No one lives in the world in general

 

Yeah like everyone else when I saw the word “Generalization” I was like . . . . . where is this going? But with the explanation of naturalistic generalization I got a little more comfortable to this idea. A natural and dangerous thing generalizations can be. I’ve tried to make it a point to be careful when creating and considering generalizations. Or using them to inform or make decisions.

 I was severely relieved to see an emphasis on context. “A case study, be it a community, a classroom, or a program, is not a separate entity but a located one, existent in some particular geographical, political and cultural space and time” (121). In my research, and my life recently, I have been growing to realize that context affects everything. It seems obvious now, but I hadn’t sat around and thought about it, or applied this realization to anything. When I started empowering and acknowledging biases is when I realized, a bias is a context.  A mental context created by outer influences, or outer contexts. What I am starting to dig into is this idea that ignoring or silencing context created some of the social injustices that have been swirling in my head. Dyson and Genishi happen to mention one

“[C]lassic writing pedagogy texts for young schoolchildren are silent on issues of language diversity and ideology. This silence may be in part a result of the singular role of children from middle-class, White communities in the initial formation of writing-process pedagogy. Matters of culture and language may have been inaudible in the data set (128)

Ignoring student’s particular context (culture and language) when creating and implementing pedagogy texts and practices has created the cultural genocidal machine that is public school.

My research project has a lot to do with my mental context. It was a tiny thing that started this hurricane inside my head. And it has manifested into this project and others. What I am searching for lies within my participants realization of their own context and what it has created inside them.