Class Blogging: Week 11: 1
Role playing and case studies -
In the past, I never was a fan of role playing or case studies but I am beginning to enjoy it in this class and I am surprised. And I think I am learning something through these exercises. I think one thing that can be attributed to this role playing and case study approach is that I can more quickly read and identify the issues in a particular case study than I could when I began the class. I know this seems like a DUH but I am learning.
I don't think I would have had the patience for this approach 20 years ago. I don't think I was as convinced about the importance of relationships then as I am now. In fact, I was pretty uninterested in thinking about relationships at all. I was interested in having relationships but not really thinking about them - there is a difference.
I think there is also something about patience and a commiment to inductive reasoning. And the role playing and whole case study piece is an inductive sort of process - I have to pay attention to detail and search for a whole within the details rather than seeing a whole and then looking for the details.
Perhaps this case study/inductive reasoning/role playing approach has something to do with the sense in the field that there is no one ID model but many - the field does have a body of scholars who are thinking about these questions and trying to identify processes that are helpful, comprehensive, inspiring but it's an inductive approach to a discipline that was - perhaps - founded on a model that tried to provide or was being asked to provide a dedutive model: Dick and Carey specifically.