I found the difference between chapter two and three pretty dramatic. While chapter two reports on concrete examples of “tangible computing,” chapter three traces the roots of “social computing” in sociology, ethnography, ethnomethodology, and phenomenology. In the first chapter Dourish promises to bring the tangible computing and social computing together, in chapter four. So I read this more theoretical chapter with anticipation.

Once again, many of the approaches found in this unfamiliar territory of “Sociology in HCI [Human-Computer Interaction]” were familiar to me as a teacher who has learned a lot from ethnographic research in education and descriptive processes. So far, this chapter has been a good reminder of why teacher research and description of the details of the classroom experience are important. Although Dourish doesn’t seem to make connections to education, I find it easy to translate much of what he says into my world. I like thinking about the computer-mediated classroom as an “interactive system” (p. 55).

When I read Dourish’s claim that “computation is part of a richer fabric of relationships between people, institutions, and practices that sociology can help us explore” (p. 56), I was thinking: This is an important perspective to have and it should be the focus of any professional development around computers and software. Although it’s true that teachers need to learn how to use new software, develop Web pages, moderate discussion boards, and manage curriculum systems like e-chalk or Blackboard, we also need to center this learning in a study of how computers might be used in the “richer fabric of relationships between, people, institutions, and practices…” of our schools.

Another important concept that Dourish mentions—and one worth remembering when computing is seen as isolating—instead: “Even the most isolated and individual interaction with a computer system is still fundamentally a social activity” (p. 56)—at least between designer and user.

In general, it’s hard to imagine a perspective that would overlap more with ethnographic research in education than Dourish’s notions that sociology in studies of human-computer interaction should be about detailed, real, case studies (p. 57). Again, the distinction Dourish draws between work processes (the stated procedures) and work practices (how people actually get the work done) are important to think about in a school setting. I know I will be thinking about this difference as I begin learning what makes East Side Community High School work this fall.

I think teachers who are interested in seeing technology integrated into the schools would do well to adopt Dourish’s approach of “ethnographic investigation” of their schools “with an eye toward the technological opportunities it offers or design constraints that it imposes” (p. 64). “Computer supported cooperative work” (CSCW) is exactly the domain of study that should be done in schools (p. 65). I wonder if there are any examples of CSCW focused on schools. Dourish doesn’t refer to any, but the examples of ethnographies that he summarizes in the first half of chapter two make me jealous for education. I do wonder though, how these descriptions of what IS move to changes toward what SHOULD BE.

If I may, I’d like to quote a longer passage from the middle of chapter two because this shows how nicely Dourish’s notions of sociology and ethnography fit with the agenda of teacher research and ethnographic studies in education:

“In the course of everyday life, everyone, always, is engaged in ‘practical sociological reasoning,’ when as part and parcel of what they do, they have to figure out what other people mean and in turn figure out how to act themselves in order to get things done” (p. 75).

So to apply this reasoning to teaching: The knowledge teachers bring to bear everyday in their classrooms is no less valid than the theoretical models that professional researchers might offer when THEY try to figure out what good teachers do. Seen this way, I find this to be a profound equation of research and practice—a way of seeing this that I hadn’t really understood before.

As a final example of how sociology in HCI and the work of teaching overlap, notice how “the theme of ethnomethodology” seems similar to descriptive processes: “to look for the emergence of social order out of the details of what people do rather than from abstract theory” (p. 75). Isn’t this what reflective teaching is all about?