Feedback on Devi's Research Component

Feedback for Devi

Fantastic! Caveat: I haven’t read the paper. This feedback just pertains to the presentation.

Background

  • I like the initial framing around “wicked problems.” It would be nice to go a bit further into the history of the term though, particularly as folks hearing that as jargon could misinterpret (e.g. with a moral valence). This history could also helpfully center a design perspective. You ask the question, “What should we do?” If we want to get to the point of figuring out what to do, but we want to avoid the linear, single-causality view which misses the complexity of systems, a design perspective may be valuable.

    • Later, you use the term “ill-structured” which is connected to this background, would be helpful to note.

  • I love your point about how interpretive lenses / cultural ways of knowing (I forget the term you used) is missing from systems thinking. I feel like there is some non-critical work in systems thinking you could build on here–Wilkensky somewhere talks about the difference between an agent-based perspective (e.g. an individual participant in a system) and a systemic perspective (top-down, from the outside). Could this idea be extended into a sort of “systems thinking positionality?”

  • Your work is challenging views of systems thinking which lack an account of power, privilege, and position. It would be helpful to embed this within the broader tensions between western Science and indigenous ways of knowing (e.g. Megan Bang’s work). More on this in the background would help surface the importance, for example, of the excerpts where students ask questions about why the dam is there. Partly, this is a question of audience as well. Would you like people who are committed to NGSS views of science to be reading your work? If so, what is the way in for them? (btw, it’s fine if the answer is no. I love, for example, the way bell hooks often starts her books by laying out some axioms: effectively, if you don’t understand the US as an institution of settler colonialism, you’re reading the wrong book. Byeee.)

Methods

  • Positionality: Who chose the pseudonyms? Is there a sense in which students have agency in how they are represented in this research? This could enhance your argument at another level, by showing how you enact the kind of participation in science you presumably want to support. This may not be logistically possible, but it would be wonderful to know whether students agreed with, authorized, or endorsed the extended maps you derived from interviews. For example, look at Stephanie Tolliver’s work [1], particularly how she talks about her own positionality and the role of her research participants.

  • Mental modeler: What are the assumptions behind this tool? Specifically, is it related to Epistemic Network Analysis [2]? Some readers might wonder.

  • I suggest qualifying your use of statistics–in reporting p-values, for example, you suggest you’re in the domain of statistical inference, effectively trying to make claims about a population based on a sample. This paradigm doesn’t do justice to your data, and it exposes you to specific statistical methodological critiques you probably don’t want to have to address. It might be better to focus on descriptive statistics.

[1] Toliver, S. R. (2020). Can I get a witness? Speculative fiction as testimony and counterstory. Journal of Literacy Research, 52(4), 507-529. [2] https://www.epistemicnetwork.org/