Alan (and perhaps Christine and anyone else interested in reflexivity ...
?Brian)
You say:
We enquire not as
> unfeeling observers viewing from a detached standpoint through a fixed
> reference frame that isolates content from context, but as empathic
> included observers aware of the contextual qualities influencing the
> behavioural patterns we are studying.
This may be the cue for me to share with this list what I chose not to share
earlier, namely, how I am understanding 'reflexivity' ...
[As a matter of anecdote, this was not my starting position so much as my
final capacity to articulate something I was unaware of when I started out.
The fact that this next quote appears in the introductory chapter of my
thesis is a matter of how one constructs AND presents (structures)
information for a reader who benefits from the outcomes of the process, as
distinct from the immersion in the process.]
"Terminology:
I am using the term 'reflexive' to convey the relationship where the subject
conducting the activity is also to some extent the object of the activity -
thinkers exploring their thinking.
I use the term 'reflective' to refer to the careful thinking which has the
characteristics identified by Dewey in How we think (Dewey, 1933).
Other authors use 'reflexive' to speak of an action which is a reflex
action - virtually automatic, without any evidence of any space for
conscious thought. When that is the meaning I want to convey I will use
the term 'reactive', and I distinguish that from 'responsive' where the
action responds to the situation or actions of others, but intentionally:
that is, where some thought, or rationale, is informing the action."
and later in that thesis ... at section 8.6 (see attachment) I elaborate
some more.
If anyone else has been caught up in this phenomenon I would appreciate
hearing how they express their experience of it. And if any one is
interestes the whole thesis is available at
http://www.library.uow.edu.au/adt-NWU/public/adt-NWU20050901.105532/index.html
Dianne Allen
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