AN EXPANSION OF ROGER BARKER''S BEHAVIOR SETTING SURVEY FOR AN ETHNO-ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PERSON–ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS

Journal of Environmental Psychology (1996) 16, 319–333  1996 Academic Press Limited

0272-4944/96/040319+15$25.00/0

Journalof

ENVIRONMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY

AN EXPANSION OF ROGER BARKER’S BEHAVIOR SETTING SURVEY FOR AN ETHNO-ECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO PERSON–ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS

DORIS GEORGIOU1, PHIL F. CARSPECKEN 2 and EDWIN P. WILLEMS1 1

Department of Educational Psychology, University of Houston, TX 77204, U.S.A. Department of Educational Leadership and Cultural Studies, University of Houston, TX 77204, U.S.A.

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Abstract Roger Barker’s Behavior Setting Survey is generally recognized as the first major effort to bring physical and social contexts into psychological methodologies for studying human behavior. Since Barker’s day, advances in social theory, speech act philosophy, pragmatics and other disciplines within the human sciences have converged with Barker’s concerns in various ways, making it possible to sharpen and enrich a number of his formulations. The methodological school of critical qualitative research in many ways occupies the vanguard of approaches synthesizing advances in social theory for methodological application. Critical qualitative research, however, has yet to take advantage of Barker’s work on behavior settings. Thus both Barker’s work and the work of critical ethnographers can be enriched through a synthesis of their theoretical constructs and procedures. This pilot study explores the advantages of synthesizing behavior setting survey and critical qualitative methodology. A university department was studied through a truncated version of the Behavior Setting Survey (BSS) and also with Carspecken’s five-stage model for critical social research. Results are significant on both substantive and analytical levels. It was found that departmental behavior patterns discovered through the BSS are only explicable when their cultural conditions are reconstructed via critical qualitative data analysis. This was true particularly with respect to the ‘circuitry’ discovered by the BSS but  1996 Academic Press Limited explained through cultural reconstructions.

Introduction This study is about two scientific traditions set at the opposite ends of a continuum. One tradition, ecological psychology, supports quantitative investigations of the relationship between behavior patterns and environments. By ‘quantitative’ we refer to an emphasis on operational definitions, a preference for the term ‘behavior’ over that of ‘action,’ and the use of mechanistic or organic imagery in model building. The other tradition, ethnographic methodology, supports qualitative investigations of the same relationship. By ‘qualitative’ we refer to an emphasis on hermeneutic inferencing over the use of operational definitions, a preference for the term ‘action’ over that of ‘behavior’, and the use of linguistic and narrative imagery in model building. Quantitative research, through operationalized definitions, delivers information about how dis-

cretely conceived variables relate externally in space and time. Qualitative research through hermeneutic reconstructive analysis, delivers information about complex cultural structures implicated simultaneously, outside of time–space relations (Giddens, 1979) by social acts. The marriage in question was consummated through the union of Roger Barker’s (1968) behavior setting survey (BSS) and Carspecken’s (1996) fivestage model for critical qualitative research (CQR). Both methodologies are already subversive in relation to the traditions from which they sprang. Barker’s BSS facilitates the collection of quantitative data and behavior setting theory employs rather mechanistic metaphors. But the whole point of the BSS is to collect a set of objective indicators from which a lot of qualitative, or cultural, structuring is meant to be implied. Critical ethnography employs the hermeneutic-reconstructive techniques of

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purely qualitative social research, but includes specific attention to non-qualitative, highly objectified, system relations as well. In Carspecken’s (1996) five-stage methodological scheme, the last two stages of a research project are meant to focus entirely on objectively ascertainable behavioral routines locked into system relations. The analytical models advocated in these two last stages do not shy away from mechanistic or organic metaphors. Thus a marriage between these two methodologies appeared to be almost ‘made in heaven’ to us, and will hopefully help to unite two academic families that have shunned each other for decades. Students of the person–environment relation have emphasized the importance of a more contextualized research orientation (e.g. Rosenow & Georgoudi, 1986; Altman & Rogoff, 1987; Stokols, 1987; Fuhrer, 1990) and the need to bridge the gap between ‘objectivist’ (e.g. behaviorist) and ‘subjectivist’ (e.g. phenomenologist) views of the environment. Unlike the dominant approaches in contemporary mainstream psychology—the interactional approaches (Altman & Rogoff, 1987, chapter 1)—which continue to treat psychological processes, environmental settings, and contextual factors as independently defined and operating entities, the transactional approaches (Altman & Rogoff, 1987, chapter 1) assume an inseparability of contexts, temporal factors, and physical and psychological phenomena, and view stability and change as intrinsic and defining features of psychological phenomena. The transactional world view has been readily embraced by ecological psychology (Barker, 1968), as well as by interpretive movements in the field of anthropology and sociology. However, the former maintains an ‘objectivist’ view, to the exclusion of the complementary view, whereas a ‘subjectivist’ view continues to permeate much of the latter, in that, although sensitive to the dialectic of constraint and volition, much qualitative inquiry pays little attention, if any, to environmental forces generated by the physical context. The concept of the ‘behavior setting’, or BS, has informed the work of many researchers since Barker first introduced it (e.g. Barker & Gump, 1964; Wicker, 1968, 1969; LeCompte, 1970, 1972; LeCompte & Willems, 1970; Srivastava, 1974, 1977; Bechtel, 1977; Barker, 1978; Moos, 1979; Stokols & Shumaker, 1981; Kaminski, 1983, 1987; Gump, 1987). The BS is a small-scale social system located within temporal and spacial boundaries. The various parts of a BS interact in a synchronized fashion to carry out an

ordered sequence of events called the ‘setting program’. Researchers who use the BS as their basic structural unit of investigation employ the behavior setting survey, or BSS, to discover these small-scale systems in naturalistic social environments. The systems discovered through use of the BSS have varied from study to study and include a wide range of social institutions, including whole communities (see references above). In the educational field, however, the focus has been almost exclusively on elementary and high school environments, leaving a research gap for institutions of post-secondary education. On the other hand, from a methodological point of view, the emphasis, so far, has been on quantitative data and objectivity, and some investigators (e.g. Wicker) have recommended that more attention be paid to the lack of qualitative data and subjectivity, which would contribute to a more balanced and complete inquiry process. Within qualitative sociology (Silverman, 1985), the critical approach developed in recent years has made important gains in linking non-objective cultural structures to objectively analyzable components of social systems. Critical methodology distinguishes between cultural phenomena that condition action through an internal relation to human volition, and systems phenomena that condition action outside of human volition as in the distribution of resources and constraints (Carspecken, 1996). Culture refers to a group’s shared patterns of belief, thought, speech and action. Cultural practices are partially constituted by values and carry with them normative expectations about how things should be done. Carspecken’s five-stage methodology begins with the collection of qualitative, observational, data (stage 1), so that cultural themes may be reconstructed by the analyst to articulate the way meaning is constituted within the group (stage 2). Cultural themes are meaning–constituting structures employed frequently and broadly by members of a cultural community. They are drawn upon by actors to make sense of social situations, to get an idea of what actions could be appropriately performed within social situations, and to have some idea of what actions others are likely to perform within social situations. Routine actions are always conditioned by cultural themes, as well as by environmental variables. In fact, it is through cultural themes that actors understand environmental variables and determine how to act in relation to them. To ensure the integrity of the study, the reconstructed cultural themes are then checked against qualitative data collected through semi-structured

An Ethno-ecological Approach

interviews (stage 3). In this study, the cultural reconstructions obtained (stages 2–3) were then juxtaposed in relation to BSS findings for the investigation of system relationships (stage 4) linking the social site with other sites and with resources and constraints of an economic, legal–political, and physical–environmental nature. Carspecken’s fifth stage, involving the explanation of micro findings (stages 1–4) through macro sociological theory, was limited to a general discussion in this pilot study.

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Methodology Site selection The academic environment studied belongs to an urban state institution of higher education located in a large metropolitan area of the state of Texas. The Department studied is part of the College of Education, offers graduate courses and degrees at the masters and doctoral level, and comprises a number of behavior settings, all falling under its jurisdiction. Subjects selection

Study Purpose and Site Selection The primary purpose of the original study was to explore the use of two distinctive methodologies in tandem: Critical Ethnography (Carspecken, 1996) and the Behavior Setting Survey (Barker, 1968). Synthesizing two methodologies based on different theoretical traditions requires alterations in the social–theoretical rationale underlying their distinctive procedures and poses various challenges for consistent data analysis. The authors thought that an empirical test of the synthesis would help to refine the resulting methodology: both in terms of the social theory underlying it and in terms of the precise methods and procedures employed. Almost any social site could have served to test the synthesis of the two methodologies but it so happened that the authors were requested to contribute to the evaluation of an academic department. This department was experiencing difficulties in making changes in its degree programs even though change was desired by most of its faculty. The department hoped that evaluation research would clarify issues and help in the effort to make substantial changes. Therefore, we chose to conduct a micro ethnography on this department, as well as a behavior setting survey, primarily to test and refine the synthetic methodology but with the hope that our report might aid the department in its efforts to restructure. In this paper, we focus on the synthesized methodology, rather than on the contributions our findings could make to the department’s efforts at restructuring. We first explain the synthesized methodology employed. We next present findings yielded through both BSS and CQR techniques, and then show how both sets of findings help to mutually explain each other, illustrating in this way the benefits of our synthetic methodology.1

Male and female subjects, age 18 to approximately 65, observed (n=100, approximately) and interviewed (n=30) were all occupants of the BSs of the department’s premises. The BS called ‘Department Faculty Meeting’ was selected as a sensitive source of information reflecting its culture. Fifteen faculty members (long-time tenured members and junior faculty working toward tenure), 11 male and four female, approximately 35–65 years old, including the department chair, and seven adjunct faculty members comprised the department. Only the 15 tenure and tenure track faculty members attended the faculty meetings. Design: two methodologies and one set of foci Our research design was formulated to produce a full description of the departmental routines (accessed through use of the BSS) and to discover the conditions, both cultural (accessed through use of CQR) and noncultural (accessed through use of both BSS and CQR), that shaped these routines. In other words, both routines of the department as a whole and routines of the Department Faculty Meeting were the foci of the two methods employed, so as to ensure that both methods address the same or closely related events. Use of the BSS was to provide information about routine activities, amount of time spent in these activities, and the temporal and spatial location of these activities. Use of qualitative interviewing basically explored these same issues, but sought narrative accounts of particular experiences, values, and beliefs relevant to each BS. Because routine activities are never merely the result of organizational rules, information flows, or formalized exchange relations, but also the result of beliefs, norms, and values, it was deemed imperative to collect narrative accounts from faculty members and reconstruct backgrounded norms and

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beliefs from them. Often, items asked faculty members as part of the BSS came up again in the qualitative interviews so that faculty could elaborate upon experiences, values, and beliefs relevant to their participation in departmental settings. In addition, it was initially hypothesized, and later verified through faculty interviews, that cultural themes used by faculty to coordinate interactions at their departmental meetings would help to explain their behaviors in other departmental BSs. Thus, five faculty meetings were observed and scripted so that this sort of cross-over of cultural themes from setting to setting could be examined. In this way, use of BSS and CQR methodologies did not produce divergent sets of information but, on the contrary, placed the same foci under two different but complementary lenses. Protocols Various sources of information were utilized to gather data for the BSS. These ranged from contacts with key informants (e.g. faculty, staff, students) to consultation of catalogs, schedules, posted announcements, and other printed materials available to the public. The information obtained by means of interviews was organized through the use of two protocols: (1) the ‘Schedule of Activities’; and (2) the ‘Behavior Setting Information Sheet 2’, a modified and abbreviated version of the survey form used by Bechtel (1977) in his research programs. Features of the latter included the name (as given by the local population) of the BS, its location, time, duration (total number of hours/day the BS functions during the survey period), occurrence (number of days the BS occurs during the survey period), total duration (number of hours/day×number of days the BS functions during the survey period), population (total number of persons entering the setting, broken down into various categories, i.e. faculty, students, staff, male, female, minority nonminority), occupancy time (total number of person-hours inhabitants spend in the BS during the survey period), hierarchy of positions people filled in the setting (because of their influence or responsibility, with higher degrees of penetration of BSs corresponding to positions of greater influence and responsibility), and six out of the 11 action patterns (type of global, standing behavior patterns going on in the setting) originally defined by Barker (1968, pp. 52–66), i.e. Business, Education, Government, Nutrition, Professionalism, and Social Contact. In the qualitative portion of the study, the inter-

view protocol followed Carspecken’s semi-structured technique of specifying topic domains and lead-off questions to initiate a conversation with each patient (Carspecken, 1996, Ch. 10). Once a conversation is initiated within a topic domain desired by the researcher, the researcher employs nonleading responses of various types to encourage more talk, elaborations, and self-reflection. A list of covert categories, items that the researcher desires each subject to address but does not wish to reveal in order to prevent leading, is referred to during the interview to make sure that all areas of interest are covered. The topic domains used in this study were: ‘Typical routines in departmental life’, ‘Dynamics of departmental faculty meetings’, and ‘Roles played by faculty in departmental meetings’. The last two topics helped to clarify departmental cultural themes evident at meetings but of relevance to all departmental behavior settings. Procedures For the purpose of this pilot study, a truncated version of the BSS was conducted for a period of one month (February 15 to March 15, 1993). Identification of every possible public BS was obtained through observation (Wicker, 1979/1983) and by utilizing various sources of information available to the public. Descriptive data were obtained in collaboration with faculty, staff, and students of the department. Data collected were compiled to generate dimensions other investigators have used in previous research (e.g. number of kinds of BSs, population demographics, occupancy time, and so forth) and originally defined by Barker (1968, pp. 35–91). The BS called ‘Department Faculty Meeting’ emerged as the most significant event relevant to the culture of the department studied, in that it presented collective and highly interactive patterns involving all of its inhabitants. Moreover, it was in that setting that decisions regarding many of the activities—administrative and academic— carried out in the other settings of the department were made. Thus, it was considered most central, as opposed to, for example, the Front Office setting, where only administrative matters were handled. Therefore, it was selected for ethnographic observations. Qualitative data collection was spread over five observation sessions of about 2-hour duration meetings each, involving all 15 faculty (except for occasional absentees), and 6 face-to-face unstructured interviews (Spradley, 1979) of 1–2-hour duration each, with three male and three female

An Ethno-ecological Approach

faculty. Observations and interviews generated experiential data of what took place in that BS, in particular, and in the department, in general. In both cases, the use of tape recordings of all speech acts (verbalizations) was complemented by field notes on body behavior. In general, in generating field notes, the researcher followed Carspecken’s (1996) guidelines and the technique of ‘priority observation’: this means that for about 5 minutes, the observer recorded everything about one person in the setting, as a first priority; she then recorded what others did in interaction with that person, as a second priority; finally, she recorded what else was happening in the setting, as a third priority, keeping a flexible observation schedule to allow disruption when something important to the study occurred and needed to take priority; the observer then moved to the next person, repeating the process for the next 5 minutes; and so forth, throughout the duration of the meeting. Conclusions were validated by means of a variety of checking procedures, following Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) criteria for assessing the rigor of the naturalistic inquiry. Analyses The treatment of the quantitative data involved frequency counts and computation of the formulas established by Barker (1968). Analysis of the qualitative data followed Carspecken’s (1996; Carspecken & Apple, 1992) guidelines. Thus, in stage 2, the investigator reconstructed a preliminary analysis of the collected data to begin developing the subjective (references to how an actor feels, what the actor intends, and what the actor is aware of) and normative (tacit or unstated norms and rules assumed to be shared in all communicative processes) meanings of the observed behavior. This was done by reading through repeatedly the records and generating an initial set of grounded (in the data) codes or categories of the meeting activities. Specifically, codes referenced portions of the data set that were later used to examine patterns, relations, and meanings (Carspecken, 1996, Ch. 8). Once the coding was completed, the frequency of significant similar coded segments was recorded. Next, the investigator began reconstructing possible meanings carried by the observed acts through hermeneutic inferencing and looked at secondary conceptual codes (e.g. roles, kinds of power employed, and so on), while refining and delineating the objective, subjective, and normative references. For the purpose of clarification, objective references relate

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to that which is accessed through the senses and entails claims supported by general consensus (multiple access) concerning ‘what is’ and ‘what took place’ (Carspecken & Apple, 1992, p. 517). Subjective references relate to the internal states (privileged access) of participants, to their feelings, beliefs, and so forth. Whereas, normative references relate to the unstated or tacit rules, norms and assumptions that give meaning to social acts. These references generated a field of meaning of the articulation of acts and behaviors which revealed some themes or clusters of values and assumptions used by the participants under study to interpret events and respond to them. The themes, value clusters, norms, and assumptions of most interest to us were those that shed light on participants’ activities within other departmental BSs. Because faculty members talked about their routine activities in other BSs at the faculty meeting, and discussed plans for changing these routines or adding to them, it was not difficult to spot ‘cross-over’ cultural themes of relevance to most BSs. Additionally, because the faculty meeting was the one BS where participants could contribute to the development of formal policies affecting all BSs, the cultural themes through which policy changes were made or avoided became a central focus of analysis. Interview records (stage 3) were analyzed in similar fashion. Participants’ articulations regarding the normative realm (tacit norm and rules assumed to be shared in all communicative processes) of the department meeting were used to validate and clarify the normative structure identified in stage 2 by the investigator, and were useful in understanding both the behavior and the intended and/or implied meaning behind the behavior. The implementation of stage 3, in the data generation process, was intended (Carspecken & Apple, 1992) to allow BS staff some control over the research process and a more democratic form of knowledge production. It was also intended to empower BS occupants by making it possible for them to articulate, during the face-to-face interview, feelings and thoughts that they felt were not allowed expression within the normative realm observed by the researcher. Stage 4 of Carspecken’s critical qualitative methodology is the site of intersection between Barker’s ecological psychology and CQR. In stage 4, the interpretative position required to understand culture is conjoined with an observer’s position necessary to view systems of activity. The identification of BSs through Barker’s techniques corresponds to the discovery of small scale systems in Carspecken’s methodological scheme. Barker’s BSS is a more pre-

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cise and exacting tool for locating BSs than those suggested by Carspecken to date. However, Carspecken’s methodology emphasizes the importance of culture in the construction of small scale systems much more than does Barker or other ecological psychologists. The basic idea is that systems of action form only through culturally constituted action orientations from which the participants within a system or BS act. The system can exceed the boundaries of understanding provided by those very cultural themes necessary for systems to operate; which is why an external observer’s position is needed to spot systems. But without cultural milieu there would be no action orientations and thus no system (Carspecken, 1996, Chs 12 and 13). We attempted to marry CQR and the BSS with Carspecken’s stage 4 as the wedding ring. Specifically, the underlying structure of the BS operating ‘circuits’ (goal and program circuits, deviationcountering and vetoing circuits, as defined by Barker, 1968) were examined, in correspondence with the ‘normative structure’ (yielded by reconstructive analysis) of the BS. An attempt was also made to relate the BSS findings and the findings from stages 1–4 of CQR to a broad view of society. Although settings have their own internal dynamics and, to a degree, serve their own purposes, they are simultaneously part of the larger social world and the forces generated within it. These comprise general contextual factors (e.g. value patterns and other cultural conditions; political and economic conditions, and so forth), historical factors (e.g. events and other settings that contributed to the setting’s establishment and maintenance), and the structural arrangements by which settings are related to one another in the larger social system.

seen, the highest OT (number of occurrences of a setting×average number of inhabitants per occurrence×average duration per occurrence in hours) rating (7079) corresponds to the 36 BSs Classes/Lectures, which occurred 122 times during the survey period, for a total duration of 391 hours and involved a population of 2206 occupants. Next, with an OT rating of 3192, is the single BS Front office, which operated 8 hours a day for 21 days, for a total of 168 hours. Office hours/Student advising follow with an OT of 1865 corresponding to 15 BSs represented by the 15 faculty offices; they were available to the students 148 times for the total duration of 458 hours, and 570 people (including the faculty themselves) were involved. At the least busy end, seven Dissertation/Candidacy research proposals/defenses BSs resulted in a total duration of about 14 hours, involved 44 participants (including faculty, students and, at times, guests) for a total OT rating of 70. The population demographics of the department are summarized in Table 3. One can see that, for the category Classes/Lectures, the 15 professors and seven adjunct filled 137 positions and nine assistant positions, teaching a total of 2060 students. The estimated total population (P=3681) involved TABLE 1 Summary of the global attributes (G, BS, O, D, P, OT) of the molar environment of the department, during the survey period of time BS Attributes

Total

No. of Kinds of BSs (G) No. of BSs (BS) No. of BS Occurrences (O) Total Duration (D, in hours) Total Population (P) Total Occupancy Time (OT, in person-hours)

7 76 330 1315 3679 13288

Results Data from the BSS 1. Department. During the period of time the BSS was conducted, the following seven categories (genotypes) of BSs were identified: Classes/Lectures (36 BSs), Office hours/Student advising (15 BSs), Dissertation/Candidacy research proposals/defenses (7 BSs), Departmental meetings (6 BSs), Front office (1 BS), Library (1 BS), and Carrels/Study halls (10 BSs), for a total of 76 BSs. A summary of the various attributes that have been traditionally examined to describe BSs can be found in Table 1. The distribution of the same attributes per category of BSs is summarized in Table 2. As can be

TABLE 2 Distribution of attributes (BS, O, D, P, OT) per category of BSs, during the survey period of time BS (G)

BS Attributes BS

O

D

P

OT

Classes Off.Hrs Dis/Can Dpt.Mtg. Frt.Off Library Carrels

36 15 7 6 1 1 10

122 148 7 9 21 12 11

391 458 14 28 168 36 220

2206 570 44 94 399 36 330

7079 1865 70 314 3192 108 660

Total

76

330

1315

3679

13288

An Ethno-ecological Approach

(entering the various BSs) included 1295 males, 2384 females, with approximately 744 minority members. The discrepancy between the number of male and female occupants, as well as the discrepancy between minority and non minority members is noteworthy, considering that the department offered only graduate programs. All meetings (departmental and interdepartmental) considered together, there were 92 faculty positions filled, two student positions filled, a male/female ratio of 54/40 and six minority. The number of female participants was enhanced considerably due to a higher proportion of female faculty representing neighboring departments in several of these meetings. In the BS Front office, there was only one male staff (a working student) and five female staff (one office manager, one faculty secretary—both minority—and three working students). The two staff members filled 42 staff positions, while the working students filled 84 staff and student advising positions. An estimated total of 273 faculty and students crowded the office at one time or another of the survey period. The

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overall male/female estimated ratio was 121/278, with approximately 84 minority. The faculty and staff of this department seemed to reflect the very traditional picture offered by most academic institutions, with a male majority filling the leadership, faculty, higher paying positions, and a female majority filling the subordinate, administrative, lower paying positions. Interestingly, the proportions were reversed when considering the student body with a ratio close to two females for one male. The very low proportion of minority students (with the exception of the extension of the departmental program in a southern part of the state, where the reverse was true, and which constituted the bulk of the minority group) also seems to indicate the presence of a stratification in the department—with some ethnic groups over represented and other ethnic groups under represented—as is apparently the case in most graduate programs in the United States. This observation seems to find further support when examining Table 4, where the various hierarchical positions (the higher the degree of penetration of

TABLE 3 Population demographics of the Department during the survey period of time Population

BSs Clas. /Lec.

Office Hours

Dis/ Can.

Department Meetings

Frt. Off.

Lib.

Crls

Faculty Students Staff Other Male Female Minority

137 2060 0 9 851 1355 510

148 410 0 12 152 418 118

26 7 0 11 27 17 1

92 2 0 2 54 40 6

0 8 42 273 121 278 84

36 0 0 0 24 12 0

21 110 0 199 66 264 25

Total

2206

570

44

96

399

36

330

TABLE 4 Hierarchy of positions (degree of penetration of BS depending on degree of influence and responsibility) in the Department during the survey period of time Positions (zones 1–6)

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Onlookers Aud/Guests Memb/Cust. Act. Funct. Joint Leaders Single Leaders

Total

BSs Cls. Lec.

Office Hours

Dis/ Can.

Department Meetings

Frt. Off.

Total

0 0 1810 259 23 114

4 8 410 0 0 148

0 11 0 26 0 7

0 2 0 83 3 8

0 0 273 105 0 21

4 21 2493 473 26 298

2206

570

44

96

399

3315

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100

OT (%)

80

60

40

20

0

PSET

PSET

PSET

PSET

PSET

PSET

Bus.

Edu.

Gov.

Nut.

Pro.

Soc.

Action patterns FIGURE 1. Action pattern (global behavior) profile (Business, Education, Government, Nutrition, Professionalism, Social Contact) of the Department BSs on the Participation (P), Supply (S), Evaluation and Appreciation (E), and Teaching and Learning (T) subscales during the survey period of time.

the BS the more influential the position) of the department and the corresponding membership categories are summarized. Overall, there was a small proportion of single- or joint-leadership positions (298+26=324 out of a total of 3315), which ascribe immediate authority and power over the settings. The only BS where students occupied something like leadership roles were the Dissertation/Candidacy research proposals/defenses (seven out of 298) and the two positions in the Graduate Studies Committee. Otherwise for the great majority of students, the maximum depth of penetration corresponded to zone 3 (members or customers), which represents great potential power but little immediate power over the settings (Barker, 1968). Conversely, 87·92% (114+148=262) of the 298 leadership positions were filled by 22 faculty representing only 0·79% of the population involved (2206+570=2776) of which they were totally in charge in their BSs (Classes+Office hours). These figures indicate a predominance of primarily individualized responsibilities and activities, such as teaching and candidacy and dissertation advising over collective responsibilities and activities. The importance of this BSS finding became clearer later when it was juxtaposed with findings from qualitative analysis. The Action Patterns (Barker, 1968) profiles of the BSs of the department on the Participation (P) Supply (S), Evaluation and Appreciation (E), and Teaching and Learning (T) subscales (Barker, 1968, pp. 52–66) are reported in Figure 1. It can be seen

that the department is pre-eminently a social one; some interpersonal behavior occurs in all of its environment. It is also highly connected to and dependent on the government as part of a state institution. It is a highly professional one, too; in most of the environment (90%) there are some paid leaders and functionaries. Most of the environment is assigned to educational functions (91·67%). Although there are no business transactions, some kind of nutrition is allowed in most of the settings (85·71%). Whereas providing materials for carrying out the respective action pattern in another setting is a very restricted activity, there is an important place in the program of the department for evaluating education (67·85%; tests, examinations, proposals, defenses) and professionalism (53·57%; student evaluations of faculty). Some evaluation of governmental matters (22·62%) is inherent in the teaching of specific classes, as is some evaluation of social conduct. There are noticeable peaks in education (82·14%; teaching or learning procedures of education or stimulating people to increase education) and government (65·47%; teaching or learning about government or legal procedures) and much lower levels in social contact (19·04%; recognizing sociable persons or values of sociability), professionalism (13·09%; performers receiving financial recompense), and business (2·38%; learning and teaching the methods or skills of business). 2. Department Faculty Meeting. Population demographics, hierarchy of positions, and various attributes (Occurrence, Duration, Occupancy Time) of the Department Faculty Meeting are summarized in Table 5. During the survey period, there were two 2-hour meetings held in the usual room where all TABLE 5 Population demographics, hierarchy of positions (zones of penetration of BS), occurrence, duration, population, and occupancy time of the BS Department Faculty meeting during the survey period of time Occurrence (O)

2

Duration (D)

4

Population (P) Male (M) Female (F) Minority (MN) Audience/Guest (zone 2) Active Functionaries (zone 4) Single Leader (zone 6)

28 18 8 0 2 24 2

Occupancy Time (OT)

56

An Ethno-ecological Approach 100 80

OT (%)

other department faculty meetings took place. In each occurrence, 13 faculty attended, four females and 9 males. Two faculty were absent from both meetings, while the investigator attended in the role of invited guest and observer. Occupancy time rating for both occurrences was 56. As far as the hierarchy of positions occupied by the members of this group, they were the following, according to Barker’s (1968) definitions (pp. 50–51): with the exception of the invited guest (zone of penetration 2), all others, chair excluded, acted as active functionaries (zone of penetration 4). In fact, almost all of them were not only voting members, but acted also in some official capacity (e.g. secretary, representative of undergraduate studies committee, of graduate studies committee, of higher education committee, of admissions committee, and so forth) and reported to the chair, during the faculty meeting, accordingly. In other words, in addition to discussing and voting on issues pertinent to the department, faculty were actively involved and reported on initiatives or projects of which they were individually responsible (e.g. developing and implementing a survey to collect data on students time preferences for specific classes) and on the progress of work carried out by committees of which they were in charge. Thus, they had power over a limited part of the setting, which they did not lead, as this was the prerogative of the chair, who acted as single leader (zone of penetration, 6, maximum influence and responsibility). In fact, with one exception (which appeared to be a strategic move on the part of the chair, who delegated leadership to the most verbal, long time ex-chair and senior, faculty so he could express in more direct ways the concerns—about faculty inertia—the chair was trying to convey indirectly to the group), faculty meetings were either cancelled or postponed in his absence. The action patterns of this BS on the Participation (P), Supply (S), Evaluation and Appreciation (E), and Teaching and Learning (T) subscales, during the survey period are profiled in Figure 2. As can be seen, this faculty meeting was highly social and interactional and highly professional, too, with its members paid by the state; it was also highly involved in evaluating educational and governmental matters (including governing the department), generating some teaching and learning about education and government. In sum, the BSS told us much about noncultural conditions and social routines of this department. Specifically, as far as faculty activities were concerned, they were largely carried out individually in

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60 40 20 0

PSET Bus.

PSET Edu.

PSET Gov.

PSET Nut.

PSET Pro.

PSET Soc.

Action patterns FIGURE 2. Action pattern (global behavior of BS) profile (Business, Education, Government, Nutrition, Professionalism, Social Contract) of the Department Faculty Meeting on the Participation (P), Supply (S), Evaluation and Appreciation (E), and Teaching and Learning (T) subscales during the survey period of time.

classrooms and offices. The sort of collective activity that took place at the departmental meetings every two weeks, and during occasional departmental retreats, was a small portion of the total time each member put into faculty work. There was thus an important contrast between individualized action and collective action, the latter occupying a small portion of total time. The formal reward structure was oriented solely towards individualized activity. Faculty could get salary raises for successful research and excellent teaching, not for service activities on committees. Qualitative Data Studies of BSs have provided evidence that these stable, extra-individual units and their ‘program’ have great ‘coercive’ power over the behavior that occurs within them, which is regulated via inherent ‘circuits’ (Barker, 1968; Schoggen, 1989). Schoggen describes at length the circuitry that joins BSs and inhabitants via the Environment–Organism–Environment (E–O–E) arc (pp. 176–188). Circuits comprise: (1) goal circuits, which are ‘routes to goals that are satisfying to the inhabitants’ (p. 176); (2) program circuits, of which ‘the essential features are. . . knowledge of the program by one or more inhabitants of the setting and actions by them that control the order of the occurrences that characterize the program’ (p. 177); (3) deviationcountering circuits; and (4) vetoing circuits aiming

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at maintaining the function of the BS and its program, basically. Wicker (1987) laments that: ‘although [Barker’s] theory identifies operating circuits, it does not provide any details on how programs are organized and carried out, or how personal inputs affect these processes’ (p. 623).

Keeping in mind this state of affairs, this portion of the study attempted to uncover the existence of patterns, relations, and field of possible meanings shared within the context and the culture of the Department Faculty Meeting(s) BS, that could possibly shed light on the nature of its ‘circuitry’. This was accomplished by grouping the generated grounded codes into larger categories. Five major domains emerged: (1) chair-modeled culture and the peer setting (through the chair’s adoption of a democratic leader/faculty peer role), (2) faculty negotiations and power (by means, for example, of probing and delaying tactics, such as silence, in response to a direct question emanating from the chair); (3) situations of tension (e.g. challenges to chair’s assertions or position); (4) management of situations of tension (by the chair’s switching roles, for example, from democratic leader to traditional mediator/facilitator of the meeting); and (5) positive interactions (e.g. tacit supportive alliances). The five domains were used to reconstruct key features of the Department Faculty Meeting(s). The resurfacing, repeatedly, of generalized normative references carried by specific acts led to the identification of cultural themes. The construction of the themes by the participants was related to three main conditions which structured all department faculty meeting interactions: (1) the goals set for the meeting (by the meeting agenda) and their related constraints (external to the actor’s volition, such as, for example, the need for the chair to be a clear communicator and team builder); (2) the formal structure of the meeting (for example, most of the ways the chair used to achieve goals and overcome constraints consisted in speech acts and behaviors rather than formal interventions); and (3) the normative realm generated within the meeting. The actual culture of the meeting was the result of implicit negotiations undertaken between the chair, with his set agenda of social political principles, and the faculty, with their own particular perceptions and concerns. The departmental chair was under continuous pressure from college administration to introduce reforms in service position, restructure existing curriculum, and basically keep abreast of the times with long-distance learning and sitebased instruction, in line with national trends. On the other hand, the faculty were overloaded with a

huge amount of individualized activities, these very activities that, in terms of Barker’s ‘circuitry’, constituted the department’s formal program and goal circuits, through organized rewards and constraints. Because of the democratic structure of the meeting, the chair could not force restructuring to occur. Faculty would enthusiastically present ideas for restructuring and would generally receive support from other members for these ideas. But actual steps toward making the necessary changes were not discussed and those who felt themselves in disagreement with the ideas of other members rarely expressed their disagreements. Congeniality ruled discussions to the point where concrete proposals were nearly impossible, because implicit conflicts were never taken to the surface and discussed. In interviews, faculty universally indicated their awareness of these processes and the norm of congeniality that supported them. One of the interviewees claimed that departmental culture was governed by a ‘tacit working principle’ and ‘a lot of indirection in the language’ that prevented real conflicts and disagreements from arising for discussion and further prevented any concrete decisions from being made. The result was promotion of status quo. As the substitute chair lamented in one of the meetings (while the chair was out of town with his class): ‘We talked the last time about some of this organizational inertia, and we do seem to get to a point, and then things fall apart.’

Another faculty member pointed to the subtlety of the process: ‘I can’t even describe exactly what happens. It’s so subtle. . . part of it is of a filibuster approach, you know, you keep talking about, long enough, and the time to deal with it runs out.’

Still another member stated: ‘The thing that I have noticed is that we don’t ever bring things to a conclusion, finish it up and go on.’

Within the awareness of at least some faculty members was the function of these cultural themes, congeniality and the tacit working principle. Given the huge amount of individualized work, given the reward system of the university, little real desire existed for undertaking the work of departmental restructuring. But the norm of congeniality worked two ways: it helped faculty avoid making real decisions that would require more time and energy while it prohibited direct expression of the basic reason for avoiding restructuring—reluctance to assume a larger work load. All of this occurred primarily at tacit levels of culture. From the system’s perspective, departmental meetings served the

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function of the deviation-countering and vetoing circuits. These circuits had to be covert given the norm of congeniality and faculty support for the chair. The deviation-countering and vetoing circuits were the functional results of culturally constructed action orientations emphasizing normative–evaluative and identity claims rather than goals.

Discussion From the results of the qualitative portion of this study, it becomes extremely difficult to resist the temptation of defining the basic nature of the BS circuitry in cultural terms, of considering the terms circuitry (behavior mechanisms ensuring the maintenance of the BS program) and normativity (recursively organized rules and resources assumed in every communicative action) as equivalent and interchangeable. In fact, it is possible to explain the circuitry involved in the department faculty meeting via the cluster of themes revealed through ethnographic inquiry, for example, around the ‘working principle’. As reported above, one important finding of the BSS was the predominance of primarily individualized responsibilities, such as teaching and candidacy and dissertation advising. These activities were under the control of single- (and in a very few cases, of joint-) leaders, who had total responsibility for the flow of communication and information reaching the occupants of their respective BSs. As was apparent from Table 4 (zones of penetration 5 and 6, for the BSs Classes and Office hours), 87·92% of the 298 leadership positions were filled by 22 faculty, despite they represented only 0·79% of the population involved, of which they were totally in charge in their BSs. Furthermore, these positions did not account for other totally individualized activities of which faculty were fully responsible, such as class preparation, personal research agenda, and personal professional development. These activities were very time-consuming, as demonstrated by the very high cumulative OT rating (68·65%), which left little time for other endeavors. Most importantly, these activities constituted the department’s formal program circuits, which determined the goal circuits through organizational rewards and constraints. In fact, the department structure was such that research (for assistant professors), teaching quality (for all faculty), and service work on committees (which counted much less than the first two) were practically the sole ‘routes to goals that are satisfying to the inhabi-

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tants’ (Schoggen, 1989, p. 176) of zones of penetration 5 and 6. Ethnographic findings concurred, in that this point was made very clear by interviewees: ‘We’ve got a lot of young professors with pressure on them to write, to produce. . . which is unfortunate, but that’s the way the system is,’ said one faculty, while the chair talked also about ‘a reward system for some kinds of behaviors. . . textbooks, research agenda.’ Given the program circuits and the goal circuits determined by the department’s formal structures, one could reasonably anticipate finding deviationcountering circuits and vetoing circuits, that prevented or eliminated conditions interfering with the carrying out of the program of the setting, or, in the case of inhabitants, with achieving their goals. Unlike the program circuits and the goal circuits, which were inherited, deviation-countering circuits and vetoing circuits were not formal and were constructed culturally by the BS inhabitants themselves. The ‘working principle’ seemed to be the way the department under study had developed its deviation-countering circuits and vetoing circuits, in order to slow down departmental change. Although, given the program and goal circuits of the academic department, the consequent constraints on time rendered the formation of maintenance circuits predictable, it is important to understand that there was no ill-will or intention on the part of faculty to stall all efforts at change, but that the patterns of behavior observed were the result of the unintended consequences and their system effects (Giddens, 1979) created by the program and goal circuits with the time constraints they imposed. Formal goals of departmental meetings, in other words, which included efforts to make changes in line with national trends and expectations of the college’s higher administration, were in conflict with established BSs that individualized decision making, rewarded traditional activities rather than efforts at change, and overwhelmed participants with large work loads. The conflict was resolved with vetoing and deviation-countering circuits that had a purely tacit, cultural basis. The participants who constructed these vetoing and deviation-countering circuits in a consistent and coordinated way never planned them: they were the result of the tacit ‘working principle’, producing objectively ascertainable action patterns that escaped the explicit awareness of the participants. Looking at the larger context then, the very words of the interviewees underscored the influence on the culture of academia of formalized program and goal circuits, as noted by others (e.g. Bloom, 1987;

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Smith, 1990): publish or perish, financial constraints, old-time tenured inertia, and the nature of the system’s rewards. Finally, as acknowledged by the interviewees, the culture of the department faculty meeting was not only the reflection of the world of academia, in general, but was indeed tributary of the culture of the society within which it is set, with society’s own goal circuits, dictated by the primacy of individualism, elitism, fragmentation, inability to see the big picture and short-term goals, as equally noted by others (e.g. Bellah et al., 1985; Hsu, 1983; Sampson, 1977, 1988; Tocqueville, 1946). One faculty summarized it all in a few words: ‘We don’t look at things in the long view. . . I think it is in the culture. That’s a reflection of our society. The same problem is with economy, it’s all been short-term!’

It should be noted that finding matches between localized system patterns and socially broad system patterns in this way comprises part of Carspecken’s stage five in CQR. To summarize, the objective, quantitative data yielded by the BSS allowed to generate a quite detailed, yet global, picture of the environment under study, be it an entire department or a department faculty meeting. Beyond that, they allowed inferences about the setting in connection with its larger context. For example, despite the fact that an abbreviated version of the BSS was utilized in this exploratory study: (1) it was possible to flag the prominence of primarily individualized responsibilities of the department, which raised the issue of the significance of this fact and its impact on the culture of the department; and (2) it was possible to demonstrate how the department, with its traditional hierarchical structure and stratification, was a reflection of most of the academic world in this society. Likewise, gender and ethnic (minority) discrepancies reproduced the typical patterns of the same society, whenever issues of distribution of power are at stake. Although the BSS provided a clear description of the standing patterns of behavior of the inhabitants inside the BS, what was not readily available was information regarding the thoughts, beliefs, attributions and hopes (the subjective realm) of the occupants, the meaning of the setting for its inhabitants, and, most importantly, those unstated conventions, rules, and norms (the normative realm) that linked them to the setting and gave meaning to the social acts. And it is precisely in those areas that critical ethnographic inquiry was complementary, with meaning, subjectivity and normativity being its main foci, as was the interplay

of social and structural constraints on human actors and the relative autonomy of human action. Viewed from the outsider 3rd person position required by objectivity, this university department displayed ‘circuitry’ consistent with Barker’s BS theory. The outsider view taken when employing the BSS, however, only revealed the circuits without explaining them. For the insider perspective reconstructed through the first three stages of critical qualitative research (Carspecken, 1995) a cluster of norms and themes that participants termed ‘the working principle’ of this department became apparent. Though participants made no conscious choices in reproducing their departmental circuits, they were tacitly conscious of adhering to this previously unarticulated normative cluster, ‘the working principle’, and in so doing put into effect deviation-countering circuits and vetoing circuits. This is a connection between culture (the normative cluster) and system (the circuits) that is supposed to show up when employing Carspecken’s fourth and fifth methodological stages (1996, Chs. 12 and 13). Thus, the study demonstrated the potential of Barker’s BSS for granting greater specificity to the final stages of critical qualitative research. Simultaneously, it demonstrated how critical qualitative research can explain, and not just describe, objective regularities ascertainable through the BSS through the reconstruction of an insider’s view. Specifically, cultural themes most visibly revealed during faculty meetings explain two things about BSS findings: (1) they display norms, assumptions, values that spill over into other BSs where they are drawn upon in more tacit ways by faculty members. A faculty member, for example, might get the feeling, when preparing a course lecture, that the pedagogy and curriculum could be better than what he or she is preparing. But, due to time constraints, this would require undesirable amounts of time and energy. And, given norms and values evident from faculty meetings, it is easy to justify to one’s self just continuing with the status quo and preparing a lecture much as they have long been prepared. And (2) they display norms and values at work during faculty meetings when change is discussed that subvert the possibility of real change without making this so explicit as to produce cognitive dissonance: explicit conflicts with the formal goals of faculty meetings. Thus, they explain why, in the one setting of most relevance to producing formal rules relevant to all other BSs, no new rules are made. While, given expectations placed formally on the head of the department chair, a pretence of trying to restructure is performed.

An Ethno-ecological Approach

Finally, for the reader who is little familiar with qualitative research methods and assumptions, and who is anxious to know how ‘generalizable’ findings of this study are, the authors would like to stress here the paramount importance of the context. That is, results may be generalized only to those contexts with similar conditions. Also, due to the fact that an abbreviated form of the BSS was used, the resulting picture of the environment under study is partial and, thus, representative of a limited number of the features afforded by Barker’s complete BSS. Indeed, due to the exploratory nature of the present study, heavy emphasis was placed on stages one through three of Carspecken’s critical ethnographic methodology. The synthesis of the empirical body of evidence yielded by the BSS and critical ethnography was attempted in stage four, while stage five was limited to a general discussion linking the micro findings to macro phenomena of the system and society of which the department is a part. On the other hand, it is worth mentioning that, in addition to the six faculty interviewed, three other faculty of the department gave verbal confirmation regarding the working principle effect. Therefore, there is a good support for the contention put forward in this study, although despite their behavior was consistent with it, the remaining six faculty’s perception is uncertain.

Conclusion The results of this pilot study demonstrate that: (1) information about the structure of the (educational) environment aids in understanding its (educational) culture and process; (2) an emerging connection between the BSS and CQR involves the structures of the BS unit; (3) BSs can only exist through culturally constituted action orientations and thus can only be fully understood with some reconstructive analysis; (4) tacit, nonformal, maintenance circuits can only be explained through cultural reconstructions because nothing written down, nothing on the formal level, will explain such circuits when they are not planned—often, they will not be planned; and that (5) the integrative methodological approach allows a reconceptualization and redefinition of the BS unit, in association with its objective, subjective, and normative aspects, as a multidimensional, cultural setting unit that emerges when an environment takes on meaning for the behaving organism. Recently, Wicker (1991, 1992) has suggested an alternative to Barker’s conception of the dynamic

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links between persons, behavior settings, and the larger environment. His own ‘Sense-making model’ incorporates the concept of ‘cause maps’, which ‘are cognitive representations that incorporate the entities a person is aware of, certain qualities of those entities, and perceived linkages among them’ (1991, p. 275). Cause maps as applied to behavior settings, Wicker explains, are similar to other concepts such as ‘scripts’ (Schank & Abelson, 1977) and ‘social episodes’ (Forgas, 1979). They ‘are subjective residuals of past transactions with environments’ (1992, p. 175). Wicker’s effort expands Barker’s original conception of BSs to make room for individuals’ subjective experiences. In addition to subjectivity, Carspecken’s methodology emphasizes the importance of culture in the construction of small scale systems. Again, the basic idea is that systems of action form only through culturally constituted action orientations from which the participants within a system or BS act. The system can exceed the boundaries of understanding provided by those very cultural themes necessary for systems to operate; which is why an external observer’s position is needed to spot systems. But without cultural milieu there would be no action orientations and thus no system (Carspecken, 1996, Chs. 12 and 13). In summary, may be means of a theoretical, conceptual, and methodological integrative effort, this pilot study demonstrates that explanations for the organizing and operating processes taking place within the behavior setting are possible, provided we seek explanations of human action and social behavior, through a holistic articulation of: (1) objective conditions in the physical and social world; (2) actors’ subjective understandings of themselves and others in the social world; and (3) background and social structure (recursively organized rules and resources) which are not part of the actor’s discursive understandings but yet impact on his or her behavior normatively through the actor’s tacit knowledge.

Acknowledgements The first author of this paper wishes to thank Allan Wicker, Ph.D., for his feedback on the original manuscript on which this article is based, and for kindly sharing with her more recent work of his on behavior settings. Thanks are extended to him and two other reviewers (one to whom we offer our sincere apologies for having been unable to decipher his or her signature, and one anonymous) for their

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helpful comments on an earlier version of this article.

Notes Correspondence and reprint requests can be addressed to Doris Georgiou, c/o Phil F. Carspecken, Department of Educational Leadership and Cultural Studies, Room 401 FH, University of Houston, 4800 Calhoun, Houston, Texas 77204, U.S.A. (1) For the interested reader, the contributions our findings could make to the department’s efforts to change are the topic of an article titled ‘Change and stagnation within formal organizations: Applications of micro ethnography to the problems of an academic department,’ by the same authors, currently under journal review.

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