Reflective Learning Log #5

CRESWELL (Ch. 11)

Summary of Chapter 11
In this chapter, Creswell reiterates the value of having awareness about the differences between the five approaches to qualitative research. Creswell further distinguishes each of the five approaches by refocusing one research topic or study, for example the gunman case, through the lens of each approach. The author moves through the narrative approach explaining how the focus changes from identifying responses from multiple constituents to just one interview with someone involved in the incident focusing on the racial context and his or her ensuing reactions to the campus shooting. The campus shooting becomes his life experience and the stories are a result of personal, social, and interactional components.

In phenomenology, the researcher focuses on several individual students and a psychological concept. The story would be explored in terms of the fear that students in the shooting experienced, capturing its essence. If a theory needed to be developed, then a grounded approach, as Creswell describes, would have been the appropriate approach. The focus would move to the process of exploring the surreal experiences of students following the shooting and developing a theoretical model that explains those experiences.

Ethnography would focus on the campus community and how it functions as a culture-sharing group. Creswell explains how one could explore how the shooting, though unpredictable, resulted in rather predictable responses by different constituents across campus. This would require the researcher to enter the field, build rapport, and ultimately tell a story through his interpretation of the events that ensued.

Creswell concludes by re-examining the question of “how does the approach to inquiry shape the design of a study?” To answer this question, he offers seven suggestions; the approach identifies the focus of the study, interpretation flows throughout, the language of the research design procedures is shaped by the approach, the approach is inclusive of the participants, consider how the data will be analyzed, the approach informs the written product as well as the structure, and assessment criteria differ among approaches. Creswell recommends that a researcher design a study within the bounds of one approach reflecting the nuances that are unique to that approach.

Reflections and Analysis
This chapter was rather fascinating. I appreciated how Creswell used one case example and weaved it through each approach explaining how the study would look differently and where the focus of the study would shift. In class, we each decided on our topic and similarly, explored how our studies may develop through each of the five approaches. As Creswell articulated, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate when to use one approach over another as there are many ways that one case could very well cross over and become the product of a different approach.

One thing to keep in mind is that each approach is very very different to say the least. It really depends on whose story you want to tell and how you want to tell it. I also appreciated Creswell’s insight in that the essence of a good qualitative study can be captured if a researcher is able to convey the approach of inquiry, research design procedures, and philosophical and theoretical frameworks and assumptions. These are essentially the crux of qualitative research and regardless of the approach contribute to a rigorous and contributive study.



GOLDEN-BIDDLE AND LOCK (Chapter 1)

Summary of Chapter 1
In Chapter 1, Golden-Biddle and Locke establish the notion that as researchers, we are text-writers among knowledge-creating professions and we maintain our status through textual networking. The authors ascertain the need to explore what we often take for granted in the scientific writing process… the writing process itself and discussions that illuminate the endeavor.

Academic writing is often devoid of emotion, attitude, and judgment and is simplified for the sole purpose of knowledge transfer. As authors we are encouraged to write using an active voice being sure to avoid suggestive language and stick to professional code as prescribed by scholarship. Golden-Biddle and Locke make the point that while academic writing is structured and particular it certainly is not straightforward. The reporting style of academic writing makes comprehension challenging for readers who are not among the disciplines within which we write. The authors make the claim that this actually deters some readers from engaging in our reading. When doctoral students were asked to share about their learning experiences in writing academically, most of them shared that it was structured, difficult to learn the language, and they struggled getting their ideas across without self-expression.

In their discussion about what to write, the authors indicate that a writer writes much more than what they physically experienced in the field, they are called to discuss their thoughts and comparisons as they relate to what they believe about their field experience. But often our experiences are trumped by space constraints and publishing expectations, again limiting the true shape that the experience takes as it is written and read.

When determining whom we are writing for, we are influenced by intended audiences and susceptible to their influence. We often write for researchers and scholars within our specialization and the meaning we develop and articulate in our work is geared towards the theoretical models embraced by that discipline. Our contribution to the literature is manifested in our ability to link our insights and experiences to existing theory ensuring that it is both true and significant.

The authors discuss the ‘how’ of this writing by exploring the style and practice of academic writing. The accrediting process in moving our writing from proposal to publishing invites our work to be both persuasive and contributive, advancing our claims as knowledge and not merely as ideas to be ignored or challenged.

The persuasive discourse of our knowledge contribution often takes many forms but is always grounded in theoretical insights that have already laid the foundation on which knowledge is built. This is no different in qualitative writing. However, here the authors begin to explore other literary devices used in qualitative writing such as metaphors in order to depict the stories we discern in the field. Our writing task involves four components: articulating our insights in theoretically relevant terms, identifying and shaping our contribution through a storyline, arguing the uniqueness of our story line by challenging and acknowledging its limitations, and characterizing ourselves as storytellers.

Reflections and Analysis
Since my first assignment in my first psychology course in college I have been assigned course papers that strengthen my capacity to write both scientifically and academically. It was like learning another language and since I have been in either psychology or educational fields since, my default has been APA style, first person, empirically based, analytical, and especially “unadorned and disembodied.” I realize I like the structure of academic writing and I find that I get nervous when I’m asked to “take away the training wheels” and explore the research process as phenomena occur, as it is socially constructed around me and through literature.

The authors make a great point that “if the writing of scientific work does not come naturally, then neither does the reading of it for audiences outside these disciplinary boundaries” (p. 11). But this was further clarified by the fact that we intentionally choose our audience by deciding to explore a concept within a discipline of academic writers and scholars who have the “insider language”. By simply moving through the writing and publishing processes, we expose both ourselves and our writing to critique.

It is in the constraint of publishing and truly academic writing that I see where qualitative writing gets tricky and messy. In an effort to give our writing depth and meaning in the academic field we have to give consideration to our writing as being worthy of inclusion in this “public” theoretical discourse. Yet in order to give our experiences and stories depth and meaning, we have to be able to “show” not tell through literary devices that, convey the results and theoretical implications of our insights, contribute to the literature, and also accurately depict the holistic experience of the story we are trying to tell. Somewhere in all of that we inject our own personal style and beliefs about how theory and story meet. So it makes sense to me know that I would find qualitative writing a bit more consuming than I bargained for.