"Windows" onto Practice
Often we use good quotes simply as "illustrations": we use what someone's said to illustrate an argument we're making with a specific example, and then we move on to make another argument. But we can use the rich quotes we find in these practice stories to do much more: we can use them instead as "windows" -- if not microscopes! -- through which we can see more clearly whole new terrains of practice.
So we encourage you to explore your practitioner profile in this second way -- as a "window" onto the world of practice that you've chosen to examine. Imagine, for example, that you're standing at this window with an interested friend looking carefully at all that your quoted material reveals. What do you see? What's most striking? Surprising? Instructive? What wouldn't you want your friend to miss? What's puzzling and needs further examination?
Your analysis (for class or for publication) is your thoughtful response to what you see through your "window":
- What can we learn as we look through this "window" at this practice story?
- What can it teach us about the kind of practice we're interested in?
- What surprises do we find? (And why are we surprised? Why were we expecting something different?)
- What myths about planning, education, etc. might this account dispel (or perpetuate)? What literature might this practice refute or challenge?
- What education or preparation seems necessary, given this practice?
- What do you see in your quoted material that helps you to understand the place of power, advocacy, values, rationality, objectivity, imagination, participation, improvisation, etc. -- whatever it is that you care about and want to better understand?
- How does your "window" onto the world of practice reveal the difficulties and possibilities of this kind of work?
You can deepen your analysis by considering what you see through your "window" in light of the best literature you've read. You'll see that powerful readings related to your interests will help you to see even more in a practice story than you might first have seen. But you'll also see that your interviewee's story might suggest possibilities that your readings don't. In this way, for example, we might learn not just about "setting agendas" from our interviewee's story, but we might learn too how our theories/analyses of "setting agendas" don't yet do justice to what our interviewee is really showing us. So our study of practice can help us to criticize and build better theory.
Finally, while your windows might be unique -- your interviews and the emotions and choices that produced them -- the kinds of practice problems that you see through them are hardly unique. You've chosen your interviewees, after all, not because they're complete outliers, weirdos, but because of their potential to illuminate more general kinds of problems that matter to you. So if your friend stands with you at the window and asks what's not unique in what you see, you'll probably have a lot that's important to say.