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Chapter Seventeen - Additional Resources Box 17.1 : Principles in the ethogenic approach 1 An explicit distinction is drawn between synchronic analysis, that is, the analysis of social practices and institutions as they exist at any one time, and diachronic analysis, the study of the stages and the processes by which social practices and institutions are created and abandoned, change and are changed. Neither type of analysis can be expected to lead directly to the discovery of universal social psychological principles or laws. 2 In social interactions, it is assumed that action takes place through endowing intersubjective entities with meaning; the ethogenic approach therefore concentrates upon the meaning system, that is, the whole sequence by which a social act is achieved in an episode. Consider, for example, the action of a kiss in the particular episodes of (a) leaving a friend’s house; (b) the passing-out parade at St Cyr; and (c) the meeting in the garden of Gethsemane. 3 The ethogenic approach is concerned with speech which accompanies action. That speech is intended to make the action intelligible and justifiable in occurring at the time and the place it did in the whole sequence of unfolding and co-ordinated action. Such speech is accounting. In so far as accounts are socially meaningful, it is possible to derive accounts of accounts. 4 The ethogenic approach is founded upon the belief that a human being tends to be the kind of person his language, his traditions, his tacit and explicit knowledge tell him he is. 5 The skills that are employed in ethogenic studies therefore make use of commonsense understandings of the social world. As such the activities of the poet and the playwright offer the ethogenic researcher a better model than those of the physical scientist. Source: Adapted from Harré, 1978
Source: Brown and Sime, 1981: 163 Box 17.3 : Experience sampling method Below are listed fifteen types of situation which most people have been in at some time. Try to think of something that has happened in your life in the last year or so, or perhaps something that keeps on happening, which fits into each of the descriptions. Then choose the ten of them which deal with the things that seem to you to be most important, which cover your main interests and concerns, and the different parts of your life. When we meet we will talk together about the situations you have chosen. Try beforehand to remember as clearly as you can what happened, what you and others did, and how you yourself felt and thought. Be as definite as you can. If you like, write a few notes to help you keep the situation in mind.
Source : Adapted from Kitwood, 1977 Box 17.4 : Concepts in children’s talk 81 Sally Cuttings can grow to plants. 82 Teacher [writing] ‘Cuttings can grow -,’ instead of saying ‘to 83 plants you can say ‘grow, = in: to plants.’ 84 Sally = You wrote Christina. 85 Teacher Oops. Thank you. I’ll do this again. ‘Cuttings can 86 grow into plants’. That’s also good. What is a cutting, 87 Christina? 88 Christina A cutting is, umm, I don’t know. 89 Teacher Who knows what a cutting is besides Sally? Sam. 90 Sam It’s when you cut off a -, it’s when you cut off a piece 91 of a plant. 92 Teacher Exactly, and when you cut off a piece of a plant, what do 93 you then do with it to make it grow? If you leave 94 it -, 95 X Put it in soil. 96 Teacher Well, sometimes you can put it in soil. 97 Y And plant it, 98 Teacher But what -, wait, what else could you put it in? 99 Sam Put it in a pot? 100 Teacher Pot, with soil, or . . . ? There’s another way. 101 Sally I know another way. = 102 Teacher = Wait. Sam, do you know? No? = 103 Sam = Dirt. 104 Teacher No, it doesn’t have to do with s -, it’s not a solid, it’s 105 a liquid. What liquid -, 106 Meredith Water. 107 Teacher Right. [. . .] Source : Edwards, 1993 Box 17.5 : ‘Ain’t nobody can talk about things being about theirselves’ This comment by a 9-year-old boy was directed to his teacher when she persisted in interrogating him about the story he had just completed in his reading group. Teacher : What is the story about? Children : (silence) Teacher : Uh . . . Let’s . . . Who is it the story talks about? Children : (silence) Teacher : Who is the main character?... .... . What kind of story is it? Child : Ain’t nobody can talk about things being about theirselves. The boy was saying ‘There’s no way anybody can talk (and ask) about things being about themselves’. Source: Adapted from Heath, in Spindler, 1982 Box 17.6 : Parents and teachers: divergent viewpoints on children’s communicative competence Parents The teachers won’t listen. My kid, he too scared to talk, ‘cause nobody play by the rules he know. At home, I can’t shut ‘im up. Miss Davis, she complain ‘bout Ned not answerin’ back. He say she asks dumb questions she already know ‘bout. Teachers They don’t seem to be able to answer even the simplest questions. I would almost think some of them have a hearing problem; it is as though they don’t hear me ask a question. I get blank stares to my questions. Yet when I am making statements or telling stories which interest them, they always seem to hear me. The simplest questions are the ones they can’t answer in the classroom; yet on the playground, they can explain a rule for a ballgame or describe a particular kind of bait with no problem. Therefore, I know they can’t be as dumb as they seem in my class. I sometimes feel that when I look at them and ask a question I’m staring at a wall I can’t break through. There’s something there; yet in spite of all the questions I ask, I’m never sure I’ve gotten through to what’s inside that wall. Source: Adapted from Heath, in Spindler, 1982 Box 17.7 : Justification of objective systematic observation in classroom settings When Smith looks at Jones and says, ‘Jones, why does the blue substance spread through the liquid?’ (probably with a particular kind of voice inflection), and then silently looks at Jones (probably with a particular kind of facial expression), the observer can unambiguously categorize the event as ‘Smith asks Jones a question seeking an explanation of diffusion in a liquid.’ Now Smith might describe the event as ‘giving Jones a chance to show he knows something’, and Jones might describe the event as ‘Smith trying to get at me’; but if either of them denied the validity of the observer’s description, they would be simply wrong, because the observer would be describing at least part of what the behaviour which occurred means in English in Britain. No assumptions are made here about the effectiveness of classroom communication; but the assumption is made that . . . communication is dependent on the system of conventional meanings available within the wider culture. More fundamentally, this interpretation implies that the systematic observer is concerned with an objective reality (or, if one prefers, a shared intersubjective reality) of classroom events. This is not to suggest that the subjective meanings of events to participants are not important, but only that these are not accessible to the observer and that there is an objective reality to classroom activity which does not depend on these meanings [our emphasis]. Source: McIntyre and McLeod, in McAleese and Hamilton, 1978
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