Staring into the Void

This week is practice theory in my theory class. I like practice theory. In an exchange with a fellow student he asked if I had found any research in my area. 

I was sitting in traffic heading to my preferred swimming pool (because heated!) thinking about the question and getting the sense that I had felt this feeling before. No, there is not a lot in the literature about the student teacher relationship among artists. That relationship that makes up the practice of art education. There is plenty of information about art information seeking. Pacey and Hemmig and Cobbledick all covered that a while ago. Gorichanaz and Tidline write about art as information. Challener covered the difference between information seeking of art history teachers and studio artists. I could go on and on. I haven’t found, and I keep looking for, a study of the practice of art education which would encompass information sharing, information seeking, information creation...and I remember what I tell my students in library instructions -- you are not going to find an article that covers everything you want to write about because you have not yet written it.

But that feeling I have when I am searching brings me to another world of practice I inhabit. That feeling of staring into the void. I remember when my oldest was an infant. I knew something was different about him. I couldn’t say what it was. I would stare at him all day wondering. My husband would come home from work and I would toss him the baby and frantically start reading baby books. I just couldn’t find him there. Baby books didn’t have the information and I was staring into the void wondering if my son was the Kwisatz Haderach. Recently I participated in a skills deficit assessment for that same son. It’s a thing you have to do to get adult medicaid services. It can be rough because it focuses on what can’t be done. But the practice element was really in play. The interviewer and myself and a teacher and my very sleepy son and a document we had to look at the whole time that outlined the deficit scales. 

Anyway, I keep thinking about that assessment and how that feeling of seeking is the same in both of these completely different cases.  Staring into the void. 

A reflection

I wrote an informal reflection on my first doctoral class.  I thought I would share it here.  I'm going to link out to some of what I mention, but it's okay if it doesn't make tons of sense.

When I started this class I was unfamiliar with the idea of conceptual frameworks.  At first, I thought about the frameworks my deceased, ex-husband used to go on and on (and on and on) about.  Java frameworks.  Coding.  I knew that was not applicable here, but it wasn’t until reading Reason and Rigor that everything suddenly clicked.  Then the idea of basing your thinking and research on the backs of those who had gone before suddenly made sense. It’s much like the conversation I have with students about citation, but in a bigger way. This is one of the challenges of being a doctoral student at this stage in my life.  I have been living in academia, but not DOING academia for a long time. However, as much as this is going to be uphill for me, I feel like I have a lot to offer and a clearer eye than many who have been completely involved in their studies from the beginning.  For example, can I mention that as much as Gorichanaz has to offer, every time I read his articles I feel like he is about to tell me that he does CrossFit, eats vegan, and doesn’t watch television.  

At the beginning of the class, I immediately gravitated to Chatman and Erdelez.  The idea of the small world and the idea of serendipity suit so much of what I see every day.  The mere fact that my campus has no more than 700 students on-ground makes it a prime candidate for examination as a small world.  And information encountering is part of what makes artists artists.  But the more I looked at these ideas, the more I realized I needed something more encompassing. Both these ideas seemed too narrow.  Many of the ideas we talked about in class ended up feeling too narrow.  Everyday life information seeking didn’t work for me.  I felt like the emphasis on the gap in knowledge didn’t address what I was seeing in action.  Also, so many of the theories we have been looking at in the past few weeks have to do with that gap. My research population has gaps (oh my, the gaps) but they are all so individual.  

What I have enjoyed is seeing all the pieces fit together.  The narrow theories comprise the larger and that seems to make sense to me.  I can use the narrow theories, life in the round, to look at one element of my research: students in a small community.  I can use a larger theory to look at the bigger picture and see how that small world affects students in a bigger way.

I have identified Wilson’s theory as the most useful for me at this point. It includes all the smaller pieces that can be examined in more depth but provides a flexibility that isn’t inherent in narrower theories.  I think the Community of Practice idea is another framework entirely, but I’m including it has a narrower piece of the puzzle.  I think it speaks to the small world idea that resonated with me from Chatman. 

I have made myself a summer reading list to get through Wenger’s Communities of Practice and read all the theories in Theories of Information Behavior.  I want to make sure I’m not missing something obvious.  I am so excited for the next steps and hope I do not disappoint anyone. My kids make fun of me a bit because I want to tell them what I’m studying and they just don’t care.  The quarantine has been a little tough on me.  Zoom meetings are exhausting and you can only read so many hours in a day.  Writing has helped because I can imagine an audience.  I am thinking about information in ways I never have, and it is exciting.  I am so looking forward to Fall.