Article
Reflexive Rejection: Confessions of our first encounter with SenseMaker, an emerging research methods for STEM education
Murmurations: Emergence, Equity, and Education
(2021)
Abstract
Point of view:We are four female educational practitioners who engage in varying degrees and forms
of teaching, research, and evaluation. We are curious about new approaches to conceptualizing, inquiring
into, and doing science, technology, engineering and math (‘STEM’) education that have the
potential to disrupt systemic social, economic, and ecological abuse and exploitation.
Value of submission: This collaborative autoethnographic analysis serves as a cautionary tale and
provides emotional sign-posts for those seeking to explore emerging research methodologies, particularly
those that are suited for complex, dynamic social systems, such as “engineering education”:
expect cognitive and/or emotional dissonance. By definition, alternative approaches to research will
occur as new and possibly "wrong" to those trained in traditional research approaches. Reflexive
rejection responses can happen unconsciously and undermine the goals of learning and discovery.
Summary: It is becoming increasingly common to hear engineering education described as a complex
system (National Science Foundation 2018). Such a perspective shifts the focus of analysis from
the parts to the whole – from individual elements to the relationships between the elements. Most engineering
education researchers, however, are trained in atomistic or reductionist models of inquiry
(Borrego 2007; Laszlo 1996; Robbins 2007), which begs the question – how prepared are engineering
education researchers to conduct research on, and productively intervene in, complex systems?
As four educational practitioners who have previously embraced complex systems thinking, both in
our teaching and in our research, we considered ourselves well prepared to explore a new, participatory
research methodology, called SenseMaker, which is explicitly designed to understand characterize
and facilitate interventions in complex systems. And yet, all four of us independently and
reflexively rejected this methodology upon our first encounter with it. In this study, we used collaborative
autoethnographic techniques to examine what it was about our shared cultures, experiences,
and training as engineering education researchers and practitioners that led us to react in this way.
We reflect on how methodologies founded on complex systems theory, like SenseMaker, often sit outside
the boundaries of whatwe are used to, and may initially occur to us as “foreign,” or even “wrong.”
Further, we explore how our reflexive responses were connected to embodied cognition, that is, a
recognition that “[one’s] body, beyond the brain...play[s] a significant causal. . . role in cognitive processing”
(Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2015). We offer some suggestions for developing an
awareness of both reflexive rejection responses and how to recognize and use our embodied cognition.
These perspectives are important for researchers who seek new ways to understand and work
with complex, dynamic social systems.
Keywords
- emergence,
- change models,
- dynamic complexity,
- education,
- engineering education
Disciplines
Publication Date
Summer June 1, 2021
Citation Information
Linda S Vanasupa, Nicola W. Sochacka, Carol J Thurman and Patricia Torcivia. "Reflexive Rejection: Confessions of our first encounter with SenseMaker, an emerging research methods for STEM education" Murmurations: Emergence, Equity, and Education Vol. 3 Iss. 1 (2021) p. 36 - 56 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/lvanasup/80/
Creative Commons license
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons CC_BY International License.