stevie.

Adena is having us start research projects at work, which is actually kinda perfect for me. In fact, I wish she had asked me to do this a month ago, because I could really have used this kind of time and structure to get my thinking straight about grad school. 

Anyway, step one is to go through my old Tumblr posts and notebooks and look for ideas I’ve had about research and about learning. Then, I’ll see what I still find interesting from there. I’ll keep you posted on what I find and how it goes.

As some of you know, I’m working on an application to the Ph.D program in School Psychology here at Berkeley. (*fingers crossed*)

However, I just came across this tumblr:

I am a Ph.D. candidate in History at the University of Illinois. I’m currently writing a dissertation about the role of bookmobiles in designing, building, and contesting communities in the United States since turn of the twentieth century.

Check here for images, videos, links, and random thoughts about information on the move.

How my heart leapt at the phrase “contesting communities”! I LOVE this stuff. I have to remember to think about space and culture, about seeing patterns and breaking them, even as a school psychologist.

Background info: Philip Zimbardo is the psychologist responsible for the famous Stanford Prison Experiment (1971). He took 24 student volunteers and randomly assigned each one to be a “prisoner” or a “guard.” The guards got uniforms, the prisoners got numbers, and they were all set up in a fairly realistic “prison” in a basement at Stanford. Guards were instructed only to keep order in the prison. Zimbardo watched as the “guards,” though not allowed to hurt their prisoners physically, quickly embraced their roles as figures of authority. These otherwise nice, normal boys began verbally and psychologically abusing their “prisoners,” and the abuse became so real that the simulation had to be cut short after only six days.

Zimbardo was since asked to testify on behalf of a guard caught brutalizing prisoners at Abu Ghraib, which prompted him to revisit the study that showed the world that certain systems of power can cause otherwise good people to do bad things.

I have mixed feelings about Zimbardo. I think that he’s a good researcher, but some things about him rub me the wrong way. I had the opportunity to see him speak at Ohlone the other day, and these were my impressions:

The Bad:

• His talk was called My Journey from Evil to Heroism. Arrogant much?
• He was wearing a t-shirt that he designed and was trying to sell after the talk.
• The last portion of his talk was devoted to promoting his new non-profit, the Heroic Imagination Project, which stacks oversimplified and under-researched ideas about heroism on top of good questions and fairly sound research about brutality.
• Now I whine: He was very late to the talk, was demanding with the gluten-free cookies in his green room, and was not generally very nice to my friend, the president of Ohlone’s Psychology club, who organized this visit (and the substantial funding Zimbardo demanded).

The Good:

• The Stanford Prison Experiment was groundbreaking, as many technically unethical studies unfortunately are, and I love to see it applied to today’s politics. In fact, I especially love to see Zimbardo say to those responsible for Abu Ghraib: I told you so. There’s thirty-five-year-old research that shows you what NOT to do, and you went and did exactly that.
• The part of the talk that probably resonated most with me was when Zimbardo said: “We know exactly what makes good people do extraordinarily bad things. I could give you a recipe right now… [but] we have no idea what makes ordinary people do extraordinarily good things.” This was a great call to action for all of the aspiring psychologists in the room. There’s research to be done!
• I really do like the idea behind his non-profit: People have the potential to do good or bad, and as Zimbardo’s and Milgram’s studies showed, socially responsible behavior and socially irresponsible behavior can be heavily influenced by even a single person acting in either direction. We all have the opportunity to be that good influence.

On school psychologists.

Bardon, J. (1987) “The Translation of Research Into Practice in School Psychology”, School Psychology Review 16(3). 

Context: “In graduate school [school psychologists] are taught that science is important as the basis for practice. They are told that they are scientist-practitioners… Yet, only a few ever do any research. They seldom cite research in their reports or when talking to teachers and parents. But when these school psychologists get together at meetings, they act as though research is the basis of their professional behavior. They tell each other that it is. They like to attend meetings about research. It makes them feel good about themselves. Yes, they claim that they are research-based, but, frankly it is difficult to observe this aspect of claim in their actual working behaviors.”

I like working at ATDP because it allows me to combine my interests. I have always been interested in the cultural aspect of technology, which has only become more riveting in recent years, and I discovered in college that I deeply enjoy teaching writing. I’ve been out of college for a year, and I find myself in a perfect environment for developing my academic curiosities before seriously thinking about grad school.

While talking with Nina the other day, I mentioned that I’d really like to investigate the ways in which engaging with Web 2.0 interacts with the ways kids learn to read and write. People seem to accept that there is an interaction between social networking and learning. Some embrace the power of social networking tools and expect those tools to facilitate a full-bodied learning experience; others worry that abbreviated online interactions will sabotage depth and art in language. I’m really not concerned with arguing with any of these people. The way we interact with one another and with the world is changing, and using research to pat either of these sects on the back and send its supporters on their way seems like more of a political move than a practical one.

I’m interested in the following questions:

1. As interactions (both with other people and with text) become shorter and less linear, what is being lost and what is being gained? (General areas to look at include attention, depth of understanding, breadth of understanding/integrative complexity, social relationships, and community building.)
2. Of those things being lost and gained, which are worthwhile? (This really can’t be answered by research, but I’m still interested in what people think in which contexts.) One way to treat this would be to look at something the educational research has decided that it values (like critical thinking), and study the relationship between certain things gained/lost and that goal.
3. How can students, teachers, and parents use these tools to enhance those things that are worthwhile and minimize those that aren’t? (This includes both capitalizing on the benefits of connectivity and regulating internet use smartly and deliberately.) Which types of interactions foster which kinds of positive development, and how can/should we encourage those?

I know these questions are super vague at the moment. I have yet to do more extensive reading to see what’s out there. I need to find out which cultural perceptions dominate and what holes there’ve been in formal research. I like the idea of this project because it’s satisfyingly relevant and interdisciplinary. I can talk to Dean about what it takes to foster intelligence, creativity, and change, I can talk to Carolyn about trends in America’s relationship with technology, and I can talk to the great pool of people at ATDP about what it really takes to teach kids effectively. I’m even thinking that School Psych might be where I want to end up for grad school.