NSF Award
0126104
Rigorous understanding of teaching and learning practices requires the development of a descriptive science that captures multiple cognitive and social aspects of complex learning situations. This project builds upon available micro-analytic methods, both cognitive and sociological, with a careful regard for the established standards of rigor applied within these traditions. We will explore the promise and limitations of these methods by analyzing a particular set of practices (referential practices) in a particular learning situation. Reference is a fundamental feature of all human communication. It is the means by which we initiate and achieve a common orientation to objects in our shared environment and as such is an integral part of learning. By providing an account of how interactants accomplish reference in a particular situation, we hope to contribute to our developing understanding of how people do learning. Our intent is to study learning practices in the operating room (OR) of a busy teaching hospital, focusing on medical students' early experiences with endoscopic surgery. In such surgeries, surgeons use fiber-optic lenses to view and operate within the patient's body. This poses multiple perceptual challenges, particularly to newcomers. Pilot work shows that this is a rich site for examining referential practices as they relate to learning. Furthermore, these surgeries represent an analytically compact cycle of activity, helping to make manageable the highly ambitious task of describing the content and methods of learning. Preliminary investigations have revealed that establishing shared reference is not always easily accomplished. Participants may proceed as if a common reference has been established even though they are orienting to different aspects of the scene. Post-surgical interviews highlight some of the complexities of studying how participants display their understandings in natural settings. This project will consist of a series of six sequential studies, each involving phases of fieldwork, participant interviews, and analysis. Standard methods for ethnographic fieldwork will be employed when taping in the OR. Post-surgical interviews will be conducted with the participants, using the video from the surgery as an object for discussion. These interviews will serve both to augment our interpretations of the referential practices utilized in the OR and to document the forms of anatomical and professional expertise displayed. Biannual project teams meetings will be conducted to do collaborative analysis of the data. These data sessions will be structured to encourage a disciplined form of noticing. Community building activities are planned to foster the development of descriptive skills by other researchers working in other learning settings.
