Symbolic Interactionism in Chemistry Education Research

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Symbolic Interactionism in Chemistry Education
Research

• Dawn Del Carlo
• University of Northern Iowa
• 19th BCCE, Purdue University
• Aug 2, 2006

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Brief History and Schools of Thought

• Grounded in elements of the sociological theories
  of George Herbert Mead (Chicago, 1863-1931).
• Student of Mead, Herbert Blumer, coined the
  phrase symbolic Interaction.
• Focus here will be on Meads Chicago School of
  thought but others exist
• Manford Kuhn, Old Iowa School
• Carl Couch, New Iowa School
• Sheldon Stryker, Indiana School

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Goals of Symbolic Interactionism

• Main goal is to understand how people act based
  on the definitions and meanings they hold of the
  world around them.
• Three premises
• Humans act toward objects on the basis of the
  meanings these objects have for them.
• Meanings evolve from social interaction.
• Meanings are established and modified through an
  interpretive process

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Assumptions

• Ontological (Assumptions about reality)
• Reality is socially constructed and constantly
  changing (interpretivism)
• An individuals reality is based on what is found
  to be useful (pragmatism)
• Behavioral
• Somewhat behavioristic in nature but not based on
  instinct
• Behavior instead results from an interpreted
  meaning which is then further constructed through
  the social interaction of that behavior.

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Methods Appropriate to Symbolic Interaction

• Participant Observation
• Critical to documenting the observed behavior
  within the social interaction
• Challenge is to become part of the group enough
  to understand it as a native but yet also be
  able to step back and describe to others.
• Interviews and Collected Artifacts
• Used to supplement the observations and uncover
  the underlying meanings behind the observed
  behaviors.

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Data Analysis

• Grounded Theory/Inductive Analysis
• Use collected data as starting point for the
  generation of theory
• Preliminary data dictate the direction of future
  data collection so must be analyzed as it is
  collected
• Not used to pin-point what to observe, only to
  suggest in which direction to look

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Criticisms

• Social Construction of Meaning
• Little attention paid to psychological phenomema
  inherent to the individual
• Treats human emotion, desire, and motives as
  socially constructed entities (much to Freud and
  Jungs dismay)
• Lack of Generalizability and Bias
• Socially constructed meanings are contextualized
  within the specific social event, which is never
  identically repeated
• Participant observers may influence interactions
  to reflect a particular bias and consequently
  generate different theories

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Potential Educational Benefits of SI Research

• Classroom climate and culture
• Pre- and In-Service teacher education programs
• Culture of science and scientific research

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Selected Examples of Research using SI

• Pre-Service Preparation
• Student Teaching Experience (Abell Roth, 1992
  1994 Southerland Gess-Newsome, 1999)
• Focus on pre-service teachers understandings and
  knowledge and how those manifested themselves as
  behaviors in the classroom during their student
  teaching
• Teaching Methods Course (McGinnis Pearsall,
  1998)
• Examined how outcomes of a methods course were
  affected by the presence of a male instructor in
  a class with a predominantly female enrollment.

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Selected Examples of Research using SI

• In-Service Teacher Practices
• Focus on connections between teachers
  understandings of science content, pedagogy and
  pedagogical content and their resultant classroom
  practices.
• Beginning teachers (Simmons et. al., 1999
  McGinnis et. al. 2004)
• Specific characteristics of teaching with regard
  to perceptions of caring (Van Sickle Spector,
  1996), sense of professional self (Helms,
  1998), and experience in literacy (Dillon, et.
  al., 1994).
• Curricular reform practices (Gohn 2004)
• Focus on teacher-teacher interactions within the
  group

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Selected Examples of Research using SI

• Student Perspectives of Culture
• Science Classroom (Smardon, 2004)
• street vs. chemistry classroom code of conduct
• Science Ed. School-wide (Hyde-Gess-Newsome, 1999)
• Experiences of female SME majors who persisted in
  their majors
• Science as an institution
• Student perceptions of the culture of science
  with regard to socio-scientific dilemmas
  (Zeidler, 2002)
• Compare classroom laboratory with real labs
  (Del Carlo Bodner, 2004)

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Final Words on Symbolic Interactionism

• Consider it an exploratory framework
• Does not offer easy answers or solutions to
  fixing a problem
• Offers a broad, but not generalizable,
  understanding of a social context and its
  existing meanings
• Once the phenomena are understood, other studies
  can be used to make appropriate changes in the
  social meanings and consequently the observed
  behavior

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Acknowledgements

• George Bodner
• MaryKay Orgill
• Theresa Winge
• MaryBeth Stalp