Teaching

When you read through fieldnote after fieldnote, listen to interview after interview, transcribe recording after recording, one begins to understand how much drudgery qualitative research can be. Several questions plague me during these long hours:
1. What's the significance of this all?
2. You don't have statistics or a representative, random sample... how does this show anything on a larger scale (generalizability)? What are your measures of validity (e.g. statistics has agreed statistical boundaries)?
3. IS IT WORTH IT?

My answers so far run on these lines:

1. I can write a whole lot on a report that sounds great. I can justify my research by explaining how it helps develop better pedagogy for migrants. It helps us contextualize, prepare, develop, strengthen, augment... While I don't think it's hypocritical, I've come to take the significance portion of every research proposal, every award ceremony, and every biography with a grain of salt.

At least in the field of education, the significance of each piece of the puzzle that fits to make these institutions tick is simultaneously minuscule and crucial.

2. This question has been fielded several times as I've read through most of the literature on migrants. Some branches of sociology, economics, and other statistically based social sciences have the lion's share of academic knowledge in China's migrant sphere. In China, science reigns supreme: throttling toward a hazy modernity, it is indeed "science" that sends rockets into space, saves the environment, and structure a harmonious society. The "soft" and "thick" (to use Geertz' word) ethnographic realm is simply too fuzzy. I'm not in the least surprised that good ethnographies have yet to define policies in China. But change those into numbers, and you have a whole fund under your control.

I believe there are two reasons: qualitative data seems to lack generalizability and validity. How can one school shed light on a whole city, much less a nation? How can twelve students' opinions (note: opinion) be valid, much less generalizable?

On the other hand, stories have been humanity's primary mode of communication for centuries. In some ways, we've surrounded our lives in "webs of meaning" based on the thousands of stories we've learned and listened to. The scops of Anglo-Saxon lore weren't talking about confidence intervals, The Venerable Bede doesn't tell you about the normal distribution of singers, the poets of China surely weren't telling us about student-t tests. Not to dismiss statistics, however: surely some of the most powerful civilizations ran censuses and reigned over the nation with statistical and mathematical tools (look at the genealogies in the Bible, for example). I believe few individuals are innately drawn to statistics as a tool of communication, however. Stories are passed down through the centuries: the Gospels are stories of Christ; the Bhagavad-Gita chronicles the *story* of Arjuna; the stories of Mohammad, Buddha, Abraham Lincoln (not to imply these figures are the same!) continues to this day.

Whether true or untrue, a story communicates so well because it opens itself toward interpretation. It intrinsically asks the reader to internalize, to ponder, to place the story within the framework of his or her own life. For example, one easily walks away from Miller's Crucible with different thoughts, each individual thinking differently about the story. It is nebulous, uncertain, and perhaps in the stereotyped, contemporary Chinese mind, unscientific.

Does my work have validity? It really depends, I suppose. On a superficial level, clearly I can honestly record events that occurred, providing as much detail as possible, and clearly state my methodology. These types of historical, for lack of a better word, validity are agreed in the field. For example, the story of Christ has good historical validity.

On a deeper level, however, is whether it actually answers the questions it originally attempted to answer. In attempting to understand how students develop their perceptions of education, I believe understanding their lives through stories is a more valid analytical tool. I doubt many would deny that students develop their ontological framework mostly through stories, especially while they are young. Understanding the stories of their lives, their experiences, their social networks... these are more suited toward developing a perspective of their education. To funnel these questions into a statistical framework may increase its generalizability, but probably not its validity (e.g. how you can say that this set of questions provides a perspective into the students' mind?).

Does my work have generalizability? Probably not in the statistical sense. But like a good story, it offers the kind of affinity one feels toward, say, Proctor, or Willy Loman. In being so focused, it offers a picture of humanity with all of its crazed complexity. That said, I agree that the scale of implementation of a policy must follow its level of generalizability. For a *social scale,* ethnographic data cannot be used alone. It must be paired with a good statistical study. But the reverse ought to be true as well.

I think this picture illustrates the relationship between qualitative and quantitative research quite well. In tackling a frustratingly complicated ("rocky") area, we must use one method. In tackling a relatively uniform area, we can use another. To bridge the two in a synergistic fashion allows for the most validity and generalizability, however.


3. At the end of the day it really is about the students. At 5:40 in the morning, pulling myself out of bed to run with the students, I am grouchy, angry, and for the past few days aching and sick. I want to rip something apart and sleep for hours. But nonetheless, there's a drive the forces me to continue. Whether working as a teacher, a volunteer, or a researcher, the core goal in my being at this school really is the students. It's not that they are impoverished and lacking in opportunities (well, that's true too), it's really about growth, and wanting to understand and implement the most effective way to help these students grow. Anything toward that end, I think, is "worth it." Plus the added bonus of being called "teacher" all the time, in spite of my embarrassment.

After reading China Road (Gifford), I've been enthralled with the idea of roads. At first my whole experience was about walking a road less taken. I've come to believe that it shouldn't even be about myself at all, because all that will remain on this road (my whole life, actually) is my "shadow." The important part is rather to serve those who live here and grapple with a difficult road on a day to day basis.

Grittiness

A little grittiness isn’t a bad thing… once you’re used to it.

Walking across the paved one-lane road (but acting as a two-lane road), I dodge several incoming vehicles and a horse cart before safely breathing the noxious fumes of gasoline and burnt charcoal on the other side (how ironic). A steel frame stretches over this open mouth of a road, the words 寿宝庄 written on it. A vendor sells fruit, shielded from the dust by a few umbrellas boasting the words ‘Lenovo.’

To my right is the public bathroom, an inconspicuous concrete building with broken concrete tiles outside. Further along the road is a bathing facility and a local police station.

Sand and dust rises from the air, mixing with the pungent smoke swirling mischievously from a small stove. Taking the lid off a tower of wooden containers, steam from the newly made buns rises to join the smoke. A splash of water catches my attention, and I notice several fish swimming desperately in a tiny concrete pond. The owner fetches one with a net hanging from a stick and hands it, still flipping, to a customer.

A cigarette hangs precariously from the mouth of a worker shoveling gray-yellow sand from a pile the height of his waist onto a small frame, which acts as a filter. Caked with sand and bits of cement, bricks are piled in stacks that remind me of a game of Jenga. The whole community glows from the vibrant shade of orange dye that permeates the cloth sky, a bright glow in the west fading gently light blue in the east.


Bicycles vie for space with pedestrians and motorcycles, a rather curious mix of buzzing, clicking, spinning, clacking (high heels, I imagine), and tapping. Vendors occupy “tables,” which are essentially bricks with a cement slab laid over them, hawking goods from winter clothes to durians. Leeks, onions, ginger (overflowing onto the concrete road from a wicker basket), cabbage heads meld to apples, oranges, pomelos, and tiny pears.

I continue walking and pass a supermarket. Ahead of me is another team of construction workers mixing and shoveling cement. They’ve almost taken up the entire road! I feel oddly comforted when I see school uniforms. I believe I have been at this school too long and am now only comfortable when I see middle school students. What a strange situation to be in.

On the yellowed mud walls of the alleyways are vents covered by pieces of perforated charcoal, the holes regularly spaced in the cylindrical piece of charcoal. As I continue walking, there’s sign of an expanse of garbage collecting, a veritable factory putting together these items. On the other side is an expanse of vegetable garden, translucent plastic sheets spread over tiny verdant spots struggling in the sable soil. An old grandfather, his wrinkles looking more like rivulets carving down a rock face, assiduously hacks away with an axe at a door frame. Four children kick a little bean bag to the side, enjoying the last glowing rays of a setting sun. I ask if I can take a photograph, and the grandfather shakes his heads majestically before returning to his work. I walk away hearing the chatter of the children, “who was that person? What did he want?”


A little grittiness can definitely be a good thing… if you get used to it.