop, or collecting sequins and feathers off the floor of the mainstage. I watched the actors in rehearsal and witnessed the creation of alternate realities -- constructed, painted, and upholstered right there in the scene shop.
Along with the arts, I also developed activist tendencies – joining Amnesty International at an early age, and becoming a national volunteer leader by my college years. I learned that social empowerment often rises from the bottom up – it is not a stranger’s gift to give. And people generally don’t end up poor and oppressed of their own accord. They are beaten down by a system only they have the perspective to understand. The social ills we face today – poverty, hunger, lack of health care, child abuse, prejudice, illiteracy, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse – all of these feed into the cycle of violence that keeps us from achieving balance. How might we combat this cycle and these social problems without talking to those it affects most?
All of this background, I think, puts me, according to Burrell and Morgan, in the radical humanist camp. I could see myself straying into the interpretive or radical structuralist quadrants occasionally, though both might be a stretch. I’ve just never been one to go with the status quo. However, I do think that regulation, solidarity, and consensus could sometimes be appropriate goals. Similarly, objectivist research working towards radical change might go hand-in-hand with the subjectivist work. The only area I would feel completely out of place in is probably the functionalist category. To me, hard facts do not always reveal the truth.
The field of counseling, and particularly the incorporation of arts into the therapeutic process, is focused on internal worlds, soul-searching, relationship exploration, and sometimes just pure presence. Both counseling and the arts involve emotional, intellectual, and spiritual journeys that end in an intuitive conclusion of sorts. We discover, experience, and expand our awareness of the world.
In expressive arts therapy, and in many counseling approaches, the emphasis is placed on the process, rather than the product. We trust that the therapeutic process will effect positive, though not specific results. Instead of intending to change a behavior or cognition, or to represent a particular meaning with our expression, we allow deep emotion to surface, and to tell us what it is that we need to know. The meaning is constructed between the artist and the art itself. Having a dialogue with the art is even a therapeutic technique! This seems to be squarely opposite of the positivist perspective. There are no numbers to crunch, no statistical analysis, validity scores, ratios or percentages. It is not a straightforward approach to problem-solving, nor is it in keeping with current social practices of structure and control. But it relates back to our most ancient paradigms, of the times when life was still interdisciplinary – before there was a need for the word interdisciplinary. It brings back the sense of interrelatedness that we have forgotten. We did not always have science and statistics and objectivity. Once upon a time….all the isms were integrated and lived together in harmony.
While I certainly recognize the need for objectivist research in such a subjective and constructionist field, it seems that many of us who are drawn to this field are also drawn to the subjectivist and constructionist approaches. I am more intrigued by Jung’s acausal relationships than by any cause-and-effect, correlational data. Replicability may not always be an option – you just have to be there at a synchronistic moment. Are intuition and objectivism mutually exclusive? How will I conduct quality (and qualitative) research that earns the respect of the academic world without compromising my own relationships with knowledge and meaning? I can’t be the only one who believes in fairytales…

“Seeing with a reverential eye, the painter’s eye, can guide our planet into an innovative and compassionate future.” -- M.C. Richards

First Readings

I would really like someone, in clear terms, to explain to me what epistemology and ontology are. I understand all the definitions and descriptions...but I'm not sure I quite have a good grasp of them. I need some artwork or something visual to explain the differences in the object-observer relationships. Or maybe a real-life example would help! Maybe we could scuplt it.

I thought the Crotty chapter was helpful as far as explaining process and elements. And Guba was helpful with -ism definitions, sort of. Aside from having unfortunate-sounding names, I thought Crotty/Guba were clearer than Burrell /Morgan. Good old Crotty and Guba.

Rollercoasters

Well I'm not sure what to say that hasn't been said in class already. I thought we had a pretty good list of hopes and fears by the end of it all! I appreciated being able to have that discussion with everyone. It helped me clarify my own feelings as well.
My hopes are higher and my fears are lower now that we've been through the first week of class and know a little more about what to expect. I've been kind of overwhelmed so far, but I think that has more to do with my personal life than my school life...although it's difficult to separate them... So besides the reading list, in one week I will have started two new jobs and quit a job that I've been doing for more than 5 years. And still more changes coming! So I'm just taking one thing at a time and enjoying the ride...

The Beginning

Just doing housekeeping...I'll post more later....