a place for community

A question (or challenge or doubt) has been raised whether it may be more difficult to describe the Ideal Place than it has been create such a space. This would be reasonable if the specialness was rare and unpredictable. But when such a place setting arises with regularity it is worth trying to capture the conditions that create this phenomenon. Further, that the Ideal Place consists of a substantial proportion of new participants and occurs in vastly different location -- it appears that comparing these distinct cases ought to shake out the common factors.

The conditions for the Ideal Place probably tap into a primal instinct. While somewhat fanciful, their existence in the world outside of children's stories suggests that the border between fiction and non-fiction may be a gray area. Or perhaps the special place is set within the very location that only appears to be a border: a hedgerow or a windbreak or a stone wall. Each of these cases might superficially designate a dividing line. However, those who look closely recognize the special and unique occurrences taking place in these interstitial zones.

A special place could be where a person goes on his own in order to enjoy the solitude. It is probably best for each person to find their own spot and not disclose its location or existence to others. However, another type of ideal place takes the form of a gathering. It would have to be more than an ordinary gathering because (at least in my mind) one aspect of the idealness would be that everyone involved would benefit from the experience. In fact, it might even be better if there was a shared sense about why to gather in the first place. As we are growing to appreciate, such topics were long ago explored by John Dewey:

Wherever there is conjoint activity whose consequences are appreciated as good by all singular persons who take part in it, and where the realization of the good is such as to effect an energetic desire and effort to sustain it in being just because it is a good shared by all, there is in so far a community.

~ The Search for the Great Community, 1927

Admittedly this does not describe how the Ideal Place may be established. But perhaps knowing the ends and their subtle characteristics, we can reconstruct the means. Maybe the secret is that we had an implicit sense for what we longed for within an Ideal Space and because our experiences and aspirations were so aligned with that of so many others, our boldness to act may have simply opened the door to what it was that so many others needed.

dewey is all we need

I own 3 books by John Dewey: Experience & Education, How We Think, and Democracy & Education. Because I find myself referring to those fairly often, and enjoy assigning the thinner volumes for classes, I trick myself into believing that I have a pretty good handle on him. Other writers who quote Dewey will sometimes cite him, not by using one of these key texts, but from within the compilation of his writing as in "Middle Works." Just because I have some grant dollars I could expend, I have thought about buying a CD of the entire collection. But that would mean I would be admitting there is more to read and know than is contained within the three books I now own.

In discussing the role of "tension" within powerful professional exchanges, we have begun to wonder whether we ought to write something about the rewards of wrestling with ideas rather than perpetuate the civil and flat conversations that are all too common at typical conferences. I stumbled across a piece in Teachers College Record by David Wong. It's title is "Beyond Control and Rationality: Dewey, Aesthetics, Motivation, and Educative Experiences." While it is more of a rambling philosophical essay, it has become a gateway into some of the very issues with which we have been struggling. One is that anticipation can be a better way to explain why people do certain things than motivational theory. Another is that aesthetics is all about tensions: fear vs. desire, worry vs. relief, excitement vs. serenity. Who lead Wong to this and also expands my understandings? Yep, John Dewey.

According to John Lennon, all we need is love to fix everything. Within our academic work, I am wondering whether John Dewey is all we need. It seems that when I get stuck on some notion, it is John Dewey's writing that rescues me. In this case, the Crossroads experience offers a way for people to find a type of completeness that is all but disallowed in other professional settings. There seems to be some underlying beauty or wholeness that occurs ... but knowing how to capture that, even though it seems evident within the photographs of the event, has been elusive. As revealed in the following passage, I need to obtain a copy of Dewey's Art and Experience:

Since the artists cares in a peculiar way for the phase of experience in which union is achieved, he does not shun moments of resistance and tension. He rather cultivates them, not for their own sake but because of their potentialities, bringing to living consciousness an experiences that is unified and total.

If I ever have a sabbatical again (note to self: stay in one spot for at least six years and do so when financial exigencies don't preclude paid leaves) I suspect I could be quite content writing essays that each incorporate a Dewey nugget. What I would write would be a contemporary re-interpretation of Dewey in the spirit of "standing on the shoulders of giants." Whether anyone else reads that stuff would be less important. I wonder if anyone has devoted most of a sabbatical simply to generating blogs. Or pitching books to editors that spin-off into possibilities that were only dreamed about late at night in a conference hotel bar.

father of doctoral students

The European Union is doing more than simply developing a common currency. Another project is developing coherence and consistency across doctoral programs. Central to this is the desire to create mutual trust and close collaborations across national and institutional boundaries even as there is a collective understanding about high quality standards and the conditions for doctoral education.

One issue is that doctoral candidates in many European countries are treated as employees with salary and benefits; funding streams to maintain this practice are becoming a difficulty. A second issue is the scope and sequence of experiences that culminate with the granting of a doctoral degree; there is considerable inconsistency in coursework and research training. Finally, and most pertinently, is the push for a departure from the apprenticeship model of doctoral preparation. The traditional model of supervision is viewed as something that needs to be phase out.

According to an article by Alexandra Bitušíková the supervisor of German doctoral candidates is solely in control of the experiences and progress of those who labor under him. Not only does this sound very paternalistic, but the translation of this title is "Doctor Father." And the imeptus for this entire blog entry is the formal label for someone in this role: Doktorvater. Yes, it really is. There is even a Wikipedia entry about this which means it MUST be true.

As one would expect, to be a Doktorvater is a prestigious role. One might also have a female supervisor but presumably these women mumble when they speak: they are called Doktormutters. Try as I might I could not l was unable to locate an image of Darth Vader wearing a mortarboard -- and I don't have the skills to create one myself. I also failed to find a mash-up in which Darth's theme was blended with "Pomp and Circumstance." If I was still in the business of spoof entertainment then I might try to commission such a composition. Instead, the imagery of a dissertation defense with Chewbacca and Darth Maul and Princess Leia as committee members is enough to give me a chuckle.

do the job in the interview

When an individual is interviewing for a new job, the word on the street is that this is the opportunity to do the work involved with the position. Rather than play the game of interviewing, it has been suggested that the candidate reinvent the intervirew by using the setting as the first day of work. After identifying a challenge associated with the position, the candidate then shows how s/he would take this on — not by talking about it but by beginning to actually do so. For example, instead of talking about how to re-design a doctoral program (assuming this is part of the new position) the redesign process begins during the interview.

We applied similar logic during applicant interviews for our graduate teacher education program. I was interviewing potential science teachers and I'm expected to invent a "content" question. Because it looks as if I'll be teaching the science methods course to these students this summer, I realized this was my opportunity to foreshadow the content of that course. Further, since the achievement gap data is so fascinating, I thought it would be revealing to ask the teacher applicants to engage in the work they will be doing in July.
We gave them some of the data from NAEP and invited them to comment upon what they made of this information. They were also asked to describe the possible implications for the classroom science teacher. At the very least, it made for interesting conversation and it was entertaining for me to watch them work to make sense of the material even as they attended to the comments being made by the one or two other applicants who were also at the table.

No, we didn't solve the problem of the achievement gap. But YES, we did learn a great deal about the applicants by how they wrestled with the issues. For one, we found out that some people are too caught up in their own lives (and the schooling experiences of their children) to take into consideration the wider population of school-aged children. Others revealed that they had already puzzled over similar data and those discrepancies were part of the reason they were leaving laboratory science to engage in science teaching. Was this a brilliant move to ask this kind of question: maybe. One reservation about claiming brilliance is that it has taken many years of being unfulfilled by the interview process for teacher applicants to FINALLY stumble across this approach. The tragedy is that this became the first time I felt as if we were asking our applicants to do the job during the interview.

bad apples

A recent posting about bad behavior during an academic conference appeared just a day before I heard about a study about bad apples within organizations. It is somewhat startling that something as mundane as a junior faculty pup who pees on others' legs can be described in a scholarly journal. The report even included an conceptual framework (only part of which appears here) that seeks to represent how a deliberate detractor can influence the others with whom he comes into contact.

The study itself is quite clever: the researcher hired an actor who, unbeknown to three other research subjects, was to act like (1) a jerk or (2) a slacker or (3) a gloomy Gus.Which of these applies to the Golden Retriever Puppy is less important than this study's discovery about the cascading effects of his pissy behavior.

We present an unfolding model that describes the prototypical process by which one individual behaving badly might have a profoundly negative impact on the group. We suggest that the three most salient and important behaviors of a negative member are the withholding of effort, the demonstration of negative affect, and the violation of important interpersonal norms. (Felps, Mitchell & Byington, 2007)

As I understand the story, the dynamics of the group were greatly harmed by the presence of the detractor. The mood of the group suffered and the levels of trust were jeopardized. In terms of completing the group task, the researchers noted lowered motivation, reduced creativity and lessened amount of cooperation. Other behaviors noted in the unsuspecting group-mates were defensiveness and irritability. This suggests that the "bad apple" can indeed ruining the whole barrel (cf. Osmond, et al. 2008). Fortunately, the group does have the capacity to resist.

Although not disclosed within the article, the radio interview (near the 12 minute mark) uncovered that it was possible for diplomacy to overcome the negative influences of the jerk. And the diplomat could be a leader that emerges whose positive influences neuters the pup AND brings the group along. In other words, it may not be necessary for the entire group to resist and revolt. Instead, at least with the actor, someone who represents goodness and generosity can resist the attempts to pull one over to the dark side.

ozark landscape

Our niece’s wedding is tomorrow so today we took advantage of the free time and a loaner car to drive around. The destination was the birthplace of George Washington Carver that is a designated National Park Service site. It was about an hour away and the destination was worth that much travel time. But no one should build a vacation around this place. What struck me was the landscape on Highway 71 between Arkansas. Even though it was a sunny day, it is January and so the landscape is very stark. In the bright sunlight and leisurely pace I came to recognize what is so distinctive and so ugly about the countryside. The dominant shade is dun or umber and the sound of these colors’ names parallels the visual excitement of the territory.

There was nothing distinctive or eye-catching. Instead it’s the overall effect that is not only dull but downright depressing. At some point in my youth our family acquired a deer hide. I can’t remember how it arrived but my sense even then was that it was a castoff substandard effort of a novice. Perhaps my father. The hide was a little stiff and would not lay completely flat. The hair was not as soft as I had imagined. The color was a hard to describe combination of tan and brown and off-white. There were patches where the hair had fallen out, either in the tanning process or because of pre-death hair loss. And the edges of the hide were rough and ragged. It wasn't a pelt you would wrap around yourself -- it was something you'd throw on a sibling to hear them shriek in horror.

I suppose we might imagine that a wintry prairie would be a gently rolling tan version of green wheat fields. Similarly, a deer hide should be as seductively soft as a kitten’s tummy. But for me, neither is the case. Instead, the rock pressing through the turf lacks the robustness of granite. Instead, the limestone is rusty and crumbly. The effect is geologic mange. The trees are not at all pretty. The branches are gnarled and arthritic, the twigs stubby like the fingers of someone who should have worn gloves when they worked in the garden. There are occasional stands of cedar but their evergreen-ness is closer to dried blood. The landscape may be lush and verdant in the summer; since I only seem to visit for Christmas, I don’t recall seeing the area in that condition. Instead, it’s equivalent to chapped lips, torn cuticles, flaking sunburn, scraped elbows, rusting equipment, or de-layered plywood. It’s harsh and it’s sad. Unlike a town that had a past golden age, I’m not convinced the area was ever a place of joy or hope. It’s grim and disheartening. The only relief is the small town with the glimmering signs for WalMart and Sonic Drive-Ins. But even the tater tots seem underdone and make me long for golden times.