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.