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?
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