I am very pleased to announce the Very First Ever (I assume) Child/Human Development and Family Science Blog Meme!
Background. As you may know from some of my previous posts, one of my obsessions interests is professional socialization in my discipline, particularly involving the training of graduate students for careers as faculty, instructors, researchers. For example, I have previously discussed the issue of "stewardship" with regard to graduate training in multidisciplinary fields such as mine. In this entry, I stated that I agree with the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate's description of what professionals in training should be training for. Among other things, this includes the idea that graduate students, or "disciplinary stewards," must be trained to conserve their discipline in the face of ongoing evolution: "stewards have responsibility for maintaining the continuity, stability, and vitality of the field."
But, I noted, this is not as easy as it sounds:
Some disciplines are not clearly markated in terms of their origins, or their "foundations" are collaged from many different disciplinary materials. Landscape-fitting is made more challenging for students in such departments due to the "blind-men-touching-the-elephant" nature of the intellectual tree/bush/vine (or rock/mountain/sand...) these students are being entrusted with. For these students, the very vitality of their discipline is thought to lie in its intellectual diversity, a diversity that makes "stability and continuation of what?" a crucial, persistent--and not often agreed upon--question.
And this brings me to the inspiration for this current meme. Can some of us in the field begin to come up with answers to the question of "who/what/where" we are? I don't know. But it might be fun to find out!
The CD/HD/FS Meme: Instructions. Of course anyone is welcome to tackle these questions--I'd love to hear (and likely would greatly benefit from!) the perspectives of folks in disciplines unrelated to child and family sciences. In addition to whoever might want to chime in, I'm going to specifically ask ("tag") a few fellow bloggers and a couple of non-bloggers in these disciplines who I happen to know. In case you've never been tagged before or are otherwise unfamiliar with the meme process, here's what I understand of it: Answer the questions on your own blog/site, in the comments to this post, or email me. Then, if you want, pass the meme along to (again, tag) a few other folks with the same instructions.
Disclaimers: Please note that this meme has not gone through IRB review (!), and that you are free to not participate or not answer any question you do not want to. In the spirit of "Tribblegate" (!), please be advised that blogs are permanent public spaces and thus you should express yourself honestly in the context of thoughtfullness to your present and future professional life.
(Finally) The Actual Meme. I was inspired by--once again--the CID, this time one of the reports from last summer's meetings of reps from the CID Partner Departments (chemistry, education, English, history, mathematics, and neuroscience.) The neuroscience folks asked some intriguing questions, and participated in a "mapping exercise":
Participants created a physical drawing of all of the different influences and ideas and theories that shape neuroscience. By situating themselves on that map, participants felt better able to think about the links between people and subfields, and to think about areas that were growing, changing and connecting. Participants discussed why it was important to map the discipline, in terms of helping answer questions like what is the significance of my work? How shall I plan my course of study? Who are my colleagues? Who are my potential collaborators? What changes or new directions in career path are open to me? Where is the money going? By laying out the spectrum of the field, students and faculty can be more thoughtful about approaches to research, collaborative work, and the future of the field, among other things.
Think about doing this exercise with your own discipline.
(1) Sketch a quick "map" of your field: What do you see as some of the different influences, ideas and theories that provide the directions and major landmarks in your discipline?
(2) Where do you see yourself currently on this "map" of disciplinary influences, ideas, and theories?
(3) What road(s) did you travel to get where you are right now?
(4) What is the significance of your current work, in terms of how it situates you and/or others on this map, or how it charts future courses for your discipline?
(5) What fields/disciplines have your colleagues been from? How have these collaborations influenced your placement on the "map"? If you are a grad student and feel you have not really had working "colleagues" yet, what fields do you feel they may come from in the future?
(6) What changes or new directions in career path do you feel will be open to to the incoming 2005/2006 cohort of graduate students? Where is the money going in your field?
Now for the fun part. I hereby tag the bloggers at Inner Geek, Working to Live, FamiLee Blog, and the dynamic (and hopefully still around!) duo at Pouring the Systemic Foundations. I'm also emailing this to a couple other folks--non-bloggers: I'll keep their names out of this for the time being until/unless they decide to jump in!
I'll post my own thoughts to these questions in the next few days. Thanks for participating!
Posted by perry032 at August 18, 2005 01:10 PM