Shank, 'USING QUALITATIVE RESEARCH TO UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF VIRTUAL CULTURE IN EDUCATION', Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture v1n07 (November 30, 1993) URL = http://hegel.lib.ncsu.edu/stacks/serials/aejvc/aejvc-v1n07-shank-using The Arachnet Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture __________________________________________________________________ ISSN 1068-5723 November 30, 1993 Volume 1 Issue 7 SHANK V1N7 Special Issue Introduction: USING QUALITATIVE RESEARCH TO UNDERSTAND THE NATURE OF VIRTUAL CULTURE IN EDUCATION Gary Shank Guest Editor, EJVC V1N7 Northern Illinois University It is my privilege to guest edit the following issue of EJVC V1 N7, which deals with the use of qualitative research methods to understand and explore the emerging role of virtual culture in educational settings. While each of the three articles is unique, there are some important common factors that are worth some preliminary reflection. The first article, "The application of technologies to student teaching," by Blanton, Thompson, & Zimmerman, displays the potential of a virtual network in the clinical training of preservice teachers. As the authors explain, the clinical field experience, where preservice teachers do their actual student teaching, is one of the most important educational experiences in teacher training. At the same time, it is one of the most frustrating and difficult and problem-fraught experiences that these preservice people face. In their milieu, Blanton, Thompson & Zimmerman have developed an extensive technological support system to help these clinical interns create a virtual link to their university professors and perhaps more importantly, to each other. In this article, the authors skillfully excerpt from the studentsU actual words to display some of the more important issues that typically emerge in the student teaching experience, while at the same time reporting on fellow student and supervisory professor follow ups, as well as an analysis of the operation of the process itself. It is safe to say that the work that Blanton, Thompson & Zimmerman report on can be, and most likely will be, used as a model by many schools of education in their attempts to monitor and enhance the clinical student teaching experience of preservice teachers. In the second article, "The behavior settings of network literacy: A framework for generalization from anecdotal evidence in qualitative research about computer-mediated communication?" Tony Scott tackles the virtual culture issue in education from a substantially different perspective. He is concerned with re-establishing several theoretical perspectives from recent psychological work as tools for understanding and comparing various examples of virtual settings in education. The primary theoretical tool that he uses is the idea of the "behavior setting" first developed by Roger Barker in the 50's and 60's. Barker's work has always been somewhat controversial, and has been in something of an eclipse in recent years. However, Scott makes a strong case for the use of Barker's ideas as a means for tackling the fundamental question of: 'How do we define a virtual setting in the first place?" By using three disparate case study settings (earthquake disaster reports, virtual classrooms, and network literacy training), Scott makes a case for the behavior setting as a concept which cuts across each case setting, thereby allowing for cross-comparison and analysis. In the third and final article, "The growth of a multimedia school culture: a multi-voiced narrative," Ricki Goldman- Segall and her colleagues in Vancouver press the limits of the ascii form of this journal in her postmodern reportage of her multimedia ethnographic methods of understanding the development and functioning of a new technologically- rich and virtually-oriented middle school in rural British Columbia. Her Learning Constellation form offers exciting promise for the future of our ability to understand the virtual landscapes of our schools from a qualitative perspective. I encourage those readers who have the technology to take advantage of her ftp HyperCard file and the CD ROM version of the entire ethnography to do so. The rest of us need be content to appreciate the descriptions of the process offered in the six constellations that comprise the report. In proper postmodern fashion, there is no need to read this reports in any particular order. In fact, I recommend re-reading in a variety of orders, so as to get a sense of the immediacy and the interconnectedness of the the settings and the virtual activities. Allow me to conclude this brief introduction by suggesting that qualitative research methods and the study of emerging virtual cultures in education seem well-suited to each other. As our authors have shown, the use of qualitative methods allow for the development of rich, thickly textured descriptions of the complex processes and interactions that are often found in virtual settings. It is ironic that a method that seemingly eschews the use of numerical description and analysis seems particularly apt to study and understand a phenomenon that exists only because of the development of highly abstract and technical quantitatively-based computer applications. But let us set this irony aside and look instead on the use of an emerging and important methodology to capture the human consequences of an emerging and important technology. _____ Articles and Sections of this issue of the _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ may be retrieved via anonymous ftp to byrd.mu.wvnet.edu or via e-mail message addressed to LISTSERV@KENTVM or LISTSERV@KENTVM.KENT.EDU (instructions below) Papers may be submitted at anytime by email or send/file to: Ermel Stepp - Editor-in-Chief, _Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture_ M034050@MARSHALL.WVNET.EDU _________________________________ *Copyright Declaration* Copyright of articles published by Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture is held by the author of a given article. If an article is re-published elsewhere it must include a statement that it was originally published by Electronic Journal on Virtual Culture. 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