Traversing Academics of Science Teaching & Learning
Research Territories and Subjectivities
By Michelle Wooten, M.S. PhD Candidate Educational Research Methodologies
Abstract
Just as the writing of abstracts, theoretical frameworks,
methods, etc. are practices that produce knowledge
about the writer as researcher and the territor(ies) they
study, my studying of the practices of academics
produces knowledge of myself as becoming-academic
between and among academics who are also implicated
within their practices. In this study-in-the-making, I
trace the expressed practices and values of academics
of science teaching & learning, mapping sedimentation
of their research territories and subjectivities. Further,
I suggest that these territories and subjectivities can be
studied as produced within power relations which
academics resist.
Theoretical Framework
I seek to align my methodological practices with critical
(or new) materialism, which posits that knowing is
shared and produced intra-actively* through practices
in which constituents are engaged. Critical materialist
practices are (de)constructions that work to rewrite
histories that have produced negations and hierarchies
between and among the social and the material world
through practices of differentiation. Rewriting these
histories may come through mapping and traversing
these differentiations to demonstrate their
connectedness and free movement (flows) across
otherwise normative boundaries.
Methodological Practices
MAP practices and values
TRASVERSE differentiations
HISTORICIZE power relations
ENABLE flows
Throughout this process I will
consider how my own material
presence is engaged in the
rewriting, attuned to how
differences between myself as
researcher, my participants, and
the material world we engage
become less like difference and
more like flows.
Participant Population Intra-Actions as Traversal Flows
A representative sample was used to invite 26 academics I invite the reader to engage with the below describe (already territorialized) disciplinary
who had participated in research on science teaching & mapping of participant quotes, which I have practices as sedimenting differing research
learning for at least 10 years to in-person interviews laid out like stratified layers of rock. Just as territories and subjectivities, e.g., biology
ranging from 30- to 90-minutes. The resulting atmospheric, anthropogenic, and geological education research, science educators,
participant population came from 20 different processes intra-act to configure sedimented discipline-based education research (DBER)
institutions in 11 states. layers of rock, you can notice how participants which they intra-actively both re-inscribe and
resist.
Differentiations Glossary
To me, biology education research is sort Intra-action
of a sub-discipline of science ed research. Reality is composed not of
But what sets it apart is that it relies on a things-in-themselves or things-
really complex, well thought out behind-phenomenon but of
understanding of the discipline of things in-phenomena. The
biology, and always asks education world is a dynamic process of
research questions associated with the [this] intra-activity. (* , p. 140)
discipline. So it's imbedded in the
discipline. -Aylee
Subjectivity
Education by its very nature, were an We should try to discover how
engineering field in some respects. If we it is that subjects are
were just a pure theoretical field, wed be gradually, progressively, really
in psychology or sociology. We wouldnt and materially constituted
be in education. So our work, at least from through a multiplicity of
my perspective, our work both makes organisms, forces, energies,
contributions to theory but also practice to materials, desires, thoughts
what happens in classrooms. -Jam
etc. (, p. 98)
When you think about the distance between
geoscience research and education Historicize
Power must be analyzed as
research, youre going across from a
scientific discipline to a social science
discipline; right? So the way that people do
something which circulates
never localized here or there
their work is really different. -Sally employed and exercised
The thing about being a science educator,
you have to interpret for everyone. How
through a net-like organization
The individual is the effect of
you talk to a physicist is different than how
you talk to a group of biologists, which is
power andis at the same
time its vehicle. (, p. 98)
different than how you even dress for
education people. Like I'm dressed in my
education garb. I won't go to biology like
Acknowledgements
This study has received monetary support
this. No, hell no. -Ishmael from the UA Graduate School, the UA
References College of Education, the UA ESPRMC
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, Department, and the UA Graduate
Next steps 1972-1977. (C. Gordon, Ed.) (1st American Ed edition). New York: Vintage. Student Association. This study has
Enable participants places and spaces (website, conferences, *Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the received intellectual support from
publications, further interviews) to converse (traverse) the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press Books. thought-partners and my dissertation
Dolphijn, R., & Tuin, I. van der. (2012). New Materialism: Interviews & committee, Dr. Aaron Kuntz, Dr. Kelly
differentiations.
Cartographies. S.l.: MPublishing, University of Michigan Library. Guyotte, Dr. Grant Gardner (MTSU), Dr.
Trace the histories that made differentiation a matter of (even Kimberly Tanner (SFSU), and Dr. Douglas
Deleuze, G., & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and
continuing) import as a context for historicizing the power relations Schizophrenia. (B. Massumi, Trans.) (1st Edition). Minneapolis: University of McKnight, and practical support from Dr.
producing these differentiations. Dennis Sunal.
Minnesota Press.