An (Unfinished) Experiment in Reverberations:
Thinking with New Materialist Theories while (Re)engaging with Data
Catherine Y. Cheng
Welcome to My Wunderkammer: An Assemblage of Data Possibilities
As an emergent educational researcher and Deleuzoguattarian-inspired thinker, I am grappling with how to meaningfully gather, approach, and employ data when I conduct my own research in a dynamic, morphing landscape of a classroom. In a previous essay, I explored the dominant, everyday views of data, data’s role in schools, and data’s problematics as a way to ground my thinking. Here, I aim to do the reverse—that is, to engage with post-structuralist scholarship (particularly new materialist theories) to open up ways of thinking about, with, across, and through data. Inspired by Maggie MacLure’s (2013) concept of the wunderkammer as a “cabinet of curiosities” (p. 180) that is also a form of inquiry, I use this essay as a means of walking through an assemblage (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) of my recent and past encounters with data as a teacher, grad student, and research assistant, attempting to re-turn (Barad, 2014) the analyses as I reconsider them alongside my semester-long musings on data-related texts and data’s creative possibilities, and my recent romance with sound and affective resonances.
Taking “always in the middle” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 25) as a directive, I begin my tour through the wunderkammer literally in the middle of my first year as a doctoral student—a time during which I found myself in a liminal space (another kind of “middle”), feeling uncertainty and unease surrounding my role as a former-teacher-turned-student, becoming (re)educated in and (re)attuned to the social sciences and to qualitative research, after having been trained in the biological sciences and in quantitative inquiry. In the midst of that in-betweenness, I recollect a particular affective “sticky/stuck” moment with tension-laden data gathered by researchers about teachers’ work with student data. From there, I follow the “lines of flight” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 9) that emerge until I find myself attuning to elements of some other scene that is rich with information not considered “data.” What I wish to present here is less of an argument and more of “an experiment” (p. 1) in which I create a “kind of contact zone” (Stewart, 2007, p. 3) to call attention to my affective attachment (and repulsion) to certain texts, scenes, and experiences. By “coming and going rather than starting and finishing” (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987, p. 25), I leave some remarks throughout the text and…and…and…
Thinking through the Middle: What Can Data Do to the Body-Mind?
Ask people who work with data what they do with them and the most common answer is likely to be to explain something. Indeed, our desire for explication and clarity propels us to gather different kinds of data and to do something to them in order to formulate interpretations or draw certain conclusions. When it comes to data, it is often not about what they do and can do, but about what can be done to data so that they tell a coherent story. Among the “usual” ways of treating data are analyzing, comparing, dividing, interpreting, categorizing, reducing, processing, simplifying, coding, and labeling. Data are regarded as compelling when they are manageable, reliable, and accessible, and can thus be used to either verify or invalidate an idea. On the other hand, data that are inconclusive, ambiguous, or incongruent are often deemed problematic because they cannot provide the lucidity, certainty, and confidence that we seek. Oftentimes, unexpected appearances in the data are covered up, with “details of data’s unanticipated becoming…not be[ing] released in the fear of judgment or invalidation, or…manipulated prior [to] making it public or accessible to others” (Koro-Ljungberg & MacLure, 2013, p. 219).
From all of this, it is clear that as a society, we have not yet come to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity, along with deviations from an articulated norm. Interestingly, this is just as true for bodies (Baglieri, Bejoian, Broderick, Connor, & Valle, 2011; Kafer, 2013; McDermott & Raley, 2008; Niccolini, 2016; Petersen, 2017) as it is for data (Childers, 2014; Evans et al., 2019; Holmes, 2014; Koro-Ljungberg, MacLure, & Ulmer, 2018; Pianta & Hamre, 2009; Strom, 2015). Our inclination toward “the center” can be seen from some of the first operations that, as students, we learn to carry out with numbers—calculate the mean, median, and mode—all of which look for central tendency. This concern for legibility and regularity follows us through our training as researchers as we learn to handle and sort categorical, nominal, and ordinal data, determining ranges and calculating standard deviations. Similarly, for descriptive data from qualitative research, we learn to search for convergences as a way of making the data “tidy” and more “comprehensible” to the reader. In privileging intelligibility and order, however, we sacrifice the generative potential of aberrations and outliers. In pursuing grand narratives, we miss out on the alternative stories that ambiguous data have to illuminate. In searching for clear explanations and finite conclusions, we forgo the opportunities for exploration and “becoming-analyses” (Holmes, 2014) that messy data have the potential to provide.
Re-turning an Affective “Sticky/Stuck” Moment with “Mismatch” Data
The aforementioned tensions and dilemmas are particularly palpable in a recent study. It is one that I would like to bring to the fore to revisit some of the resonances and dissonances in the data as I “think with” (Jackson & Mazzei, 2012, as cited in Dernikos, 2018, p. 13) new materialist theories as an analytic strategy to help me notice things differently. The Evans et al. (2019) study is a qualitative case study that showed how teacher teams from racially, ethnically, and socioeconomically diverse elementary schools made meaning from student performance data from district-mandated assessments. Months later, the study remains perplexing and, at times, even haunting because of the resonances with my own experiences working with student data, specifically with me often asking the question of what counts as student data?
What called out to me were the study’s “data talk episodes,” during which teachers engaged in collective analyses of student data while researchers looked on. The teacher-led conversations revealed that some students deemed intelligent and capable by the teachers were not validated as such by their test scores. Some teachers saw the tests as flawed because they were not complex and relevant enough to capture outside-the-box thinking, diverse cultural values, or deep comprehension. The teachers’ feelings of unease and tension (which jumped out at me as I considered the “official” data alongside the experiential knowledge of teachers) spoke readily to me. Re-turning that moment, I believe I had an affective attachment to the teachers’ experiences because as an educator, I, too, often found myself trying to justify to others why certain students belonged in my honors-level biology class despite them not having the performance data in the form of grades and test scores to support their case.
To my surprise and disappointment, rather than acknowledging the insightful teacher knowledge that surfaced and unpacking the dilemma further, the researchers made the analytical decision to file the data under a generic, elusive “mismatch category.” In describing findings, they treated the “mismatch” data like other less ambiguous data. Thus, here is an illustrative case of researchers forcing the actualization of unfinished, incipient data. As teachers struggled with a complex “open-minded and ongoing practice of making sense” (MacLure, 2013, p. 181, original emphasis), grappling with the extent to which test scores aligned with students’ knowledge and learner identity, the researchers resorted to presenting their data neatly in the form of categories to make meaning. The “sanitary” manner in which they dealt with “promiscuous” (Childers, 2014) data that defy categorization and taming bothered me then and still trouble me today. My repeated body-mind intra-actions (Barad, 2003) with that “hot-spot” (MacLure, 2013) alongside my other readings lead me to wonder some more: What can we do with ambiguous or surprising data? Instead of disciplining them like our society tends to do with unruly bodies, what ethical and response-able action (Barad, 2014) can we take as researchers? Might a disruption of the neat and harmonious be necessary to bring about “inspirational data” (Ellsworth, 2002, p. 30) and creative ways of coding them (MacLure, 2013) that stimulate imagination and create new openings and…and…and…?
Re-turning Teacher Observation Tools and Data on Teaching
With teacher evaluation tools like the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) (Pianta & Hamre, 2009), there is also the danger that potentially rich and generative data are discounted when they do not fit neatly into one of the established twelve dimensions of “quality teaching.” Tension also arises from attempting to reduce teaching—which is a highly complex and affective activity—to a dizzying array of numerical values, because it does not allow for “knots/tangles…where something else begins to glow” (Frigerio, Benozzo, Holmes, & Runswick-Cole, 2018, p. 399). Missing from the supposedly “data rich” tools like CLASS is the personal touch—a kind of force that is tangible and perceptible by those in the shared space, yet defies explication, categorization, and even capture using (field)notes. This is the “dimension” of teaching that is the least predictable, quantifiable, and documented, which is no surprise given the rigidity of traditional definitions of data; subsequently, this dimension of teaching (which I liken to a kind of “art”) is also the most overlooked and the least understood.
To better discover and appreciate those hidden gems of teaching, I believe one should enter the space with a generous openness to “get ‘in touch’…physically, affectively, and inquisitively” (Childers, 2014, p. 821) with the material-discursive space so as to better attune to various scenes and be moved by the circulating affect (or lack thereof). Far from the view of teaching as a set of practices that the teacher carries out in an inert space, I embrace the concept of teaching as a phenomenon produced by intra-actions among teachers, students, texts, objects, and ideas. According to Barad (2003), phenomena do not pre-exist relations; rather, a phenomenon—in this case teaching—comes into being when bodies and things engage in intra-activity and shape one another in a bidirectional manner. My own past teaching experiences evoke teaching as a “collectively negotiated activity” (p. 321) and an assemblage with many connected elements “work[ing] together for a particular purpose” (Strom, 2015, p. 329). Thus, to “observe” teaching is to become body-mind entangled” as one engages in “promiscuous physicality” (Childers, 2014, p. 821) and…and…and…
Re-turning Participant Observation and Pondering Sound/Affective Resonances
There is an old adage “seeing is believing” that I wish to trouble. In light of a recent visit to a fourth-grade classroom as part of my research work with a teacher inquiry group, I now wonder to what extent is “seeing” also selecting what we wish to see, jumping to partial conclusions, and even discriminating? To what extent are our observations influenced by our biases and interests, and our fieldnotes shaped by our limited and selective attention? Seeing can also be not perceiving something that is less obvious as a result of our eyes privileging the readily noticeable over the hidden, and the major over the minor (Manning, 2016).
In response to the limitations of sight, Walter Gershon (2013) invites us to consider the possibilities of sound (which includes not only talk but also music and noise) in qualitative research. Unlike with seeing, Gershon asserts that with hearing, there is “no inside/outside framing of sound or blinking of an ear” (p. 259). According to him, “listening is a qualitatively different experience than watching [as it] often requires a kind of slowness and attention” (Gershon, 2013, p. 259)—the kind of attunement that Kathleen Stewart (2007) writes about and evokes through her descriptions of the affects weaved into everyday American life.
In a classroom, sound encapsulates everything from audible human talk to less discernable noises created through the interactions with differently textured materials. As I play back the audio-recording that I made while observing fourth-graders engaged in play, I am immediately transported through time and space. (Re)hearing the sounds outside that classroom space is a different experience, and I find myself attuning to new details and feeling different emotions during each re-turn. Sound does something to me—it allows me to “stumble upon” those things that are “not simply given, as ‘data,’…[but] cause us to stumble—and thereby become data” (Brinkmann, 2014, p. 724); in this context, inquiry is a way of “regaining one’s balance” (p. 724). As I re-turn that episode of a classroom soundscape, the following words from Gershon (2013) echo in my ear, creating openings for me as I rethink my engagement with data:
Their sound representation provides an opportunity for traditionally marginalized youth to be heard in ways that utilize the sonic to interrupt mainstream conceptualizations of their social and academic lives as unsuccessful and does so in an affectively embodied fashion that is simultaneously theoretically and materially resonant—vibrations that affect and are in turn affected by others’ nested layers of resonance. (p. 261)
In the ethnically and linguistically diverse fourth-grade class, differences did not protrude because all students were engaged in a different form of self-curated play with various materials, making sense in their own way by drawing, building, talking, writing, and…and…and… As I moved through the space, I found myself affected by its energy—an intensity emanating as much from the students as from the things they were interacting with. Through their intra-activity with the materials, the students were transforming their thinking through play, reeling me in. It was impossible not to be entangled in the assemblage of the classroom, even as an “outside visitor.” I was more-than-participant-observer, shaping the space as much as it was molding me (you can hear my voice in the clip). In this way, I echo Elizabeth Ellsworth’s (2005) perspective that “learning and teaching are affectively charged events” (as cited in Niccolini, 2016, p. 230) that do not occur within a vacuum. Hence, there are bound to be resonances and reverberations.
Some questions emerged as I re-turned the audio-recording: What can we learn about space and place with sound? What do we attune to in certain spaces and why? How do teachers attune differently to their classrooms and what shapes their attunement? Might sound be a way of expanding our attunement to things? To this last question, I say yes. Sound allows for data possibilities as it (re)centers taken-for-granted aspects of our work as teachers and researchers—that is, the micro moments and minor experiences that evoke alternative narratives. My engagement with sound so far has helped me problematize experiencing a space in a dominant way (i.e., with all my senses activated). Might something “glow” (MacLure, 2013) when one differentially heightens one sense while dimming others? Might we attune to silences differently? How about to “unproductive” classroom “noises”?
(Re)developing a Relationship with Data: Assemblage of Resounding Words
Feeling my way through fostering a response-able relationship with data, I close this paper (but not my thinking) with an assemblage of resounding words about data from within and “from without.” As with the encounters of this essay, there is no rational hierarchical order to the quotes I illuminate; rather, I view my (re)engagement with data as a deterritorializing (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) process that takes me in new and at times uncertain directions. I find inspiration in Vannini’s (2015) approach to use data “to enliven rather than report, to render rather than represent, to resonate rather than validate, to rupture and reimagine rather than to faithfully describe” (as cited in Niccolini, 2016, p. 236). Part of embracing this renewed perspective on data entails re-turning how we regard the notion of thinking itself and allowing for alternative understandings of how to think alongside data that do not naturalize the Cartesian mind/body split or privilege the human over all other things.
In keeping with this kind of opening up of thinking beyond purely cognitive internal processing, I welcome the conceptualization of “thinking as something that happens to us from ‘without’…mov[ing] researchers to intra-act with data as vibrant matter: a dynamic becoming that constantly shapes and transforms us” (Dernikos, Ferguson, & Siegel, 2019, p. 10, emphasis added). The reference to Barad’s (2003) concept of intra-actions is a fitting one, for I believe the process of making sense of any phenomenon obliges us to acknowledge our own entanglement in the phenomenon we hope to study. As my audio-recording and accompanying re-turned reflections show, we are never truly above or outside of the scenes we study. Perhaps meaning is not something that pre-exists relations but rather comes into being when researchers, data, objects, and ideas engage in intra-activity, shaping one another in a multidirectional manner to negotiate sense-making in a collective fashion.
Ever since I learned the importance of thinking for myself (acknowledging, of course, that thinking is rarely an isolated activity), I have been drawn to all things messy, perplexing, unfinished, and unruly. Even as a biochemistry researcher, I was captivated by variations in the collected data and intrigued by findings that did not make sense. Especially in the sciences, in which method grounds all inquiry, I always believed there to be an aesthetic to doing science. With each repeated experiment, I often wondered if something distinct occurred. Had Deleuze and Guattari (1987) been with me, they would have said that there is newness inscribed in each repetition. When I later became a teacher, my interest in the abstruse, the minor, the aesthetic, and all-things-odd followed me. Whenever I encountered an “outlier” (in the negative sense) in student data, I let my intuition guide me in doing what felt right. Rather than take the “rational” step of flagging the student for additional intervention, I tried to imagine what else could be happening, and reached out to the student to hear the narrative I might have overlooked from only considering the visible. Re-turning, I wonder whether my affective attachment to outliers stems from the feeling of not belonging anywhere that I have felt for much of my life, always straddling multiple identities, languages, cultures, knowledges and…and…and…
While voice is something I have always cherished, it was not until I was exposed to post-structuralist theories that I found the language to illuminate my thinking about the significance of sound, intuition, resonance, and affect. The phrase “thinking with theory” and even the notion of “thinking” register with me differently now, now that I have experienced theory come to life as I re-turn my recent and past encounters with data (i.e., vibrant matter). And it is only now that I am coming to realize and truly feel what Sara Childers (2014) proposed when she wrote that “paying attention to the materiality of our research engagements and using theory to think through them might be one way to face the fears of researching an unruly world” (p. 819). How refreshing it feels to be awakened by words on a page that are no longer static when one allows one’s body to be permeable to the flow of vibrant matter from without.
With regard to engaging in fieldwork in animated classroom spaces, I appreciate Bessie Dernikos’s (2018) invitation to attend to “the call of things” and to “be open to seeing/hearing/feeling other possibilities…[to] keep asking yourself: What if something more is at work here?” (p. 26). Her words of research wisdom resonate deeply with me and bring to mind some of Deleuze’s ideas about studying the world in ways that “shed light on other ways of knowing, relating to and creating the world, ‘noticing’ different kinds of things that might be happening, or things that might be happening differently” (Coleman & Ringrose, 2013, p. 4). Such noticing necessitates that researchers attune (Stewart, 2007) to different kinds of things (e.g., sensations, intensities, and textures of quotidian life) that may not readily register as “data,” but whose minor experiences quickly add up and have the potential to illuminate the less-known and taken-for-granted. Re-turning the notion of data, then, perhaps it is worthwhile to “rethink data as a less definitive series of phenomena” and to (re)view data analysis as “a process of cutting together-apart of separate (human) entities…[that] invites the data to ask new questions of us, re-turning different problems, and forcing reconsiderations” (Frigerio et al., 2018, p. 394).
Additional (Not Concluding) Thoughts: Data Engagement as Deterritorialization
As this essay draws to an end, this exploration I have embarked on is ongoing. I might even say it is a duration (Mazzei, 2016), or time that is simultaneously present and past. My exploration is simultaneously unraveling and entangling as I let go of some of my previous thinking about data that no longer resound and pick up new modes of thinking that resonate more. In this manner, learning and researching (like data) are part of an assemblage that is, by its very nature, dynamic and constantly shifting—or, as Frigerio et al. (2018) put it, “a complex mixture of dynamic entities under continuous reconfigurations, not as fixed structures, but always certain, in movement” (p. 400). In lieu of a standard concluding “take-away,” I share my sentiment that I am thrilled to continue the exploration this summer in Lancaster, Pennsylvania with #SSASS.
References
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