Showing papers in "Qualitative Inquiry in 2004"
TL;DR: In this article, the relationship between reflexivity and research ethics is examined, and the notion of reflexivity is used as a helpful way of understanding both the nature of ethics in qualitative research and how ethical practice in research can be achieved.
Abstract: Ethical tensions are part of the everyday practice of doing research—all kinds of research. How do researchers deal with ethical problems that arise in the practice of their research, and are there conceptual frameworks that they can draw on to assist them? This article examines the relationship between reflexivity and research ethics. It focuses on what constitutes ethical research practice in qualitative research and how researchers achieve ethical research practice. As a framework for thinking through these issues, the authors distinguish two different dimensions of ethics in research, which they term procedural ethics and “ethics in practice.” The relationship between them and the impact that each has on the actual doing of research are examined. The article then draws on the notion of reflexivity as a helpful way of understanding both the nature of ethics in qualitative research and how ethical practice in research can be achieved.
2,157 citations
TL;DR: Guba as discussed by the authors used Foucauldian policy analysis, feminism via Luce Irigaray, and postcolonialism via Stuart Hall to critique the federal government's incursion into legislating scientific method in the realm of educational research via the "evidence-based" movement of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.
Abstract: This talk was the Egon Guba Invited Lecture at the American Educational Research Association annual conference, April, 2003, Chicago. This article mobilizes three counterdiscourses to critique the federal government’s incursion into legislating scientific method in the realm of educational research via the “evidence-based” movement of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. Foucauldian policy analysis, feminism via Luce Irigaray, and postcolonialism via Stuart Hall are used to situate such scientism as a racialized masculinist backlash against the proliferation of research approaches that characterize the past 20 years of social inquiry. Congressional disdain for educational research is addressed within a context of the Science Wars and the needs of neoliberal states, including conservative restoration.
287 citations
TL;DR: The concept of scientifically based research occupies a central place in the thinking of the newly formed Institute of Education Sciences and seems well on its way to becoming the dominant paradigm as mentioned in this paper...
Abstract: The concept of scientifically based research occupies a central place in the thinking of the newly formed Institute of Education Sciences and seems well on its way to becoming the dominant paradigm...
271 citations
TL;DR: Reflexivity involves turning one's reflexive gaze oil discourse-turning language back on itself to see the Work it does in constituting the world as discussed by the authors, where the subject/researcher sees simultaneously the object of her or his gaze and the means by which the object (which may include oneself as subject) is being constituted.
Abstract: Reflexivity involves turning one's reflexive gaze oil discourse-turning language back on itself to see the Work it does in constituting the world. The subject/researcher sees simultaneously the object of her or his gaze and the means by which the object (which may include oneself as subject) is being constituted. The consciousness of self that reflexive writing sometimes entails may be seen to slip inadvertently into constituting the very (real) self that seems to contradict a focus on the constitutive power of discourse. This article explores this site of slippage and of ambivalence. In a collective biography oil the topic of reflexivity, the authors tell and write stories about reflexivity and in a doubled reflexive arc, examine themselves at work during the workshop. Examining their own memories and reflexive practices, they explore this place of slippage and provide theoretical and practical insight into what is going on in reflexive research and writing.
221 citations
TL;DR: Although it is not their intention, institutional review boards (IRBs) often impede the conduct of studies that are not conventional and/or experimental designs as discussed by the authors, as a consequence, studies that were that are
Abstract: Although it is not their intention, institutional review boards (IRBs) often impede the conduct of studies that are not conventional and/or experimental designs As a consequence, studies that are
179 citations
TL;DR: A former student of Pierre Bourdieu's, a bright, witty, and amusing fellow who'd studied in France with the great man, recounted a story of how some of the most profound theoretical statements in postmodern times eventuated as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Years ago, while on a European trip, I met a former student of Pierre Bourdieu's-a bright, witty, and amusing fellow who'd studied in France with the great man. He recounted a story of how some of the most profound theoretical statements in postmodern times eventuated. He was sitting in on a conversation with Bourdieu and a half dozen of his colleagues and their own doctoral students while the senior professors were discussing the meaning of the rise of feminism, identity politics, postcolonial critiques (particularly from out of North Africa, where France had had a presence for many years in Algeria), poststructural critiques of literary theory, and the like. There was great consternation among the sociologists for what they believed to be displacement of their rightful ownership of the Great Ideas of Western history. After some serious and lengthy discussion of what to do about these women, colonial peoples, and other interlopers into the canon, Bourdieu is reported to have expostulated vehemently, All right [Eh, bien].... If we cannot be the center, there IS no center! [Si nous ne peut pas etre le centre, il n'y a pas le centre!]
149 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a layered account based on qualitative research gathered at a county jail and state women's prison illustrates the ways in which organizational discourses and micropractices encourage emotio...
Abstract: This “layered account,” based on qualitative research gathered at a county jail and state women’s prison, illustrates the ways in which organizational discourses and micropractices encourage emotio...
140 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the author outlines her experiences as a woman and as a researcher engaging in the process of becoming a qualitative researcher and writer, and discusses how feminist methodology both challenged her and allowed her to see herself as part of a research community.
Abstract: During her years as a graduate student, the author was involved in not only the outward process of research but also the inward process of developing her own identity as a researcher. This article outlines her experiences as a woman and as a researcher engaging in the process of becoming a qualitative researcher and writer. It grapples with the issues she faced during her fieldwork, specifically, with concerns about her own positionality in relation to her research participants, and discusses how feminist methodology both challenged her and allowed her to see herself as part of a research community. By telling her story, she hopes both to create a more honest analytic process for her own research and to reassure other young feminist researchers that they are not alone.
120 citations
TL;DR: This article examined the sources of the attacks and revealed a wide network of new and recent foundations with decidedly right-wing political views, the establishment and growing power of the National Association of Scholars, and other well-funded efforts to discredit research that uncovers and exposes deep inequities in social life and schooling on gender, race, social class, religion, and/or sexual orientation.
Abstract: Recent legislative and executive orders that mandate preferred methods for evaluating the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 signal a much larger movement in the social sciences. Attacks stemming from the “culture wars” of the 1990s have spread to forms of research labeled “unscientific,” including postmodern research and qualitative research. Examination of the sources of the attacks reveals a wide network of new and recent foundations with decidedly right-wing political views, the establishment and growing power of the National Association of Scholars, and other well-funded efforts to discredit research that uncovers and exposes deep inequities in social life and schooling on gender, race, social class, religion, and/or sexual orientation. Each of these well-funded sources of attack is discussed and the agenda of each is dissected.
83 citations
TL;DR: The reemergence of a narrowly defined "scientifically based research" that marginalizes qualitative approaches represents a major threat to qualitative research as mentioned in this paper, and a postmodern perspective not only c
Abstract: The reemergence of a narrowly defined “scientifically based research” that marginalizes qualitative approaches represents a major threat to qualitative research A postmodern perspective not only c
68 citations
TL;DR: The lack of closure in ethnography is less a problem of unknowables than plural "knowabilities" and the frustrations of choosing among them as mentioned in this paper, which is a problem that is solved by using poetry as a way to encode and share the foundations of such experience.
Abstract: Lack of closure in ethnography is less a problem of unknowables than plural “knowabilities” and the frustrations of choosing among them. Human beings are sensual and intellectual creatures who experience the world through that combination and whose corporeal existences are appropriated and molded by culture—the system of signs and meanings that defines for us the nature of the world and our place in it. Carving science or poetry out of this “made”universe requires heigh tenedsensitivity to its properties. Yet mostly, only poets write about experience consistently from a sensual perspective. Poetry is another way to encode and share the foundations of such experience; poetry can ground theories of the world that actually involve our interactions with it, not just abstractions from it. Thus, a more robust entrance point for modern ethnography may be best centered on some combination of humanistic and scientific design as artful-science, not on either extreme.
TL;DR: The National Research Council Committee's report, in part a response to congressional legislation, pursues an outline for the foundations of an education science necessary for policy making, and argues that they have little to do with science and its relation to policy may not be as fruitful as the committee believes.
Abstract: The National Research Council Committee’s report, in part a response to congressional legislation, pursues an outline for the foundations of an education science necessary for policy making. This article focuses on these foundations and argues that they have little to do with science and its relation to policy may not be as fruitful as the committee believes. The so-called bedrocks of science are based on, at best, weak premises and an unrigorous understanding of the sociology, history, and philosophy of science. There is a nostalgia for a simple and ordered universe of science that never was. The resulting models of science embody a technological sublime that weaves together the procedures of administration and engineering with utopian visions and discourses of progress ordered by the expansion of its expertise. Finally, although the resulting framework was to relieve educational research of its “awful” reputation, the report may reinstitute and reinstantiate those very practices.
TL;DR: This paper used the iconic text Black Skin/White Masks by Frantz Fanon as a metonymic trope to examine the nature of white studies through the autobiographical frame of a Black critic.
Abstract: This article uses the iconic text Black Skin/White Masks by Frantz Fanon as a metonymic trope to examine the nature of White Studies through the autobiographical frame of a Black critic. The articl...
TL;DR: The word itself, "research" is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world's vocabulary as mentioned in this paper, and when mentioned in many indigenous contexts, it stirs up silence, conjures up bad memories, it raises a smile that is knowing and distrustful.
Abstract: The word itself, “research”, is probably one of the dirtiest words in the indigenous world’s vocabulary. When mentioned in many indigenous contexts, it stirs up silence, it conjures up bad memories, it raises a smile that is knowing and distrustful. It is so powerful that indigenous people even write poetry about research. The ways in which scientific research is implicated in the worst excesses of colonialism remains a powerful remembered history for many of the world’s colonized peoples. It is a history that still offends the deepest sense of our humanity. (p. 1)
TL;DR: The passage of No Child Left Behind legislation and the publication of the National Research Council’s Scientific Research in Education have generated much discussion and criticism of the call for reform in education as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The passage of No Child Left Behind legislation and the publication of the National Research Council’s Scientific Research in Education have generated much discussion and criticism of the call for ...
TL;DR: In this paper, an analysis of the power relations involved in this debate, an epistemological analysis of its politics, and resistance to its adverse effects on children and teachers in classrooms are presented.
Abstract: Taking issue with the narrow vision of science the federal government’s demand for scientific-based research in education has produced, this article calls for an analysis of the power relations involved in this debate, an epistemological analysis of its politics, and resistance to its adverse effects on children and teachers in classrooms.
TL;DR: This article argued that memory is not a form of bias but a problematic that must be addressed to provide adequate attention to the youthful informant's legitimacy and authority as an interpreter of experience, and explored multiple representations of memory, the social construction of youth, and these effects in an example of research.
Abstract: Ethnographers of youth often invoke adolescent memories in relation to their informants. This article examines memory as a concern for ethnographers who study young people. It suggests that this rhetorical strategy heightens the narrator’s authority and authenticates the author’s speaking position, pulling the center of the story from the youthful informants toward the adult researcher. At the same time, this strategy ignores power relations between adults and youth. The article explores multiple representations of memory, the social construction of youth, and these effects in an example of research. The article argues that memory is not a form of bias but a problematic that must be addressed to provide adequate attention to the youthful informant’s legitimacy and authority as an interpreter of experience.
TL;DR: In the previous special issue of Qualitative Inquiry, titled Dangerous Discourses: Methodological Conservatism and Governmental Regimes of Truth (Lincoln & Cannella, 2004), the authors analyzed the National Research Council (NRC) report Scientific Research in Education to illustrate the dangers in conceptualizations, forms of legitimation, and methodologies of present day reconstructions of the discourses of research as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: In the previous special issue of Qualitative Inquiry, titled Dangerous Discourses: Methodological Conservatism and Governmental Regimes of Truth (Lincoln & Cannella, 2004), the authors analyzed the National Research Council (NRC) report Scientific Research in Education to illustrate the dangers in conceptualizations, forms of legitimation, and methodologies of present day reconstructions of the discourses of research. The NRC report is a U.S. government–requested project designed to clearly define the nature of research that is to be labeled as representing quality and therefore useful and fundable. Accurately referred to as methodological fundamentalism (House, in press), contemporary conservative research discourses as exhibited in the report have returned to a Western elitist high modernism that would reinscribe a narrow form of experimentalism as the “gold standard” for judging legitimacy and quality. Similar to the backlash against the civil rights and women’s movements during the past 15 to 20 years, diverse research philosophies and methodologies (e.g., critical theory, race/ethnic studies, feminist theories) that are conceptualized from within critical dispositions and have proposed to include the voices and life conditions of the traditionally marginalized are not “just” attacked but are directly rejected (NRC, 2002, “reject[s] the postmodernist school of thought,” p. 25). These conservative discourses are being produced from within the United States and other government complexes of power (and reinforced from various societal institutional positions) in a manner that would inscribe and provide resources to a universalist regulatory science. Originating from multiple and diverse positions, critical analyses of the NRC report (represented in the first special issue) provide specific examples of the ways that power and resources are being redeployed to foster conservative technologies of truth. Discourses are shifting and being repositioned
TL;DR: The 2003 American Educational Research Association Conference on Accountability for Educational Quality: Shared Responsibility as mentioned in this paper argued that educational researchers' involvement in this process represents a form of collusion in our own oppression, the "organization of consent" embedded in Gramsci's concept of hegemony.
Abstract: This article argues that the theme of the 2003 American Educational Research Association conference, “Accountability for Educational Quality: Shared Responsibility,” reflects a disturbing move in educational research away from inquiry and interrogation and toward the purpose of serving policy. This is related to wider political and rhetorical moves by which we both construct and are constructed by what Ball described as “global policyscapes” within which “thinking otherwise” becomes almost an impossibility. Our involvement, as educational researchers, in this process represents a form of collusion in our own oppression, the “organization of consent” embedded in Gramsci’s concept of hegemony, and there is an urgent need for a radical rethinking of our roles, rights, and responsibilities as researchers. A plea is made for a determined move toward “thinking outside the box” at a time when, and precisely because, to do so is conceived of as a form of heresy.
TL;DR: The authors discusses how validity and truth claims, which are often based on singular theoretical and philosophical assumptions, are negotiated within qualitative research practices created at different levels of the research community, such as academic journals and conferences.
Abstract: This article discusses how validity and truth claims, which are often based on singular theoretical and philosophical assumptions, are negotiated within qualitative research practices created at th...
TL;DR: The authors suggests that transnational complexities require a more sensuous approach to ethnography, an approach in which local epistemologies and sensory regimes are more fully explored, and concludes that a fully sensuous scholarship not only propels social scientists to reconsider the analysis of power in the world but also compels them to rethink their scholarly being-in-the-world.
Abstract: This article suggests that transnational complexities require a more sensuous approach to ethnography, an approach in which local epistemologies and sensory regimes are more fully explored. More specific, the purpose of this article is to suggest that sensuous descriptions improve not only the clarity and force of ethnographic representations but also the social analysis of power relations-in-the-world. African states, as the author attempts to demonstrate, have been particularly adept at manipulating sensory regimes to establish and reinforce their power. In the end, the author concludes that a fully sensuous scholarship not only propels social scientists to reconsider the analysis of power-in-the-world but also compels them to rethink their scholarly being-in-the-world.
TL;DR: This article focused on the role of collective reflexivity within a year-long ethnographic study examining Black and Latino/Latina urban youth's negotiations of college going in and out of school.
Abstract: This article focuses on the role of collective reflexivity within a year-long ethnographic study examining Black and Latino/Latina urban youth’s negotiations of college going in and out of school c...
TL;DR: Bloch as discussed by the authors discusses the National Research Council (2002) report's six guiding principles that define good scientific educational research and suggests that the report represents only one truth among many, limiting further inquiry.
Abstract: This article discusses the National Research Council (2002) report’s six guiding principles that define good scientific educational research. The principles and discussion focus on good educational research in terms of the “rigor” of the research as well as the “scientific” base and principles adhered to in doing the research. This article critically examines the normative base from which the consensual definitions of rigorous research and good science were drawn for the report and by its authors, and looks at the margins where other research falls, by definition. By using a variety of examples of research from around the world that highlights the need for complex historical, political, and cultural lens to examine policy, research, knowledge and power constructions, Bloch suggests that the report represents only one truth among many, limiting further inquiry. By examining the relation between knowledge and truth, the danger in a limited perspective is underlined.
TL;DR: The story of Melvin Juette, a Chicago gang member turned world-class wheelchair athlete, was the inspiration for embarking on a research project about wheelchair sports as discussed by the authors, and his perseverance in the face of adversity illustrates the dynamic interface between agency and structure and suggests a way to move beyond the "supercrip" critique that is prevalent in the disability studies literature.
Abstract: Wheelchair basketball offers an ethnographic space through which this article connects a familial story of survival to the author’s evolving engagement with disability. The author has been looking for role models, for people who might offer guidance to help his family cope with his daughter’s disability. The story of Melvin Juette, a Chicago gang member turned world-class wheelchair athlete, was the inspiration for embarking on a research project about wheelchair sports. Melvin’s perseverance in the face of adversity illustrates the dynamic interface between agency and structure and suggests a way to move beyond the “supercrip” critique that is prevalent in the disability studies literature. Melvin’s story and others like his have emboldened the author and helped him to view social difference as enabling rather than as disabling.
TL;DR: The authors used a toolbox of narrative discourse analysis to analyze diary texts written by three mothers during the 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s to understand the desire to mother and Foucauldian thought of the arts of existence.
Abstract: This article ponders the special character of “confessional” texts, especially the diary-form text both for its keeper and for its researcher. Diaries written by ordinary people certainly give us knowledge about psychic, cultural, and social realities, but what kind of knowledge, and how could it be interpreted? This article uses a toolbox of narrative discourse analysis critically applied to diary texts written by three mothers during the 1960s, 1980s, and 1990s. Theoretically, feminist ideas of the desire to mother and Foucauldian thought of the arts of existence are made use of in the article.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors described the multiphrenia malady as being symptomatic of nations with these particular traits and described it as endemic to the current human condition and referred to it as a "multiprocessor".
Abstract: Kenneth Gergen saw identity crises as endemic to the current human condition and has termed the malady “multiphrenia.” It is described as being symptomatic of nations with these particular traits o...
TL;DR: In the past half decade, however, many campus IRBs have been created to review biomedical and psychological research involving demonstrable risk to human participants as discussed by the authors, and many of them have been ineffective.
Abstract: Institutional review boards (IRBs) were created to review biomedical and psychological research involving demonstrable risk to human participants. During the past half decade, however, many campus ...
TL;DR: The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has explicitly promoted randomized research designs and implicitly promoted clinical trials as the only legitimate educational science in doing so, the law seeks to remodel educational research in a medical mode as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) has explicitly promoted randomized research designs and implicitly promoted clinical trials as the only legitimate educational science In doing so, the law seeks to remodel educational research in a medical mode This article draws on the narrative of a human subject participating in a medical randomized experiment to raise questions about the extent to which such designs secure the goals NCLB claims they will: validity, rigor, replicability In contrasting the narrative of science in NCLB and the narrative of science as told by human subjects, the author draws on de Certeau as well as Bowker and Star to make sense of the difference in structure of the narratives and to highlight the extent to which randomized designs are mythologized in the law and current debates over methodology
TL;DR: In this paper, a call for the international community of qualitative researchers to address the implications of the attempt by federal governments to regulate scientific inquiry by defining what is good and what is bad.
Abstract: This is a call for the international community of qualitative researchers to address the implications of the attempt by federal governments to regulate scientific inquiry by defining what is good s...
TL;DR: The authors examines possibilities for qualitative evaluations within the federal government's narrow context of research as articulated in the No Child Left Behind Act and the National Research Council's Report on Scientific Principles for Education Research.
Abstract: This article examines possibilities for qualitative evaluations within the federal government’s narrow context of research as articulated in the No Child Left Behind Act and the National Research Council’s Report on Scientific Principles for Education Research. Through vignettes from qualitative evaluation studies, the following questions are addressed: (a) What is quality in qualitative evaluation? (b) How do we communicate with multiple audiences in ways that are engaging and convincing? (c) What role do emotions play in the work of qualitative evaluation? Despite calls for “scientific objectivity,” emotions are at the core of quality educational research. Emotions as responses to power and status dynamics within social relations puts emotions work at the center of evaluation research in schools. Qualitative researchers are challenged to broaden narrow views of educational research through continuing to demonstrate how well, through attention to emotions and through elegant explanations, qualitative met...