This is the first of five posts about my viewing of Stamatis’ 70-minute interaction with a group consisting of Derrick, Bruce, Don, Tim, and Jim (I’ll call them group 1) on Thursday morning. This interaction – and the simultaneous one that Leslie was having with the group on the other side of the room – has been getting lots of blog attention, and I’m excited to join the bandwagon (although I admit that I’ve chosen to wait to carefully read the other posts until I thought about mine, so there may be some overlap). :)
I decided to watch this interaction after observing a group conversation on Thursday afternoon in which group 1 (primarily Don and Tim) reflected on the morning’s exercise (I’ll post this video in a later blog post) in what felt like a devaluation of the activity and statements about their own perception of “what Stamatis was doing.” I guess I just got curious about whether what they thought Stamatis was doing would line up with what I thought he was doing.
The first time I watched the interaction all the way through, I got the sense that they just didn’t 'get' what Stamatis was asking them. The fact that he clarified the question and rephrased and restated…a lot…certainly left me feeling like at least he didn’t think they were getting the question. So I thought this whole interaction was just a series of several miscommunications – Stamatis (and Leslie) had a question that needed to be answered, and group 1 didn’t understand what the question was. In any case, it didn’t feel like they made much progress toward answering the question.
But then I realized that there were moments when the group repeated – or what felt like appropriately rephrased – the question in a way that communicated understanding to me. So I started to wonder what went wrong. If they understood the question, why weren’t they answering it?
Here are two examples of episodes in which I felt at least one participant understood the question being asked, but progress didn’t seem to be made toward answering it (or even attempting to answer it):
Episode 1:
Episode 2:
So here’s my question to you: Why did this happen? Is it because Don (episode 1) doesn’t think the question is worth answering? Is it because the teachers weren’t given the time or conversational space to move toward an answer (episode 2)? Did they not actually get the question, and I'm misreading their statements? Something else entirely?
In the next few posts, I’ll show a few episodes in which there seemed to be a mismatch between: (1) what ‘scientists’ mean by ‘causal mechanism’ (a debatable point, to be sure) and how one teacher seemed to interpret the phrase; and (2) what the teachers considered ‘evidence’ (or a good answer to a question) and what Stamatis might consider ‘evidence. I'm wondering whether these mismatches, at least in part, slowed progress during this interaction.
I'm musing on the possibility that they weren't answering the question because it was not their question. In this way of thinking, for learners to answer a question there has to be a sort of impedance matching between the asker and the askee, or the question just bounces off.
ReplyDeleteI'd like to put a question out there - what is miscommunication? What is miscommunication made up of, what are its parts? Can we identify things that support a working communication and things that do not support it?
ReplyDeleteRachel gave me a really helpful observation yesterday - I like asking questions that might not be answerable. I have a feeling that this might be one of those questions, but I have this strong desire to sit on a working theoretical framework for communication while going over these videos. Its clear to me there was a miscommunication happening in these episodes, and it seemed like the elongation of this miscommunication caused even more miscommunication. So, where this came from begs the question of what a miscommunication (and a communication) actually is.
I think I'm going to go read some Rogers now.
On the question "what is a miscommunication," I just want to throw a string of words into the conversation, since I haven't seen them so far: framing mismatch. I don't want it to sound like I am solving the problem by saying some words. So, let me spell out what I think the concept of framing mismatch adds that might help.
ReplyDeleteAn interaction consists of a series of turns by the actors. Each turn is not just a turn, though - it carries with it (for the actor acting in that turn) a sense of a family of possible interactions, or a family of constraints on possible interactions. This seems useful to me, to think how each turn has something to say about the entire interaction, and is not just an isolated event in sequence among other events. I think this is what I have been taught about framing.
Now, my own thoughts, which may or may not agree with what else is understood about framing by others. When I say such-and-such, I have expectations about the various valid ways in which another actor might respond to my turn. Presumably there are things we say and do to help guide each others' expectations about what we think valid responses would be, so we don't just have the expectations and they're met or not. If your response doesn't fit within what I would consider to be a set of valid kinds of response, I might try to correct or guide your expectations to match mine, for some small number of turns. If it doesn't happen within, I'm going to say, 2-5 turns, I will give up, maybe with a sense of frustration or embarrassment. I think this would end up looking like a "miscommunication."
Great minds think alike Hunter. Rachel and I both already suggested to Jessica that she read some Tannen, and she's sitting here reading that right now.
ReplyDeleteI forgot to include where in the original video these episodes came from. Both are from E2 110811 1015 Don. The first starts at 23.52, and the second at 41.35.
ReplyDelete