Readings for Paly Research Study & Quest

Readings for Paly Research Study & Questions I wanted to give you some grounding in the ideas that form the foundation of this study. Here are two academic papers presenting concepts we will be using next week. I recommend skimming enough of each to get a basic idea of what they’re talking about, and then doing enough targeted reading to be able to talk about the concepts I emphasize below. 

Ito, M., & Okabe, D. (2005). Technosocial situations: Emergent structurings of mobile email use. Personal, portable, pedestrian: Mobile phones in Japanese life, 257-273.

  1. How are the concepts of “physical place,” “social situation,” and “technosocial situation” related? How are they different? (see page 3)
  2. Skim the before/during/after sections (pages 9-13). Choose one example of how the authors support a theoretical argument with a piece of evidence. Ultimately, we will be making arguments like these, using evidence from our interviews. Might give you some perspective. 

Hull, G. A., & Greeno, J. G. (2006). Identity and agency in nonschool and school worlds. Counterpoints, 249, 77-97.

  1. How do positional identity and voice show up in your life at Paly? (pages 77-78)
  2. Hull & Greeno argue that being good at a school subject depends on what you know and can do, but also on who you are in a situation. What do they mean by “interpersonal identities,” “epistemic identities,” and “discoursal identities”? (pages 83-85) Do you see how this argument is a huge challenge to how we think of academic success?

A note on reading academic literature. Almost certainly, you are out of your depth here—you are just joining a conversation that has been going on for a long time, and there will be a lot of references you don’t understand. You need to be scrappy and take what you need without feeling like you need to understand the whole thing. When you come across a reference you don’t understand, either:

  1. Make a guess and keep moving. 
  2. Make a note and ask about it in our research meeting. 
  3. Look it up. If you have never followed an academic citation before, it’s actually really straightforward and pretty satisfying. When you come across something like “In his review of Erving Goffman’s theories of social situation, Joshua Meyrowitz (1985) suggests that the presumed isomorphism between physical space and social situation needs to be questioned when we take into account the influence of electronic media,” it might be worth your time to have a quick look at Meyrowitz, 1985. Scroll to the end of the article for the full reference: Meyrowitz, Joshua. 1985. No Sense of Place: The Impace of Electronic Media on Social Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press. Then copy this and paste it into Google Scholar. You probably won’t be able to access the full article, but you don’t need it. Just read the abstract (the one-paragraph version) and you’ll have much more context for the original article. (Of course, sometimes you hit on something really interesting, maybe more interesting than the original article. That’s awesome! If you ever want articles you can’t access, email me and I’ll send you a PDF.)