Lessons Learned from Using Shadowing as a Qualitative Research Technique in Education: An Article Summary

meerkat-255564_1280I was unable to post this yesterday due to many work tasks in the morning, so continuing my #5Papers focus with this great methodological article today.

1/ I read Ferguson (2016) Lessons learned from using shadowing as a qualitative research technique in Education Continue readingLessons Learned from Using Shadowing as a Qualitative Research Technique in Education: An Article Summary

Let’s Make Article Summaries! Thoughts on Ragged Edges

research_biteI have been tossing around this idea in various forms for some time now, and find a number of influences–Twitter Journal Club, #CLmooc (we make learning!), Shut Up And Read!, That new habit, and even #365Papers–all of which revolve around sharing some of the really great reading we do with others, specifically the academic, research-oriented reading we (I?) frequently do in silence.

I get new articles and read some of them every day, so why not Continue readingLet’s Make Article Summaries! Thoughts on Ragged Edges

Research Evaluation Tools for Articles in the Social Sciences (DRAFT)

UPDATED on September 9, 2013:

These tools were again revised, with the current version on my Research Tools page.
Feedback is always appreciated.

UPDATED on August 21, 2013:

Based on some very helpful feedback, I revised these two tools:

As before, feedback will be most appreciated.

ORIGINAL POST:

I am in the process of creating 2 tools to help my graduate research students assess and evaluate research studies, and am interested in getting some feedback on them. They are:

While I have seen various tools for specific purposes, I have not seen many that were intended for general use in the social sciences. Furthermore, while these cannot be applied to every qualitative or quantitative study in the social sciences, they are intended to be applicable to most of them.

Do these work? Are they helpful? Is there anything major missing or that should be combined, edited, or refined? Any feedback at all will be most appreciated.

Once I finalize these, I will make them freely available under a Creative Commons license.

QI2010 Abstract Accepted: Learning Goals and Personal Learning

One of the abstracts I submitted for the QI2010 Conference (in May, 2010) was just accepted! Here is the title and abstract:

Learning Goals and Personal Learning in Practitioner Autoethnographic Inquiry: A Case Study

Autoethnography is an increasingly used method of inquiry in the social sciences that focuses upon an experience, or case, in the life of the researcher, who then studies this with the hope of presenting it with vivid and rich descriptive details. It is often intended that the reader be able to share in the experience, so the research is intentionally related to common cultural perspectives. There is limited research around why autoethnographers engage in this method, especially in the context of trying to better understand their goals and intentions for their own work, as well as what is hoped for within the audience. This exploratory case study research will explore the researcher’s learning goals for his or her readers, as well as how the researcher’s own learning develops through the process of conducting the autoethnographic research.

I attended this conference last year, liveblogged it, and had a wonderful time (I learned, I laughed, and I saw a much larger world than I noticed before). Looking forward to attending once again this year.

Qualitative Reliability, Validity, and Generalizability

As I am continuing to develop my idea that I published yesterday, Research Design: Communities of Practice for Autoethnographers, I want to clarify one of the issues that some of my wonderful colleagues commented about, namely the issue of Reliability, Validity, and Generalizability.

While I used those terms in that area based on Creswell’s Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches work (pg. 190), I put it there primarily as a place-holder so those in my program who will offer me some comments on it will know that I will, in some way, address it. What I actually had in mind was Lincoln and Guba’s Naturalistic Inquiry, where they give 4 areas of concern for qualitative Trustworthiness:

  1. “Truth value”
  2. Applicability
  3. Consistency
  4. Neutrality

These four were offered to address the quantitative internal validity, external validity, reliability, and objectivity.

I will address these as I engage with my research, and share aspects of them here.