I gave Brenda Dervin's "From the Minds Eye of the User" 2 reads. I still have a LONG way to go in fully understanding what she has to share about sense making and how this can be used to further my research. As I read through the text I kept trying to think about how this could relate to my classroom and my teaching practice.
On page 64 Dervin explains that studies should include how a user or human actor acquired or made sense of the information. Researchers should not just analyze if an answer is correct or for a certain piece of information. Rather, questions should be asked about how a user made sense of the information or found a piece of information to be accurate. This section stood out to me as a teacher because We should all be interested in learning more about how our students are learning and making sense of the content in our classes, not just the correct answer. As a science teacher, how are my students determining if something is accurate and what criteria are they using to decide if something is not accurate. Dervin suggests that actors are trying to bridge a gap of discontinuity. At the moment I am the human actor who is trying to bridge a gap in understanding sense making. I am now trying to chose the right tactic to bridge that gap. If I can understand sensemaking and overcome the situation I am in right now, I can become a better teacher researcher. I am hoping the conversations that we have in the upcoming classes and future reads of this text will help answer questions that I have and strategies to understand it. Dergin provides several visual examples of this "gap bridging" and shows that it can be linear or more of a cycle. Sense making seems to be mostly tied to data collection. The idea of research interviews was discussed. The research interview is much better at getting into the decision making process that the actor goes through as they try to obtain information and bridge a gap. There are several interviewing methods discussed in the chapter to help get to this type of information during an interview. The sample exemplars were also helpful in seeing how these strategies could be used in research. I was surprised to read that only 40 sense making studies had been conducted at the time that this book was written. As I read through the text, I was trying to make sense of her information by trying to relate it to gaps that my students may have. My research in the last semester was focused on students digital literacy. I came up with this research project because I see many gaps that my students have in their skills and knowledge of how to properly and efficiently use the internet. I would say part of my goal of the pretest I gave my students in my action research project was to identify gaps in their ability to evaluate websites for credibility. I could see how a research interview could have provided me with more information about how students perceived the gap, how they intended to bridge the gap and strategies and tactics that they currently used.
2 Comments
Jane Gallagher
2/12/2018 04:18:10 pm
You are right! We are the actor trying to bridge the gap of understanding sense making. I wasn't thinking that until I read your blog. I also see our students as the actors attempting to bridge the gap of umderstanding what is presented to them. To determine thier thought processes there would have to be a questionnaire or survey for themt o complete. I could see this extending our research on our original question. I am wondering if we are going to be asked to create questions to ask our students.
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Madeleine O'Rear
2/12/2018 06:55:50 pm
Christina,
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