Reflective Reading Log #4

CRESWELL (Ch. 10)

Summary of Chapter 10
Creswell touches on the importance for researchers to understand the knowledge that is gained from visiting with participants, asking questions to elicit meaning, and spending hours in the culture and in the field. In an effort to “check” this knowledge one must seek to validate the account and determine by whose standards this validation is suitable.

Validation and reliability in qualitative research vary in terms of perspective, definition, and procedure. Creswell explores the literature on validation and summarizes each of the major findings indicating that some writers use qualitative equivalents to quantitative methods of validation, some writers contend that qualitative validation requires more natural and fluid terms. In some cases, writers replace the use of the word validation with such words as credibility and utilize a different set of standards to judge research. Further still are writers whom conceptualize qualitative research through a postmodern frame. Other writers use an interpretive approach, draw on metaphors through the image of a crystal, or have little use for validation altogether. Creswell considers these perspectives and focuses on eight strategies that are employed by researchers and recommends, “qualitative researchers engage in at least two of them in any given study.”

Reliability, much like validation, can be addressed in many ways in qualitative research, mostly through detailed field notes, quality transcriptions, and through “blind” coding and intercoder agreements. Establishing the quality of qualitative research depends on the variety of standards that exist and vary within the research community. Such standards can be through a procedural/methodological perspective, a postmodern perspective, and an interpretive perspective. Creswell further explores how these standards can be utilized with each of the five approaches to qualitative research. In addition to the standards discussed through Creswell’s exploration of the literature, he also offers his own set of standards by which a researcher can judge his or her work.

Reflections and Analysis
As open to interpretation as I find qualitative research to be in general, it doesn’t surprise me that the concept of validity and reliability is the same. There are several perspectives and standards for measuring the validity. I found this chapter helpful in my understanding of qualitative research in that it identifies standards that inform whether or not your research findings are accurate—do they truly capture what the participants reported or are they the researchers’ own version of what was gathered in interviews. These standards also inform whether or not the research is trustworthy. Words such as transferability, authenticity, dependability, confirmability actually make sense to me as a way to describe the quantitative equivalent to internal/external validation, reliability, and objectivity. With qualitative research it is hard for me to understand how one person’s observations, interpretations, and conclusions are essentially “valid”— a sense of checks and balances if you will is needed to give the research credibility. Time spent in the field, thick description, and triangulation of data are among the ways to make sure that findings are transferable and essentially credible.

In grounded theory, which I focus on since that is the approach I am utilizing in my project, the suggested criteria used to judge the quality of the research, according to Strauss and Corbin (1990), is comprised of seven items. I like the way these criterion flow beginning with identifying how the original sample was collected and on what grounds. This captures the essence of the research at its preliminary moment, before the researcher has collected data and identified categories or themes. Then once themes are identified, the criterion suggest that one seeks to understand what events, incidents, and actions specifically point to some of the categories. I especially appreciate the 6th criterion that asks what hypotheses pertained to the relationship among categories and on what grounds were these hypotheses formulated and tested. This holds the researcher accountable and it is advised that discrepancies are accounted for as well as an explanation of how they affect the hypotheses. While there is plenty of room for interpretation, these standards provide the researcher with benchmarks that ensure a sound study and an opportunity to include and discuss the criteria in the final write-up.


MY FRESHMAN YEAR (Ch. 6-7, Afterward)

Summary of Chapters 6, 7, and Afterward
Chapter 6 of Nathan’s My Freshman Year was the last chapter of her actual research and time in the field. She discusses the cultural traditions of college/campus life and summarizes the culture in terms of how students navigate and manage college as an art. First outlining “classic” American college culture and the male experience, Nathan recounts the impact of peer influence as a measure of success and that the cultural codes expressed in eighteenth and nineteenth century college life are remarkably similar to the culture of the twenty-first century. The first notion of managing college is “time management.” “The key to succeeding at college is effort and good planning.” Yet Nathan found that the juggling wasn’t between preparing for courses and studying for exams, rather it was “controlling college by shaping schedules, taming professors, and limiting workload.”

In this sense, students arrange their schedules to accommodate their lifestyle as opposed to changing their lifestyle to accommodate a busy academic schedule. This means building in social activities, club involvement, and selecting courses that fit a student’s needs either by way of time of course offerings or courses’ levels of demand. Similarly, Nathan’s observations revealed “you can get what you want from classes by establishing and using a personal relationship with your teachers.” Placating to the teachers’ ideals and completing assignments that reflect the teacher’s mindset gives them what they want—this was among the relationship advice espoused by students. Doing what’s necessary was one of the way students regulate their workload. Nathan uses mostly research and statistics to convey the message here that students are often cultured to “ditch” class, strategically cut corners by only studying for and reading materials that student’s will be tested on, and partake in questionable forms of “cheating.” Her findings indicated that most students viewed academic integrity through blurred lines and vague definitions. She concludes the chapter by examining seniors’ ability to move through the college scene successfully having in some fashion employed the strategies discussed.

In chapter 7, Nathan reflects on her transition both in the student experience as a professor and her transition back into her role as a professor having been a student. She answers the lingering questions that colleagues, and essentially readers, have about her personal learning and the implications that her findings have on higher education and in the future. She refers to the shared ignorance that teachers and students possess as they encounter and sometimes misperceive the other’s world. Nathan discusses how her experience has re-shaped how she teaches her courses and how she perceives her students inside and outside of the classroom. In terms of policy and change, Nathan offers several examples showing how “assumptions that do not reflect the reality of student life can lead to weak analyses, bad policy, or ineffective solutions to problems.” College is characterized as a rite of passage and the behaviors described in preceding chapters shape what is known as college culture. Students at this juncture, suspend normal rules of society in an effort to explore their identities, grapple with the generation’s questions, and look to their future in curiosity. This chapter ends with the notion that college culture is deeply rooted and influenced by society or American culture. Nathan explores the university as a business subject to the ebbs and flows of the wavering market and plummeting economy. This affects affordability on many different fronts for the university and the student alike. Nathan ends the chapter with highlighting the conflicting messages that institutions send to students about what it means to be educated—career skills and money-focused benefits verses the importance of humility, tolerance, self-criticism, and the wise use of power.

The afterword provides the reader with a behind the scenes account of the author’s research. Nathan discusses the ethical boundaries she encroached upon when she reached the writing portion of her research. Relinquishing all professional responsibilities, Nathan underwent the transformation to become a student in all senses of the term. She unveils key moments where she disclosed her identity for the sake of reciprocating the vulnerability she encountered with other students in specific settings. Many of her conversations and gleanings, while trendy and significant in understanding student culture, were out of the confines of what was ethical to use for her book. Under the premise that she was a student, there were many opportunities for her to put down her notes and simply be a student knowing well that she would not be able to incorporate them into her publication.

Reflections and Analysis
Chapter 6

I found Nathan’s observation and analysis in Chapter 6, The Art of College Management, to be very intriguing. At first I was skeptical of her conclusions about what contributes to students’ abilities to be successful in college. I found myself wondering, and actually wrote down at the end of the chapter, what about other factors that contribute to academic and overall college success? How does she define success, how is success generally defined? I was concerned that her conclusions were isolated and narrowed down to her observations and experiences within the field, which the were, but I mean in the sense that she collected the very bare and raw material necessary to conclude that it all boils down to time management, the perfect schedule, the care and handling of professors, any only doing what’s necessary in terms of course workload. In other words, I wondered if she had made hypotheses or came to a set of conclusions on her own and then in self-fulfilling prophecy looked for examples, information, and findings that confirmed her initial perceptions. Not to say that her perceptions were false necessarily, I agreed with much of what she described, but it just seemed as though her findings supported her predictions as opposed to the other way around.

However, after skimming through the chapter again and thinking about it, I feel a little differently. Much of this may be due to the fact that it had been a month or so since I had read the preceding chapters and my initial understanding of her style of writing and her observations had swayed after much of our online threaded discussions about her study in general. I must say, now, though that even when I initially read through this chapter I more or less agreed with her observations about how students negotiated their lives at college. Whether she came to these conclusions initially or after much time spent in the field, I appreciated her exploration of college culture. I found myself nodding agreement either having experienced some of the strategies myself as a college student or know plenty of students on my own campus who execute them in the same way. Time management is absolutely less about how to schedule in adequate time to study and prepare for class (in my undergraduate career of course) and more about how can one fit that activity or social opportunity in an already packed schedule. I found it most interesting when Nathan observed that at AnyU “the university had designated no unscheduled hours during the week when meetings, lectures, film series, or other event could be held without interference.” Balancing courses and shaping the perfect schedule is absolutely an art. I don’t know about treating professors in a friendly manner results in better understanding and more forgiveness later, but I wouldn’t put it past a college student. Doing what is necessary for class is necessary to keep that life balance that Nathan speaks of as the key to success. However, attendance, preparation, and ideals on cheating have risen to new fashions that I could not relate with. Perhaps I was the student with the guilty conscience who graduated with a halo over my head. By the end of the chapter I still wondered about other factors that may or may not contribute to student success like environment, upbringing, natural intelligence, learned study habits, emotionally stability, major selection, motivation for college. But at the same time, those didn’t get at the “culture” that Nathan describes, those are the individual characteristics that each student brings to the general college culture and college experience. So suffice it to say, that I appreciated and agreed with Nathan’s analysis in this chapter.

Chapter 7

Nathan’s actual observation and field experience had more or less finished by chapter 7, which I was not expecting. I was just getting into the book, her style, her experience, and beginning to feel as if I was right there beside her and suddenly she is reflecting on her experience and relating it back to her initial role as a professor first. I really appreciated her newfound respect and understanding of the student experience and I agree with her when she says that more teachers could see students and student culture from “the other side” in order to realize their students’ perceptions and ways of navigating the college scene.

One thing that stands out to me was that Nathan mentioned how “most professors have no idea what a dorm room looks like, or about the routes of the campus bus system, or the cost of books, tuition, and housing. Most students have no understanding of faculty rank, how the university actually functions, or how professors advance in their careers. They [students] have little appreciation for the after-hours work that goes into staging the course they are taking, and no inking of what teach are required to do beside teach.” I find this to be incredibly fascinating because while this may seem like a two-way street in terms of understanding the others’ experience, it’s not. Simply put, at one point ALL professors were college students and at no point were students were ever professors. So it is does not seem fair when Nathan says “it is easy to see students as irresponsible, deceitful, and self-indulgent, just as it is easy to see teachers as officious, unkind, and self-important.” Why is it that professors completely forget what its like to be a student, much in the same way that parents forget what its like to be a child or a teenager? Furthermore, professors are often shocked or disappointed by students’ behavior that Nathan describes as purely college culture. While in chapter 6 Nathan described student’s behavior as negative and a discourse, in chapter 7 she justifies it, saying that students are generally good, the majority do not cheat or take the easy way out, and that “the actual experience of individual students is much richer than the normative expressions of student culture.” While I appreciate her journey and exploration of her own alienation as a professor, I don’t know that I would give students quite the benefit of the doubt. While culture is grounded in many things, including societal influence, market fluctuations, generational differences, etc, and is rather difficult to change, I don’t feel its appropriate to attribute all behavior good and bad to “college culture” without scrutiny and reflection of one’s role in changing or shifting the culture. I hear that a lot at my own institution, many individuals attribute student’s negative behavior to the “culture” and that somehow dismisses their responsibility in facilitating change. While the inclination is to, as Nathan says, address the negatives in student culture with a frontal attack-- that is not the answer either. In fact Nathan hits it head on when she says “I believe that policy works best when it reflects a positive regard for the judgment of those it seeks to influence and a respect for the resiliency of the culture it wishes to change.”

Afterward

After reading through the chapters, discussing much of her work through threaded discussions, and understanding her own learning throughout the process, I completely appreciated this text. I thought it was very interesting that most of her learning and interpretation came during the writing process, not during her actual time in the field. This chapter really conveys the “behind the scenes” aspects of her research; I wish she had expanded more on this. It occurred to me that there were so many aspects of the research project in general that she hadn’t given a great deal of consideration until the moment or the necessity to, presented itself. For example, navigating the reaction of and her relationship with students who might read the finished product and find themselves in her work. She more or less figured she would deal with it when the time came.

This chapter also helped me in understanding her shift in writing from the first 5 chapters and the 6th chapter. Her descriptions in the first chapters were so rich and full of detail. Her insights were supported by student comments, dialogue in and out of class, and the plethora of notes she collected as a result of conversations in the hall, in class, and through wall postings. It was almost as if her research agenda was front-loaded with a majority of her insights gathered during the first semester. Then in chapter 6, her descriptions of actual events were less forthcoming as compared to her observations of student behavior in general and her interpretation of those behaviors or snippets of quotes. However, in the afterward she explained the difference. While valuable information was gathered through spontaneous conversations and out-of-class gatherings, it was all under the precept that she was a student and therefore felt that it was unethical to use any of the information from these accounts in her writing. The reality was that anyone she quoted and the interviews to which she referred were all conducted with informed consent and disclosure of her identity as a researcher. In the end, I didn’t feel she was nearly as sneaky or deceitful as I had initially suspected her to be. This chapter is very helpful in mediating the internal conflicts one may encounter as they wrap their mind around her experience as a professor in a student’s world. She described three instances where she disclosed her identity, however, I wonder how that confines her research slightly. Students talk! Even when they tell you they don’t, they do. I would be skeptical to assume that the small groups and select individuals that were told maintained total confidentiality. Is it ethical to disclose to some and not others? For the students that she developed relationships with and whom she encountered later, how were they not violated to learn about her research and the fact that she was a professor? I almost think she would have fared better to remain completely anonymous even throughout the publishing process. Waiting a year or two did not suffice in my opinion. Over all, however, Nathan wrote an excellent story and captured the true essence, in my opinion, of college students, the college culture, and the college experience!