Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

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130 U. Stadler-Altmann and E. Keiner 9.1 Oral Presentation of Empirical Studies – Contextual Framework From a detached observer’s point of view (oral) presentations of educational empirical research findings can sometimes be perceived as a kind of ‘lyric poetry’. The formal structures of such presentations often resemble surreal or dadaist poems showing a perseverative form: problem – theory – research design – method used – findings – discussion – conclusion. Like a poem, there is the structure of intro, recall, and conclusion in an oral presentation of educational empirical research. Like the use of language in a dadaist poem, we find that the same words and sentences reoccur during oral presentations of educational empirical research. Let us first look at the literary aspect of the comparison. New and surprising combinations of words and sentences are characteristic features of poetry. Poets use everyday language to show our reality in another light. When they collect everyday words and put them into unexpected contexts the audience suddenly sees what is extraordinary about ordinary life. This is a well-known technique of constructing poems which can surprise us and introduce new insight. The dadaist poems ‘Anna Blume’ and the ‘Ur-Sonate’, both written by the German poet Kurt Schwitters, illustrate this approach. Kurt Schwitters: Eve Blossom (original 1919) (Kurt Schwitters’ own translation of ‘An Anna Blume’) Oh thou, beloved of my twenty-seven senses, I love thine! Thou thee thee thine, I thine, thou mine, we? That (by the way) is beside the point! Who art thou, uncounted woman, Thou art, art thou? People say, thou werst, Let them say, they don’t know what they are talking about. Thou wearest thine hat on thy feet, and wanderest on thine hands, On thine hands thou wanderest Hallo, thy red dress, sawn into white folds, Red I love Eve Blossom, red I love thine, Thou thee thee thine, I thine, thou mine, we? That (by the way) belongs to the cold glow! Eve Blossom, red Eve Blossom what do people say? PRIZE QUESTION: 1. Eve Blossom is red, 2. Eve Blossom has wheels 3. what colour are the wheels? Blue is the colour of your yellow hair Red is the whirl of your green wheels, Thou simple maiden in everyday dress, Thou small green animal, I love thine! Thou thee thee thine, I thine, thou mine, we? That (by the way) belongs to the glowing brazier! Eve Blossom,eve, E-V-E, E easy, V victory, E easy, I trickle your name. Your name drops like soft tallow.
9 The Persuasive Power of Figures and the Aesthetics of the Dirty Backyards 131 Do you know it, Eve? Do you already know it? One can also read you from the back And you, you most glorious of all, You are from the back as from the front, E-V-E. Easy victory. Tallow trickles to stroke over my back Eve Blossom, Thou drippy animal, I Love Thine! I love you!!!! When we look at a scholarly presentation of educational research results, the new combination of data in educational research can produce new meanings that derive from theoretical considerations. Even new, surprising and sometimes magic knowledge emerges from this combination of data, theories and the ordinary (research) life as a practice of its own right. Hence, in this sense it may be possible to compare structures of poems with structures of oral presentations of empirical studies seeing them as different forms of aesthetics delivering different meanings in respect to different contexts. Both the poet and the author of research presentations try to make sure that the scholarly audience has a clear understanding of their meanings. However, they use everyday language in different ways. Statistical understanding is both a linguistic and a conceptual matter (see Vergnaud, 1998, explanations for mathematics). Therefore, we have to accept, that even oral presentations of empirical social studies serve two points of reference: in order to understand statistics, one not only has to be able to identify relationships between statistical or mathematical symbols, but also to identify these symbols’ relationships to natural everyday language (see Stadler, 2004). Finally, one has to connect this relationship to the relationships between the empirical study and questions of ‘real life’. The symbolic language of mathematical and statistical concepts is based on a formal definition that is independent from spoken language. Since these mathematical and statistical languages are difficult to teach and to understand within their symbolic format, spoken language is used to informally define statistical concepts. Within these informal definitions, statistical symbols are replaced by proper words from the spoken language. Following this model, statistics has become independent from language, yet its informal definitions are also an integral part of this language. For example, understanding of statistics is based on the distinction between samples and populations. On the one hand, some statistical concepts clearly refer to population quantities (such as expected value). On the other hand, however, some of these concepts (such as standard deviation) need a specified reference (population or sample) to distinguish the precise statistical definition from the ambiguous everyday language use of such concepts. As an example the following table presents some symbols used in statistics and in poems (which also could be transformed in everyday language).
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Educational Research: The Ethics an
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Paul Smeyers · Marc Depaepe Editor
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Earlier Volumes in this Series Educ
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viii Contents 10 The Good, the Beau
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28 M. Depaepe of the Leuven Catholi
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30 M. Depaepe Tan’s final verdict
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32 M. Depaepe of methodological bot
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34 M. Depaepe tapping other sources
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36 M. Depaepe In the context of dem
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38 M. Depaepe combination. Moreover
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40 M. Depaepe 4. See Pelleriaux (19
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42 M. Depaepe Schneider, J. (2010).
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44 J.J.H. Dekker (see Section 4.4).
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46 J.J.H. Dekker from their own par
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48 J.J.H. Dekker a cohort study tha
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50 J.J.H. Dekker child” (Van IJze
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54 J.J.H. Dekker of the problem”.
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56 J.J.H. Dekker Dekker. J. J. H.,
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186 I. Munday in numerals. This mig
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188 I. Munday We might also note th
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190 R. Smith ‘Statisticism’, on
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192 R. Smith identify, and twice in
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194 R. Smith of the final sentence
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198 R. Smith 7 www.equalitytrust.or
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204 R. Smith Reeves, R. (2009, Apri
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206 P. Standish Some students’ no
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216 About the Authors co-editor-in-
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218 About the Authors voor Wetensch
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220 Author Index Elkins, G. R., 190
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222 Author Index Silverman, J. G.,
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224 Subject Index I Inequality, 29-
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