Context: Welcome to our Logic of Inquiry
In the Fall of 2011, graduate students in Dr. Judith Green's Education 221A: Introduction to Qualitative Methods course began to explore the fundamental challenges and ideas of qualitative research. However, their attempt to understand what it means to "think qualitatively" and identify a working definition of qualitative research posed a challenge. In order for students to become comfortable with this idea of qualitative research as unbound by one defined tradition, or even to be comfortable with qualitative methods being interpretative depending on a researcher's philosophy, they began their own qualitative research. Pairs of students chose a published article written by a UCSB faculty member with the goal to first analyze, disect, and interpret the article, using the article and interview with the faculty member as an artifact. Next, their goal was to follow the author's logic of inquiry:
How did the author think qualitatively?
What was his or her epistemological positioning?
What was the socio-political landscape that they were writing their article?
What was his "way of knowing" or what was the argument on "ways of knowing" relevant to the field of Education research?
What was the invisible yet intentional logic he was working from?
These questions introduced in class are the starting points that frame our logic of inquiry. Using a reflexive definition of logic of inquiry that we developed during this project, we describe "our logic inquiry" as our attempt to examine how we used various social structures and situated understandings to uncover the underlying logic of Bazerman’s "Theories of the Middle Range" (2008). It is represented and organized in this wiki via four categories that move through three different stages of development—basic, exploratory, and synthetic—each of which was characterized by our individual thought process, the partner collaboration, our interview, and the post analysis of our artifacts. In the basic stage, our understanding was limited by our lack of understanding of middle range sociological theory and other background knowledge and was centered upon our need to formulate framing questions as we entered the work. The developmental stage is characterized by our nonlinear process of using our prior and current knowledge of Bazerman's work and Writing Research, building on both our knowledge bases and synthesizing our thoughts, and culling researched sources that enabled us to understand where Bazerman's article was positioned in the discipline. Finally, the synthetic stage is characterized as our final analysis of Bazerman's article, which was only possible with the development of the previous stages and our situated learning process. In this stage, we are able to trace back each of our steps in a reflexive manner that allows for more critical discussions on qualitative research. We hope this wiki serves the purpose allowing education researchers to continue this critical discussion on the fundamental challenges and ideas in qualitative research.
Genre: Why a Wiki Page? The purpose of this wiki page is to provide a public space for emerging scholars in education research and even those seasoned researchers to continue a conversation towards thinking critically about qualitative methods. Students can add content to the Resource Page to serve the purpose of building a research community on qualitative methods.
In order to map out this non-linear process, we represent this project in the form of a Wiki page. We chose the genre of the wiki to represent our work in order to:
1.) Create an accesible resource for our audience who may not be familiar with the field of Writing Studies and Qualitative Methods in Research that are the center of our artifacts of analysis.
2.) Allow this space to be continuing resource for graduate students in educational research, which is facilitated by the nature of the wiki as an opensource and collobarative project.
3.) To illustrate our logic of inquiry, which include our setbacks, “a ha! moments,” and collected resources that we have compiled during this learning process of understanding to not only “think qualitatively,” but to begin articulating our understanding of what it means to be researchers in the field of action research.
To explore our developing understanding of the article, go HERE.
In the Fall of 2011, graduate students in Dr. Judith Green's Education 221A: Introduction to Qualitative Methods course began to explore the fundamental challenges and ideas of qualitative research. However, their attempt to understand what it means to "think qualitatively" and identify a working definition of qualitative research posed a challenge. In order for students to become comfortable with this idea of qualitative research as unbound by one defined tradition, or even to be comfortable with qualitative methods being interpretative depending on a researcher's philosophy, they began their own qualitative research. Pairs of students chose a published article written by a UCSB faculty member with the goal to first analyze, disect, and interpret the article, using the article and interview with the faculty member as an artifact. Next, their goal was to follow the author's logic of inquiry:
These questions introduced in class are the starting points that frame our logic of inquiry. Using a reflexive definition of logic of inquiry that we developed during this project, we describe "our logic inquiry" as our attempt to examine how we used various social structures and situated understandings to uncover the underlying logic of Bazerman’s "Theories of the Middle Range" (2008). It is represented and organized in this wiki via four categories that move through three different stages of development—basic, exploratory, and synthetic—each of which was characterized by our individual thought process, the partner collaboration, our interview, and the post analysis of our artifacts. In the basic stage, our understanding was limited by our lack of understanding of middle range sociological theory and other background knowledge and was centered upon our need to formulate framing questions as we entered the work. The developmental stage is characterized by our nonlinear process of using our prior and current knowledge of Bazerman's work and Writing Research, building on both our knowledge bases and synthesizing our thoughts, and culling researched sources that enabled us to understand where Bazerman's article was positioned in the discipline. Finally, the synthetic stage is characterized as our final analysis of Bazerman's article, which was only possible with the development of the previous stages and our situated learning process. In this stage, we are able to trace back each of our steps in a reflexive manner that allows for more critical discussions on qualitative research. We hope this wiki serves the purpose allowing education researchers to continue this critical discussion on the fundamental challenges and ideas in qualitative research.
Genre: Why a Wiki Page? The purpose of this wiki page is to provide a public space for emerging scholars in education research and even those seasoned researchers to continue a conversation towards thinking critically about qualitative methods. Students can add content to the Resource Page to serve the purpose of building a research community on qualitative methods.
In order to map out this non-linear process, we represent this project in the form of a Wiki page. We chose the genre of the wiki to represent our work in order to:
1.) Create an accesible resource for our audience who may not be familiar with the field of Writing Studies and Qualitative Methods in Research that are the center of our artifacts of analysis.
2.) Allow this space to be continuing resource for graduate students in educational research, which is facilitated by the nature of the wiki as an opensource and collobarative project.
3.) To illustrate our logic of inquiry, which include our setbacks, “a ha! moments,” and collected resources that we have compiled during this learning process of understanding to not only “think qualitatively,” but to begin articulating our understanding of what it means to be researchers in the field of action research.
To explore our developing understanding of the article, go HERE.