Generalization!

The final portion of Dyson and Genishi deals with "generalization." or the application of the findings of a case study to other situations or larger issues. One thing I found very interesting was the idea that readers might generalize in "personal private ways" (115), which is something I had definitely not thought about before. I think a lot of the time I tend to get caught up in this idea of "data" as some type of sterile thing, although I think that's more a misconception that I perhaps had about quantitative research than anything. I liked this idea of the "naturalistic generalization," because it's something I really hadn't considered; I have never really thought about how my work might create different types of personal meaning for individuals. However, reading it here really made sense to me. Lest things get too amorphous and far away from capital-R academic Research, the book also strongly advocates that researchers put their findings within the context of other similar cases in the literature. This reminded me of a conversation I had with Graham while I was working on my proposal assignment. One element of my Literature Review dealt with was my negative opinion of generalization in the field I was studying (the specific situation dealt with quantitative research on the effects of television viewing being applied to the effects of "gaming"; I do not think there are great similarities there). He brought up the strong point that instead of assailing the practice of generalization, I should instead concentrate on the studies themselves. He also brought home a similar related point in his blog somewhere downstairs from here regarding honing in on our focus, and I agree. If we do what we're supposed to do as researchers appropriately and with fidelity, I do not think that this issue becomes thorny. To me, the only time generalization becomes inappropriate is when it's done unethically.  In fact, often it is within this area of looking to find generalization where we've seen historically seen "research" fail; for example, the Milgram  experiment and some of the other unethical stuff we've looked at up to this point. However, as Jose points out in his blog, another way things might get sticky is if we try and squeeze enormous "truths" out of a single small case, particularly  when we’re studying a particular group.  Certainly we've spoken many times in our class about "cultural" studies done by members of the dominant culture, as Jose rightly points out. In the particular case of our reading, however, I believe both authors handled this aspect of their work on Mrs. Kay’s and Mrs. Yung’s class quite well. Dyson's closing remarks regarding her goal to simply "add new understandings to the evolving dialogue" (130-131) is to me a perfect way to phrase how we should view our station as researchers, and how we might approach this contentious issue of generalization.