Suchergebnisse

In recent years, a number of prominent scholars have criticized the current state of qualitative research and advocated a paradigm of post-qualitative inquiry (PQI). Incorporating insights from new materialism, PQI seeks to trouble what it calls conventional humanist qualitative methodology (CHQM). Although sympathetic to this overall project, the present article identifies and discusses three challenges in current PQI, namely the roles it ascribes to theory, to data, and to writing. It is argued that PQI risks succumbing to 1) theory-centrism, 2) researcher deletion, and 3) meta-reflexivity. By pinpointing these three challenges, the article hopes to nudge PQI one step further in its continuous theoretical "becoming."

AbstractIn the past few years, we have become increasingly focused on technology use that is impulsive, unthinking, and distractive. There has been a strong push to understand such technology use in terms of dopamine addiction. The present article demonstrates the limitations of this so-called neurobehaviorist approach: Not only is it inconsistent in regard to how it understands humans, technologies, and their mutual relationship, it also pathologizes everyday human behaviors. The article proceeds to discuss dual-systems theory, which helpfully discusses impulsive technology use in terms of habit instead of addiction, but can be criticized for its mentalist celebration of conscious control. Finally, the article introduces a phenomenological approach whose conceptualization of habit manifests many of the experiential qualities that we try to capture with addiction, but remains non-pathologizing and opens a space for learning: While tech addiction is bad and must be eliminated, good tech habits can be trained and cultivated.

Given that qualitative researchers have (rightly) abandoned the ideaof social scientific truths as mirrors of nature, what kind of truth dowe hope to provide to our readers? In other words, what is the pointof reading qualitative research? Taking inspiration from Paul Ricoeur'sdistinction between a hermeneutics of suspicion and a hermeneuticsof faith, this article sketches out two possible answers. It firstpresents a critical approach that exposes hidden truths to educate andemancipate its readers. The concept of 'critique' has recently comeunder scrutiny, however, with postcritical scholars denouncing its tautologicalreasoning, its reductionist analytical strategies and its arrogantapproach to other people. Acknowledging these criticisms, thearticle then goes on to present a phenomenological approach thatpoints out unnoticed truths to reverberate and resonate with its readers.It is argued that this self-consciously 'weak' approach helps uscircumvent the analytical issues currently associated with critique.

This article provides a critical study of the ambivalent nature of educational technology. Departing from the fact that the contemporary classroom is no longer a bounded and discrete space, the article uses ethnographic participant observation to provide thick descriptions of technologies-in-use at a Danish business college. These observations suggest that educational technologies play much more nuanced roles than hitherto imagined. Building on the notion of spatial imaginaries, the article explores two complementary patterns of spatial relations in the classroom: Educational technologies open a gateway to the world that can be used both to bring relevant information into the space of the classroom ("outside-in") and to escape educational activities in favor of off-task activity ("inside-out"). By exploring these twin movements, this article hopes not only to provide a glimpse into the 21st-century digitized classroom but also to showcase the uneasy position of educational technology between burden and blessing.

Sometimes stories about games make their way into the media. Around the year 2000 they were usually about how games turns mild-mannered suburban kids into desensitized high school-shooters-in-training. But things have changed. Warnings about aggressive emotions, caricatured gender images, and detrimental effects of time spent in front of a screen now compete with claims about gamification as a magic key to business success and utopist visions of a better game-based tomorrow for education, citizenship, and science participation. The claims are many – but they all seem to agree on one thing: Games affect us. And we all want to prove our claims. But how do we test the impact of games? In this chapter, we discuss empirical logics and approaches known from large- to small-scale effect studies as traditionally found in educational, political, and biological sciences. There are two premises in this approach: We assume that causal effects of games can be specified and measured (often by proxy) in a statistically valid way, and that findings from studies allow us (at least with a few caveats) to generalize cause and effect to other players at other times. The balance between control and real-world relevance varies very much across methods, and is something we will return to repeatedly. This chapter provides an overview of methods, as well as a discussion of the dilemmas and limitations inherent to measuring anything in the lives of diverse groups like students or gamers. The chapter finishes by discussing the inherent problems in causal and probabilistic claims in media psychology, and argues that it is necessary to keep in mind that humans are interpretative beings. But first, a few words about evidence and (yes, unfortunately) math.

This volume contributes to postphenomenological research into human-technology relations with essays reflecting on methodological issues through empirical studies of education, digital media, biohacking, health, robotics, and skateboarding. This work provides new perspectives that call for a comprehensive postphenomenological research methodology.