I have always been fascinated with words, especially those that I
hear in presentations or speeches where I think “that’s a new one” or “what
does that mean?”. Having studied Greek,
Latin, French, German, and a bit of Spanish, I am always curious to know their
etymology. I am also curious as how these new words might be useful in my work
or personal life. Maybe I was an editor at the Oxford English Dictionary in a
previous life.
Several years ago at an Educause keynote, Sherry Turkle, the Abby
Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, introduced me to the concept of
“bricolage”. Derived from the French
verb bricoler ("to tinker") it roughly comes to equate to the English
“Do it yourself”. Turkle speaks of
bricolage as a form of tinkering, a soft-style approach to computer programming
that is more intuitive and experimental than the strict analytical coding
approach (https://dixieching.wordpress.com/2009/11/22/the-triumph-of-tinkering-turkle/).
This tinkering approach certainly speaks to the modern maker movement of
learning by doing. Bricoleurs, people
who use this approach, look at the world and their work in a more right-brained
way.
Within the arts, bricolage has a slightly broader scope to include
the work itself that is made from objects that are readily available (Wikipedia
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricolage). Similar to “assemblage”, a form of
art first introduced to me by an artist friend, Rudy Rodeheaver, “assemblage” is art that is made by
assembling disparate elements – often everyday objects – scavenged by the
artist or bought specially (http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/a/assemblage).
I was first introduced to chaos theory in a doctoral leadership
class when we watched a film with Margaret Wheatley on Leadership and the New
Science. Chaos theory, grounded in
mathematics and quantum physics is quite complex. There are two important
aspects to chaos theory; things that appear chaotic are subject to an
underlying order, and complex systems are highly sensitive to change where tiny
changes lead to dramatic consequences (e.g. butterfly effect). Chaos theory has
real-world applications and is used in predicting weather, and in cryptography
and robotics, to name a few. While
Wheatley applies the ideas from chaos theory to leadership and organizations, I
believe it has some insights to offer regarding the research process
Over the years since I first encountered these terms, I thought
that they provided some insight into how research is conducted and how students
sometimes see library information literacy instruction as too linear and
prescriptive.
Research is certainly a “do-it-yourself” activity. Thinking of the researcher as a bricoleur
emphasizes the creative aspect of the research process; one that is
nonprescriptive; one that does not have a predetermined path. Like an artist,
the researcher uses the ideas she/he finds or brings to the process and creates
something new; new knowledge, new insights.
I am attracted to the idea of chaos theory as a way to think about
how research actually happens. Looking at the definition of “chaos theory” in
Wikipedia I see, at least for me, the pattern of how I do research. “Chaos' is an interdisciplinary theory
stating that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there
are underlying patterns, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity,
fractals, self-organization, and reliance on programming at the initial point
known as sensitive dependence on initial conditions.“
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory)
I often start research with an idea that is quite undefined in my
own head – one that has a variety of disparate ideas. When I am researching a topic
that has a clearly defined outline, my outline very often quickly devolves into
chaos, one that is torn apart and re-assembled in new ways. As I start searching databases, discovery
systems, journals, books, blogs, news stories, I am not always able to discern
a pattern as one citation/idea leads to others that may or may not be related
in an easily discernable way. As I start
to read what I have gathered, I begin to see some underlying patterns that help
to organize my understanding of the topic and also shows omissions and sends me
back to “re-do” the search. One of the
things that I look for are for some feedback loops that help my growing
understanding of the topic. These
feedback loops should reinforce some ideas and weaken or help me discard others;
they may show repetition of ideas or authors important to the research.
Even looking for articles or books, the process is not
particularly linear, unless I am looking for a known book or article. What I get for results, even at the macro
level, depends somewhat on the starting point – e.g. Google, EBSCOhost,
ScienceDirect, or a discovery layer like Primo or EDS. I pick and choose from the results, usually
from those on the first page or two of results. The introduction of filters or
additional keywords will either narrow or expand the search and confirm a
direction or present an interesting new tangent to explore. While we are taught
to look for good keywords, or find a good article and look at the references,
even these present options for creating a new research path that may yield
results. We have all experienced those
“aha” moments when a seemingly minor new idea takes our research in an entirely
different direction or provides a new insight that brings clarity.
If I think about the
research process in terms of bricolage and assemblage, I typically begin with
bits and pieces of what I know, and from gathered articles, blogs posts, books,
without any sense of how they go together, or even if they can be put together
into a coherent whole. While I think of research as a somewhat coherent
process, it really is rather chaotic, with feedback loops, and tangents that
drag my attention to new or related ideas that may become fruitful aspects of
my work. I assemble, disassemble, and reassemble with new pieces and ideas, in
seemingly random but structured ways until something coherent appears. Thinking back to the beginning of the
process, I can often see where some new insight, seemingly minor at the time,
changed the focus and the outcome of the research.
Taking these ideas and turning towards thinking about teaching
students how to do research (aka information literacy), I believe students
often view what is presented in class is a linear or formulaic process of doing
research. The new ACRL Information
Literacy Framework (http://www.ala.org/acrl/standards/ilframework) is certainly
more process oriented, but because there are six frames, it is easy to think of
them as distinct and mutually exclusive rather than chaotic, with underlying
feedback loops and self-organizing patterns that overlap across and throughout
the six frames. While it is critically
important for students to know how to find books and articles, and how to
evaluate what they find, and how to cite those sources, these skills and the underlying
frames are in no way a description of the research process. Students need to
know how to take these skills, find the necessary information/ideas, and then,
more importantly, think like a bricoleur/artist and take this information and
create something new; their own understanding of the topic.
In the end, what does this mean for us in the library profession?
I see these ideas as a call for developing our “tinkering”, “creative”, and
“design thinking” skills in the work that we do and in the way we help students
gain the skills and expertise for life-long learning. I hope, encouraging students to think of
research as a chaotic process that is full of creativity, feedback loops,
interesting tangents, as well as having some underlying process, will help them
approach the process with more optimism and less dread. My hope, for myself, and my librarian
colleagues is that we will allow this type of thinking to move us beyond or
typical analytical solutions to more creative ways of approaching the problems
we all face.
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