5.2 What is knowledge?

Collaboration or Framing?
When I read box 15.4, Voices from the Field, “What is knowledge?” I came away feeling a little uneasy about the process of gathering statements from interviews. It appears that Barbara Schneider, University of Calgary, was very thorough in the collecting of the data from the interviews. However, when she makes the comment that, “the answer is thus not the teacher’s alone but is a collaboration of interviewer and interviewee”, I have a problem with this, especially if this is supposed to be an objective report.

If we are going to interview someone and collect their thoughts, shouldn’t we report them as they come to us? I don’t understand how shaping the questions to gather certain responses will lead to anything other than the interviewers goal of writing a report that supports his/her opinion. Is this knowledge or an extension of the interviewers’ opinions.

When Schneider states, “The answer is then compressed and transformed in the notes”, can we rely on the objective ideology from the interviewer? If this report/knowledge gathering exercise is to shape an opinion, then it needs to be clear to the reader they are reading an opinion piece, not a report on stated facts.