Creswell, continued.....

     I like the idea of finding families of information, chunked together.  I am doing preliminary research, applying for grants.  No, you can’t just work on one all the time.  I previously learned to multi-think and have lots of folders.  When my mentor began telling her latest several thoughts, I thought, “I have to go and label all this in files with names on them, and look up more on the Web.” I noticed, however, in talking with her about the grant process that she rather would prefer that I bring them all to a point and allow themes and patterns to emerge.  At least I thought that was what she meant.  When I explained that I was studying qualitative inquiry, and correlated that with our own paradigm, I suspected that we came to be speaking the same language.  It didn’t really have words, and didn’t need to.  It was fun.  “Yes, Yes, Yes,” she said.

     When I got to the part of our reading that spoke of “dismantling a dichotomy” and “examining silences”, I actually felt that I wanted to devote my life to this author (Martin, 1990, p. 355).  It reminded me of the painterly practice of examining the negative spaces that are found between objects. He went on to explore “limits of what is conceivable or permissible.”  The whole thing made my day.  Creswell was right when he said we would have fun.  The data analysis spiral made the whole business come to life.  I could imagine myself in there, back and forth, around and around.  It is the opposite of linear, and it is a hard and fast process that can remain fluid and flexible. Talking about the architecture of a study.  And deconstructing the narrative.  My, oh, my.

     I thought the computer systems could all be extremely useful.  The data reminds me of an unopened Christmas present in its mystery.  I had a similar feeling when I high-fired porcelain ceramics and did hypotheses in quantitative statistics.  If one pot exploded, that was the lot.  Almost always, they were more surprising and beautiful than we could possibly take credit for.

     Since I am a writing teacher by trade, I was so pleased to see Creswell mention the themes that might arise from the story.  I developed a series of lesson plans for my sixth grade writing classes using autobiographical recall to bring to the fore vivid memories of childhood that I hypothesized would improve narrative writing in students.  Probably the least part of the research was improved writing techniques and (dreaded) No Child Left Behind test scores.  The techniques of writing were improved dramatically and the test scores soared anyway.  More importantly and unexpectedly, there arose a wellspring of exquisite emotional reveal, and, what was more surprising, improved psycho-emotional response to classwork and to each other. I would love to know more about his three-dimensional model.  But a theme that stood out for me was that here we were not looking for anything specific.  We allowed the natural flow of events to arise.  Of course we had ideas.  We had core elements.  But we refused to assign ANYONE a tedious topic, or subject, or format, or rubric, or had the slightest thought aside from bringing out the art, bringing out the human. 

     They will not feel marginalized.  We will see to it.

Steps in a Process, QUALITATIVE INQUIRY AND RESEARCH DESIGN, Creswell, chapters 4, 5, 6

     Finally, a glimmer of light has dawned at the end of a provocative and fascinating tunnel.  There will still be twists and turns aplenty, no doubt.  While reading chapters 4, 5, and 6, it was helpful to me to think of a qualitative research idea that interests me.  It may or not be the one I ultimately choose (or I may choose many), but, by superimposing my thoughts over the skein of pathways presented, I was better able to better comprehend the five approaches presented.

      I had been drawn to the narrative approach. The story of Vonnie Lee was liberating in a number of ways.  The answer to Vonnie Lee’s fascination with the symbol of the heart was hidden in the normal presuppositions that I would certainly have held along with the author.  However, the author was able to step outside of his training and prejudice to come to a delightful understanding:  the young man was just tickled to ride the badly scheduled bus.  My father once said “Don’t feel sorry for people because you would be devastated to find yourself in their circumstances.  They may be happier than any of us will ever be.”  Despite Vonnie Lee’s challenging circumstances, there were things that made him very happy.  The author was unknowingly able to facilitate and later understand the hidden meanings.  My idea of working with college students who have Attention Deficit Disorder and are trying to come to terms with life away from the schedule and aid of family members might not fit into the narrative schema, but I certainly gained a new kind of sensitivity and focus from reading Vonnie Lee's study.

     The phenomenological study about persons with Auto Immune Deficiency Disorder could probably jive with some of my thoughts about students with ADD.  There could be systematic data analysis and a central phenomenon.  I like that the authors set aside their own experiences to explore the lived experiences of their subjects.  So, yes, there is a possibility.  But a larger number of subjects was required for this study compared to the narrative study.   The grounded study of women who had suffered sexual abuse was systematic and scientific, but there was much care and sensitivity taken with the subjects.  Might I develop a theoretical model and relate it to the research I have done about secondary students trying to cope with post-secondary education settings?  Perhaps, but I needed to know more.  I have always enjoyed reading ethnographic studies, way before I had any idea what the term meant.  The research of Margaret Mead is fascinating.  Would I spend months or years immersed in a subculture?  Probably not right now.  What a thought for future studies!  The case study, with a system bounded by time and place to create a complex picture, might be tweaked to work with my idea.  I read on.  The idea that each type of study involved a special type of focus was causing me to become a bit more focused. 

     Chapter 6 brought it all home for me (inasmuch as it, indeed, at home).  There were steps, procedures that were becoming understandable.  Somewhat.  The research question is posed and tied to the issue.  It made sense to me that there would be a back and forth in order to integrate components, because it has seemed that preconceived notions are anathema to the qualitative researcher.  I like that so much!  I think I might have a population that has been most understudied.  The students with ADD, yes, but I have also been interested in those gifted students who seem to have an unwarranted difficulty creating writing, especially narrative writing.  Might that be an area of research for me? 

     The author continued to take each step of research through all five types of studies.  The steps leading to the development of a purpose statement were familiar from a study of single subject research design.  The ensuing  identification of an approach, encoding, foreshadowing, and developing a central question,  sub-questions and procedural questions, were, yes, somewhat understandable.  Even encoding seemed to be something that I might someday tackle. I have breathed a sigh of relief.  Thank you, Mr. Creswell.

Qualitative Research: A View from the Bridge

     What I am viewing from the bridge is a fuzzy picture of my mind attempting to comprehend and my mouth attempting to drink from a hose the extensive new material, including a vast and unfamiliar nomenclature, provided this week for our perusal and digestion (or lack of).  It has not been an unpleasant experience, since I am excited and challenged by the series of worldviews presented.  It has been an experience not unlike my high school reading of Encyclopedia Brittannica, when I sat with a newly purchased unabridged dictionary by my side at all times. Should I have done so more often during my academic career?  Probably.  But I relied on the tried and true technique of coming to grips with a word in context or online lookup.  That practice has remained unsuccessful from the beginning of this course.
     The whole thing rather reminds me of my own research into the nature of reality.  My opinion:  it really is not possible to understand anyway, so why trouble your mind with it?  I have a lingering hope that I can understand a bit of what it being said in our week's readings of Denzin, Lincoln, and Creswell. Surely they did not just make it up just for fun.  Then I came upon Critical Realism.  I thought, "This is for me!  I am all for a rejection of a particular definition of reality.  Obviously, there as many realities as there are peceivers of reality."  However, my own thought runs more like:  there is universal consciousness out there that includes all realities, rather than the author's statement that "there are worlds out there that are observable and independent of human consciousness (Denzen et al., 2004)."  I believe that consciousness is consciousness.  What the devil does it matter if one is independent of the other?  Just as  was reconciling myself to the annoyance of that statement, I come upon he author's demand that we have a social science that address all the social justice issues.  What about reporting what is there?  I became confused.
     Toward the end of our reading, it became apparent that the present state of qualitative research is really a combination of and always a nod to, even in passing, all that has gone before.  I was relieved to discover the author say as much.  Also a relief was that thought that the materials is as always, filtered through a lens that involves "language, gender, social class, race, and ethnicity" (Denzin et al., 2008).  During the reading about the early studies and the Lone Ethnographer, I recalled reading two particular studies years ago that I am no longer able to site.  The first involved an Englishman (eighteenth century, I believe) who chose to assume the disguise of a Moslem so as to infiltrate Mecca.  It was a dangerous thing to do, because death was the sentence for approaching the holy of holies as an infidel.  The brave fellow made it through, and delivered what I believed to be an unbiased and adventure-laden account of the whole affair.  The other study was by an early observer of the Natchez Indian tribe, a particularly dangerous group of indigenous folk.  He lived to tell the tale of what seemed to be a realistic, if somewhat gory, account of Natchez Indian life.  I remember thinking at the time that If this was field study,I wanted to do it.
    The researcher's viewpoint still seems valid, and indeed must be taken into account.  Since we are human, of course he speaks from his experiential point of reference, unavoidably.  The passage about interpretive paradigms rather brought the whole reading to a good conclusion for me.  I liked that he did not try to analyze each paradigm and perspective at the beginning, but gave enough history about the whole business to give me a fighting chance of understanding.  I will read page 30, part Theoretical paradigm and Perspectives, and the explanation on page 31 over and over.  Some of it all is beginning to soak in.  Relief came when I read that there were lots of methods to use in all the reading, analysis, interviewing, and observation that comes into play.  What I find so exciting is that, yes, the field involves a huge amount of creativity.  The research rather does remind me of a painting.  One has a viewpoint, one takes all the pieces of experience and winds them into a brilliant montage, as a skilled bricoleur should.