20th Annual Conference on Interdisciplinary Qualitative Studies
1992 Conference Proceedings
Abstracts and Key Words
S. Brock
D. Kleiber
M. White
Personal Narratives of Elite College Athletes: Stories of Career-Ending Injuries
Key Words: athlete injury narratives
Abstract: This study uses a life narrative approach to interpret the impact of serious injury on the lives of elite athletes. It is intended thereby to dramatize the subjective experience of illness more generally and to offer implications for more effective intervention. The concept of liminality is found to be particularly useful in characterizing the experience of those interviewed.
D. Brook
Issues of Researcher Role and Subjectivity in Research on Educational Change in South Africa
Key Words: researcher role, educational reform
Abstract: Aspects of subjectivity and researcher role are examined in case study research in the rapidly changing educational arena in South Africa. Dilemmas faced by the researcher and the importance of experiential knowledge are illustrated with examples from field research in schools at the forefront of the movement to abolish racially segregated schooling in South Africa.
D. Brown
Why Are We Giving the Tests Anyway? Teachers' and Principals' Perceptions of State Mandated Testing
Key Words: testing, perceptions
Abstract: Teachers and principals in three states were interviewed using a nonscheduled interview guide to determine their attitudes regarding state mandated testing. Major themes that emerged included limited use of results by teachers, redundancy of information in scores that verified teachers' previous knowledge of students, and the belief that the public places too much emphasis on the results of external tests.
H. Chang
Persist or Perish in the Qualitative Studies of Adolescents: Strategies to Win a Silent Negotiation
Key Words: negotiation strategies, studies of adolescents
Abstract: In qualitative studies of adolescents, negotiation with teenagers is almost a survival skill, not usually taught in research method classes. Nevertheless, success in the negotiation shapes researchers' relationships with the informants and ultimately the quality of data. This paper introduces a new concept of silent negotiation to describe the process of establishing and maintaining rapport with adolescent informants. Drawing upon my three cross-cultural studies of American, Korean, and Korean-American adolescents, I discuss four strategies of negotiation that helped me to persist fieldwork and successfully maintain rapport with young people.
R. Chenail
Scientific, Artistic, and Clinical Qualitative Research
Key Words: theory and methodology
Abstract: Sharing common interests (e.g., description, interpretation, criticism, subjectivity, etc.) with scientific qualitative research are two contrasting traditions of research and practice: methods and ways of knowing from the arts and humanities, and from the clinical fields. The shapes of these three forms of qualitative research will be presented, compared and contrasted, and research projects embracing one or more will be illustrated.
N. Dana
T. Dana
K. Kelsay
D. Thomas
D. Tippins
Qualitative Interviewing and the Art of Questioning: Promises, Possibilities, Problems and Pitfalls
Key Words: interviewing, qualitative research methodology
Abstract: The "art of questioning" during qualitative interviewing as well as appropriate alternatives to questioning (i.e., active listening, invitation to elaborate, wait time) are discussed. In a simulation, participants will practice interview questioning and alternative to questioning skills. Additionally, participants will analyze actual interview transcriptions for problematic questions (i.e., questions that impose predetermined responses, dichotomous questions, posing multiple questions as one question). Finally, a panel of qualitative researchers discuss their experiences with qualitative interviewing with children and adults.
N. Davis
Change from Teachers' Perspectives: A Model of Personal Change
Key Words: autobiographies, action research
Abstract: Action research and critical autobiographical ethnographies are used as a basis to discuss the process of teacher change. Issues associated with working with teachers in interpretive research projects will also be discussed.
G. A. Fine
Ten Lies of Ethnography
Key Words: ethnographic standards, compromises
Abstract: All work includes ways of doing things that would be appropriate for those outside of the occupancy to know about. In this address I describe the underside of ethnographic work--those compromises that one frequently makes with idealized ethnographic standards.
J. Gale
B. Lindsey
Activities for Educators in "Teaching" Students Epistemologies of
Subjectivity
Key Words: constructivism, epistemology
Abstract: This paper will present various activities that educators of various disciplines have used to teach students to conceptualize and act from various non-positivist epistemologies. The activities presented were gathered from a survey distributed internationally. Issues including evaluation of students, research based on subjective measures, and working within a university setting will be presented.
J. Haas
The Interpretive Process for Learning the 'Taken for Granteds':
From Stranger to Intimate and Back Again
Key Words: participant observation, validity
Abstract: This paper discusses the advantages of participant observation for learning the "hidden meanings" or "taken for granteds" of groups we study. The analysis focuses on the range of relationships--stranger, acquaintance, and intimate--which can develop and how each of these levels of intimacy and estrangement over time are helpful for grasping what is important to know about the group we purport to know.
L. Hart
J. Reeves
L. Warren
Processes of Interdisciplinary Team Planning in the Middle School
Key Words: team planning processes, interdisciplinary curriculum
Abstract: This paper will review research literature on teacher planning and present two studies of middle school teachers planning together in interdisciplinary teams. The two studies provide support for the importance of the school context in how teachers plan together and how they view team planning.
P. Hearron
"They Said to Make a College": Families' Perceptions of
Kindergarten Homework Tasks
Key Words: literacy acquisition, families and school
Abstract: I examined the home-school interface in the process of literacy acquisition, with a particular focus on non-mainstream families and the literacy tasks with which the school expected parents to help their children. Data included 1) field notes from a kindergarten classroom; 2) audio recordings made by the families of six of the children; 3) interviews; and 4) samples of writing and drawing.
L. Heshusius
Methodological Concerns About Subjectivity: Will We Free
Ourselves From Objectivity?
Key Words: objective/subjective dualism, bias
Abstract: The real shift in contemporary concerns about how we can know is not from objectivity to subjectivity, but from the parasitic objective/subjective dualism to knowing as an expression of participatory consciousness. The relevance of this shift for educational research will be explored.
M. Horney
Supporting Multiple Perspectives: Case Studies of Using Hypertext
in Qualitative Research
Key Words: Hypertext, parallel cognition
Abstract: This paper presents a study in which three educational researchers used a hypertext editing system, EntryWay, for the analysis of qualitative data. The researchers were able to code and organize data, easily transfer it to other computer applications, and flexibly display their results. Suggestions for further research in the use of hypertext are presented and the software will be demonstrated.
C. Langone
R. Rohs
The Use of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods to Evaluate an
Adult Community Education Program
Key Words: evaluation, community adult education
Abstract: Determining the impact of educational programs is a challenge for planners and evaluators. This paper describes the use of qualitative and quantitative methods to provide a comprehensive evaluation of an adult leadership development program.
J. Meloy
Experiencing the Qualitative Dissertation as a Researcher, Writer
and Reader
Key Words: dissertations, subjectivity
Abstract: The literature on how to design, experience, and write up qualitative research exemplifies a linear, rational paradigm that does little to reflect the actual experiencing of qualitative researchers. I will share letters/vignettes of 20 people who reflect upon everything from the decision to do qualitative research to their retrospective understandings of it in ways that celebrate the "subjective," human side of experiencing.
M. Merryfield
Constructing Scenes and Dialogues to Display Findings in Case
Study Reporting
Key Words: writing up qualitative
research, case study reporting
Abstract: I describe a method whereby researchers construct scenes and dialogues to display findings in case study reporting. Scenes, as products of inquiry, offer readers entry into the lives of people in order that they learn of multiple perspectives, contextual factors, and issues in much the same way that a researcher does.
B. McCarty
K. Davis
Alternative Assessments: A Constructivist Approach
Key Words: alternative assessment, alternative paradigms, evaluation
Abstract: This study will examine the implications of alternative paradigms the dissatisfaction with standardized testing, and present several alternatives in the form of portfolios, journals and projects as implemented by an elementary teacher and a college professor.
A. Peshkin
Experience Subjectivity
Key Words: effective research, subjectivity
Abstract: Becoming aware of the nature and impact of one's subjectivity is critical for effective research. Acknowledgement of our subjectivity is important but not sufficient. We must search out our subjectivity so that we become meaningfully aware of the intertwining of ourselves in all phases of our research projects.
T. Schram
Negotiating a Positive Marginality for Researcher and Informant
Key Words: marginality, gaining entree, ethnography
Abstract: among the many implications for ethnographers in the code of ethics is the basic concern that people must be informed of your role-who you are and what you want. In this paper I address gaining entree and managing multiple perceptions of my role within an ethnographic study of teacher and peer influences upon the education of Laotian refugee students in a small American high school. I examine how one manages the distinct intentionalities manifested in the role of participant observer, and then focus on the development of shared intentions among those-both fieldworker and informants- who hold marginal status in the setting.
J. Stubbs
J. Bozarth
Beyond Heuristic Research: A Journey in Subjectivity
Key Words: heuristic; qualitative; person-centered
Abstract: This article notes the relationship between heuristic research (Moustakas, 1990) and the person-centered research model (Barrineau & Bozarth, 1989) which was developed from the principles of Person-Centered Psychotherapy (Also called Client- Centered Psychotherapy) (Rogers, 1951). A systematic summary of the principles of the Person-Centered Research Model is proposed and examples from research conducted in Czechoslovakia during a cross-cultural communication workshop is presented. Testimonial examples to the reality of the researcher's endeavoring to follow the guidelines of the person-centered research model resulted in a natural emerging creation of a free flowing atmosphere engendering a heightened awareness of the researcher, the research, the researching, and hence the results of the qualitative study.
D. Waite
Its Not What You Know, But Who You Know: Social Networks and the
Negotiation of the Formal, Informal, and Technical Cultures in
Fieldwork
Key Words: ethnography, field work, entree, social network
Abstract: this paper relates the author's experiences in field work, especially in gaining entree and establishing rapport. It presents an alternative to those who advocate step- by-step, recipe-like procedures for field work. In the end, it's really who you know, who you are, and how you relate. The author draws on network theory to explain the phenomenon of gaining entree.
J. Williams
M. Hawkins
M. Lichtman
The Triangulation of Researcher Interpretations of Interview
Data: Cross-Gender Friendships
Key Words: cross-gender, content
analysis
Abstract: One method for overcoming the threat of inherent researcher bias in analyzing interview data is to use multiple researchers to interpret interview content and integrate individual interpretations. An attempt to improve this approach was made by using two researchers to interpret dichotomies of content (e.g., male vs. female; sociological vs. psychological) and a third researcher to integrate the dichotomized interpretations in a separate analysis of the original data.
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