The increased use of virtual space as a cultural site for communication and social interaction opens a new space for social inquiry. The latest issue of the Forum: Qualitative Social Inquiry is devoted to this topic.
This peer reviewed journal is completely online and is truly international in its scope, indeed articles are available in several languages. You can subscribe to the journal and will get an email when each issue is published.
Here are links to the five elementary and middle school ethnographies that focus on the impact of state mandated testing on teaching and learning. In each case, one researcher spent a year doing participant observation with the team of 3 or 4 researchers involved in teacher, parent and administrator interviews.
Creating a Culture of Preparedness: One Suburban School’s Experiences with High-Stakes Testing
Hemlock’s Stand: One Urban Elementary School’s Efforts to Raise Test Scores
Doing the Best on the Tests: A Suburban Elementary School’s Response to High Stakes Test
Here is one of the Shepard Fairey statements currently cropping up around Vancouver (unfortunately the masterful superimposing of obey the giant over the MacDonalds billboard was gone by the time I got back to take a picture). I would describe his work as phenomenological as the appearance of obey in unlikely places challenges the taken for granted with an emphasis on disrupting images of capitalism, globalism and neo-liberalism. In this picture there is a blank billboard, but the juxtoposition with the Pattison sign is enough in and of itself.
Here is a nifty little graphic that illustrates the fundamental idea in grounded theory. I don’t remember where this comes from, so my thanks to whomever created this.
An excellent resource to explore Marxist perspectives is Bertell Ollman’s website. Lots of his publications can be found that, as well as links, and his scholarship is engaging and high quality. You will see a link to his book Dance of the Dialectics ~ the dance steps are below. So, when you need a refresher on dialectical thinking get up out of your chair, do the dance of the dialectics and then get on with your intellectual project.
For a more general treatment of what it means to do critical social science, take a look at Brian Fay’s Critical Social Science. This book may be out of print but can easily be found in the library or through booksellers.
A little detailed but worth taking a look at, especially to see that the various philosophical traditions that underlie contemporary educational inquiry developed across about the same historical time frame. Too often positivism, interpretivism and critical approaches to inquiry are presented as if their were an evolution from one to the next. Each of these traditions has evolved over the past two hundred plus years and although the ideas of Comte, Husserl, and Marx live on in our contemporary orientations to inquiry their ideas are not static and we continually reinterpret them in the present.
You will note in the Crotty readings that his emphasis is on constructionism, what he at times calls social constructionism (or sometimes social constructivism). While it may seem at first reading this is all about different words for the same or different things, these are indeed critical differences that matter. Constructivism, especially social constructivism, is the epistemological foundation for interpretative and critical research perspectives. Davis & Sumara in this article that refers more to teaching than research, is nonetheless excellent on these distinctions. Knowing whether you adopt a subject-centred constructivist epistemology or a subject object interdependent constructionist epistemology is an important step in finding a research orientation that is sensible.
If you gave a 30 item survey to 1000 people would you analyze the results by hand or in your head? Probably not. The amount of data from an interpretive study will be just as voluminous and using computer assisted data analysis can make the analysis more systematic and frankly easier. There are a number of programs available, most are sold by Scolari and which one you use is at least partly a matter of personal choice.
In addition, the system you work on will matter. I am a Mac user and use HyperResearch. Other popular software packages, especially for those still stuck in the Windows world are atlas.ti and NVivo.
