Wow! Brenna Dervin’s chapter “From the Mind’s Eye of the User: The Sense-Making Qualitative-Quantitative Methodology” is pretty difficult to make sense of. One might even call it educational jargon... but I will do my best to share MY understanding of the article.
Dervin is not preaching facts, but instead is revealing academic theory posed by various studies on sense-making, and condensing those studies into a very dense chapter. She takes the information presented in various studies and continues to pose questions related to cognition and sense-making. Throughout the chapter, a major focus seems to be the role of human interaction and understanding information: “humans by continuing dialogue and sharing of personal observations do arrive at always limited but more stable observations” (Dervin 63). Similarly, she reveals the individual’s role in understanding new information: “sense-making does not assume that the individual is situated at cultural/historical moments in time-space and that culture […] Nevertheless, sense-making also assumes that the individual’s relationship to these moments and the structures that define them is always a matter of self-construction, no matter how non-individualistic the person or the time-space may seem” (67). Another way she frames the individual vsstructural levels of understanding is with the terms qualitiative vs quantitative approaches to research. Qualitative entails the individual’s role and all their biases in defining new information, while quantitative looks at new information from a structural standpoint. Ultimately, Dervin defines sense-making as “explicitly both qualitative and quantitative […] systematic qualitative research, an approach with qualitative sensitivity which is amendable to the systematic power of quantitative analysis (81). If I were to attempt to share this reading with a high school class, I might ask each student to pull 3-5 quotes from the reading and add them to a class-wide google doc (or padlet page!). Students should pick statements from the reading they can actually understand; quotes that they would be able to summarize in their own words. Then I’d have students get into groups of four and try to make sense out of the giant collage of (hopefully understandable) quotes from the reading, and collaborate on writing a short paragraph in which they utilize at least three quotes from the collage. Well…. I have always done well in school and enjoy reading new material applicable to my classes and career, but I have also always struggled with intensely theoretical academia. I’ve avoided philosophy classes my whole life for this reason… I cannot wait to read my fellow cohort member’s interpretations of this reading. I hope they shed some light and can “make some sense” out of this for me. Thank you!
5 Comments
6/6/2020 03:38:46 pm
I agree that this is some dense reading. At times, it felt very "meta". I like the idea of having high school students make an idea splash using something like Padlet. This would certainly make the information less intimidating.
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Laurie Gaynor
6/6/2020 08:46:42 pm
I enjoyed reading your recap. Your idea of using padlet to highlight quotes is perfect. Great place to start. I can't imagine what this class would be called that would require this type of reading though. The time-space continuum makes me think of 'Back to the Future' I hope we won't need to use this as a platform for our capstone project.
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Jason Chatham
6/7/2020 02:26:58 pm
Dustin,
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Erica Gysbers
6/8/2020 06:41:41 pm
I also struggle with academic theory. As a concrete, straightforward thinker, I don't really enjoy it. I like your idea of using padlet to gather quotes and then break that down with students in an attempt to further comprehend.
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6/9/2020 12:54:15 pm
I loved this recap and your visual. I think high school students would appreciate the fact that a heavy article can better be understood by combining individuals' take-aways, and all the more enticing when using a fun new technological platform to share like Padlet. Reading your blog helped me solidify a few of my own shaky understandings form the article. But, piggy-backing on Laurie's comment, the gravitational force created by my head-spinning after reading this article could disrupt the space-time continuum.
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About Dustin Green:High School PE Teacher Archives
March 2021
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