Glen Gatin Final Oral ReviewGlen Gatin Final Oral Review

Keeping Your Distance: A basic social process

Agenda for this FOR

• The project that I undertook for this dissertation

• What I have learned

• Contribution to knowledge

My Background and perspective

• Canadian educator

• Scholar/practitioner

• New media evangelist

My Areas of Interest

• Technology-mediated education

• Manitoba, Canada

• Other jurisdictions

New Paradigms

• Rapid advancement of technology

• Resulting social change

• Changing locus of control for education

Current Research in Distance Education

• Existing theoretical frameworks based on old understandings of industrial education

• Field is evolving rapidly

• Need new theories

Grounded Theory

• What is grounded theory?

• Why did I decide to use it?

• How does it work?

• How did I apply the method?

Grounded theory

• A way to look at areas from a participant’s perspective

• A way to minimize preconceptions

• Answers the question, “What are people really working on?

• For new or rapidly emerging fields

Grounded theory is

• Explanatory theory

• An integrated set of concepts organized around a core variable

• Not concerned with validity or verification

Why I decided to use grounded theory

• Dissatisfaction with other research methods

• Opportunity to discover theory

• Promise of meaningful contribution to knowledge

Criteria for a grounded theory

• Fit

• Grab

• Generalizability

• Modifiability

All is Data“Mention a hospital and everyone has an experience to tell and often cannot be

stopped until they do”

• Formal interviews

• Observation

• Collegial comments

• Literature from the substantive area

• Slices of data

Keeping Your Distance

• People regulate distance, physical and representative, in their everyday lives.

• People use strategies to control physical, emotional, and psychological distance and to conserve personal energy.

• People use a personalized algorithm of engagement.

Distancing for Physical Safety

• Most basic form of this response

• Related to survival

• People use physical distance as a proxy for emotional and psychological distance

Emotional Distancing

• Protect your heart

• Defense mechanisms

• Not an aberration but a normal response

• Default to distance

Distancing for autonomy

• Self-determination

• Response to chaos

• Also applies on a collective level

Distancing for energy conservation

• Social engagement costs and benefits

• ROI of lost causes

• Internet distance has a new quality

Strategies

• Physical distancing

• Symbolic distancing

• Internalizing and compartmentalizing

Algorithm of Keeping Your Distance

• KYD response is mitigated

• Skin thickness

• Wind chill factor

• Steven Strogatz clip

Covariance

Strategies

ConditionsConsequences

Mitigating Factors

Applications of this Theory

• Technology-mediated education

• No Creepy Tree-house

• KYD in other settings

Implications of this Theory

• Respect for people’s desire to maintain distance

• Pull, don’t push

• Notions of distance are changing.

Invitation to the wiki

• A grounded theory is modifiable

• http://ggatindissertation.wikispaces.com/

• Interested in the potential that others see

• Under-represented populations

• Critical pedagogy

Conclusion

• Thanks for coming

• Questions, comments?