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Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research, University of Ghent, 19-21 September 2007

Methodologies and Commitments.

Melitta Calvet

M.A. in Applied Linguistics, PUC São Paulo Didàctica i Organització Educativa, Universitat de Barcelona E-mail: [email protected]

Abstract.

Starting from the assumption that education is a process of construction of identity, I reflect on a story of self and some ontological issues raised by my educational research. My findings point at a territorial concept of identity, rather than individually, group, or culturally limited, demanding an essential process of interpretation which, in turn needs some degree of commitment to actual people, personal relations, and a sense of quality or value. In my case study, I found a gap between an urgent need for a personal educational research and references from my interviewees on one hand, and a lack of directness in the addressees on the part of academic researchers who might address that need. I conclude that lack of explicitness in terms of whom the researchers address and who they are in relation to their addressees may be consistent with the blurring of boundaries between I and others, researcher and beneficiaries of the research, but it can only serve the actual people involved if communication is possible and if there is real commitment among the people. I suggest that there could be a conversational aspect to research, linked to communication. Key words: identity territory, narratives of self, methodology, communication.

Knowing and being in stories of self.

As part of my research project for a doctorate program at the Universitat of Barcelona, I recorded and transcribed some interviews in the course of which some people tell me about their lives. My conceptual starting point was the view that being is becoming, that becoming implies learning, and that I could learn about education through communicating with people. The people I interviewed, through what they chose to tell me, have been my main sources for learning during my research process. I refer to them as my co-researchers. In this paper I am referring mainly to the narrative of Pearl Tangoi, a young woman about twenty years old. Although she is in her first year of University, still far from the professional physical education teacher she intends to become, she narrates how she has made herself, the stages in becoming the fully grown person she considers herself to be, which are related to both health processes, and integrating roles in acting and the kaleidoscopic reflection of other people’s views of her in her own self-image. She starts with some memories from her early childhood, in which she presents herself in the role of listener and follower of her cousins’ stories and adventures, and a witness to the life of the neighbourhood. This very personal story is among her most vivid memories: I remember Trash, this bitch that belonged to some neighbours, and she had puppies, and one of the puppies fell into a pipe that was supposed to carry water, and the whole neighborhood went crazy trying to pull out the little dog, because there was a certain time of the day when lots of water would go through that pipe, and the puppy was going to drown. (...) They got it out, eventually. Yes, they threw in everything down there, sticks, food. But the puppy wouldn’t get anything, he didn’t want anything. And then, suddenly they managed to get him out, they threw something and they pulled the puppy out, I remember that.

From being a witness, a follower of her cousins and a patient (she underwent a surgery when she was six) she moves into increasingly autonomous and, later, responsible roles. She becomes a tango dancer. She tells how she managed to innovate in the ways tango is taught, learnt, and conceived in her hometown. She tells how she organized classes for the teachers at her school, starting with the way she developed the idea out of a conversation with her own dance teacher, to the steps of carrying out the venture, how she reached the phase of proposing the project to the head of her school, how she struggled with the letter and the subsequent conversations to negotiate the details of the enterprise, like the managing and financing system through which she became a (teenage) organizer, teacher and, as far as I can see, a businesswoman within the school boundaries, and, gradually, outside, into the world of tango teaching and shows, assuming responsibilities for work, time management, taking care of herself against some male predators, and artistic innovation and creation. Giving tango lessons was an important landmark in becoming who she is: So, this was a change, a phase, I mean, I think this marked, more than when they tell you ‘you are menstruating, so you’ve become a woman’. No. I think it was that which marked my passing from girl to woman: the fact that I entered the world of grown ups. Her story includes narratives of crises and illnesses. But if her working experiences meant a further phase away from childhood, what was decisive in defining her entering adulthood, was the time when her mother was in hospital and her grandfather died. Talking to her relatives around the common experiences of facing death and healing, comforting her father and brother, visiting the ward, were as many roles that earned her a different relation among the whole of the family. She describes this with an image from her dancing experience: she reached a balance with her folks. And my mother’s illness, last year. My grandfather got ill too, my father’s father died around those days. I then got over another phase. I mean, maybe I already was a woman, maybe I already was a grown up. But, but when my mother was most ill, at the critical moment in my mother’s illness, I had to really grow up more, I had to, at this one moment, I had to reach my balance, I think I got my balance with the adults in the family, with my father, with my uncles. (...) with all of them. Because I had to, sometimes, they had to lean on me. My father, too.

I think Pearl’s is a clear example of the narratives in which people tell me that being is becoming, that there are levels in coming into being through knowledge, and that even if the process is intimate and personal, it can only happen in the making of a relationship, “finding a balance” with others, moving in tandem, to the same tune, depending on each other, like in tango dancing. Maybe this fulfilment in reaching a balance with other people is what inspires Pearl’s projects for the future: Pearl would like to devote herself to teaching dance and gymnastics to the elderly. She currently derives the greatest satisfactions from her sessions with third age people, and, although she never actually says so, I can well imagine that, for those people also, dancing with her account among the richest, most aware and happiest moments in their lives. From inflections in her voice, I gather she is proud of her “balance” with other people, happy that they can “lean” on her, and that she considers herself a beautiful human being.

Not being.

Pearl also refers to “not being”. In the past, “not being” herself is related to moments when, as she was going through an internal crisis, she did not communicate with others, did not play with the younger children in the schoolyard, did not feel like doing things with other people, and could not even take her tests at school. “I think people didn’t recognise me” or “friends said ‘that’s not you’” are her words to represent that for her, not communicating meant not being. In her projected being, “missing an arm or a leg” would signal an end of what she is, because “dancing is the way she works” and it is through her whole dancing body that she communicates with the rest of the world. In Pearl’s narrative, her idea of non-being is consistent with her story of becoming and being.

Different stories, all in one.

But parallel to this, there runs another story in the same narrative. Pearl is also a student, aiming to become a physical education teacher. She has trouble keeping up with the demands of her university. In this secondary, embedded story, academic demands are actually very clearly separated from Pearl’s being, and they even seem to be in contradiction with some of the things she knows she ought to do in order to keep what she explicitly considers to be her essential being. She is always on the verge of failing because some time ago she overexerted herself at some exercises and this affected her back. She doesn’t feel she has to negotiate with the faculty about this overworking of her sprained back, because after all, it is the teachers, the University, the programs which have to decide what she has to do, even if this goes against her body and her doctor’s well informed opinion. It is not that she is powerless in a struggle against the institutional rules. She is quite willing to comply with her own powerlessness, self effacing her capabilities and her beautiful being, endangering her bodily integrity. As a person, as a tango teacher, as a family woman, Pearl is autonomous and responsible. She can feel both proud and humble, and both her actions and her attitudes earn her value. Contrary to this, as a student, she feels her rights and responsibilities are limited, and have very little to do with her integrity as a person and a citizen. Her anecdotes about her university life tells about studying, talking to classmates, attending classes, failing to comply with institutional demands: activities which, in her narrative, are not presented as qualitatively related to her being or her becoming, but rather as fragments of some duty she has to comply with for some abstract demand imposed upon her, either by her parents or by society. The ultimate source of the demands is not clear. In spite of these contradictions within the narrative, Pearl shows herself as owning a harmonious, healthily united- in- her- multiplicity identity.

A territory of identity.

In order to make some sense out of this apparent contradiction, I consider identity is not a given or acquired attribute that belongs to a person or a group of people, but rather as a shifting territory always in the making, and that individual people do not belong to only one, but several territories of identity, all of them in processes of doing and undoing. My concept of territory is anthropologically shaped. I mean by this that I believe in actual reality, but it is a reality that is always filtered by people who are organized and who give it meaning. So, by way of an example, the concept of space, in which a territory exists, will vary from one territory to the next. Space is determined by agents and relations, so a distance can be covered by walking, by praying, by ritual, by a recorded message, by taking a pill that will eventually enter and affect my bloodstream, or by undergoing a painful tattoo. We inhabit identity territories which we share and dispute with other territorial agents, in a vital tension which includes experiences of a vital- destructive relation, reifications (symbolic referents which are partly received, negotiated and negotiable, the main one being an attitude facing death), social practices around a value-generating economic activity, and a deep vital commitment. All this is not always explicit through words, and it may not even be conscious. My co-researchers express this commitment as relations (to other people, to plants and surrounding, to their own body health) and as a general, often vague, idea of a better world, not limited to their own immediate surroundings, through poetic devices, such as metaphors and other figures of speech, tales and parables, eloquence, bodily expression (blushing, shiny eyes), references to works of literature or popular songs. Through poetic expression they seem to assess meaning and value to their stories and also to the relation to their direct and indirect audience. This poetic commitment, although flexible, is a strong source of generative empowerment. Value, in Pearl’s narrative, as well as in the stories of self of my co- researchers, has to do with the construction of units of ontological-deontological meaning (about what belongs to one’s being and what is proper for one to do), through an activity which implies managing resources and relations. That is, there is an economic activity that aims at generating or increasing value, and, as Corsani, Lazzarato, Negri and Moulier-Boutang very clearly show in the context of the Parisian immaterial work fieldii, there is no clear distinction between exchange value and use value. The process of being-becoming within and without territories has rhythms that complement each other, forming fuzzy units that overlap or oppose each other, although never exactly. This process is expressed through discourse and silences, discontinuities and omissions, and also through non discursive manifestations. The expression of territory is dialectic. It pulses both towards a hardening institutionalization, (the institution being “social” or “individual”), and towards a loosening, poetic, sense of belonging. Both movements seem to be necessary and complement each other.

Quality.

In short, the story of Pearl contains several stories: the successful tango dancer, the happy family woman, the caring friend and citizen, the struggling, hardly successful, student. They are united by a broad concept of a quality system of responsibility assuming and recognition, of self and socially recognised value. Responsibilities are related to rights. Responsibilities, rights, increasing and decreasing values are, in turn, related to institutional functioning. In Pearl’s story, the Institution-School has some responsibilities for her and she is given some rights and denied many others. Her own set of responsibilities there is very limited. On the other hand, the family has gradually endowed her with increasing responsibility, which she has actually had an important role and responsibility in creating and securing. The self-made individual that she is has created a wider set of responsibilities and expectations related to rights. The citizen has come to be more concerned and more involved. If being is becoming, it requires shedding and losing as well as acquiring. The story of Pearl is also the story of an awareness in increasing synchronization of beings and processes, and the making of a set of steps in keeping pace with the surrounding world, keeping count even when forgetting to count. The steps include loosening from others and tightening the grip, in a choreography of leaning and letting others lean. Becoming entails building quality systems. And quality building entails communication. Identity building, institutionalization, de-institutionalization, belonging and commitments are all processes which use languages, including verbal, mathematical, musical languages and other communication means, to substantiate themselves. By observing Pearl’s and other people’s narratives, I conclude that quality is an ontological dimension, and that both rights and responsibilities, as well as other aspects of commitment, are related to seeking and finding means of communication, (as well as measuring and evaluating in relation to communication) whether through words or otherwise, and that communication arises out of some form of working together, whether directly, actually, virtually, institutionally, or potentially, both with others, and within the self.

The crisis.

But is there always a connection? Is there real communication or are there just one-way roads crowded with, or devoid of, signs? As a matter of fact, Pearl’s story is one among the set of stories that I chose in order to represent a broad territorial unit that I called ONE. The narrators of ONE are all people whose narratives seem to be driven by a search. At the origin of this search, there is a very acute sense of ill being, connected to issues of physical health. Actually, the fact that all those people, in their stories, connected physical illness to an ill being which is socially-related and to a not always explicit communication crisis is what had me consider them as a unit, a case study. The main character, in all these stories, is a little hero, or a victim who has turned into a part-time hero, but even if my co-researcher’s narratives insist on the small size and relative value of their feats, the characterization that they build of the narrator as a hero covers a sense of commitment to others, and to a sometimes abstract idea of a better, happier world against which the plot takes its full meaning. Education and commitment.

As I have said before, my co-researcher’s stories of self are poetic assessments of some sort. There are consequences in considering education as a poetic expression. On one hand, flexibility and lack of precision allow for combinations and reassessments of values, evaluation and quality issues. On the other hand, poetry demands interpretation. Like music, it is fulfilled in a multiplicity of interpretations. We go to concerts to be moved with new pieces, but also to recognize our own accords and moods in the playing of others of pieces composed by others. But the stories of self that I recorded are no simple pieces of poetry composed by my co-researchers. Narratives of self contain poetic expressions of rightful connections and responsibility bonds towards others that often appear within a history, sometimes as logical or formal, but more often rather as historical, carried and developed since childhood, health related, self evident or unlearnt. This is related to an institutionally documented history, and it entails the “ownership” of the right to function as an individual, which is a source from which increasing self-value can or could be obtained, but also a significant reduction and limitation of other sources of value and empowerment. Among the tensions within the self, the perception of a right related to a consciousness of being and functioning as an individual within an institutionalized society clashes against the notion of being a person with multiple stories and commitments. It is commitments which bind people within and without, through non institutional channels. Commitment is a search and a call rather than a clear-cut roadiii. Some kind of “educational research” is therefore essential to those people. Even as a researcher, or connected by the very search, I am one of “those people”.

Assertion and search: a double need expressed in the stories of self.

The stories of self in my study case convey an awareness of going through a moment of transition, of ontological uncertainty, of a need to search and share the search. Some kind of educational research, in a very broad sense, seems to be a personal need. Something that has to be done urgently, but, mainly, something that has to be communicated, something that should increase as well as circulate values, as an effective means of reflection, action, and the building of hope, confidence, self-assertion. Connected to the urgency of this need, languages, and verbal language among them, appear to be crucial, both as a means of communication, and as a major tool in education, that is, in becoming with others. Pearl is very clear as to the function of talking in relation to this double need: I feel you don’t just give something to the person who’s listening to you, you are getting to receive what you want to give. You receive, you learn (...) things. They are those little things, tiny things you’ve got, kept inside you, but by telling them, they make you grow. That’s why I like listening to people so much, but I am also, I am aware that telling things helps. I couldn’t define it like a help to do this or that, but it does help, a lot.

Referential sources for educational research.

I questioned Pearl on the renewable referential sources for her education. Direct interaction with other people from her direct environment is undoubtedly a very important source, but Pearl also draws much information to feed on her knowledge and thinking from the media: she watches the news on television and occasionally other programs, she reads and comments on newspapers and magazines more than once a week. She enjoys going to the theatre for concerts and plays. She also reads poems and short stories. She deliberately chooses not to read about academic educational research unless it is an explicit demand from her teachers. As I am learning from Pearl and her story, she becomes part of my own story of becoming. I am the researcher, but I am also the intended recipient of the research. On the other hand, I become part of her story too, as I am more than an audience. And then, the “others” in the research are the academic educational researchers, although I would like to think I am also one of them!

My research.

Although I did not intend to claim universal value based on a reduced study case, I drew some conclusions which can be useful as a basis for reflection on education, its processes, and its agents. Mainly, the stories of self tell of the building of a territory of identity, which comprises more than one characterization or leading role for the self, each role in agreement with varying degrees of institutionalization into various institutions, one of them being the documented Individual, based on the biological body, who is an authorized fragment of society with certain rights and some (limited) responsibility and power. The individual Me was born on a precise day, wears glasses, and has a certain schooling and working experience. All this has been registered and can be checked against different institutional records. Telling stories from the point of view of this documented unit means adding documental value and enhancing this institutional-biological being.

My research confronted me with some ontological issues.

I had chosen a very inductive way of researching at the beginning, and I soon realized that I needed some systematic theoretical thinking, some deductive phases. Without this, I would not go very far beyond a superficial description randomly determined by my chance ways of perceiving, and, much worse, I would also destroy my living relation with the subject of my study, which was a relation of dialogue and deep understanding, not the peeping Tom witness to a display of disembodied parts. I had started with the notion that a methodology was a way to do things that was related to the tools it used, and that it all was connected to the end product the researcher had in mind. But if I wanted to be part of my end product, and if I wanted to include other people in the role of the researcher, because I needed to belong in their research, then methodology had to do with more than just things and end products. Actually, I realized I was facing an ontological problem. When I said, above, that I wear glasses, any other institutionalized members of Society can agree that I have a right to wear them, because I have a medical prescription and a receipt from having paid for them. So, stories of self contain the officially documented history of individuals. My sense of loss, my failure to notice certain details when I am not wearing them, my childhood memories of having to live with something that was permanently threatening to fall, break, get lost, or make me stand out among hostile classmates are not documented, unless I tell somebody. In the jigsaw puzzle of society, individualities are a necessary appendage, but an appendage, nevertheless. Appealing as it might seem, the individual can turn into a reductive, restrictive conceptual trap. By telling my story, I can create a documented record with a few more details. For my research, I would wear my glasses and turn on my recorder (and thank the doctors, engineers, family members and teachers who helped me do that). I could look for my co-researchers’ institutional records, and I could lay them through the text of the interview, and present them faithfully in their detail, as they were presented to me. Or I could go deeper, and find that roots are always connected to externalities which turn into essential food. But in order to go deeper into the meaning of what we were talking about, I had to go deeper into myself, and I needed help, because my institutionalized self was simply not enough. I realized that there was no going back on the inductive quality of my research, but that this also meant seeking my own informed reflection. It meant resorting to grounded theory, including deductive moments to my research. It meant involving myself and my own experience of life. It meant considering and referring to others, if I wanted to address the real people I wanted to learn from. It even meant some degree of misunderstanding if I ever wanted to reach a serious understanding. It meant not taking for granted who I was, who I was learning from, and who I was addressing. I turned to examine the literature on educational research. I found the classical questions connected indirectly to the people concerned with the research, referring to the purpose and methodology, which seem to be quite explicit and have clear answers. The best methodology has to be the best suited to the purposes, the researcher’s experience, and the end-users of the research. There seems to be some logic to this, and it has the advantage of the old “objective science” criterion in that it seems honest. Researchers often name several beneficiaries: the universities that foster the work, schools, teachers, all individuals or some of them in block, society as a whole, humankind in general, or humans in particular in their common advancement towards knowledge, and themselves. Among the mentioned would-be end-users, researchers seem to favour two or three. In books on methodology I found indirect, evasive references when referring to the people who would ultimately benefit from the material being written. Methodology writers are clearer as to the immediate receiver of the text at hand, but, when referring to the actual people who would benefit indirectly from their books, they seem to have a rather abstract picture in their minds that they would rather be silent about, or refer to in general terms. An example is the book by Gaile Cannella and Radhika Viruru, to which I am referring later. As I was clearly dealing with subjective research, I turned to find out what subjective methodologies could tell me. The few researchers I am mentioning have been important reading, but my choice in who I mention here has to do with making my point about some methodological aspects, among which the way they refer to the beneficiaries of research. Norman Denziniv, in the introduction to his book Interpretive Ethnography, states that: “a text must do more than awaken moral sensibilities. It must move the other and the self to action.”

So I go back to the old question: Who are “the other and the self” in my research? Of course these are, to a certain point, abstractions, as all language is. But are they somewhere close to the real people, and if so, to which character inside the narrators and researcher? I could start with “the other” and examine the direct impact of educational research on Pearl’s being, or wonder on the impact of education-related institutions on the institutional individual Pearl also reveals through her story. But, if education is about being and becoming with others, the meaning of action should be related to who is being educated. If I am doing this research, it is because I want to learn. I want to educate myself through the contact and exchange with others, like Pearl. But certainly, my exchanges do not exclude learning from more academic, or more experienced, researchers. And what I have learnt from others is part of myself. In order to be true to myself I have to examine all the complexity of my multiple being with others, my deepest commitments. This proves to be problematic: I had already learnt something essential from my co-researchers: understanding and learning arise from doing things together, not from looking without being allowed to see. One sided intention is never enough. Commitment leads to a need for communication. Therefore, commitment in research leads to specific needs for communication. Be as it may, I had to accept that I had undertaken a very subjective way in which the main tool had to be language. And language is like breathing, it cannot be separated from life, and it is based on relations and a transfiguring shift of inside and outside. Each language instantiation is an account of relations, tensions with, and short and long term commitments to others, and this takes place within separated realms, loosely connected through action, goals, and reifications of episodes experienced directly, lived through the narratives of others, or perceived partly through observation of the silences and reactions of people who are close. Languages, whether verbal or of any kind, make it possible for a concept of self and others that can move in several directions, deepening, spreading, loosening, while keeping a few reified, relatively stable, cores. These spreading-deepening cores allow for an increasing awareness and sensitivity of a ‘self’ that includes ‘others’ within a territorial identity through links of commitment or communication. I think it is this flexibility that demands that the recipient remain vague. In the case of Denzin, for instance his apparent vagueness expresses inclusiveness. In the book I mentioned above, Denzin says that “this is a postcolonial world, and it is necessary to think beyond the nation (...), or the local group, as the focus of inquiry. This is the age of electronic capitalism, diaspora, and instant democracy in the media (...)” and the reader can gather that he is writing for the makers of new ethnographic research, who have to think beyond the nation. Later in the introduction, Denzin concludes that “interpretive ethnographic writing in the twenty-first century will move closer to a sacred and critically informed discourse about the moral, human universe.”

Does that mean that the ethnographer has to find his or her own spiritual gurus to guide any new research project? Norman Denzin might not oppose this, but certainly, this should not be taken so narrowly. When Denzin writes that “ ethnography’s future can only be written against the history of a radical democratic project that intends humane transformations in the public sphere,” he is not writing merely to the ethnographer, but, indirectly to the readers who will in turn make the “humane transformations”. Because the research is about “those we study” and they should have their say: “ Those we study have their own understandings of how they want to be represented.”

So there is an underlying concept that Denzin writes for some people, but he is sure those people will never read him, so he addresses other people who will do the same, in the hope that somehow some ideas leak through the flow of human communication, so that, eventually, in the most indirect of ways, research “will help men and women endure and prevail in the frightening twilight years of the twentieth centuries.”

Because those men and women who are the ultimate recipients of research are the ultimate authors of research!: “ These tales record the agonies, pains, successes, and tragedies of human experience. They record the deeply felt emotions of love, dignity, pride, honor, and respect.”

Perhaps this looseness in the recipient when there seems to be much rigour in other aspects of methodology appeared natural at a time when Education was a matter of knowledge acquisition or transmission, and institutions such as School or Our Country. It sounds less natural now, although in some cases it seems unavoidable, maybe something like a necessary evil? Gaile Cannella and Radhika Viruru write for the children, but they address their books to the educators. Certainly, very young children don’t have “their own understandings of how they want to be represented”. Here again, their books are not intended exclusively for teachers or parents alone, but to the people who are willing to do their best in making the badly needed “humane transformations” that Denzin talks about. These writers warn us about the dangers of using fragments of generalizations based on the academic researcher’s culture, for example, and presenting them as the individual’s truth. Individual-oriented research, just like student-centered approaches, presents drawbacks and risks. Among other things, researchers who follow such approaches tend to address only one aspect of the individual at one moment, and neglect or repress the multiple aspects of what the people would like to become, based on, or opposing, what they have been. Other kinds of research, based on statistics, for example, have their own advantages. For one, they do not create the illusion of representing the individuals they address, and they may be a good tool within a more interpretive research. But it is the kind of research that Pearl would not read or trust, and this is a major drawback. And more so, if we consider that research on education, and education-related subjects like psychology, anthropology, didactics, or discourse analysis are read, studied and referred to by people who work for training, marketing and production management divisions in companies that deal with industrial production and financial services and are ultimately driven by making power for the powerful.

Academic research for Pearl.

Addressing people was linked to another issue, related with telling my own findings. The search for more personal, subjective, methodologies, as well as more narrative, subjective, ways of presenting research reflect a concern with the recipients and their say. I am quite certain that people like Pearl could understand, enjoy, and generally benefit from research writers like Peter Clough.v A direct conversational, informal, narrative approach to research, making it seem that no methodology is needed seems to be the answer to some researchers with results that seem no worse than the traditional methodologies in “awakening their readers’ sensibilities, and moving them to action” as Denzin proposes. Although Clough’s methodology does not always share the traditional characteristics of what is academically accepted, it does respond to clear methodological criteria. Peter Clough claims to be trying to “blur distinctions not only between form and content, but also between researcher and researched, between data and imagination; to insist, that is, that language itself, by itself, does the work of inquiry, without recourse to the meta- languages of methodology.”

I am not sure how metaphoric Peter Clough is in the latter part of this particular sentence, but I would argue that writing poetry or fiction are methodological devices in themselves, following different rules and addressing different people, or addressing people differently. And this is just what might be the trouble with poetry and fiction, because sometimes we need to establish boundaries, differences. Action has a lot to do with taking choices. Having interviewed Pearl, I could work with her in researching exclusively for her and for myself. There are obvious disadvantages in being excessively specific, and, in the case of describing a present based on the past, it doesn’t even have the advantage of serving the beings yet to become through human interaction, and subject to future circumstances. Other disadvantages arise when authors address people who look for effectiveness and efficiency: they may be helping develop institutions (social, economic, and individual) that aim exclusively to increase effective and efficient behaviours for their own very particular domination-generating ethics, but then, this happens also when addressing sentimental, or other narrowly defined issues While no absolute communication is ever a fact, attempts and trials are real and can be fruitful. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that many methodologies address people like Pearl, but they fail to reach her directly because there are no proper channelling means for communication among the different qualitative selves in Pearl.

My conclusions.

Although I learnt from different, even opposing traditions and innovations, I realized that none is enough in itself to address the issues and interests of actual persons in our world today. This should not represent a problem by itself. Who wants a single piece of research that would address all people, answer all questions and solve all problems? Or do we think we can do just that? If educational research is meant as communication, it is, by essence, incomplete. The lack of a clear-cut receiver might be related to the different selves and different relations to the people that inhabit the writers. The different inhabitants of the self may be bound in a territorial unity of action and commitment that is seldom explicit, and, in order to be allowed flexibility and generative power, it might be best left implicit or general. So, should we be more explicit in whom we address? Definitely not, I think. Some lack of definition, far from being a necessary evil that might be overcome, can be a source of reflection. It can generate including unexpected beings and situations into the picture. As Peter Clough would have it, it gives the readers an opportunity to find themselves, and not just who they are, but also who others may think they are, or who they want to become! Nevertheless, I think we can, and we should, be more concerned, or less abstractedly concerned. The problem is not that whomever we chose, we are always leaving others behind. The problem arises only when we don’t raise questions like: aren’t we always advancing the same and leaving the same others behind? Or aren’t we choosing to satisfy researchers’ questions and leaving one significant person become a nobody? Aren’t we choosing the easy problems because they are easy to see and simply assuming that whatever we do not see is not meant to be our responsibiIity to deal with? And once we have posed the questions, another problem arises if we are contented with that. We thought it was bad when researchers were not aware of their limitations, but now, as we are much more aware and humble, we can get to be arrogant about our drawbacks, proud of being so humble! Maybe it is time we examine our aimed beneficiaries to check if we are really being democratic, inclusive, and realistic, and whether being aware of how limited the reach of our results is, in all conscience, enough. Although no methodology is sufficient if it doesn’t relate to others, we cannot demand from researchers that they master all methodologies, or even several of them. It is just our human nature to be limited, to know little, and to make mistakes. Nevertheless, I have learned from my co-researchers that feeling unwell is a sign of being healthy. After all, the main defining feature of the people in ONE’s territory was the search, the need for communication. One way to meet vagueness or excessive definition or limitations could be to find ways to complement, supplement and deepen the research. Or broaden it on the surface. This can, and should, be achieved by conversation. Inspired by my co-researchers, I suggest a conversational aspect or phase to research. Like triangulation within, inter-language conversation could become an element to be considered in the methodology, along with the design of the work, institutional and media projects. It should not, of course, imply imposing anything on the researcher, but rather offering the possibility for channelling communication. A conversational aspect, section of follow-up action would address the persons within the researchers, who resist the oppressing all pervasive institutions in late industrialism, the persons who do not read about education and research but who feel a deep need for both, and also the institutionalized individual who needs to link with both other institutions and processes of de-institutionalization. For a conversational methodology: a) I suggest methodology could offer the option of approaching the issues of reality through different languages, b) I propose action should be taken, through which the educational actors, writers, readers, institutions and end-users of educational research could reflect upon, evaluate, discuss the outcomes and issues involved in research, and c) I envision a new important role for universities, public institutions and the media in promoting reflection of contrasting methodologies and research through activities in which all kinds of researchers, academic and non-academic alike, would be welcome to join with some authority. Things like that are often done, but it seems that they are not part of the research, educational policies, or the recognition of the actual model role of the media in shaping the representation of self among citizens of all ages. Basically, a conversational methodology is not about doing a specific this or that, but rather understanding that there is a gap between people who get educated and communicate among each other, or try to, and who use the media, and different sorts of schooling. This gap has always existed, but, unfortunately, breaching the distance seems to be left to volunteer workers, camp monitors, librarians, or tango dancers. It is, of course, those people’s responsibility to look for ways of instructing themselves and their public, but they are too busy communicating and obtaining results, and ways of survival. Some of the institutions that do it on a larger scale are too interested in making business and money. Researchers are too busy doing research. The inclusion of a new subject related to citizenship in the official curricula is considered and debated in the media in terms of whether it is politically correct to impose a subject on the fragile minds of students rather than how all citizens are going to start thinking and debating on the subject. Each institution or expression seems disembodied from all others. Each one uses their own methodologies and concern about internal validity. Stating that my research is valid without considering the validity of others is a sure way to cease communication among actual people. So is stating that other research is valid or that other people are certainly right without pausing to consider what it is that other people and other research are saying or doing, or not doing, what they are willing and unwilling to do. This is something any sound methodology should consider.

References.

CALVET, M. (2006) The Key, the Track and the Call: Self Narratives and Beyond. Education-line. CANNELLA, G. S. & VIRURU, R. (2004): Childhood and Postcolonization: Power, Education and Contemporary Practice. New York and London: Routledge Falmer. CHIHUAILAF, E. (1995) “Ini rume ñamvm noel chi llafe”; in De sueños azules y contrasueños. Santiago de Chile: Universitaria & Cuarto Propio. CLOUGH, P. (2002) Narratives and Fictions in Educational Research. Buckingham: Open University Press. CORSANI et al (1996) Le bassin de travail immatériel (BTI) dans la métropole parisienne. Paris; L’Harmattan. DENZIN, N. (1997). Interpretive Ethnography. London: Sage. i Pearl Tango and ONE are fictional names I gave, respectively, to one of the women I interviewed and to the whole group of my co-researchers, which includes myself, in the course of the research for my doctoral thesis. ii See, for example, CORSANI et al (1996). iii I owe the Mapuche poet Elicura Chihuailaf the image of commitment as a set comprising a key that no one has lost so far, a calling, and a going after the track of a big bird (the track of a sort of ostrich is the name the Mapuche have named the constellation of the Southern Cross). See CALVET, Melitta (2006) The Key, the Track and the Call: Self Narratives and Beyond; Education-line. iv All my quotes from Denzin are from Denzin (1997) pages i to xxiv v See CLOUGH (2002) pages 2 -3

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