Focusing Interests: Sample response from Scott Peters
Here is one way that Professor Scott Peters has answered these questions.
1. What are the elements of practice that interest me? What do I want to find out about the challenges and types of actual work in this field?
I’m interested in learning about how educators and scholars interact within public settings. How do they understand what they’re supposed to do? How do they negotiate their relationships, roles and responsibilities? How do they understand their expertise and roles in democratic life? How do they think about the knowledge of citizens? I want to know more about how scholars blend a technical role with a more activist or advocacy role. Finally, I want to know more about the political dimensions of this work.
2. If I am interested in X, what kinds of things might I be looking for?
I look for stories about the ways in which scholars interact with citizens. I look for the range of things that they do, and I especially look for the things they do besides provide technical assistance or information. When someone mentions that they “listen” or they “cheerlead” or they “schmooze,” for example, I pay careful attention and ask them to tell me more. What do they do? With whom? Where? When? I also try to find out where they learned to do these things? Were they taught to do so in their professional training? If not, how did they come to do that? What happens when they take an activist o advocacy role? Are they supported or challenged, or both? By whom?
3. Ask yourself: What are my hunches about what I might find?
I believe that when many academic researchers work in public settings, they do far more than play a narrow technical role. I expect to find that they are engaged in a range of relational, social and political activities. I also believe that the work scholars do in public settings enriches the scholars’ own research and that the interactions will mutually benefit both the scholars and to the communities.
4. What kinds of questions do I have after reading discussions in the literature? What questions do they leave me with? What hunches do they lead me to have that I can explore further by looking at a real practice situation?
The academic literature suggests that my belief in the mutual benefits of this work is correct. However, it doesn’t have much to say about how scholars’ engagement with real communities actually enriches their scholarship. Further, the practical political dimensions of that work – how these scholars negotiate interests, deal with conflict, etc. – is rarely talked about.