Newsgroups: bit.listserv.qualrs-l
Date:         Fri, 8 Jan 1993 21:44:00 CST
From:         Gary Shank <P30GDS1@NIU.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: reality check?

Qualitative Research?  Quantitative Research?  WhatUs the Problem?
Resolving the Dilemma via a Postconstructivist Approach


Gary Shank Northern Illinois University

Introduction

The Rqualitative vs quantitativeS debate has been part of the fabric of
educational research for some time. ( cf.  Smith, 1983; Gage, 1989;
Rizo, 1991; Salomon, 1991 for various discussions of the debate)  At
stake in this debate is the issue of whether two worldviews of
research can coexist, or if one has to eventually either incorporate or
discredit the other.
In this paper, I would like to take a slightly different turn.  I would like
to start by examining what is one of the most important qualitative
turns in educational research, namely the constructivist stance.  Most
issues that surface in an examination of constructivism are actually
metonymous to issues that are found in the larger qualitative context,
and, given the prominence of constructivism in educational technology
research, an analysis of constructivism per se should be concretely
fruitful to an educational technology audience.   By grounding
constructivism in the larger qualitative tradition and by contrasting it
with positivism, (arguably the philosophical basis for most
quantitative research in education; cf. Schrag (1992) for a recent
defense of positivism in educational research) I would like to show
that the Rqualitative vs quantitativeS debate, played out here in
concrete terms as a constructivist-positivist argument, is actually an
example of a much deeper and long-standing conflict of issues in the
history of science.  Finally, I would like to use this discussion as a
scaffold to address the original question.  I will hopefully demonstrate
that the flaw with most current qualitative methods and theoretical
positions in educational research, including constructivism, is that
they suffer from a lack of vision, such that these theories and methods
do not stand on their own and make sense on their own terms.  In an
attempt to ground a truly unique vision, I would like to be the first to
pose a postconstructivist model for educational research and practice.

Constructivism and Educational Technology Research

Let me start off by saying that some of my best friends are
constructivists.  I also would like to acknowledge that constructivism
draws much of its energy from the same recent historical trends that
have come to produce what we consider to be mainstream qualitative
research in education, including holistic ethnography, symbolic
interactionism,  cultural anthropology, and the like. (cf.  Jacob, 1987,
for a review of these trends)  However, I think it is important for us to
realize that constructivism assumes certain stated and unstated
assumptions that ground it very clearly to certain trends of thought,
and that unreflectively accepting the basic tenets of these trends can
lead us into some troubling consequences.
 Merrill (1991)  summarizes constructivism as being based on the
following assumptions; 1)  knowledge is constructed by the learner, 2)
learning is a personal interpretation of experience, 3)  learning is
active, 4)  learning is collaborative, 5) learning is situated in real
world contexts, and 6) assessment of learning is integrated within the
learning context itself. (p. 46)  Duffy & Jonassen (1991) acknowledge
that Rconstructivism provides an alternative epistemological baseS (p.
8)  for research in  educational technology.   They cite recent work  in
situated cognition as the basis for much of constructivist theory, (cf.
Brown, Collins & Duguid, 1989 for a statement of the basic principles
of situated cognition in educational research) contrasting such
theoretical work against what Lakoff & Johnson (1980) called the
RObjectivistS tradition.  When we look at the Objectivist tradition, we
find that it is really what we have come to call the positivist position
in research.  Therefore, it is no surprise that constructivism is
deliberately anti-positivistic in its outlook.
 While constructivism appears to differ from older, behavioristic
models of research, it seems to be perfectly attuned to more current
directions in psychology.  For instance, Perkins (1991) explicitly links
constructivism with information processing theory by noting:

  ...information processing models have spawned the computer model of
the mind as an information processor.  Constructivism has added that
this information processor must be seen as not just shuffling data, but
wielding it flexibly during learning - making hypotheses, testing
tentative interpretations, and so on. (p. 21)

By linking information processing and constructivism, Perkins brings
together contemporary cognitive theory and constructivist theory.  This
is an important step, because it anchors constructivism within the
mainstream of scientific thought in the human sciences.  Spiro, et al
(1991) continue this thread, by further linking constructivism with
schema theory.  With its insistence on being more free-form and less
centralized, constructivist theory also has a natural affinity to
theoretical work in connectionism, (Bereiter, 1991) hypermedia,
(Tolhurst, 1992) and multimedia. (Dede, 1992)  On a practical
educational level, Bagley & Hunter (1992) argue that constructivism is
the RglueS that can hold together the combination of technological
innovation and restructuring needed in our school systems.
 All else aside, the debate about constructivism centers on whether we
are willing to take a positivist stance toward research in education as
was done in the past, or whether we need a new position.  In order to
make such a decision, the researcher should be aware of what a
position entails, and where it came from.  Therefore, we need to focus
on where constructivist ideas come from, and why they have such
purchase on the imagination of researchers in education and other
human sciences.

The Roots of Constructivism

What are the basic tenets of constructivism?  Cole (1992) claims that
Rsocial negotiation of meaningS and Rcritical argumentationS (p. 27)
are the keystones to the constructivist approach.  Cunningham (1991) in
his neo-Galilean dialogue between a constructivist and a positivist, has
RSalviatiS define constructivism thusly:

Constructivism holds that learning is a process of building up
structures of experience.  Learners do not transfer knowledge from the
external world to their memories; rather, they create interpretations
of the world based on their past experiences and their interactions in
the world.  How someone construes the world, their existing metaphors,
is at least as powerful a factor influencing what what is learned as any
characteristic of that world.  Some would even argue that knowledge
that is incompatible with or unaccounted for in an individualUs
interpretation cannot be learned. (p. 13)

These ideas are quite different from the notions that have guided
educational research through most of the twentieth century.   What are
their historical roots?  All talk of cognitive theory and methodology
aside, it is reasonable to claim that constructivism is basically
grounded in the work of three contemporary philosophers of inquiry
methodology - Richard Rorty, Nelson Goodman, and Paul Feyerabend.
 Richard Rorty, with his neo-pragmatism, (Rorty, 1982; Trimbur & Holt,
1992) is probably the most influential person in the philosophy of
science today, as well as being the heir apparent to KuhnUs
tremendously important theorizing on the role of paradigms and
paradigm shifting in scientific research.  Rorty pushes the idea of the
paradigm shift to the extreme with his model of narrative philosophy.
In narrative philosophy:

Rorty shifts the terms from a search for method to a strategy of
historicization.  He urges us to look at philosophical discourse as
language-in-action - not a privileged perspective that holds out the
hope  of finally moving from speculation to science but simply the
stories philosophers tell each other....  To historicize philosophy in this
way...means we will no longer possess a universal measure by which to
judge knowledge claims and the accuracy with which they represent
reality....  To recognize that philosophy is no more and no less than its
own narratives is to recognize that we will always get the past that
we deserve - not a final definitive version of philosophical problems
and issues  but the version our present situations calls up.  We will
have what was there all along - ourselves, our common activities, our
attempts to cope with reality.  And we will be no worse for our
judgements.  It is just that our judgements will no longer be concerned
with what is true and accurate according to some extrahistorical
criteria.  (Trimbur & Holt,1992: 75)

Nelson GoodmanUs Ways of Worldmaking (1978) reads like a manifesto
for the constructivist movement:

Truth, far from being a solemn and severe master, is a docile and
obedient servant.  The scientist who supposes that he is single-
mindedly dedicated to the search for truth deceives himself.  He is
unconcerned with the trivial truths he could grind out endlessly....  He
seeks system, simplicity and scope; and when satisfied on these scores
he as much decrees as discovers the laws he sets forth, as much
designs as discerns the patterns he delineates....  Truth, moreover,
pertains solely to what is said, and literal truth to what is said
literally.  We have seen, though, that worlds are made not only by what
is said literally but also by what is said metaphorically.... (p. 18)

Paul FeyerabendUs (1975) self-styled anarchistic emphasis on the
practice of science as opposed to theorizing also strikes a fundamental
chord in the constructivist model:

It is clear, then, that the idea of a fixed method, or of a fixed theory of
rationality, rests on too naive a view of man and his social
surroundings.  To those who look at the rich material provided by
history, and who are not intent on impoverishing it in order to please
their lower instincts, their craving for intellectual security in the
form of clarity, precision, TobjectivityU, TtruthU, it will become clear
that there is only one principle that can be defended in all
circumstances and in all stages of human development.  It is the
principle:  anything goes.  ( P. 28, italics his).

Guba (1992) explicitly links Feyerabend to his project of relativism
which Guba says R ...is an essential element in defining the ontological
and epistemological presuppositions of the constructivist inquiry
paradigm of which I am a proponent.S (p. 17)  Eisner, (1992) whose
critical version of qualitative methodology is akin to GubaUs model of
constructivism, draws heavily on Rorty and Goodman in his attempt to
critique objectivity in a postpositivist frame.  Therefore, we can
assume that Rorty, Goodman, and Feyerabend are central figures in the
emerging constructivist-qualitative paradigm developing and growing
within educational research. What are the common issues that unite
these three foundational constructivist thinkers , and how can we
examine those issues to help understand the basic tenets of
constructivist thinking?  Essentially, Rorty, Goodman, and Feyerabend
all share a concern for the historical side to human inquiry, and this is
no accident.  This is because all three of them see themselves as
members of the pragmatist tradition, a tradition that Pepper (1942), in
his review of metaphysical positions, labeled RcontextualismS.
Contextualism, furthermore, took its root metaphor from the idea of
the historical event.  Pragmatism has always looked to the context of
practice, in historical and cultural terms, as the basis for resolving
issues of meaning. (cf. House, 1991; Cherryholmes, 1992;  House, 1992
for a discussion of the role of pragmatism vs realism in scientific
inquiry in educational research)  Therefore, we can conclude that
constructivism, as articulated in educational research settings, is a
species of pragmatism.  This link to pragmatism will ironically provide
us with the means to move from constructivism to postconstructivism,
since we will make that move by linking the concerns expressed in
constructivism to the ideas of the philosophers who formulated
pragmatism in the first place.

Steps toward a Postconstructivist Model

The path to a postconstructivist model of educational research is based
on the split within pragmatism that has shaped that philosophical
discipline from its outset.  Pragmatism is a movement with two
founders - an actual founder (C.S. Peirce) and an expedient founder
(William James).  Many of the problems that arise in pragmatism are
based on the fact that the ideas of the actual founder  and the expedient
founder are different in important ways.
 Let us start with the expedient founder of pragmatism - William
James.  In 1898, in a lecture at the University of California, James
stated his version of pragmatism in such a way that the ideas caught
the imagination of the American intellectual community for decades to
come.  Even though James was careful to acknowledge that his good
friend, Charles Peirce, was the founder of pragmatism, few people
actually looked at PeirceUs ideas.  Instead, they followed JamesUs dicta.
JamesUs version of pragmatism is fairly simple.  He held that
pragmatism was a means for determining the truth of certain claims.
That method works as follows (James, 1948):
 RGrant an idea or belief to be true,S it says, Rwhat concrete difference
will its being true make in any oneUs actual life?  How will the truth be
realized?  What experiences will be different  from those which would
 obtain if the belief were false?  What, in short, is the truthUs cash-
value in experiential terms?S The moment pragmatism asks this
question, it sees the answer:  True ideas are those that we can
assimilate, validate, corroborate  and verify.
 False ideas are those we cannot.  That is the practical difference it
makes for us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of
truth, for that is all that truth is known- as. (pp.160-161; italics his)
 Now, let us compare JamesUs maxim on the pragmatic notion of truth
with the Pragmatic Maxim.  This Maxim, first published in 1878 and
pretty much ignored thereafter, is PeirceUs definition of pragmatism
(Peirce, 1955):

 Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings,
we conceive the object of our conception to have.  Then, our conception
of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.  (p. 31)

 Granting that the above quote is hard to understand, let us look at a
passage where Peirce explicates his maxim:

 ...the  whole meaning of an intellectual predicate is that certain kinds
of events would happen, once in so often, in the course of experience,
 under certain kinds of existential conditions  - provided it can be
proved to be true. ( p. 273; italics his)

 And elsewhere:

 But of the myriads of forms into which a proposition may be
translated, what is that one which may be called its very meaning?  It
is... that form in which the proposition becomes applicable to human
conduct, not in these or those special circumstances, nor when one
entertains this or that special design, but that form which is most
directly applicable to self-control under every situation, and to every
purpose.  That is why he locates the meaning in future-time; for future
conduct is the only conduct that is subject to self-control.  (p. 261)

 Finally, let us turn to MurphyUs (1990) paraphrase of PeirceUs
pragmatic maxim, which Murphy calls PeirceUs Principle of Meaning:
 If one can define accurately all the criteria governing uses to which a
 predicate can be put, one will have therein a complete definition of the
meaning of what it predicates.  (p. 46)

 Compare this now with MurphyUs (1990) paraphrase of JamesUs theory
of truth:
 What is true in our way of thinking is the production of beliefs that
prove themselves to be good, and good for definite, assignable reasons.
(p. 57)

 Peirce and James mean two very different things by pragmatism.
Peirce saw the Pragmatic Maxim as a way of determining the logical
nature and consequences of certain beliefs in terms of the practical
consequences of holding those beliefs.  James, on the other hand, saw
the Pragmatic Maxim as a method of determining the truth of a given
proposition.  For Peirce, belief claims were contextual and provisional,
yet truth claims were more general and logically accessible.  For
James, truth claims, not just meaning claims, were provisional and
contextual.  Because Peirce held that there can be truth over and above
what we might think to be true, he is ultimately a realist.  Since James
always grounds truth claims in contextualist activities, he is
ultimately a relativist.  And the gap between the two is quite vast.
 The pragmatism that informs Rorty, Goodman, and Feyerabend, and thus
ultimately the constructivists, is derived from James.  For instance,
Rorty (1982) turns explicitly to James to make the following points
about JamesUs view of truth:

 JamesUs point was that there is nothing deeper to be said:  truth is not
 the sort of thing that has an essence....  Those that want truth to have
an essence want knowledge, or rationality, or inquiry, or the relation
 between thought and its object, to have an essence.  Further, they want
to be able to use their knowledge  of such essences to criticize views
they take to be false, and to point the direction of progress toward the
 discovery of more truths.  James thinks these hopes are in vain. ( p.
162)

 And this version of understanding the nature of truth is at the very
heart of the constructivist program.  As we saw earlier, the
constructivist holds that we construct knowledge.  What is knowledge
but those things that we hold to be true?  Furthermore, the
constructivist rejects the idea that there is a single foundation for
basing the pursuit of truth on, and so the question of truth becomes
instead an exercise in, what we see over and over again, the Rsocial
construction of reality.S
 Are we doomed to this project of making multiple realities, of just
telling each other stories, and letting the question of truth be settled
by whose story is more interesting, or whose will is stronger?  If we
adhere to the Jamesean perspective, then this seems to be the case.
But there is an alternative for inquiry - to return to PeirceUs initial
statements and take them in a different direction.

Genuinely Qualitative Research - A Vision

 We are at last finally free to talk about qualitative research in
general, and thereby finally address the question outlined in the title.
Constructivist theory has made significant inroads in the educational
research community by offering a vision of research and theory that
seems substantially different from the prevailing vision based on more
traditional models of scientific inquiry.  It appeals to the desire of
many in the field to be freed from the constraints of a positivistic
model of inquiry. (cf.  Glesne & Peshkin, 1992; Lancy, 1993)  It cannot
be over-emphasized, though, that the fundamental point of
constructivism is to deliberately refute positivistic positions.  By
taking this tack, constructivist ideas are necessarily grounded in the
same problematic that the positivist tradition was grounded in;
namely, a concern for establishing the proper conditions for gathering
and using knowledge.  This grounding in the pursuit of knowledge
characterizes the basic task of modernist thinkers.  But the modernist
problematic is no longer appropriate.  The predicament faced by most
constructivists is that they sense that they need to shift beyond a
modernist perspective, but they attempt to do so by addressing the
matter in a modernist fashion.
 There is no escaping the fact that we are now living in a postmodern
world.  Lyotard (Lyotard, 1979; Johnson, 1992) has declared that the
postmodern condition is based on the notion that there is no longer a
Rgrand narrativeS that defines a single vision for culture.  We have to
abandon the search for a single perspective through which we can
formulate a single best way of doing inquiry.  Gergen (1992) shows us
that postmodernism involves a turning away from the Enlightenment,
with its insistence on individual cognition, rational order, and
correspondence models of inquiry, toward a new sensibility of
collective rationality, action, and examination of phenomena as RtextsS
instead of repositories of fact or instantiations of theory.   Thinkers
such as Heidegger (Guignon, 1992) and Baudrillard (1988) have
emphasized that language and its rhetorical nature play a crucial role
in the ways that we understand our world, thereby clarifying the
RtextnessS of the world.
 Both James and Peirce would appreciate the move in inquiry towards
the postmodernism described above.   But their characterizations of the
situation would be quite different.  James leads us away from the pole
of strict objectivity by positing a relativist and ultimately subjective
model of truth and therefore inquiry, while Peirce rejects the
subjective vs objective duality altogether.  It is this rejection, which
is far more radical than any project that James or the constructivists
would suggest,that finally allows us to build the bold and radical vision
of qualitative research that education needs in order to function
properly in a postmodern setting.
 As my fundamental move in this paper, I would like to show how Peirce
gets out of the subjective-objective trap, and then show the
consequences of this move as the basis for a genuinely qualitative
model of educational research, one that does not slip either into the
trap of an Ranything goesS relativistic subjectivism or the Rjust the
factsS pseudo-scientific objectisitic positivism that has strangled the
vitality from educational research. ( cf.  Shank, 1987; Shank, 1988;
Shank, 1990; Shank, 1992; Shank & Cunningham, 1992)
 The key to creating a pragmatically-informed model of inquiry is to
realize that pragmatism, as Peirce conceived of it,  was a totally
radical departure from the Enlightenment scenario.  That scenario
established by the work of Descartes.  In point of fact, the subjective -
objective split that haunts modernism is a direct consequence of the
Cartesian method of inquiry, known as the method of doubt.
 Briefly, the method consists of deliberately doubting the truth of
anything, until we arrive at something we cannot doubt; namely, the
famous Rcogito ergo sumS or RI think, therefore, I am.S  This method
requires both a subjective observer and the objective realm of the
observed.  This method also creates an unbridgeable split between the
observer and the observed, keeping the observer always out of the very
reality of that he/she is trying to observe.  Peirce realized that this
split was a function not so much of DescartesUs intended worldview,
but of his method instead.  So, in order to create a Postcartesian
worldview, one that is free from the subjective - objective split, we
need to create a new method.
 To make a long story short, the Pragmatic Maxim was a direct
consequence of PeirceUs efforts to replace the Cartesian method.
Peirce realized that  DescartesUs method of doubt was flawed because
the doubt that Descartes engendered was not genuine.  Peirce chose to
focus on genuine feelings of doubt that we feel, and the means that we
try to alleviate them and move back into states of belief.  This fixation
of belief in the face of genuine doubt was the basis for all inquiry,
 in PeirceUs view.  So long as we have no reason to doubt either our
senses or our current understanding of things, says Peirce, then we
have no reason not to suppose that they are true.  As soon as something
intrudes into our current state of understanding, though, we realize
that we were not right after all, and that truth is different from what
we had held it to be.  That instance from experience, furthermore, is a
clue that the way that we looked at reality was not quite right, and by
that fact alone, we now have a new clue as to the ultimate nature of
reality.  Through this correctable process, held Peirce, we co-evolve,
with the help of experience, a significant understanding of reality, one
that we have no reason to suppose that is not true, but one that we
cannot feel smugly is correct.
 Inquiry, then, becomes an act of RreadingS experience to gain more and
more clues about the nature of reality.  We treat the items of
experiences as neither objective facts whose truth we can grasp in an
unmediated way, nor as subjective opinions whose truth is simply a
matter of what we want it to be.  Rather, we treat those items as signs
of reality.  In order to read them, we have to live in the gap between
the objective and the subjective, and we soon come to see that the gap
as illusory.
Our postconstructive model says that we do not construct reality,
because reality itself is so rich and significant that all we need to do
is to read it.  And that act of reading will change both us and reality,
since we are both co-evolving.  We have the tenets of experience to
keep us straight, and the Pragmatic Maxim to keep us from slipping into
models of inquiry that lead us away from reality.
 What would such a model look like in practical terms?  It is
legitimately postmodern, in that it realizes that there is no one way to
look at reality.  But it rejects the notion of dependence on the observer
and replaces it with a model of the inquirer as a participant.  When we
construe the inquirer as a participant, we see that he/she is not
looking at reality from some outside or privileged position, but instead
is in the middle of reality.  In fact, Peirce would claim that all inquiry
begins with us being in the middle of some already existing world, and
that our first act is to try to make sense of that world.  The
constructivist would say that we find ourselves in a situation where
we have to make meaning in the sense of imposing meaning on a
situation which has no meaning until we put it there.  Remember
JamesUs old dictum of the Rbuzzing, booming confusionS we experience
until we impose order on it?  Furthermore, again following James, the
order that we impose then becomes true so long as that truth is useful
to us to maintain the order we have already imposed.  Pretty soon, we
find ourselves in the dilemma of being in a situation where any meaning
is totally a product of what we have put there.  What does the world
become, then, besides ourselves?  And what is instructional design
under the aegis of this thinking but the use of oneUs intellectual will to
impose a worldview on others, which is then claimed to be true because
it conforms to the will of the design creator?  And what does
educational technology become, then, except for a means to enhance
this imposition process?  What about the constructivistUs claim that
the creation of knowledge needs to shift from the designer and
instructor to the student?  What is this other than the shifting of the
will to either the individual or the collective student?  At its very
best, constructivism with its inherent relativism and dependence of
the subjective stance of designers and students, becomes a way to
shift from an individual to a collective solipsism.  And as Peirce
pointed out in his famous essay on the fixation of belief, the only way
to maintain a belief which we do not want to abandon is to hold onto it
with tenacity and to make sure we do not find ourselves in any kind of
circumstantial situation where that belief might get challenged.  The
path of constructivism leads inevitably to the championing of the will,
rather than the intellect, as the supreme arbiter on what counts as
knowledge.
 The postconstructivist alternative is to accept that we cannot impose
our will freely on reality, but that we are not slaves to some
configuration of reality.  It accepts the fact that we are always in
reality, and in relation to all other systems in reality.  And that every
experience has significance as a part of the whole picture of reality.
And that reality is not constructed, or a simple set of principles
underlying a complex surface, but is instead intelligible on its own
terms.  But we accept that the terms of intelligibility of reality are
not directly translatable into human terms.  We have to treat
experiences as signs of the nature of reality, as answers to questions
we are not sure how to ask.  We have to shift our model of inquirer
away from the prospector model of positivism, who seeks to find the
nuggets of truth under the welter of experience, and the noveli
st model of the constructivism, who seeks to create truth out of what
seems to be available.  The postconstructivist is postmodern in
realizing that there any many paths of inquiry, but unlike the
constructivist the postconstructivist does not hold that we impose the
order we seek by following many paths.  The model of the
postconstructivist follows along semiotic lines, where the inquirer
realizes that experiences are signs of order and understanding and
meaning and that they have consequences not just in and of  themselves
but of how they are taken as signs.  The model for the
postconstructivist is that of a detective, treating experiences as clues
and omens and symptoms of an order that represents a rich and
complicated reality that we can only understand within a process of
participation as part of reality itself.  The postconstructivist turns
away from knowledge per se as the starting point of inquiry, and
acknowledges that there is just as complex and as important an inquiry
based on increasing understanding, that an inquiry of understanding is
just as potentially systematic as an inquiry of knowing, and that any
real inquiry of knowing depends on an inquiry of understanding.
 So where have we ended up, on this process of going beyond
constructivism?  I want to charge that educational technology is in a
unique position of being able to help further an inquiry into
understanding.  By developing new technologies and new tools, we can
help students not just make meaning out of a jumble of data, but to
look at their experiences in a participatory way and to combine and
test patterns and clues, and to derive consequences from  these clue
patterns, and to push forward with new and unique insights.  I feel that
this was the intended mission of constructivism in the first place, but
it cannot achieve that mission unless it gives up the notion that the
order it seeks is simply imposed by the subjectivity of the inquirer.
 Let me conclude this entire piece and hopefully bring my points home
in a  concrete way by telling you about a computer program that John
Ross and I designed to help illustrate a semiotically informed model of
inquiry.  We called the program ART, which is short for the Abductive
Reasoning Tool.  The idea behind ART is that there are potentially a
myriad number of insights that can be drawn when we juxtapose two
statements in an arbitrary fashion.  We start with a topic statement,
which the person types in.  Then, the computer randomly accesses one
of over a thousand generic wise sayings, which is physically juxtaposed
with the initial topic and called the RreflectionS statement.  The whole
point of the process is that the inquirer feels a compulsion to link
those two statements as a single meaningful whole, and that such a
link will give the inquirer a new insight into the topic.  We felt that the
random linkage allowed the inquirer to explore different avenues for
insights than he/she might ordinarily pursue.  By realizing that the
linkage is hypothetical and under no burden to be RtrueS we are allowed
to pursue an inquiry of understanding that does not generate any new
knowledge.  We would not be able to take this stance from a
constructivist perspective, since we would be compelled to be making
some reality  claim, or showing how the linkage we create is in some
sense RtrueS.
 So, I turned to the program to ask:  RHow can postconstructivist ideas
help clarify the qualitative vs. quantitative debate?S
 Here is the actual reflection statement:  ROur wit wraps in obscurity
the simple natural truths in order to get credit for them.S
 I leave the task of drawing insights to you.


References

Bagley, C. & Hunter, B. (1992).  Restructuring, constructivism, and
 technology:  Forging a new relationship.  Educational Technology, 32(7),
22-27.

Baudrillard, J. (1988).  Selected Writings.  M. Poster (Ed. &
Introduction).  Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press.

Bereiter, C. (1991).  Implications of connectionism for thinking about
 rules.   Educational Researcher, 20(3), 10-16.

Brown, J.S., Collins, A. & Duguid, P. (1989).  Situated cognition and and
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