Dear Rosan,
No one is being kept out here. All are welcome to engage in
conversation on general issues in design research and specific issues
of research training for the PhD.
There is no "swipe card." The relevant issues involve standards for
serious research. Reading, writing, and analytical thinking are
foundation skills for research. You write, "scholarship and research
. . . are nothing but an institutionalized way of learning and
knowing." These are more than an institutionalized way of learning
and knowing. They are the foundations of research. Research involves
far more than these skills, but the rest cannot be developed without
them.
Everyone has the right to speak on the subjects of heir expertise.
Your analogy to the poor as experts on poverty is exactly the point
that I have made in an earlier note on Herbert Blumer and his
insistence on respect for "the obdurate nature of reality." Those who
experience and report accurately on reality are experts, and their
experience is central testimony.
No one has asked the poor "to be acquainted with THE literature
before they can tell us about what they know." To suggest that I
would ask the poor to know the literature of poverty studies before
speaking from direct experience is a misreading of what I have
written. My different notes on research method state the contrary.
Nevertheless, literature and prior art ARE part of the reality for
the development of research. This is how we record and transmit
empirical findings. This is how we configure to the development of
knowledge. The literature records the structured management of
concepts and the application of theories.
I do not ask people to read before they speak on every issue.
I ask people to read the research literature before speaking on research.
No one is excluded here. Dick Buchanan points out that a college
degree is not required for an original contribution to knowledge.
Wide reading and clear thinking are fundamental. I am not asking for
degrees. I am asking for argument from evidence. On research issues,
this usually means reading.
-- Ken Friedman
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