Frederick Erickson

Conducting Video Research in the Learning Sciences: Guidance on Selection, Analysis, Technology, and Ethics

Focusing on expanding technical capabilities and new collaborative possibilities, we address 4 challenges for scientists who collect and use video records to conduct research in and on complex learning environments: (a) Selection: How can researchers be systematic in deciding which elements of a complex environment or extensive video corpus to select for study? (b) Analysis: What analytical frameworks and practices are appropriate for given research problems? (c) Technology: What technologies are available and what new tools must be developed to support collecting, archiving, analyzing, reporting, and collaboratively sharing video? and (d) Ethics: How can research protocols encourage broad video sharing and reuse while adequately protecting the rights of research participants who are recorded?

Comment: Culture, Rigor, and Science in Educational Research:

In this article the authors argue that both the Feuer, Towne, and Shavelson article and the larger National Research Council (NRC) report on which it is based must be understood in the context of current federal discourse that focuses narrowly on experimentally derived causal explanations of educational program effectiveness. Although the authors concur with much of the Feuer et al. article and the NRC report, they are concerned that the NRC committee, by accepting uncritically its charge to define the scientific in educational research, produced a statement that risks being read as endorsing both the possibility and the desirability of taking an evidence-based social engineering approach to educational improvement nationwide. Finally, the authors review the consequences of not challenging the layperson’s “white coat” notion of science and replacing it with a more complicated and realistic view of what actual scientists do and the varied and complex methods and perspectives they employ in their inquiry.

Learning From Our Differences: A Dialogue Across Perspectives on Quality in Education Research

The dialogue re-presented in this article is intended to foster mutual engagement—and opportunity for learning—across different perspectives on research within the education research community. Participants in the dialogue each addressed the following questions: (1) What are the touchstones by which you judge quality or rigor in education research (for a single study, a set of studies, or a “field” or community of researchers in dialogue)? What is your chief concern or fear that the touchstones guard against? (2) Where do you see challenges to your perspective in the perspectives of other members of the panel? How might your perspective evolve to respond to those challenges? Given all of this, what are the implications for the preparation of education researchers? Opening and closing comments set the dialogue in historical context, highlight issues raised, and suggest next steps for collaborative learning from the diversity of perspectives in our field.

Audiovisual Records as a Primary Data Source

Full understanding of the reflexivity of social action necessitates specification of modes of interactional coordination through investigation of (1) directly observable content of action, and (2) interpretations of meaningfulness held by the actors. This article outlines procedures for analyzing sound-image records (SIR) of interaction—identifying hierarchical organization, constituent subevents and more or less typical behaviors. The approach advocated is one of moving from whole events to increasingly small constituent units. The method of microethnography is contrasted with more traditional participant observation.

Uses of video in social research: a brief history

This article discusses the origins of video‐based approaches to social research and their continuation up to the present moment. It begins by considering early studies employing silent cinema film and audio recording, followed by the unification of audio and visual recording in sound cinema film. Special emphasis is placed on the perspectives and methods initiated by the ‘Natural History of an Interview’ research group; the first systematic study of verbal and nonverbal behavior together, as these occur in immediate social interaction in face‐to‐face encounters. The discussion then continues autobiographically as I recount my own early research experience of the development of video‐based research approaches. This is followed by an overview of current work to show the wide range of contemporary research that uses video. The article concludes with a few speculations concerning likely futures for video‐based approaches in social research.

Culture difference and science education

The author reviews conceptions of culture and language to provide a conceptual framework for understanding the ways in which cultural differences between students and science teachers can influence learning of that subject. The paper is both theoretical and practical.

Topic control and person control: A thorny problem for foreign physicians in interaction with American patients

This paper examines the tension between physicians’ ability to control topics in interaction with patients and general American expectations that the asymmetry of power and status typical of such encounters be denied in favor of greater equality, manifested in shared topic control. Specifically, the paper focuses on the difficulties that foreign medical graduates, comfortable with power asymmetry, have in adapting their interactive style to American expectations. Finally, it proposes that the process of acquiring second‐culture communicative competence in this area is difficult not only because it involves learning to recognize patterns invisible to reflection in normal practice, but also because the encounter embodies a fundamental tension between authority (inequality) and equality in American society, which can be managed but not resolved.

Gatekeeping Encounters: A Social Selection Process

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses the unit of analysis of gatekeeping encounter. This is a type of interactional event; specific instances of it are junior college counseling interviews and job interviews. These are gatekeeping events because one person, the interviewer, has authority to make decisions about the social mobility of the interviewee. At the discretion of the interviewer, advice is given and/or permission for mobility is granted or withheld. In the junior college interview, permission could be granted to continue for further education in one of a number of possible programs; in the job interview, permission for hiring could be given or withheld. From summary tables and the original code charts, one could retrieve information about the relation of various verbal and nonverbal behavior classes to each other by marking situational shifts and smaller segments within the section bounded by situational shifts. Results from the rhythmic asymmetry code turned out to be more closely associated with ethnicity than with pan-ethnicity or co-membership. This suggests that the rhythmic asymmetry code is retrieving the aspects of interactional form that are cultural rather than social structural in origin.

The Organization of Informal Learning

Informal learning is often treated as simply an alternative to formal, didactic instruction. This chapter discusses how the organization of informal learning differs across distinct settings but with important commonalities distinguishing informal learning from formal learning: Informal learning is nondidactic, is embedded in meaningful activity, builds on the learner’s initiative or interest or choice (rather than resulting from external demands or requirements), and does not involve assessment external to the activity. The informal learning settings discussed all have learning and innovation as goals, and they all include guidance to newcomers through social interaction and/or the structure of activities. Along with the features in common, the organization of informal learning also differs in important ways across settings as distinct as everyday family and community engagements that are not organized around instruction; voluntary settings with an instructional focus, such as after-school programs; innovative schools that emphasize children’s initiative and choice; children’s “underground” informal learning in schools; and institutions such as science centers that have an instructional as well as a voluntary leisure focus. These informal learning settings differ in extent of focus on and ways of including play, instruction, collaborative or solo activity, contribution to “real” productive goals, and connection with a larger community.