From the Mind’s Eye of the User is certainly a complex introduction to the theory of sense-making. In it Dervin describes a theoretical framework as concepts and principles justified by prior research and evidence. She then grounds and frames these principles by providing several processes to make the concepts a reality. Her framework directly defies certain conventions and challenges a new perspective on qualitative data, while also critiquing the “standard” form of information systems. These processes give practical steps to realizing her framework and she exemplifies this by pulling from already complete studies on sense-making.
Ultimately, I feel as if Dervins is attempting to communicate a “new” philosophy of research and its principles. I put “new” in quotation marks because I feel Dervin would argue sense-making has always been there, just ignored or misused. Not to mention the forty articles she brings up in her conclusion. It is new in the sense that it challenges a conventional framework, the “versus” framework. It also defies a conventional system structure. We typically, in society, depend on experts. It’s what we do. We get jobs and we become experts at them. Most people have a conceptual idea of what it means to be a teacher, but only teachers actually KNOW what that experience is like. Some days, I feel like I fill out paperwork and write e-mails more than I instruct children. My step-father was a fire fighter at one point in his professional career. Many people have conceptions of what firefighters do, but only those who have experienced being a firefighter or close to a firefighter know that they spent the minority of their time actually putting out flames. They have other important duties as well. The point being, we build a society of experts and rely on them. A non-firefighter does not fully understand the full duties and therefore relies on the firefighter to accomplish them. Since we rely on experts, our systems are geared towards the people who, in theory, need them the most, the experts. Librarians used to rely on card catalogs, which may not be the best for the average person but were certainly effective and useful for librarians who were familiar with the tool. So, naturally, when sensemaking challenges to take things from the viewpoint of the actor and not the observer, it exposes “flaws” in the design of our information systems. Exemplars 2 and 6 indicated this well. In both, a patient repeatedly stated they did not understand a procedure and received no real explanation. Their gap was not bridged, they did not acquire the help or knowledge, and remained with their feelings of suspense of confusion. This is because the system of medical information was not designed for their use, but for the nurses and doctors use. The new mother was given cold water and instructed to walk because her doctors had information stating they were the best methods for her recovery. The new mother, according to this system, did not need to know that for the treatment to be effective. She just needed to comply. It is a results-focused or outcome focused method rather than a holistic and individually-focused approach. Sensemaking begins to critique this. As for my sense-making of the article, I had to read it through, watch the video on the topic, read it again, focus on the exemplars while referring back to the methods description, and read the conclusion twice more. It was hardly efficient, but reminded me of the chunking and analyzing that my philosophy classes in college required, leading me to my conclusion that sense-making is a research PHILOSOPHY more than a methodology. As I type this, I reflect on how I could have done it differently. I also reflect on how (with a little irony) this structure of academic article did very little to bridge my gap on sense-making. It took me as a motivated individual plowing through the provided tools repeatedly to process things. I wish someone had done a timeline interview with me as I was reading it the very first time, it would have been enlightening. In a strange way, I feel like the exemplars did the best job bridging the gap for me. At first, I was stuck on the idea of quantifying the qualitative, but the exemplars helped me see that it was really a perspective shift that allows qualitative things to become qualitative. Starting with some of those, even without the framework presented first may have given me more of a lightbulb moment. If I had to break down this article to a high schooler, I would question the person who was commanding me to do so. Like I said, in a rather ironic fashion, the article’s structure is anti-sense-making to me. I don’t feel like jigsawing the article would be supremely helpful because all the methodologies and procedures serve a larger purpose, highlighting the idea of analyzing qualitative responses through the system the individual was acting in. My students could completely understand the idea of an image survey and miss the dots that form the bigger picture of sense-making. How I would approach this topic, if it was required of me, would be a fishbowl simulation. I would convert some of the exemplars into scripts, have students simulate the exemplars in a small group with the peers watching, and have a discussion about it. I feel like seeing the respondents struggle to get access to information might get students onto the idea of analyzing how information is shared via systems. Then they can move onto analyzing images of companies or tools being presented to actors and start making sense of what the individual is experiencing. I believe students would need to practice seeing things from the actor’s viewpoint via simulation and then work towards making sense of the tools and systems. Even then, this is very heady material and I wonder how different it would be for students with no experience or knowledge of how research is done. Ultimately, I think the magic word her is "differentiation." It is what sense-making is all about at its core, recognizing the individual and adapting to individual needs and experience. Learning sense-making should probably occur in a similar fashion.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
October 2017
Categories |