Native
Theory Project Description
Students enter our classes with many taken-for-granted "native"
theories. These implicit theories guide how they attend to, talk about,
and respond to, life events, and can limit their consideration and internalization
of alternative research-based conceptions. Since implicit theories are
socially and historically formed, they serve some people and some interests
better than others; and in times of fundamental and/or rapid change,
implicit theories can become increasingly dysfunctional. University
courses, especially those in the social sciences, have the capacity
to provide students with new implicit theories. These theories can become
part of a student's life if they provide new and compelling ways to
engage the world. In an increasingly diverse and changing world, providing
students with new, more powerful analytic tools may be the most lasting
impact of our courses.
For several years my students and I have been studying collaborative
decision making processes concerning social/economic/environmental sustainability,
and diverse stakeholder interests in various community and organizational
sites. We have found that native theories of communication often interfere
with positive forms of deliberation and creative decision making (for
a summary, see Deetz, 2007; Deetz & Irvin, 2008). These native theories
are fairly powerful and difficult to engage since they are tied up with
theories of experience, personage, and democracy. These native theories
are sustained by external communities and practices that compete with
research-based conceptions and in many ways skew student learning as
well as the discussion and decision process.
This project would, first, identify students' implicit theories regarding
communication by development an instrument to detail their conceptions.
Second, I would work with graduate students to develop structured activities
providing complex decision making tasks. Students would be asked to
provide narrative descriptions of how they thought through their choices
in the exercise. These would be analyzed to see where and how native
and classroom conceptions were used. The study would add to our understanding
of the development of, and resistance to, critical thinking demonstrating
circumstances facilitating the internalization of new theories and giving
guidance to interventions.
Deetz, S. (2007). Corporate governance, corporate social responsibility,
and communication. In S. May, G. Cheney, and J. Roper (eds.), The
debate over corporate social responsibility (pp. 267-278). Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Deetz, S. & Irvin, L. (2008). Governance, stakeholder involvement
and new communication models. In S. Odugbemi & T. Jacobson (eds.)
Governance reform under real world conditions: Communication challenges
(pp. 163-180). Washington DC: The World Bank.
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Stanley Deetz (Stan)