Annual Conference of the Swedish Network of Educational Developers
Blekinge Institute of Technology
11th – 12th May, 2017
THERE IS NOTHING SO PRACTICAL AS A GOOD THEORY
Professor Emeritus Vernon Trafford, Ph.D.
Anglia Ruskin University, Chelmsford, Essex CM1 1SQ, United Kingdom
and
Research Associate, Stellenbosch University, South Africa
[email protected] // www.vernontrafford.com
WHERE TO START?
SO SIMPLE AND YET SO COMPLEX
There is nothing so practical
as a good theory.
Source: Lewin, 1952:169
Professor Vernon Trafford
AS DEVELOPMENTAL PRACTITIONERS WHAT ARE OUR THEORIES?
How often do we pause and ask ourselves:
1
Which theories are significant for ME?
2
What do I really know about those theories?
3
How do those theories help me in my practice?
4
How do those theories relate one to another?
Professor Vernon Trafford
HOW HAS THEORY CONTRIBUTED TO MY PROFESSIONAL ROLES?
THEORIES THAT HAVE INFLUENCED ME
Open systems
Ignorance
thinking
MY PRACTICE
AND
‘MY’ THEORIES
Episteme
Threshold
concepts
Professor Vernon Trafford
SUGGESTED FUNCTIONS OF THEORY
EXPLANATORY OR PREDICTIVE FUNCTION
Providing statements which explain or predict and may be confirmed or refuted
HEURISTIC FUNCTION
Suggesting and guiding activity that is based on scientifically valid propositions
OPERATIVE FUNCTION
Helping applied investigation(s) through a conceptual framework
ORIENTING FUNCTION
Bringing order to what might otherwise be disconnected items of information
REDUCTIVE FUNCTION
Reducing a mass of data to simpler statements
The highest test of a theory is to show that it, and no other, can logically specify the
outcome of empirical observations.
Source: Hutton, 1972:18-20
Professor Vernon Trafford
PRACTICALLY ~ THIS HAS GIVEN ME
A willingness, and curiosity, to read and learn from outside ‘‘my discipline ’’.
A recognition that unfamiliar theories may have something to offer me.
New insights on traditional approaches to just about everything that I do.
A strengthened capacity to understand and explain complex issues for others.
An inquisitive mind that accepts ‘other perspectives ’ on issues.
Professor Vernon Trafford
OPEN SYSTEMS THEORY
SYSTEMS THINKING
Organizations are systems that maintain themselves by the inflow and outflow of materials,
or ideas, constantly responding to their environments through feedback processes. Social
systems are contrived and understanding how they operate depends on explaining the
interrelationship of their various components. Source: von Bertalanffy, 1969: 30-53.
Environment
Input
Environment
Conversion
process
Output
Feedback
Environment
Environment
Systems thinking is a conceptual framework, a body of knowledge and tools that has
been developed to make the full patterns clearer, and to help us see how to change them
effectively. Source: Senge, 1990: 7.
Systems thinking is a subject that can talk about other subjects. It is not a discipline in
the same set as others, it is a meta-discipline whose subject matter can be applied in any
other discipline. This explains the phrase ‘a systems approach ’. Source: Checkland, 1981: 5.
Professor Vernon Trafford
PERSPECTIVES ON SYSTEMS THINKING
A system represents a particular grouping of people or issues.
Systems continually interact with their environment(s) for the inward provision of
resources in return for the outward delivery of services.
Any system is part of an hierarchy of such systems with downward influence.
All systems contain sub-systems which continually interact with other sub-systems
that constitute the whole.
Systems usually have multiple objectives that may be in conflict.
The notion of ‘a system’ provides a generic perspective on real-world activities ranging
from macrobiotics to the Universe.
Professor Vernon Trafford
PRACTICALLY ~ THIS HAS GIVEN ME
A method of thinking that is generic and transferable between issues.
A framework of thinking that is conceptual in origin and contemporary in how it can be
applied to real-world situations and settings.
The usefulness of a perspectivist concept in contrast to reductionism.
A desire to explain complexities by understanding the ‘whole’ in context.
A genuine appreciation of how the interdependence of parts can create SYNERGY
~ or the converse DYSERGY.
Professor Vernon Trafford
EPISTEME
MAKING THINKING VISIBLE
Fostering better thinking means making it visible, so that learners can
track, direct, and improve it.
“Visible” means externalized in any manner: gesture, drawing,
speaking, writing.
Also, visual thinking emphasizes documentation to preserve traces of
thinking for later reflection such as diagrams, notes, wall charts, etc.
Source: Ritchhart and Perkins, 2008
Professor Vernon Trafford
THINKING LIKE A RESEARCHER
Episteme is a system of ideas or ways of understanding that allows us to
establish knowledge.
It involves thinking like ‘a researcher’ ~ which experienced researchers
instantly recognize.
Source: Perkins, 2006
Exhibiting episteme is dependent upon possessing understanding of something and
having the capability to apply that understanding in appropriate ways.
This pluralist concept is evident when candidates display doctorateness in their
approach to research, presentation of their thesis and during its defence that includes
explanation and conceptual grasp.
Professor Vernon Trafford
WHEN DOCTORAL CANDIDATES ‘THINK LIKE A RESEARCHER’
EPISTEME
UNDERSTANDING THE EXPECTATIONS OF OTHERS
REGARDING THE CONDUCT OF RESEARCH AT THIS
LEVEL OF SCHOLARSHIP
CONFIDENT
CHOICE,
AND USE OF,
RESEARCH
APPROACHES BY
MAKING EXPLICIT
THE LINKAGES
BETWEEN KEY
COMPONENTS IN
UNDERTAKING AND REPORTING
ON RESEARCH SO THAT OTHERS
INSTANTLY RECOGNISE, AND ACCEPT,
ITS SCHOLARLY MERIT
THE RESEARCH
PROCESS
Source: AFTER Perkins, 2006
Professor Vernon Trafford
PRACTICALLY ~ THIS HAS GIVEN ME
Ways to understand how doctoral candidates approach and present their research.
Identifiable pointers to use in offering constructive and positive feedback.
Criteria to use in guiding researchers to ‘improve’ their research.
Encouragement for researchers to ‘raise their EXPLICIT levels of thinking ’.
An over-arching set of features that characterize and thus audit doctoral-level research.
A reminder that my ‘clients’ are thinking people ~ not a bureaucratic number.
Professor Vernon Trafford
THRESHOLD CONCEPTS
Professor Vernon Trafford
THRESHOLD CONCEPTS
A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and
previously inaccessible way of thinking about something.
It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing
something without which the learner cannot progress.
As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept there may thus be a
transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape or even world view.
This transformation may be sudden or it may be protracted over an extended period
with the transition to understanding proving ~ perhaps ~ troublesome.
Such a transformed view or landscape may represent how people ‘think’ in a
discipline . . . or how they experience particular phenomena within that discipline.
Source: Meyer and Land, 2006:3
Professor Vernon Trafford
CHARACTERISTICS OF THRESHOLD CONCEPTS
TRANSFORMATIVE
TROUBLESOME
BOUNDED
Threshold
concepts
are likely
to be
IRREVERSIBLE
INTEGRATIVE
Source: Meyer and Land, 2006:6-8
Professor Vernon Trafford
PRACTICALLY ~ THIS HAS GIVEN ME
A framework to explain ‘being stuck’, ‘not understanding’ or liminality.
A language and terms to account for problems in learning situations.
Identification of issues to address and overcome, explain or cope with.
A way of helping others to appreciate and understand the situation in which they find
themselves and then to seek resolution(s) to their difficulties.
Appreciation that adopting agreed change(s) may be followed by problems.
Professor Vernon Trafford
APPRECIATING IGNORANCE
IGNORANCE AS A BASIS FOR KNOWLEDGE
IGNORANCE is a particular condition of knowledge: the absence of fact, understanding,
insight, or clarity about something.
Ignorance is when data don’t exist, or more commonly where the existing data don’t
make sense, don’t add up to a coherent explanation, cannot be used to make a coherent
prediction or statement about some thing or event.
This form of ignorance is knowledgeable, perceptive and insightful.
PERJORATIVE IGNORANCE involves wilful stupidity, something worse than simple
stupidity, a callow indifference to facts or logic. It shows itself as a stubborn devotion to
uninformed opinions, ignoring contrary ideas, opinions or data.
The ignorant are unaware, unenlightened and uninformed.
Source: Firestein, 2012: 6-7
Professor Vernon Trafford
HOW IS IGNORANCE USED IN DOCTORAL THESES?
Thoroughly conscious
ignorance is a prelude
to discovery.
Questions are REALLY
more relevant
than answers.
One good question gives
rise to layers of answers.
Answers end the process.
What is the presumed
basis for, or cause of,
a gap in knowledge?
To DIS-COVER is to
remove a veil
hiding something
~ to reveal a fact.
Ask not ‘What are you
investigating?’, but
rather ‘What are you
trying to find out?’
An unproven hypothesis
is a discovery
of new ignorance.
What comes after
knowledge?
Ignorance follows
knowledge not the
other way round.
A proven hypothesis
is just
a measurement.
Source: Firestein, 2012: 6, 7, 11, 20, 57, 84
Professor Vernon Trafford
PRACTICALLY ~ THIS HAS GIVEN ME
A counter-intuitive view of what ‘a gap in knowledge’ and ‘a contribution to knowledge’
may, or should really, represent!
Opportunities to challenge and extend thinking beyond descriptive knowledge.
Asking strategically-significant questions about the ‘taken-for-granted’’.
A recognition that implicitness (knowledge seeking) typifies most research practices.
Ways to help doctoral candidates / supervisors give research a sharper focus.
Professor Vernon Trafford
THE PRACTICALITY OF GOOD THEORY?
EVIDENCE OF THEORY IN PRACTICE
Responding to the question ‘What is your thesis all about?’ should, ideally, be
answered from a conceptual perspective.
Taking such a perspective will help you to avoid becoming too over-descriptive of your
research or your topic.
By identifying the conceptual thread that runs through a doctoral thesis, you will thus
make connections between ideas, see how various theories are linked and show how
theoretical perspectives influenced your research design, fieldwork and data analysis.
This will result in you achieving cohesion in the arguments that you advance in your
writing and later defend in your viva.
Source: Trafford and Leshem, 2008: 24
Professor Vernon Trafford
THE BEGINNING OR THE END?
When Vaughan Chopping gained his doctorate
at Chelmsford, Essex, UK on Monday, 2nd February, 2004,
the final question at his viva was:
‘What have you learned from your doctoral studies?’
Vaughan’s answer was
‘I now appreciate the role and value of good theory.’
Professor Vernon Trafford
SOURCES
von Bertalanffy, L. 1969. General system theory: foundations, development, applications. New York: Braziller
Checkland, P. 1981. Systems thinking, systems practice. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons
Firestein, S. 2012. Ignorance: How it drives science. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Hutton, G. 1972. Thinking about organization. London: Tavistock. 2nd Edition
Land, R., Meyer, J.H.F. and Smith, J. (Eds.) 2008. Threshold concepts within the disciplines.
Rotterdam: Sense Publications
Meyer, J.H.F. and Land, R. (Eds.) 2006. Overcoming barriers to student learning: threshold concepts and
troublesome knowledge. London: Routledge
Perkins, D. 1999. The many faces of constructivism. Educational Leadership. 57.3. 6 - 11
Perkins, D. 2006. Constructivism and troublesome knowledge. In: Meyer and Land
Senge, P.M. 1990. The fifth discipline: the art and practice of the learning organization. New York: Doubleday
Trafford, V.N. 2008. Conceptual frameworks as a threshold concept in doctorateness. In: Land, Meyer and Smith
Trafford, V.N. and Leshem, S. 2008. Stepping stones to achieving your doctorate.
Maidenhead: McGraw Hill-Open University Press