Writing in Taipei

Kuangchi Program Service

This is the long-delayed Part II to Canberra.  Here’s where I resume my writing.  I will probably spend the first phase of it just recalling where I left off as I had done at the House of Writers in Canberra.

Jumbo

Storming outside as I go through my notes from two months ago.  They have been untouched since Canberra, where I read a lot of the essential readings.  There in the Jesuit House of Writers, I actually didn’t write a single word, but I believe time was unwasted.

Now I’m trying to wrap my mind around all that stuff again.  In other words, restarting.  Ah the travails of a struggling scholar.

Making sense of shadows

Looking for a way out of Plato's cave

In the Republic, Plato uses his famous metaphor of a cave to discuss knowing about knowing–in a word, epistemologies.   According to him, people are ordinarily chained inside the cave so that all they can see are the shadows cast before them and they therefore mistake these for the very source of the shadows–i.e., the “real” objects outside the cave.  Only when people emerge out of the cave do they realize that what they’ve watched all their lives are nothing but shadows.

Playing Einstein

I’m sort of understanding this nebulous thing called epistemology a little bit more. Nothing like the passage of time, not to mention the constant forgetting and recalling of ideas so that each time I return to it, I feel like–yes–a virgin.

Seriously, an inevitable reframing happens each time I try to make sense of it all again.

Exploring the landscape

The scene I behold each afternoon I walk home

I’ve been reading long-overdue “seminal” articles since yesterday.  It’s a good way to remember the things I’ve forgotten about this research, as well as a great opportunity to put things together, make connections, and synthesize. I’m basically exploring the landscape of epistemologies–that’s how I’d describe what I’ve been doing these days, and it’s funny how it seems to keep changing each time I visit.  Have I been away that long? 

Connecting the Dots

Trying very hard to engage in intellectual thought

Took almost an hour yesterday to get to the National Library. So much for John Eddy’s 20-minute hike. Nevertheless, it was exhilarating to get out and walk by the lake.

Spent three hours thereabouts just re-familiarizing myself with the basic thinkers and the key concepts of the research. I think I will need to think about stuff more, maybe even read more. I’m not even touching my data yet.

Deja vu

My study place for the next few days

Reading my research notes after months of working on everything else feels like deja vu.  Gradually, like leaves falling in slow motion, the ideas–and the memories of ideas–settle in place.  Recognition is a wonderful, reassuring feeling.

Letting the dust settle

I think I’m finally getting it, slowly.

Chan and Elliot’s instruments for epistemology and for teaching will help me validate or identify constructs that are meaningful and applicable to practicing teachers in our schools in the Philippines.   The dimensions that emerge will be used for the “conversations” with teachers during the semi-structured interviews of the Institution-Focused Study, as well as the thesis later.

Here we go again…

It’s difficult enough to “fumble in the world of academia,” but for practitioners like myself, to turn this thing on and off, one can’t help but end up being a dabbler.

And dabbling just isn’t going to do the job, I’m afraid.