Normal is a Setting on a Washing Machine

Critical research is new to me in terminology, but feels like something I've been trying to name for years now. Critical research asks questions that involve the so-called norm. Critical research asks questions that dismantle the oppression of marginalized groups. If I'm being totally transparent, these are questions I have longed to ask, but have been too fearful to do so. After learning what critical research is, I would even say that the questions brought forth by critical research in terms of education are in part what brought me to the doctoral program.

Let me explain. As a white female raised in a middle-upper class family, I have been situated in a place of privilege by basic birth alone. I have been afforded all of the rights and opportunities one could hope for in terms of education, travel, food, housing, and so on. For a long time, I was protected in a way that didn't even allow me to realize that this was not every other person's reality. In high school and college, I began to ask these questions, but not nearly as much as when I began working fill time as a public school educator. My eyes were opened to the enormous disparities in opportunity for different children. Then, just as Lugg and Tooms (2010) talk about, I began to see the way certain employees within the school system were oppressed, overlooked for leadership opportunities, and made to feel "less than." Moreover, I had a supervisor who I knew to be a lesbian, but whom was not openly out in her sexual orientation. To me, it was obvious that she took great care to keep this information a secret. She lived about an hour's drive from our school district, never talked about her personal life other than talking about her involvement in her Episcopal church's community garden which was also out of town. Her position as an educational leader gained speed yet her power and freedom to be herself was lessened more and more - at least that is how it seemed to me. There is no doubt that had her sexual preference actually been confirmed she would not have climbed the ladder in that district. It was for those same reasons that when I asked questions about addressing the oppression that many employees and students in particular experienced within the school system, I was told we didn't need to "open that can of worms."

Critical research allows a space for questions that address this idea of normalization. As a middle grades English Language Arts teacher, it was apparent to me early on that many of my students were not motivated to read because they couldn't find reading material in our school library that actually reflected their interests and realities. The selection was too normal - too reflective of a white or outdated experience for many students to relate to. Without spending adequate time reading actual text, I knew my students were not going to grow as readers. Additionally, most of my students did not enjoy reading. This idea more than their test data troubled me most.

As part of an action research study to address the lack of reading motivation I saw, I surveyed my students, purchased books that reflected themes and ideas of incarcerated parents, being raised by grandparents, feeling abandoned, being rejected by a first love, grappling with emotions and identity, and so on. These were not necessarily the classics that I was told to teach within my curriculum, but these were texts that my students could read and understand not just based on a lexile level, but in a very real and personal way. While I had several parents and administrators question these texts and their literary value, I defended my choices and my students showed tremendous growth in reading on their NC End of Grade tests. I attributed their growth to the fact that they had actually spent lengthy amounts of time reading and analyzing texts that not only helped them think critically about literature, but that they were motivated to read and think about. The texts they read were not the normal texts that middle school teachers typically used, and I think that actually made all of the difference.

As an educational leader, I want to inspire pre-service teachers and other leaders to ask questions that question the normalization to which we subject students in our schools. It is clear that curriculum reform needs to happen - not just to address disability needs - but to address the personal realities students face. While there is merit in the ideas and themes present in a classical curriculum, no student will care about those ideas until they feel safe in their own identities for the duration of the school day. 

Interpretivist Paradigm Reflections

For me, the Interpretivist Paradigm answers the question I have been asking myself about research since my first "teacher as researcher" assignment in graduate school - what is the effect of research on the subject(s) being researched? Anderson-Levitt puts this much more succinctly in the question "Are we doing more harm than good by studying this person or community? How are we preventing value bias from researchers? (p.283-284).

The Interpretivist Paradigm treats the researcher, the subject(s), and the process of research in more humane way than say the Positivist paradigm, and for me, that matters. While the hard facts or numbers of the Positivist paradigm appeal to my desire for reliable information, my real interest is in the Why? of those numbers. Number are just that...numbers. However, the interpretation of those numbers is often written out in the Results/Findings and Implications portion of a study leaving quite a bit unsaid. The numbers gained from the positivist methods could hold much greater meaning if interpretive data were added to them.

Ethnography, a specific kind of research that is part of the Interpretivist paradigm, is new to me. In an ethnography, the qualitative methods employed can allow the researcher to interpret and build theories about how and why a social process occurs. This aspect of ethnographies is especially interesting to me, and I feel it holds powerful potential for educational studies. For example, while certain reading interventions can be measured for effectiveness based on numerical data gained from pre and post assessments, I often ask myself about the enjoyment in using these interventions on the part of students and teachers. I dream of interventions for students that are not only effective in improving reading skills, but are also engaging for students and add to their overall educational experience. I feel that certain groups of students would respond to interventions differently not just based on academic skills, but due to cultural backgrounds, interests, etc. An ethnographic study could help to answer these and other questions while also not harming the subject (students and teachers) in the process.

For me, the interpretivist paradigm seems authentic, would actually be interesting to complete and read, and paired with numerical data in something that may resemble a mixed-methods study or triangulation, could provide real solutions for real problems.

Knowing, Knowing, Known

"Objective", "analytic," and "experimental' - three words, without which I think the western academy would be virtually speechless.

- Parker Palmer's "Violence of Our Knowledge"

Kitchen Stories embodied these three words right up until the thirty-sixth minute of the film when Isak shares a cup of coffee with Folke (which actually means 'people') Nilsson. This small gesture is the first of many that jeopardize the Swedish research study of which Isak is a subject.

Kitchen Stories shows us the flaws within the positivist and experimental research paradigms. The "gold standard" in research methodology stands firm on the precepts of keeping the "studied" at arm's length or in the case of Folke Nilsson, up in a chair at ceiling's height actually looking down on the activity of Isak. One can only imagine that tension felt by both Folke and Isak at the onset of the research study. This tension is at the heart of the positivist paradigm, but clearly, it is useless. From almost the beginning, Isak renders useless the study of single mens' kitchen habits by beginning to cook in his upstairs bedroom, leaving Folke alone in his chair in the dark. One can almost imagine that Isak's nature has been violated as Palmer (1999) talks about, and therefore the knowledge that the socialist Swedish group seeks to find is "violent" (p.3). 

Applying the lens of Parker Palmer's The Violence of Our Knowledge to the film allowed me to give meaning to and explain the resulting actions that developed the plot of Kitchen Stories. Palmer (1999) says that "there is something powerful about the spiritual understanding that we are not only seeking truth, but truth is seeking us" (p.16). While at first comical to me, I think this idea is reflected in the film when Isak drills a hole in the floor so that he can look down on Folke in the chair, and also when he adds in his own drawing in the field notes when Folke is ill. This shows our desire as humans to know truth about things, and have the truth known about us. 

Palmer (1999) goes on to say that "objectivism allows us always to be the changers and never the changed"(p.17). Folke embodies this notion until he and Isak begin to develop a relationship. Through the sharing of coffee and blankets, Isak picking up cigarettes for Folke, and eventually even bathing in Folke's presence, the two dispel the merits of cold, objective research. It is clear that Folke Nilsson has been "changed" when, in the ultimate symbolic act, he removes from his car the camper supplied to him by the Swedish research group, leaves it on the side of the road, and turns his car back in the direction of Isak's home while "Dr." Malmberg loudly protests and threatens his blacklisting!

This reflection on both the film and Parker Palmer's paper would be a sham without my own commentary on how it relates to my own paradigmatic thinking. As a self-proclaimed paradigm chameleon, both the film and paper spoke to my "want to connect back into community" (Palmer, 1999, p. 12). Like the young people Palmer talks about, in this day and age of narcissistic social media and television, I long to know the "truth" about people and connect it with my own truth. To  answer the question about education being an intervention, I see that it can certainly be one - and that it can affect both young and old in drastically harmful and helpful ways. It is my personal goal as fist, a human, and secondly, an educator, to connect what I know and what I am learning in real, meaningful ways that has a positive (not positivist!) impact on the lives of others and myself.

References

Hamer, B. Kitchen Stories (2003) film

Palmer, P.J. (1999) The Violence of Our Knowledge: Toward a Spirituality of Higher Education.

     The Michael Keenan Memorial Lecture, Berea College, Kentucky. The Seventh Lecture 1993

The Spirit Level

photo source

"Accepting this does not involve a huge theoretical leap" (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2011, p.195).

In this quote from The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett were talking about the notion of accepting that inequality is the common denominator in understanding the enormous variations which exist from one society to another in the level of problems associated with low social status.

This quote expresses my initial reaction when I began reading this book. I thought to myself, "Well, yeah, it seems fairly logical that great disparity in incomes would cause social issues in a society." That's not to say I did not think the idea was a little broad, and I had some questions about the particulars of this seemed correlation. The more I read, the more those particulars came to light.

This book carries with it a certain moral weight and has left me thinking about our society and even my place in it. While, as the text said, I didn't have to make some huge mental shift to accept the "truth" this book presents, the actual reading of it did shift my perspective. Analyzing the graphs and reading the commentary that provides the meaning to and implications of those graphs left me a little despondent. While the positivist side of me kept trying to focus on the line of regression and the facts it presented, the humanitarian, teacher, and feminist inside of me was screaming, "The U.S. has GOT to do someTHING! What is wrong with us?!?"

For me, this book imparts some responsibility as a reader and U.S. citizen, but since that is not exactly the focus of our course or this analysis, I will attempt to take on the role of the research critic and doctoral student. This text also gives responsibility to these roles as well in thinking about the methodology employed in this study and what I glean from it.

(1) What resonates with me/ What I find compelling

• p.76 - I completely agree that our psychological wellbeing has a direct impact on our health. I tend to believe that a key ingredient to overall health is having sound mental health. I have witnessed in several instances where strong feelings of inferiority can cause excessive anxiety and have a truly negative impact on an individual's life.
• p.115 - "We learn best in stimulating environments when we feel sure we can succeed. When we feel threatened, helpless and stressed, our bodies are flooded by the hormone cortisol which inhibits our thinking and memory." As a teacher, I called this amygdala hijacking. The amygdala is the part of our brain responsible for fear responses and pleasure. Basically, when an individual feels threatened in a learning environment by any stimuli (bullying, comparing his/her clothes or backpack to others, not being able to afford the upcoming field trip, etc.), he or she cannot process anything other than keeping him/herself safe from the threatening stimuli. Feelings of inequality are very difficult on children (and many adults as well), and anyone who has worked in an educational environment has most likely seen its effects.
• p.175 - The same data sets (from the UN and the U.S. Census Bureau) were used throughout this study. They were selected for use prior to any analyses and were taken as no "ifs and buts." This is a very positivist way to view the data, and I find it sound.

(2) Where I Raised my Brow in Question

• At first, I was thinking like Saunders; every time, I looked at a graph, I thought that the U.S. seemed to be so far out on its own. I really wondered about this. I wondered if this book was written with too much of a political agenda and so the data was somewhat skewed to "drive home" a point or be overly influential.

(3) Lasting Impressions

• After reading Noble's article, I tend to take the data and implications in this book seriously. The comparison Noble used of the Himalayan Mountain Range and the U.S. included as part of the data set made sense to me. Each country is separate in and of itself, therefore the U.S. cannot just be excluded from the data on terms of it so heavily affecting the line. U.S. facts and just that - the U.S's facts. Also, as a lifelong U.S. citizen, I can justify in my mind how the U.S. could be the metaphorical 29,000 foot mountain that skewed the data. We are a country whose policies undeniably have caused great inequality for a number of reasons. 
• Also, in both the actual book and Noble's article, it is mentioned several times that no one disputes that "other factors" are at play when thinking about social problems, but there is certainly a significant correlation between inequality and the Index of health and social problems put forth by Wilkinson and Pickett.

Overall, I leave The Spirit Level wondering less about the manipulation of regression lines that Saunders suggested, and more reflecting on where I fit into all of this - this unequal society. I am left to reflect on the opportunities I've been provided throughout my life, the health I enjoy, and the pursuit of bettering myself, and my own 2-person familial unit's financial situation. It leaves me questioning the beliefs I've been imparted about wealth obtainment and thinking "at what costs do my comforts come?".  Again, I go back to the paradigms....the positivist in me has respect for the methodology used in this study, and based on fairly convincing evidence, I accept it as "truth," even if not whole truth; the "bleeding heart" human inside of me now feels compelled to do something about it.

References

Noble, H. (2010). The spirit level revisited: Regression lines, correlation, outliers, and multivariate analysis.

Wilkinson, R., & Pickett, K. (2011). The spirit level: Why greater equality makes societies stronger (Pbk ed.). New York: Bloomsbury Press.

Paradigm Chameleon

The question is..."What's your paradigm?"

I would say that I am a bit of a chameleon when it comes to a research paradigm. I think more in terms of purpose, and so I operate in a paradigm based on the purpose of what I'm wanting to know or discover.

I think that I most align (right now anyway) with the post-positivist paradigm. I like the "Yes, but" definition I have given this paradigm in my mind. Meaning, I want to get as close to the "truth" as possible while realizing that my humanness makes my research somewhat fallible no matter how much I attempt to detach myself from it. Currently, my main research interests lie in reading interventions (particularly for secondary, grades 6-12 students). That being, it is important to me to find the methods that appear to give me the best results for the largest number of students. This points to the post-positivist paradigm.

On the other hand, I have a strong interest in the attitudes and preferences of reluctant readers, particularly African American reluctant readers at the secondary level. If I were to study this topic, I would likely lean more towards a feminist theory/interpretive paradigm. I would be less interested in numbers and figures, and more interested in the stories of my subjects. However, those stories might lead me to try some kind of intervention in order to motivate the students, so my paradigm would likely end up being mixed methods.

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