We have had some great
conversations going on in Link-in. One strand explored positivism and
non-positivism. But I found myself in an odd position. The idea of the
conversations is that we are exchanging ideas with no value placed on who says
it, just what is said. The whole point of the course is that we are all experts
at least in our own lives. So when we talked about positivism and I felt we
were limiting ourselves by the understanding of how large the idea is; I did
not feel I could say any more in the conversation because I did not want to
devalue what was being discussed or ‘pull rank’. But I also feel a
responsibility to you as someone who advises on the course that you do not
leave with ideas that I do not think are grounded in how most people understand
a theory. So I decided my blog was the best place to talk about it.
Positivism is more than just
a method, it is a methodology for understanding the world. It is understanding
the world as pre-existing. That there is a truth that we are able to find
regardless of what we do: it is there to be found. It is seeing objects are
existing in their own right and that your see or note seeing of them, your
experiences have no impact on what they are. They are fundamentally real. It
sees us as having one reality of which we can be aware of or not but that does
not change its existence. This is about the fundamental substance of the world,
what it is made of and how it is in relation to us.
Non-positivism is also more
than a method, it is a methodology for understanding the world. Here
interaction has an impact on the substance of ‘things’. There can be more than
one ‘truth’. In fact ‘truth’ does not represent the same thing, have the same
meaning as it does in the above. Reality is not fixed. So theses two are about
an ontological understanding of what reality is. They are more than about which
research method to use. They are important in research not just to indicate
appropriate tools but because as researchers we need to have a framework to
describe the world we think we are in.
I often use dance metaphors
or analogies because I think dance needs to have a voice beyond the studio
mirrors but these things are not so often discussed in the context of dance. So
the metaphors we use must be seen as that, window on to large ideas that are
not limited by a particular subject. Also the dance examples are not comments
on dance methodology – what dance is or should be etc… they are using the situation of dance to look at ideas. There
are so many beautiful texts, and other work about this I really encourage you
to take the ideas and explore rather than decide yet exactly what they mean in
the detail of your own day-to-day teaching activity. I really hope my ambition
to move away from the usual language to discuss these, into a language that
references dance does not confuse or over simplify the beauty of these ideas.
I wonder if I come across ??
Adesola
