Category: Research

Autoethnography Research Project Proposal ~ Feedback Requested

I have an assignment for my doctoral program that I want to share here and possibly (hopefully) generate some constructive feedback. We have a short period of time for this project / assignment, so I can not take the usual time to work out all the issues before I begin. As I am not accustomed to discussing this early in the process, some suggestions and possible direction for identifying potential participants will be most appreciated.

This project is a small-scale research project that is intended to:

  1. Get some experience doing what we have been studying, namely research itself
  2. Write about educational research methods after using some of them
  3. Set personal learning objectives and then reflect on how they were met

I have never publicly discussed this process before I have it completed, and as my program at Lancaster University in E-Research and Technology Enhanced Learning focuses on participatory and networked learning, I thought I will work with my tutor and colleagues in the cohort as well as share this experience here on my blog.

While this is intended to be an original piece of research, it is within the context of a class, so the (proposed) research headings are slightly different than a pure research paper. 

Working Title
Educational Explorations of Autoethnographic Inquiry: A Tale of 2 Teachers

Research Problem
Autoethnography is increasingly used as a research method, pushing the boundaries of qualitative inquiry by focusing on a phenomenon in the life of the researcher as the central aspect of study, and publishing the findings as a cultural critique. With online technologies making the entire research process more transparent and potentially interactive, the process and research intentions themselves may be explored more fully, as the steps can be studied as part of the process, rather than by looking only at the final, published product. Little is known about what the researcher learns and wants his or her readers to learn within the process of autoethnographic research.

Literature Review
This will focus on autoethnographic inquiry, what it is, why it is done, and what is learned through it. I am planning to focus around the work of Carolyn Ellis, Art Bochner, Deborah Reed-Danahay, and Jean Clandinin and Michael Connelly.

Purpose & Research Design
The purpose of this case study is to understand the intentions and learnings of researchers who engage in autoethnographic inquiry. This will be a qualitative research design, with a constructivism philosophical worldview. The strategy of inquiry will be case study. The research methods will be interview.

There are no expected ethical issues in this research. Participants will remain anonymous, with fictitious names being used and the transcripts from the research secured in my password-protected computer.

This research is important to me because I am interested in learning more about how autoethnography can be used as a method in online and distance education, particularly for its seeming relationship with reflective practice and transformative learning. This is part of a large research interest of mine, which I am seeking to begin exploring in this smaller research project. I hope to better understand this to ultimately help improve the effectiveness of online teaching and learning practice.

Methods
As this is an exploratory case study, there will be 2 people interviewed for this research. I will reach out to my network of colleagues and distribution lists to locate 2 people who have published autoethnographic inquiries (I have not actively looked for potential participants yet). Interviews will be conducted over the phone. Open-ended interview questions will be used:

  1. Why did you choose to use autoethnographic inquiry?
  2.  Who is your intended audience?
  3. What intentions did you have for your readers?
  4. What role did technology play in your research?
  5. What did you learn in the process of this autoethnographic inquiry?
  6. If you were to conduct further autoethnographic inquiry, what would you do differently?

Interview results will be hand-transcribed and sent back to the participants for their review and approval.

Data Analysis
I will look for themes between the results; though need to develop this section more (for possible hand-coding?).

Findings and Next Steps
TBD

Personal Learnings
I will explore what I learned in doing this research project. I do need to develop personal learning objectives, though am not sure about the format for them and how many are realistic given the time and scope limitations.

References
Listed as used.

Research Process and Methodology Class

I am teaching a graduate research class at New York University that begins tonight–Research Process and Methodology (Y51.1900.002.FA08). The course is an introduction to research, and is a required class in the Human Resource Management and Development MS degree program.

I am using 3 texts for this class:

  1. Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  2. Locke, L. F., Silverman, S. J., & Spirduso, W. W. (2004). Reading and understanding research (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
  3. Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (2001).  (5th ed.). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.

While I have more formal learning objectives than I can count, there are really only 3 things I am hoping to achieve in this class. I really want my students to:

  • understand that research can help inform and explain practice
  • know that there is not a single “right” way to engage in research
  • realize that research does not have to be scary

I suppose the main reason I am so excited to teach this class is because of my own three personal objectives for this class that I am finally articulating above. I suffered through numerous research courses, and when I finally learned those three points, research was suddenly very accessible and valuable to me. I only wish somebody would have told me and helped me understand those points earlier in my academic work. They would have saved me from much pain and suffering all on my own.

List of Online Research Resources

One of the discussion lists I have recently started to follow, the one from the Association of Internet Researchers, had an email posting that I found very useful, and just received the author’s permission (via email) to repost (as it was not available online outside of its original archived posting). Thank you, Alecea Standlee (who is doing doctoral work at Syracuse University), for putting this together.

I am reposting this without making changes or alterations.

*****

Methods

Chen, Shing-Ling, G. Jon Hall, and Mark D. Johns. 2003. Online Social Research: Methods, Issues, & Ethics. Peter Lang Pub Inc.

Dicks, Bella, and Bruce Mason. 2008.

“Hypermedia Methods for Qualitative Research.” P. 740 in HandBook of Emergant Methods, edited by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Patricia Leavy. The Guilford Press.Fielding, Nigel. 2008. The Sage Handbook of Online Research Methods. Sage Publications (CA).

Hewson, Claire. 2008. “Internet-Mediated Research as an Emergent Method and Its Potential Role in Facilitating Mixed Methods Research.” P. 740 in HandBook of Emergant Methods, edited by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Patricia Leavy. The Guilford Press.

Kazmer, Michelle, and BO Xie. 2008. “Qualitative Interviewing In Internet Studies: Playing with the media, playing with the method .” Information, Communication & Society 11:257-278.

Kendall, Lori. 2002. Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. University of California Press.

Knobel, Michele, Colin Lankshear, and Chris Bigum. 2007. A New Literacies Sampler. Peter Lang Publishing.

Mann, Chris, and Fiona Stewart. 2000. Internet Communication and Qualitative Research: A Handbook for Researching Online. 1st ed. Sage Publications Ltd.

Mulder, Ingrid, and Joke Kort. 2008. “Mixed Emotions, Mixed Methods: The Role of Emergent Technologies in Studying User Experience in Context.” P. 740 in HandBook of Emergant Methods, edited by Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber and Patricia Leavy. The Guilford Press.

Palgrave. 2005. Virtual Methods: Issues in Social Research on the Internet. 1st ed. Palgrave.

Additional readings

Anderson, Ben, and Karina Tracey. 2001. “Digital Living: The Impact (or Otherwise) of the Internet on Everyday Life.” American Behavioral Scientist 45:456-475.

Bakardjieva, Maria. 2005. Internet Society: The Internet in Everyday Life. London: SAGE.

Bargh, John A. , and Katelyn Y. A. McKenna. 2004. “The Internet and Social Life.” Annual Review of Psychology 55:573-590.

Boellstorff, Tom. 2008. Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human. Princeton University Press.

Lévy, Pierre. 2001. Cyberculture. Minneapolis, Minn: University of Minnesota Press.

McKenna, Katelyn Y. A., and John A. Bargh. 1999. “Causes and Consequences of Social Interaction on the Internet: a Conceptual Framework.” Media Psychology 1.

Palfrey, John, and Urs Gasser. 2008. Born Digital: Understanding the First Generation of Digital Natives. Basic Books.

DiMaggio, Paul. Eszter Hargittai, W. Russell Neuman, and John P. Robinson. 2003. “Social Implications of the Internet.” Annual Review of Sociology 27:307-336.

Schaap, Frank. 2002. The Words that Took Us There.

Talamo, Alessandra , and Beatrice Ligorio. 2004. “Strategic Identities in Cyberspace.” CyberPsychology $ Behavior 4:109-122.

Thomas, Angela. 2007. Youth Online: Identity and Literacy in the Digital Age. Peter Lang Publishing.

Turkle, Sherry. 1997. Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet. Simon & Schuster.

Walker, Katherine. 2000. “”It’s Difficult to Hide It”: The Presentation of Self on Internet Home Pages.” Qualitative Sociology 23:99-120.

Wellman, Barry , Anabal Quan-Haase, Jeffrey Boase, and Wenhong Chen. 2003. “The Social Affordances of the Internet for Networked Individualism.” Journal of Computer Mediated Communication 8.

Cybercommunity

Ess, Charles, and Fay Sudweeks. 2001. Culture, Technology, Communication: Towards an Intercultural Global Village. State University of New York Press.

Kendall, Lori. 2002. Hanging Out in the Virtual Pub: Masculinities and Relationships Online. University of California Press.

Raacke, John, and Jennifer Bonds-Raacke. 2008. “MySpace and Facebook: Applying the Uses and Gratifications Theory to Exploring Friend-Networking Sites.” CyberPsychology $ Behavior 11:169-174.

General Cyber Theory

Cherny, Lynn, and Elizabeth Reba Weise eds. 1996. Wired Women: Gender and New Realities in Cyberspace. Seal Press.

Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner. 2001. The Postmodern Adventure: Science, Technology, and Cultural Studies at the Third Millennium. 1st ed. The Guilford Press.

Burkhalter, Byron. 1999. “Reading Race online: Discovering Racial Idenity in Usenet Discussions..” P. 336 in Communities in Cyberspace, edited by Marc A. Smith and Peter Kollock.

Dyer-Witheford, Nick. 1999. Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism. University of Illinois Press.

Flanagan, Mary, and Austin Booth eds. 2002. Reload: Rethinking Women + Cyberculture. The MIT Press.

Huysman & V. Wulf (2004. Social Capital And Information Technology (Pp. 113-135). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Leung, Linda. 2005. Virtual Ethnicity: Race, Resistance And The World Wide Web. Ashgate Publishing.

Marshall, Jonathan Paul. 2007. Living on Cybermind: Categories, Communication, and Control. Peter Lang Publishing.

McLuhan, Marshall; Agel, Jerome. 1967. The Medium is the Message: an Inventory of Effects. Bantam Books.

Nakamura, Lisa. 2002. Cybertypes: Race, Ethnicity, and Identity on the Internet. 1st ed. Routledge.

Nakamura, Lisa. 2007. Digitizing Race: Visual Cultures of the Internet. Univ Of Minnesota Press.

Stone, Allucquère Rosanne. 1996. The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age. The MIT Press.

 

Rheingold, Howard. 2000. The Virtual Community.

Smith, Marc A., and Peter Kollock. 1999. Communities in Cyberspace.

Vangelisti, Anita L., Daniel Perlman, Jeffrey Boase, and Barry Wellman, eds. 2006. “Personal Relationships: On And Off The Internet.” P. 914 in The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships. Cambridge University Press.

Wellman, Barry , Janet Salaff, et al. 2003. “Computer Networks as Social Networks: Collaborative Work, Telework, and Virtual Community.” Annual Review of Sociology 22:213-238.

*****

Perhaps having this more readily available, it may help some researchers (or budding researchers) out there.

Let’s see, what can we add . . .

Human Resource Management Help Needed

Are you a Human Resource Management (HRM) professional or manager? If not, do you know one?

I am redesigning and teaching a graduate Human Resource class in the Fall, Research Process and Methodology at New York University, and I am looking to speak (briefly) with HR professionals to ask them one simple question:

  1. What research skills or methods do you or your team need to know and understand to do your job?

If anybody can direct me to any responses, please either email me at jk904 (at) nyu (dot) edu or please comment below. I want to meet the needs of my future students, and what better way to do this than by asking people already in the field?

Thank you.

Appointed to the ADHR Editorial Board

Advances in Developing Human ResourcesI just received news that I have been appointed to the Editorial Board of Advances in Developing Human Resources (ADHR), a peer-reviewed journal sponsored by the Academy of Human Resource Development and Sage Publications.

As a research-to-practice, or evidence-based practice, journal, it is scholarly and research-driven, with an aim toward researching areas and meeting the needs of practitioners.

As a peer-reviewed journal, ADHR:

focuses on the issues that help you work more effectively in human resource development. The journal spans the realms of performance, learning, and integrity within an organizational context. Balancing theory and practice, each issue of the journal is devoted to a different topic central to the development of human resources. Advances has covered subjects as wide-ranging and vital as performance improvement, action learning, on-the-job training, informal learning, how HRD relates to the new global economy, leadership, and the philosophical foundations of HRD practice.

I look forward to my three year appointment serving my professional colleagues and my field.