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Welcome to my blog which is endeavouring to map my journey through a Professional Doctorate in Education. The learning curve is steep and all climbing aids are welcome!

Thursday 30 June 2011

Am I a constructionist?

" When faced with the challenge of studying a world to which we are linked by all sorts of specific investments, inextricably intellectual and ‘temporal’, our first automatic thought is to escape; our concern to escape any suspicion of prejudice leads us to attempt to negate ourselves  as ‘biased’ or ‘informed’ subjects automatically suspected of using the weapons of science in the pursuit of personal interests, to abolish the self even as knowing subject, by resorting to the most impersonal and automatic procedures, those, at least in this perspective (which is that of ‘normal science’), which are the least questionable.”(Bourdieu, 1984 )

Starting to slowly get my head around epistemology - theoretical perspective - methodology - methods and how all these might link together to frame my work. Came across the above quote from Bourdieu which basically give permission for us to claim our 'vested interest' I guess.

I feel that I want to research this area of interest not only because I am interested in it, but because I also feel that I have the experience to have an opinion. Not exactly an unbiased position! This gives me the reassurance that I can imprint something of me in all of this.

I like the idea of being a constructionist although am yet to understand the finer points of the difference between constructinism and constructivism.  That means
“Truth or meaning comes into existence in and out of our engagement with the realities of the world. There is no meaning without a mind. Meaning is not discovered, but constructed.” (Crotty, 1998 ).

As I understand it , this allows me to build by understanding block by block, and it also allows me to demolish structures along the way too, as I perhaps find out new things that add to my understanding or to the meaning that I give to certain things. The giving of meaning is also key, since this will inevitably be influenced by what has gone before, what I think now, and what I might think in the future, dependent on research.