Session Information
19 SES 06 A, Parallel Paper Session 6A
Paper Session
Contribution
The use of the observation as a research method is ancient and it is related to a positivistic way of think about the knowledge construction, for which the reality is “out of there” and the researcher has to go and take it, through different ways. In more recent times, the observation has been redefined by the postmodernist critique to the traditional statement of “objectivity”, that introduced new theoretical and methodological challenges. The role of the observer has been studied for a long time, by ethnographers and anthropologists first of all, and it has been underlined how the observer can influence the situation observed. Now the attention is on the collaborative inquiry as a way to recontextualize the observational methods (Denzin, Lincoln, 2011). One of the main question, indeed, is related to the relationship between the observer and the observed, especially when, as in human sciences, the observed is an human being.
In this framework, this paper aims to explore another aspect of the observation-based research: the relation between observation and text. The researcher's observation, indeed, is often transferred into a written text, which can be more or less structured (from the protocol to the field's note), based on the theorical framework that allows the methodological choice. The reference to the subject’s inner meanings lets emerge the idea of the subject as holder of an inside knowledge that goes brought to light, and this can be done thorugh an hermeneutic mediation (M. Merleau-Ponty), a knowledge as inevitably mediated, a knowledge as method (G. Gadamer).
Moreover, as Jerome Bruner described, the act of thinking is an “act of meaning” (Bruner, 1990) and the typical form for structuring the experience is narrative. In this sense, the construction of the text is a process of knowledge construction. The researcher, while translates an observation into a text, is engaged in an hermeneutic mediation that produces something new, which is neither “out of there”, nor “inside the observer”.
In this sense, the present paper will propose a reflection on the theoretical and methodological process to "write the observation" in the educational research.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bruner, J. (1990), Acts of Meaning. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Denzin, N.K, Lincoln, Y.S. (2011), The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications. Gadamer, H.G. (1972), Wahrheit und Methode. Tubingen: J.C.B. Mohr. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1945), Phénoménologie de la perception. Paris: Librairie Gallimand. Ricoeur, P. (1986), Du texte à l'action. Essais d'hermenéutique II. Paris: Editions du Seuil.
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