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Story Telling as Teacher Inquiry
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- How did each of my students organize, understand, and create knowledge through this simulated experience?
- What created tension for each of my students?
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Posted by Karen McComas on 7/25/05; 7:48:29 PM to the Story Telling as Teacher Inquiry Department
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[Quotes taken from a summary of "Teaching for Turbulence," (1996) by Barbara Mossberg, the National Teaching and Learning Forum, 5(3), pp. 5-7.]
"Learning requires the conceptual ability to take knowledge about one kind of thing and apply it to another, different, kind of thing." In other words, the brain must construct and acquire greater complexity about a subject by virtue of the awareness of differences. Such awareness allows learners to make comparisons and define an understanding by application of analogy and metaphor. All are part of an interdependent system of learning.
In the counseling assignment that I"m examining, I've asked my students to bring all that they've previously learned to the table. Then, I've asked them to find ways to use that. It is in this process, bringing what they know from other places to this work, that learning can occur. By allowing students to develop their own "thing" (in this case their own research/theory) they develop an intellectual complexity regarding the experience that up until the analysis was one dimensional. If I were to tell them what they had in their transcript or what they had to find, then nothing would have happened of lasting value. No learning would have occurred.
In essence, they must look at a transcript and make decisions about what it is and what it is not. By discovering what it is NOT, students develop complexity. Then, they use analogy and metaphor to define and express their understanding of the new thing. How they develop anaologies and metaphors would be a great question to ask. What anologies and metaphors they develop would be another good focus. The comment about an interdependent system of learning prompts me to ask, "What elements interact when learning occurs?" Learner's brain, existing knowledge, new knowledge? But again, with the necessity of developing analogies and metaphors we see that language skills (the ability to understand analogy and metaphor and the ability to create analogy and metaphor are essential to learning. Those that go on to higher levels of learning must possess a linguistic competence of a certain sophistication. In the assignment, I'm asking tsutdents to study language (transcript), analyze that language, and reconceive that language into something different than what it appears. Perhaps those who excel are thsoe who are linguistically advanced. What metaphors and analogies do they use to make sense of their work?
Chaos theory further discusses the definitions of "order" and "disorder" within such a system of learning. Both states coexist simultaneously in the dynamic learning system. Intellectual challenge is born with the awareness that contradictions challenge existing ideas constantly, within individual learners and the learning environment. This tension is a central condition of learning: In order for learning to occur, the accepted structure must be lifted to allow information to unfold in a unique circumstance and have impact.
Once I told a young science teacher who said her students never asked questions until she put them in the lab and they "got into trouble" with the experiments that she needed to get them in trouble sooner. That trouble means moving them from order, what they do recognize and understand, to disorder, what they do not recognize or understand. The notion is that both order and disorder co-exist and the description given to any state is dependent upon whose eyes are doing the viewing. The actual state of disroder presents us with a teaching opportunity that enables us to move from dialogue to multilogue. We begin to socially construct, across the voices of the community, our understanding and order. I'm enamored of the multilogue issue. My classes, if I'm talking at all, end up being dialogues. Small group work in my classes encourage multilogues where four or five of the students within a group actually have a conversation with one another.
Somehow I know that conflict is connected to these ideas. Conflict represents tension? Conflict definitely creates tension and according to this passage, this tension is the central condition for learning. Logically, without tension there can be no learning.
If teachers can allow each class to develop its own order through the power of the class to organize, understand, and create knowledge, then what is learned will encompass all contributions and interactions. The class may learn something different than the original or intended "order," but it is now an order of which the class is part.
Owned order. Owned chaos. If I can allow each student to develop their own order through the power they have to organize, understand, and create knowledge, then they will own that order and therefore remember that order and understand it. Now, the trick for me is how do you facilitate students in their learning to organize information into something new.
With regard to my assignment, it appears that tensions may have driven Wayne to new levels of understanding of the experience. The tension for him clearly came from disorder (or his perception of what was disorderly). For example, he talks about being "prepared for any and every contingency" as a way to create order and thus reduce tension. He also talks about the interview with the parent. In this section he describes himself as being "upset" because the parent kept asking questions that did not go "in the direction I wanted them to." Here he becomes upset because disorder is created when the parent doesn't go to the place that Wayne knows and understands. In the analysis of the transcript, he writes about being too caught up in labeling and diagramming "every little thing" and not being able to see a patter in it [transcript]. Here is where his disorder turns to order with an "epiphany" as the "elements came together." |
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Posted by Karen McComas on 2/28/05; 11:22:27 AM to the Story Telling as Teacher Inquiry Department
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Meaning Finds a Way: Chaos (Theory) and Composition
by Bonnie Lenore Kyburz
College English, Volume 66, Number 5
May 2004 (pg. 503-523)
Me - sorting stuff out about chaos - a work in progress...
These scholars intimate that meaning or knowledge emerges from complex negotiations within a (chaotic) epistemic complex, following James Berlin, whose "epistemic complex" consists of negotiations among interlocutor(s), audience(s), material realit(ies)y, and language(s)." (504)
epistemic: of or relating to knowledge or knowing
I think this passage is talking about how meaning is constructed (or emerges?) from social interactions - knowledge and knowing is socially constructed - nothing new there - or at least nothing new to me. This is suggesting that we move within a knowledge complex that represents chaos or is chaotic in that there is no apparent order to some people in various pockets of information. By that ridiculously incoherent sentence I meant that if a person were studying phonology - a pocket of information - they would initially find that pocket of information to be chaotic or without apparent order.
Now, I'm wondering if information represents the chaotic epistemic complex and knowledge represents that same complex once I've begun to make sense of it - once I've begun to organize the information into some order?
The article was asking if chaos was the metaphor or if chaos was the theory and I wonder if it can be both? As a theory isn't it also a metaphor? We know that science uses metaphors to describe those things that we cannot see...and I wonder if chaotic systems really change into orderly systems or if they just seem to change into orderly systems once we begin to recognize the patterns within the system?
Here's what I wrote when I got to writing group the other day and was waiting for others to show:
Often, we find outselves in a state we call chaos. We don't recognize where we are, we have numerous bits an dpieces but don't know what to do with them. The passage is really just talking about HOW we move from chaos to order - that is, our movement is a socially constructed event (although later I'll talk about that movement as being figurative only). What he is saying is that seeing order where there was once chaos is a result of social interactions, or negotiations, which are highly dependent upon these 4 variables: interlocutor, audience, material realities, and language. The notion is that a deficiency or weakness in any one of these variables will prevent us from finding the order. I'm particularly interested now about the language aspect. Without control of the language our clients, students, will not be able to make sense of their world. This is why those with strong linguistic skills are more successful - I used to think it was because we privileged those with strong linguistic skills, we valued those skills more, but perhaps their success if also partly due to the fact that they are capable of finding an order in ways that others are not capable.
Here's what Jeri said in writing group the other day. She interpreted this passage to be talking about how we are always in a state of chaos. We pick and choose what elements of that chaotic environment to attend to and depending upon which elements we choose to attend to (the ones the "emerge[s] from complex negotations") we create some kind of meaning. So, given the same state of chaos, two individuals might find different orders out of that chaos. The differences that appear are a result of our own experiences, which are different, and those experiences cause our interactions in terms of those four variables to be different and again, it is those differences that cause us to make sense in different ways (or it is because of similarities of experiences we might make sense in similar ways of a chaotic situation). I like the notion of always being in a state of chaos and that we make sense by making deliberate (or defensive? or offensive?) choices about what elements of that chaos we choose to grab. We then make sense of those elements by establishing some kind of relationship between them and then we begin to grab more elements that look like they have a relationship with the first two.
For, as Eubanks reminds us, "Just as conceptual metaphors have certain internal entailments, the entailments of complementary conceptual metaphors can align and overlap." That is, certain metaphors do not contradict one another, and neither functions without the other, ontologically or ethically. (504)
ontological: relating to or based upon being or existence
ontology: a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature of relations of being; a particular theory about the nature of being or the kinds of existents
existents: having being; existing now
entailments: to restrict by limiting the inheritance to the owner's lineal descendants or to a particular class thereof; to confer, assign, or transmit as if by entail; to fix a person permanently in some condition or status; to impose, involve or imply as a necessary accompaniment or result
Does this mean that chaos can be both the metaphor and the theory? Yes, she said she doesn't want these to be seen as discrete and I'm assuming, different. We do, she says, actively construct metaphors and not just passively receive them. I know this to be true...as I hear someone else's metaphor I tend to always revise it somewhat to fit my experiences...that's active construction. Because of this it is possible to think of chaos as a state which can motivate us into action - shift our positions - that "paradigm shaping/shifting tool" idea that the next quote raises.
The chaos of chaos theory is about - to borrow Faigley's phrase - "coherent contradictions" that create meaning. By examining our epistemological orientations with regard to chaos and the forms it may appear to take, we may begin to see chaos theory as a sort of paradigm shaping/shifting tool that is capable of clearing progressive spaces within which we might imagine our work and its meanings, its ideational, political, and material effects. (505)
The term "coherent contradictions" makes me think about how people won't (or don't) really change their opinion or how they understand something until their paradigm stops working for them. The flawed paradigm then present a contradiction. When we are presented with evidence that suggests that our paradigms don't really work anymore, we set out to create new meanings for ourselves.
Depending on how we understand learning to occur with regard to chaos - we may see chaos theory as a way for us to understand what happens when a certain paradigm ceases to be functional for us and we move to a new paradigm. Pointing to the state of chaos as a new space or place allows us to morph into something different. Moving from where we are into a state of chaos, which really doesn't require us to literally move at all because once our paradigm is rendered useless we no longer see our world in quite the same way - the order we know/knew vaporizes with our paradigm and we simply find ourselves in a state of chaos. As we shift and shape and create new meaning, that is - identify new patterns by which we sense order - there are ideational, political, and material effects.
Chaos theory reconfigures chaos as a conceptual metaphor in ways that privilege chaos as order, as a complicated kind of order, or as potential order. (505)
I've been here before - I've argued that what we call chaos is not chaos in the sense that it means an absence of order. What we call chaos is really our inability to recognize the pattern in a system. Once we begin to see the pattern, we believe the system is no longer in chaos. This connects with what I wrote about earlier when I was saying that maybe we don't move from chaos to order. We don't move at all. We are in the same system or looking at the same system - we don't move at all and maybe - probably - the system doesn't change in a measurable way either. What changes is our perception of that system.
Spending time in the system, in the chaos, lets me come to know it - it becomes familar to me. Looking at the system with a different lens and different colored glasses allows me to see the system differently and perhaps see a pattern I was unable to see before. My trip to New Mexico taught me this. Here in WV I don't fully grasp the majesty, magnitude, or beauty of mountains because I'm too close to them and I never see the whole. From my hotel room in New Mexico I saw a whole mountain and it took my breath away! Of course, there in New Mexico I could not fully appreciate what it means to be hidden in the cool of a mountain path, close to the clouds, because I was too far away.
My point here is that to make sense of something I might need to get closer, or I might need to get farther away. Because life is inherently rich and complex I suspect I need to do both in order to gain a full appreciation of those things available to me. Wayne had to step away. He had to go to New Mexico in order to appreciate and understand what he had before him in his transcript.
This reminds me of when I was learning to write computer program on the MOO. I looked at a program and didn't understand anything - it was chaotic to me. I looked at the programmer's manual and didn't understand anything - more chaos. I kept reading that manual and nothing made sense to me. I read it once, twice...eight, nine times. Finally on the tenth read I understood a phrase - order began to emerge. The more I read, the more I understood and finally I organized the information into a pattern I understood and the system was no longer in chaos but perfectly ordered in a logical and sensible way. The programming language hadn't changed. What had changed was how I saw the programming language.
One challenge we encounter is semantic, and I argue that taking up this challenge has been possible because of a growing epistemology of chaos, one that views chaos not as a direct antithesis of order but as capable of demonstrating order itself - dynamic, complex, and nonlinear order that emerges with time and understanding. (506)
Main Entry: cha·os 
Pronunciation: <TT>'kA-"äs</TT>
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, from Greek -- more at GUM
1 obsolete : CHASM, ABYSS
2 a often capitalized : a state of things in which chance is supreme; especially : the confused unorganized state of primordial matter before the creation of distinct forms -- compare COSMOS b : the inherent unpredictability in the behavior of a natural system (as the atmosphere, boiling water, or the beating heart)
3 a : a state of utter confusion b : a confused mass or mixture <a chaos of television antennas> non·lin·e·ar  ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n n-l n  - r)
adj.
- Not in a straight line.
- Mathematics.
- Occurring as a result of an operation that is not linear.
- Containing a variable with an exponent other than one. Used of an equation.
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- Of or relating to a system of equations whose effects are not proportional to their causes. Such a set of equations can be chaotic.
- Of or relating to a device whose behavior is described by a set of nonlinear equations and whose output is not proportional to its input.
- Of or relating to the output of such a device.
Main Entry: frac·tal
Pronunciation: <TT>'frak-t&l</TT>
Function: noun
Etymology: French fractale, from Latin fractus broken, uneven (past participle of frangere to break) + French -ale -al (noun suffix)
: any of various extremely irregular curves or shapes for which any suitably chosen part is similar in shape to a given larger or smaller part when magnified or reduced to the same size
- fractal adjective
This is exactly what I was saying in my previous entry. How we understand chaos depends to a large extent on how we define chaos. Given the definition of the word chaos it doesn't seem likely that I'm right. However, we know that mathematicians have also identified fractals, the grain of sand that Parker Palmer talks about. The smallest unit one must understand to understand the whole. Essentially, we must find the smallest unit which demonstrates a way to order a system or the pattern that is actually already in the system. We know that chaos is an order we come to see with time and understanding. This is what we see with Wayne's work. Wayne spends time in the system - reading the transcript over and over and over again. The order (is all order this way really?) is dynamic, complex, and nonlinear and therefore not immediately apparent to him. Wayne finds it necessary to adjust the lens through which he is looking (he is looking too narrowly) and when he steps back he is able to see the fractal, an order or a pattern, to the conversation.
Hayles's description of changing views..."In both contemporary literature and science, chaos has been reconceptualized as extremely complex information rather than an absence of order." (504)
Otherwise known as the concept of "sensitive dependence upon initial conditions" (Gleick 23), this characteristic [the butterfly effect] of chaotic systems suggests that the production/organization, maintenance/duration, and deconstruction/dissipation of chaotic systems (a text, perhaps) occur in a comprehensive cultural matrix, within which small fluctuations in initial conditions can have huge effects....could it be that a similarly rich repertoire of events, thoughts, ideas, publications, student essays, and so on, contributes to the complexity, to the chaotic order that has shaped and will continue to describe the field of composition studies as well as the composing processes it explores? (508-509)
Systems (texts?) that seem chaotic can demonstrate the ability to organize...Self-organization makes potentially equivalent variables of all variables; thus, students, teachers, contexts, ideologies, and much more all carry equal potential to contribute to the creation of meaningful texts, meaningful theories, pedagogies, and changes to the orientation of the system. (510)
However, within chaotic systems, order can - and, according to Prigogrine's theories, does - exist. Time and space may complicate our capacity to withstand the "development" of order, but emergent order exists as potential and reality within chaotic systems. And while the structure may dissipate, another form may emerge....A dissipative structure (a chaotic system) may encounter a bifurcation, which represents a moment wherein the system or structure begins to develop differently, as if choosing between two paths. (510)
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Posted by Karen McComas on 2/16/05; 10:42:31 AM to the Story Telling as Teacher Inquiry Department
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I sat last night and thought about what I had with Wayne's poem...where was I? Here is what I wrote:
This client’s mother could tear me up, what was she going to ask me?
I prepared for every contingency, was well-informed with feelings of paranoia.
I wanted to prove my abilities, be the Miracle Worker, the “Uber” therapist.
I kept thinking, “Come on…come on…Why don’t you just ask me this?”
This paragraph is about control. Here, Wayne wants to be in control because he wants to prove himself to: himself, the client, the teacher, his classmates? Wayne also sets himself up for a huge disappointment as it is impossible to claim perfection, impossible to be the "Uber-therapist" with experience, much less without experience.
Not going in the direction I wanted, I thought, “This is stupid.”
Putting up roadblocks, she sidelined me every time,
My points, my insight, and my every utterance were blocked, driving me nuts.
Frustrated and upset, I kept thinking, “I look a fool.”
Here comes the "fall" I predicted when I responded to the first paragraph. Wayne falls hard and is quite bitter about this fall, in fact, I wondered if he didn't toy with the notion of simply giving up...using flight instead of fight.
Analyzing, I labeled and diagrammed every little thing, I was too close to it.
One day I just looked at it without a microscope and it hit me.
Graying my focus, I saw the forest and the patterns
Inspiration, epiphany, and revelation came together to move me forward.
In the third paragraph we see Wayne attempt to reclaim the crown he thinks he hwas lost in the previous paragraph. In other words, he has decided to stay and fight. Sionce he couldn't abandon the interaction (because he needed it, good or bad, to complete the assignment) he set out once again to be the Miracle Worker - the "Uber-therapist," in the analysis of his transcript. He's looking too hard ("...every little thing...") and again, he faces a fall of sorts. When he steps away from the work, quits trying so hard, he begins to see an order - he goes from chaos to order. CHAOS could be an interesting frame for Wayne's story.
Writing was a constant process of learning and
I wrote my erratic thoughts into a more cohesive order.
I wrote about who I am and what makes sense to me.
That was the greater lesson.
Ah, chaos appears again as Wayne writes his erratic (chaotic) thoughts into a more cohesive unit (order - pattern). He talks about making sense - creating order to develop understanding and self-awareness - finding some order in something external helps him find order within and this is what he wanted to learn - or maybe the only thing he learned.
This is a role you play, it is not you.
Act the part, immerse yourself, do not be afraid and do not worry
This is an opportunity for screwing up, there are some things that cannot be taught.
I learned how to react in situations, I learned how to fly!
Here Wayne returns in a more positive frame of mind - surprised in a way, as if he didn't expect anything from the experience. He realizes that perhaps some things cannot be taught but that doesn't mean that they cannot be learned...and learn he did.
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Posted by Karen McComas on 2/9/05; 8:30:35 AM to the Story Telling as Teacher Inquiry Department
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