Filter. Filter. Filter.

David Mills: Session 05

Thought pre-tutor session:

Iterate my question: Am I still contexualising? Am I equipping? Am I focusing more on creating a manual, giving them identities, or are these answers to 'how' part of the question?

Am I leaning more towards understanding?

Can both be adapting to each other?

Am I trying to make them into new groups or am I treating them as individuals? Do they hate conformity or do they like to make their own labels?

How do all the aspects combine?

What am I becoming an expert on?

Am I setting a new precedent?

What is important to me vs what is important to Gen Z?

Should I let them understand themselves?

I've identified what they respond to - now confirm it.

If I want to set up a precedent, will this be a sort of a cult? A Chaotic Good cult?

I have a lot of 'what if's.

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An observation I've made is that when I explain the project to someone, I relate them to it by reminding what their own parent might have said. This made me question whether my project is aimed at Gen Z or whether it's aimed at a certain age group with characteristics that span beyond a label.

Looking into age groups, I realised that the grouping 'late adolescent' might be more appropriate for my project's focus than Gen Z. Instead of hard focusing on specific attributes that is unique to Gen Z, I will focus on common attributes that shared by that age group. This would reveal common ground between generations. A starting point would be common things they get told from older generations and common concerns they'd have.

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Notes and thoughts from David's feedback to Dana:

What unique information I have access to because of who I am?

What is the level below 'snapping my fingers and making this happen'?

Clarify exactly what they need.

Rather than taking a blanket approach, find out where I need to aim at the most?

Why is what I'm doing needed?

Show my scope and context. Show my bias - as I'm using my country, what I know is not automatically known to others.

How do I measure my answers?

Does my students get more confidence when I'm in it with them?

Feedback to me:

The reasoning I am looking at how I'm defining my demographic can be my first academic argument. I'm questioning a label. This would also apply to my aversion against certain Western concepts.

Lens of influence: Who's influencing who? Don't simply throw my old lens away. Understand it exists. Figure out how to create that change that perspective in others.

If I am making a statement presuming where Sri Lankan culture is influenced from - religion or colonisation - show evidence.

Where did the parental authority originate from SL?

Stereotype: It gives a sort of preparation. By giving a label that carry characteristics, we can better prepare others to understand each other.

If I can understand every academic argument, then I can choose which one I go through.

With my head being all over the place, I didn't know where to stop when it came to research. I was finding out really interesting things that kept making me think, and I was losing sight of what I really needed for my change to happen. My filter for making these decisions would be my question. I need to check with all the data I find whether it is offering valuable information that would make the answer to my question stronger.

The adult gen is influenced by politics, religion, race, colonisation etc. I should know what influence the way they speak to the young generations.

Why am I focusing on Gen Z and not the other way around? Consciously, I made this decision by looking at the online focus on Gen Z. Many articles deal with telling older generations on how to understand Gen Z, how they work, how they think, why we need to cater to them... but I don't see where it talks about how Gen Z needs to understand the older generations.

Set up different arguments based on intellectual evidence: interventions will show what is right.