Read

• Michael Cole, Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline. Introduction and Chapters 1-4. 

Methods Discussion: Interviewing, Indexing, and Transcribing

• Read Lindlof & Taylor’s discussion of “Qualitative Interviewing”.
• Due: Interview Project Part 1

CCC Home | Next Week

Goal: To further the theoretical discussion about cognitive-cultural-communicative (C3) processes and systems by research and argument.

Topics

Your paper should be of one of the following types:

1. Interpretation / Explanation: Analyze or interpret an existing C3 system or process using theoretical concepts from the course and empirical data from existing studies. (You are not to gather new empirical data for this project.) The empirical studies you cite do not need to apply C3 theories themselves. Indeed, it is better if they do not. Your job is to show that some C3 ideas better account for some existing phenomena than the orthodox theories of cognition, culture, or communication.
   • A great example of this kind of work is Jean Lave’s discussion of previous studies of learning transfer in Chapter 2 of Cognition in Practice
   • Another example is Mike Cole’s discussion of classic cross-cultural psychology in Cultural Psychology
2. Theoretical / Methodological Issues: There are a number of unsettled issues and theoretical disputes among C3 theories about the best way to study C3 systems and processes. Your job is to give a clear explanation of the dispute or issue, explain what is at stake, and provide a way of resolving it that is philosophically, theoretically, or empirically well-motivated and compelling. Here are some potentially fruitful issues.
   • Actor-Network Theory and many of the other views differ on whether humans have a special place in C3 systems, or whether they are to be treated symmetrically with non-human cultural artifacts and parts of the natural environment.
   • D-Cog sticks closest to classic cognitive science by continuing to rely on the resources of classical and connectionist computation to analyze the cognitive activities of C3 systems. Should cognition still be analyzed computationally in C3 theories?
3. Critical Engagements: In the course we have read mostly defenses of radical approaches to C3 systems and processes. Of course, these approaches have been criticized from the more orthodox point of view. Your job is to research one particular set of criticisms. You can either respond on behalf of some C3 theory, validate and extend the critique, or find some middle ground. For example:
   • Philosophers like Robert Rubert, Ken Aizawa, and Fred Adams have attack philosophical and scientific theories that extend the mind beyond the brain or individual. They argue that a more conservative account which treats the mind as “embedded” without treating the external factors as “constituent” parts of mind / cognition.
   • Psychologists like Margaret Wilson have questioned views of “embodied cognition” that involve environment and action as central to cognition along empirical and explanatory grounds.
   • Sociologists (and other social scientists) like Graham Button have questioned distributed cognition theories from the perspective of adequate theories of society.

Format

1. Ordinary, easily readable fonts, font size, margins, etc. Be reasonable; aim at readability not flashy style.
2. First page must include your name, UTD-ID, date, the section number you are registered in (e.g., “ACN 6V81.501”, “EMAC6372.501” etc), the title of your paper, and an abstract, 100-200 words.
3. Every subsequent page should include a page number and preferably your last name in the header or footer.
4. Citations according to some major manual of style, preferably APA or Chicago, preferably author-date format. Take proper citation practices seriously.
5. Maximum of 2400 words (including references and footnotes but not abstract and header).
6. Review these further generic tips and guidelines.

Egregious failure to follow formatting guidelines will result in an automatic failing grade on the assignment at the discretion of the instructor.

Due 4/30, in class and online via Turnitin.com. You will have to give a relatively informal presentation of your paper.

This project is optional. You can choose to do it or to complete the Video Ethnography Project.

Goal: The goals of this project are to document how real people on campus or in the local area engage in some meaningful activity. You should have already made contact with the people in an interesting activity setting for your earlier projects. If those contacts are still working, collect your video there. If, for some reason you cannot, or choose not to, collect video in that setting, you should quickly find another setting where you can collect video data.

Getting Started: I strongly recommend you re-read many of the methodological readings associated with ethnography, participant observation, and cognitive ethnography as you carry out this project. I especially recommend you have another look at Robert F. Williams, “Using Cognitive Ethnography to Study Instruction” and Lindlof & Taylor, “Participating, Observing, and Recording Social Action”.

Part 1: Transcription of Activity in Video from Your Setting

Directions:

1. Remember that you cannot collect any video data until you have obtained informed consent. All participants in the activity being videoed (or who might be incidentally videoed) must sign the video consent form.
2. Make observations: You may already have observed, photographed, and interviewed some members of the community. In this project you should conduct a more systematic study of the ways that people make meaning in everyday activity. Talk to the people and observe them in the activity. Take notes on their activities, describe their tasks, and videotape a person or, preferably, persons interacting with their environment or with one another. Collect at least 15 minutes of video.
3. Create an index and select clips for analysis: Using the method introduced in the interview activity, create an index for your video. Select clips totaling at least 30 seconds duration for analysis.
4. Transcribe clips: Make a detailed transcription of the activity in your selected clips. Use the assigned readings for models of ways to transcribe non-verbal aspects of on-going activity. Here is a sample transcript by Professor Edwin Hutchins.

Part 2: Analysis of Activity in Video

Directions:

1. Analysis: Analyze the recorded activity using the concepts presented in the lectures and readings.
2. Write up the analysis. Be sure your analysis makes use of the concepts in the readings.
3. Please also turn in a copy of your index and transcription. It is expected that you will have made changes to these during the course of your analysis.
4. Note: NO INFORMED CONSENT = NO GRADE.

Maximum 1000 words of text for your analysis. Attach the index, transcript, and any additional figures and tables.

Due 4/30, in class. You will have to give a relatively informal presentation of your project. If you have received consent to use the video in a classroom setting, you may show clips if you bring them in a suitable format. (Please make arrangements ahead of time.)

This project is optional. You can choose to do it or to complete the Theoretical Research Paper assignment.

Each week will include certain reading assignments, activities, or both. These activities supplement our main texts by focuses primarily on the methods of research. Consult the weekly schedule to determine reading assignments. Here are all of the major activities:

1. Leave a comment on the introductory webpage. Due 1/15.
2. Cognitive Diary and Everday Activity Analysis. Due 1/22
3. Complete NIH Protecting Human Research Subjects training. Due 2/12
4. Photo Documentation of an Everyday Activity Due 2/26
5. Interview Project Part 1: Collect and Transcribe an Interview Due 3/19
6. Interview Project Part 2: Describe and Analyze Cultural Models Due 4/2

Note: For most of these projects, you will have to obtain informed consent.

Credit to Ed Hutchins from whom I’ve adapted some of these project ideas and taken some of the text for the directions.

Goal: To find and document cultural models used in the construction of meaningful passages in your interview.

Directions:

1. Search:
   1. Look through your interview transcript for evidence of cultural models. It may be necessary to go back and listen to your whole interview again to find passages that contain clear cultural models. Choose a passage that makes it easy for you to find and document the cultural models involved.
   2. Consider each word in a transcript. Pay attention to detail. As you go along, make sketches, notes, rough drafts, of models. Try highlighting in different colors to represent emerging categories of events in the material.
2. Analysis: Describe the cultural models that are required to make sense of, or establish the meaning of, the passage. Make sure that your description is accurate and clear. You might consider expressing it in a diagram or some other notation. Show how these models are used in the passage and how the passage relies on the listener having access to these models. Describe any inferences that the passage suggests. How is the listener expected to go beyond what is literally present in the passage? If possible, provide other evidence (beyond the inference or interpretation that is to be explained) in support of the claim that these models are cultural models.
   1. Choose to develop models that are well supported by the data. You will need to choose, and in order to choose intelligently you will have to do at least a partial analysis. This means that you will probably discard some part of the analysis you do. This is normal. It is the right thing to do.
   2. Describing the model. Use text for the full description. Be sure to include the parts of the model that are necessary to understand the material. As you develop the description of the model continually test it against the data. You may include other parts of the model too. If you do, try to indicate which parts of the model are needed to understand the data, and which are not.
   3. Represent the models as diagrams or in propositional form. This process will help you get the details of the models right, will help you see and understand the relations among models (hierarchical, sequential, competing, etc.), and will allow you to write the main description and analysis sections more concisely.
   4. Examine the role of the models in the organization of the material. This is the big question. Cultural Models organize meaningful discourse. Your job is to show which models organize the discourse you examined and show how those models were used by your informant (or author of other media) to construct the inscription you examined.
   5. Once you have identified some models, you can ask (and answer) these questions. Where does the model appear to be at work? What is it doing? How is it instantiated? (for example, informants often give a specific instantiation before a more general statement of the structure of the model). How is it related to other models? Here is where taking your time and attending to details pays off. Insight will be rewarded. You can discover something new while doing this. Even if it is only new to you, it’s important, and genuine discovery is a great feeling. Writing up steps 5 and 6 will produce the analysis section of your paper.
   6. Include the data! Attach segments of transcript or photocopy of other media. Be sure to make it easy for a reader to find the elements of the data to which you refer in the description and analysis.
3. Write it up including all of the above. When you make a claim about the presence of a model, you may wish to include brief excerpts from the transcripts in the body of the text in support of your claims.

Maximum 1000 words of text. You can include additional figures and tables if they contribute to the description.

Due 4/2

Credit to Ed Hutchins from whom I’ve adapted this project idea and taken some of the text for the directions.

Goal: To learn how to conduct an interview, and transcribe an audio recording.

Getting Started: You need to read Lindlof & Taylor, “Qualitative Interviewing”.

Directions:

1. For this project you will need some sort of audio recorder. This might be a tape recorder or an app for your phone. Make sure you know how it works before your interview, and that it will record for at least 60 minutes.
2. Before interviewing, read Ed Hutchins’ interviewing tips and potential interview questions and read Lindlof & Taylor’s discussion of Qualitative Interviews.
3. Contact a participant in the activity from Project 2 who is willing to talk to you about the activity.
4. Set up a time and a quiet place to talk to your informant.
5. Obtain informed consent for interview recording from your informant using the interview consent form.
6. Turn on the tape recorder and interview your informant about the activity you took photos of. Start with the photos you used in Project 2, but feel free to use other photos as prompts in the interview. Ask your informant to explain what is going on in the activity.
7. Record at least 30 minutes, but no more than one hour of interview.
8. Listen through your interview and make an index of what it contains. This should be a list of topics discussed or events in the conversation with some indication of where they appear on the tape. Then choose one or two passages to transcribe.
9. Transcribe about 1000 words using relaxed transcription techniques. For this, you should just try to get all of the words that are said, including false starts and other disfluencies.
10. Consider using Express Scribe, a handy transcription tool, that can be downloaded for free here Before trying it out, you should read the tutorial.
11. Write up the index for your interview. Be sure to indicate on the index which sections of the interview were transcribed. Type up the transcription in clean form. Ed Hutchins has a really nice example of an index and transcription

REMEMBER: NO INFORMED CONSENT means NO GRADE.

Due 3/19: Turn in your index and transcription.

Part 2: Describe and Analyze Cultural Models

Credit to Ed Hutchins from whom I’ve adapted this project idea and taken some of the text for the directions.

1. Your homework is to complete the NIH Protecting Human Research Subjects training. According to the website, the course takes approximately 3 hours to complete. (It may take some of you less time. If you have already completed the training for another class or project, you do not need to repeat the training, but you do need to submit your certificate).
   
2. At the end of the training, please PRINT your certificate and bring it to class tomorrow. (Alternatively, you can send me a PDF via email if you are able.)
3. Look ahead to the Photo Documentation project which is due on 2/26. Start thinking about it now. (The informed consent form link does not work yet but will be posted soon.)

Goal: To learn how to attend to the details of the world of everyday activities.

Directions:

1. In this project you are going to take photos of an everyday social activity. First, choose an activity. It should be something that interests you and something to which you have access. It could be something you do with your family or with your roommates or friends. It could be an activity at your workplace, or in someone else’s workplace. The people involved in the activity should be adults 18 years of age or older. You should choose an activity where you can get close to the action, one that probably has some significant cognitive aspects you can observe. If you are unsure about your choice, please consult with your Professor. You must obtain the informed consent of participants in the activity before you take photos. The procedures for obtaining informed consent are described on the informed consent page. While you are obtaining that consent, also find at least one participant in the activity who will agree to talk to you about the activity later.
2. Look ahead. This would be a good time to make contact with a community that will provide the data for the remainder of the class projects.
3. Observe the activity for a while before taking pictures. Get a sense for the nature of the activity.
4. Take pictures of the activity. Try to capture interesting aspects of the activity and the social and material environment in which it takes place. Take at least 15 shots.
5. Carefully look at your pictures and choose 2 of them that you find most interesting.
6. Carefully describe what you see in the two photos. Stick close to the data and pay attention. Look for evidence of cognitive activity. Hopefully, you will see things in the study of your photos that you did not see while observing the event live.

I assume you will use a digital camera for this assignment. The camera in your phone will even be fine, if it has sufficient resolution and a flash (if needed). If you do not have access to a digital camera, you can purchase an inexpensive disposable camera and have the film developed at, e.g., a CVS or Walgreens.

Maximum 800 words of text. Additional figures and tables (if they contribute to the description) are not included in the word count.

Due: 2/26

Note: NO INFORMED CONSENT means NO GRADE.

Download: Informed Consent Form

Credit to Ed Hutchins from whom I’ve adapted this project idea and taken some of the text for the directions.

All research using human and animal research subjects is subjected to oversight to protect the research subjects from unacceptable harms. In the case of research on human beings, a cornerstone of research ethics is the concept of informed consent. Your research subjects must consent to being a part of your study, and they must be informed about the nature of any risks involved. Human subjects research is reviewed by the Institutional Review Board (IRB) and the Office of Research Compliance (ORC).

The research activities in this class will be conducted under the terms of an application that Professor Brown submitted to the ORC. This application covers the Photo Documentation and Interview activities, as well as the optional Video Ethnography project. You must follow all of the instructions on the project page and on this page.

General Instructions

1. You must obtain informed consent from every person you collect data from before you collect the data. You must explain to them what you want them to do, what information your are going to collect, and what you will do with the information you collect.
2. You must keep clear records of the consent given by all participating subjects. Keep track of your consent forms. Keep a record of the total number of subjects you work with.
3. The people involved in the activity should be adults 18 years of age or older.
4. You will not interview subjects about their personal lives or other topics that may be socially sensitive.
5. You will not collect any sort of data on any illegal activity.
6. You will do whatever you can to protect the interests of the subjects.
7. If complications arise in your relationship to a subject or subjects, report the problem to your professor immediately

Informed Consent Forms

Download and print enough of the forms to take with you to do your data collection.

1. Photo Documentation Form – Make sure all of the participants in the activity that you observe and document sign a form, even if you do not actually photograph them.
2. Interview Consent Form
3. Video Project Form – Make sure the participants all sign the form before you video them. This project is optional.

Credit to Ed Hutchins from whom I’ve adapted these project ideas and taken some of the text for the directions.