Qualitative Conversations

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Episode 25: Episode 25. Critical Participatory Inquiry as Sabotage May 17, 2021

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In this special episode, Qualitative Conversations hosts a panel discussion with scholars who weren't able to present at the 2021 AERA conference due to technical difficulties. The particular panel session discussed in this episode was titled Critical Participatory Inquiry as Sabotage and included the following participants: Meagan Call-Cummings, George Mason University; Giovanni Dazzo, George Mason University; Sharrell Hassell-Goodman, PhD candidate in the Higher Education Program with a focus in Women and Gender studies and Social Justice at George Mason University; Alexandra S. Reed, George Mason University; Rodney Hopson, U of Illinois-Urbana Champaign; Melissa Hauber-Özer, George Mason University & Jesuit Worldwide Learning; Elisabeth L. Chan - Northern Virginia Community College & George Mason University. The following is the transcript of the conversation. Rodney 0:24 Good morning. Welcome. I'm Rodney Hopson, a faculty member at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign professor and evaluation in the queries division, Interim Director of Korea, really excited to have some colleagues here today talking about some really critical issues. If you didn't get an opportunity to hear a Ura, I was discussing for the roundtable disruption, interruption and change. It's not enough. What we need is sabotage, critical participatory inquiry as sabotage in and of the Academy. So I'm going to open up by having our colleagues introduce themselves and their key ideas and then come back around with questions of dualism.Melissa 1:16 I'm Melissa Hauber-Özer, as I recently completed my PhD at George Mason University in the international education program. And our first paper in the panel was a collaborative counter storytelling piece that I co authored with Megan, Sharrell and Elizabeth which examine an incident that occurred within our ongoing YPAR project or youth participatory action research project. And this incident, and then our conversations about it after the fact pushed us to consider our power relations within the collective and then especially around race and gender. And then our relationships or interactions with the host institutions within which you're doing this critical, participatory work.Giovanni 2:05 Great. Thanks, Melissa. My name is Giovanni Dazzo. I'm a doctoral candidate in research methodology at George Mason University. My article was titled small acts of sabotage, unraveling expertise to push for restorative forms of inquiry. And in this paper, I've been reflecting on my personal background and how I needed to bring this into my own methodological work. And as a doctoral candidate specializing in critical methodology, I needed to acknowledge my identity as a child of Sicilian immigrants being raised in small rural California town, into a family of farmers and laborers. For example, in farming communities, when we see smoke billowing from an open field of crops, this isn't necessarily a sign of danger, but one of renewal of coordinated and careful sabotage. And when done carefully, this practice called slashing burn or slashing cover has been ecologically sustainable for millennia. So I started to think about qualitative research in this way, what type of lens needs to be cleared, burned and left uncultivated for some time, and reflecting on which methodological processes have been around for so long, that they're worth burning down? So in this paper, I discussed three areas. How often are We inspired by the words of our co researchers and community members, so much so that they should be cited alongside the greats who have 1000s of citations, but where we relegate their words to the finding sections of our papers? Second, I started questioning my parsimonious citation practices. So in some cases, I simply use terms like double consciousness and simply include parentheticals for WEB Dubois, and our usual APA and Chicago styles. But it's almost an eraser divestment of knowledge divorced from the historical, contextual, political and racial. So this small act of sabotage has required me to credit and balance the words of others at the expense of my own. And last, I've begun to explore what I call known methods or those that community members and I already use in our daily lives. So when I talk about these non methods, it's not about erasing our knowledge as researchers, but more about acting in humility to unlearn our methods through the act of recognizing community expertise. So I don't simply dissenter, my experience or romanticized community members traditional knowledge, which is another issue in and of itself, but recent are both acknowledging each as residing in expertise. Thank you, Giovanni.Rodney 4:48 I'mSharrell 4:49 looking forward to reading your work. Hello, I'm Sharrell Hassell-Goodman. I'm a PhD candidate in the higher education program with a focus in Women and Gender Studies. And social justice. So my paper is a self study as a result of a black feminist critical participatory action research project, in which a group of 22 undergraduate and graduate women of the African diaspora and when I say African diaspora, we represent black African American, African, Afro Caribbean, Afro Cuban and Afro Latina women operate as a research collective. Throughout this manuscript I explored an in darkened feminist epistemological approach to critical participatory action research as an act of sabotage to radically center black women's knowledge as legitimate. I document the ways in which I navigated in negotiated my ethical commitments and obligations to the research collective, through critical events analysis. Along the way, I realized that my voice around knowledge shifted, and my orientation in the classroom was disrupted. I look at three incidents around my experiences in the classroom throughout the article. Using the researcher journal as data and critical events analysis as a framework, I explored the following questions. One, how does a first generation woman of the African diaspora a researcher come to know to what does it mean for black woman's knowledge to be interpreted as legitimate? And three, how is research an act of self sabotage? As a result of this study, I found that in darkened feminist epistemological approach to participatory action research is critical to undo the ratio of black woman's knowledge in the academy, exposing the nature of white supremacy that maintains normative confines within the Academy is to understand the challenges associated with other cultural norms and standards, specifically black women to be seen as legitimate.Elizabeth 7:00 Thank you, Sharrell. My name is Elizabeth Chan. I'm an associate professor at Northern Virginia Community College, and also a PhD candidate in multilingual, multicultural education at George Mason University. And I worked also on the paper together with Cheryl and Melissa and Megan that, Melissa, so very well outlined at the beginning.Sasha 7:28 Thanks, Elizabeth. Hello, my name is Sasha Reid and I am a PhD candidate at George Mason, studying special education and qualitative research methods with special interest in intellectual and developmental disabilities inclusion, and accessible and equitable research opportunities. I'm in the process of completing a three paper dissertation which is aimed at understanding the concept of inclusion at the post secondary level, from young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities through a critical participatory inquiry project. My panel paper was titled sabotaging method the tensions of accepting responsibility. And I'm drawing particularly from paper three, which documents the process of how I've approached navigate, and in reconciling my researcher responsibilities and commitments to my researcher group during the entire traditional research cycle process. So question, design and approach, data collection, data analysis, and deciding on next steps. And I'm really focusing on where and how I'm yielding my position of power to disrupt that traditional cycle, and where I can design or simply leave room for organic participation to occur with participants with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Throughout I'm grappling with the following questions which guide the paper from the era panel? What is recognized as Reacher research in my field, field being special education and disabilities? And how am I now forgetting the difference between a method and a way of inquiry to Who is this research for and three, how is my power and positionality as a person who does not identify as having disability tied up in this tension of responsibility, my responsibility to produce knowledge that's deemed academically significant, as well as my responsibility to meaningfully include a commonly forgotten population in the research arena.Megan 9:52 Thanks, Sasha. My name is Megan Call-Cummings. I'm an assistant professor of research methods at George Mason University where we're all From in one way or another, so I specialize in participatory feminist and critical qualitative methodologies. The paper I wrote for this panel is called sabotaging significance, a call for less research and more organizing. The paper is kind of a description of my journey of sort of critical reflexivity and kind of messy and fluid processes of both and sometimes simultaneous adaptation to and also rejection of the status quo within academia. So over the course of the last seven years, I've sort of shifted professional positions from doctoral student to university faculty member and I've kind of flipped back and forth often between a research trajectory that I would consider to be kind of like edgy and anti racist, but still within the bounds, like the safety bounds of being deemed acceptable. And then research that kind of tries to give the middle finger to academia to you know, my university, even my future tenure committee, right? It's like, whatever I'm going to do what I want. If I get tenure, it is what it is right? So I kind of flip between those two often. So the paper follows this, this messy journey offering vignettes to illustrate the kind of difficult process of really, completely altering the way academia understands and applies the intertwined white supremacist concepts of rigor, validity, trustworthiness and of course, significance. So these concepts and practices, I argue in the paper are applied routinely and often invisibly, as tools of domination and control, as as much that calls itself research. So what I argue in the end, is that what we need, just like Eve tuck has said in this moment is less research and more organizing. And I wonder, you know, how would we measure the significance of such a move? For you? Awesome.Rodney 12:02 Well, let's go back to you. Actually, Megan, because I'm familiar with your work in this panel, seems to be an offshoot of some other work that you've been doing been asking, bringing in other saboteurs and other critical participants in this space. So what led us to this particular work at AERA in this presentation? And tell us a little bit more,Megan 12:24 if you don't mind? Thanks, Rodney. I appreciate that. So, yeah, we were all part of a class last summer, this summer of 2020, I had planned to facilitate a special topics class on decolonizing methodologies, really, because several students, you know, like the ones here and others had kind of come to me and said, this is something that they needed. So I put together a syllabus during the spring semester, I knew it would be online because of COVID. And then you guys can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it was like less than a week before the class actually started, that George Floyd was murdered by police officers and on protests for racial justice erupted across the US and the world. So that not only became I mean, the sense of a backdrop really doesn't do it justice in terms of how it affected that class, it was like this simultaneous experience, we were all living in different ways, because of our different identities and connections to racial injustice, and things like that. And so, so it became these class discussions were like rich and messy and raw with vulnerability and anger and resentment of academia, and are places within the structure that's so often thick with injustice and inequity, but simultaneously have as so many people working for justice and equity. And it was actually one of Giovanni's posts, I think, along with some of Eve Tech's work that we read together, I believe that that suggested the idea of sabotage, right? The idea that what's needed now is, as Giovanni said, burn the place down, or start little fires everywhere, right? What's needed now is is not more research, right is not more research into what's wrong or who the problems are. But it's about organizing. It's about scholars becoming an activist and taking responsibility and ownership of these processes. So we talked a lot about being tired of academia or the way things are in higher ed the status quo. And so that's kind of what led us to the idea of this panel.Rodney 14:33 Yeah, that's, that's, that's quite helpful. Maybe I'll just pick on you Giovanni, as well to talk a bit a bit about both the theoretical frameworks that have inspired this work around subtour mean you don't have resistance. You don't use like resistant or resist or and then mean. Tell us more about what it is for you to bring those. Those frameworks slash and burn from the farming. Italian migrant. Please make the connection.Giovanni 15:01 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, first for me, looking at conceptual and theoretical frameworks I've been using more recently, I have put aside the academic literature, I have spoken with my grandfather, and spoken to my parents. And first and foremost, I have also spoken to community members that I work alongside in Guatemala who are ..., Maya, farmers, laborers, community members. And so when I started to think about theoretical frameworks, and what it means to theorize, I stepped away from the traditional scholars because I felt this needed to be my first small act of sabotage in unraveling. What I was socialized to think was expertise. So as now, as I construct conceptual frameworks or theoretical frameworks for my own dissertation, and various articles, I actually start with the words of community members and cite them alongside the greats, including Paulo Freire, a bell hooks, Martin barro web Dubois. But second, I've been engaging more and more with sociological theory and Communication Studies since I typically conduct applied research and program evaluation on human rights and justice initiatives. So Daren Barney's work on sabotage and the politics of withdraw have been pivotal for me, as it provides this theoretical grounding and critical theory and historical examples of sabotage, and how we don't really talk about sabotage when we engage in Marxist theory, and thinking about sabotage and and this politics of withdraw. I've been engaging a lot with the work of activists and scholar activists who talk about the politics and epistemology of self determination. Everyone from Kwame Nkrumah, Angela Davis, Patricia Hill-Collins. And then following on that, when it comes to these citation practices that I talked about, I argue that the way we cite is similar to what bud Hall and we're just 10 done in their 2017 paper on decolonizing. Knowledge call accumulation is dispossession, a term they credit to the work of geographer David Harvey. So in their example, just as universities stolen accumulated land by native and indigenous peoples to build campuses that would then dispossessed them of the r…

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Episode 25: 24. Egon Guba Lecture with Mirka Koro Apr 19, 2021

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Welcome. Tervetuloa. My name is Mirka Koro, I come from ASU, and I go by she and hers. I would like to acknowledge the land on which I am standing here in Phoenix and the original Hohokam caretakers of this land. I would also like to thank the Egon Guba awards committee and QRSIG chair Jessica VanCleave and her executive committee for this amazing honor and opportunity to share my thoughts with you all. Despite my indefinitely youthful appearance and my love of Apocalyptica, I have a somewhat lengthy past with qualitative inquiry. Aaron, Juha, who are my stimulating discussants, Egon Guba, and I are entangled in our past and hopefully our experimental and philosophical qualitative inquiries will keep forming and shaping new relationalities among us and others in the future. I think it was 1998 when I attended my first AERA, heard amazing talks, and met Egon and Yvonna. At that time, I also attended my first QRSIG business meeting and thought to myself how excited I was about qualitative inquiry, stimulating scholarly exchanges, thinking, doing, theories, and paradigms. Egon’s Paradigm dialogue and Yvonna and Norman’s leadership with QI and ICQI were very inspiring for a beginning scholar. Since early 2000s Aaron’s work on methodology, Foucault, philosophy, ethics, and responsibility has been intellectually engaging and provocative for me. My entanglements with Juha, in turn, extends even further in linear time. I met Juha during my master’s studies and he introduced me to the world and practice of qualitative inquiry. I remember vividly attending Juha’s lectures and methodological seminars describing his exciting field work. His critical scholarship, philosophical knowledge, work with Freire’s legacy, and intersecting lines of methodology are truly inspiring. Mahtavaa etta olet taalla tanaan Juha videon valityksella! Entangled narratives, shared professional and personal histories, paradigm dialogues, multiple matter of and within factory and working-class town of Tampere Finland, meetings rooms of SQUICK in Athens GA, endless sunlight and scented orange blossoms of Phoenix AZ come together today. I have multiple titles for this presentation yet all of them are quite inaccurate. Title 1: Restless methodologies and speculative wonderings multipliedTitle 2: What does the light have to do with this? Title 3: Lived scholarly possibilities of (methodological) multiplicityTitle 4: If we take speculation seriously…we need to multiply- also methodologicallyTitle 5: Lost in the words but still alive-- many methodological lives of qualitative matterAs you can tell, I deliver this talk with much speculation and hesitation. My methodological wonderings will not have core components or clear argumentative logic. The talk might not even offer anything new especially if one considers the relational nature of knowing and situatedness of being as simultaneously historical, already already here, and always multiple. Light encounters, in turn, have everything and nothing to do with my presentation today. This talk is designed to be light in its effects- dizzy, requesting little effort, having little weight, move away from inner light and truth, something that informs, to ignite and spark. I hope this talk may offer some provocations in the form of thoughts, wild ideas, images, light effects, and conceptual and theoretical movements and more. Maybe something I will say or do will enable you to enter the difference, feel affect, sense and live the methodological light/lightness and darkness differently, and access alternative spaces through unthought connections and different ways to work through and live realities of inquiry, methodologies, and qualitative relations. Still designs fail and continue with their hesitation.Provocation 1: Close your eyes and see. What methodologies become possible? I will wonder about the potential and possibility embedded in speculation and speculative practices in a methodological world where many worlds fit. Some of my thoughts today are prompted by the way I live and experience qualitative inquiry as a contemporary reflection, mirror, and actor in our complex and political global world. Many qualitative scholars are excited about opportunities related to experimentation, theoretical connections, onto-epistemological freedom, justice and ethical orientations research can offer. We have been inspired by the post, (new, feminist) materialisms, and more-than-human movements. We showed that qualitative research is needed, driven by practice, and can create different knowledges and knowledges differently. Recently, the field has also experienced ontological and relational turns paying more attention to ecologies of life and inquiry. However, some of my excitement has been tamed by artificial theoretical boundaries, conceptual regulations, standardized citation practices, overly descriptive guidelines, and other political ways to manage learning of qualitative inquiry and monitor experimentation processes. Occasionally I find myself mourning for more liberatory practices, worlds within worlds that stay open and welcoming in infinitum. Sometimes I feel saddened by the epistemological and ontological violence that we might have practiced against our community members, sisters, and brothers. It is also possible that I am late to the game, delayed in my reflections, dwelled in the past and we have already lived methodological pluriversity quite productively and practiced responsible collectivity for some time. However, I am truly inspired by visible and hidden potential, more inclusive vision and unthinkable hope for qualitative inquiry as a methodologically pluriverse community. This talk includes interrelated flows of relationality including speculative, experimentative, methodological, and plural flows. Speculation offers opportunities for creative imagination, hesitation, reflective questioning, and thinking with unthinkable futures. Experimentation reminds us that much of qualitative research is crafted in shifting practice, in artistic relations (Hannula et.al., 2014), and within different and internally creative and active time-space-matterings (Barad, 2007). Responsible methodologies and methodologists (see Kuntz, 2015) are needed while current methodological practices are radically re-visioned. Pluriversity and pluralism, in turn, are thoughtful choices toward more collective equity and ecological diversity. Finally, all of these relational flows ask for open-endedness and creative potentiality embedded in our ecological and relational onto-epistemological systems and practices. The flows come and go, relating and connecting logical and illogical ways while always creating alternative time-spaces. About experimentationSome years ago, I wrote about methodologies without methodologies, about methodological spaces without faces, names, and predetermined categories. I was interested in methodologies with inaccuracies and defects, abnormalities. At that time, my problem was the insufficiency of language, methodological non-imagination and inflexibility and my focus was on theoretical and methodological difference in infinitum. Now my breakdowns are more relational and material. Ndlovu-Gatsheni (2018) reminds us about a scary and lonely world without others, specter of difference, and the cruel and toxic identitarian politics. Now I see more clearly the vitality in pluralism, caring and sharing communities, and perceive the endless becoming of many. Worlds within worlds, methodologies within methodologies, researchers within researchers – in other words the multiplicity and methodological pluriverse are the worlds I want to talk about today. I also argue that for us to live the plural and many (also plural and many methodologies) we have to imagine. Qualitative inquiry is not a world without a difference and since its first visionaries and documented imaginations qualitative inquiries have been conceptualized as the other, multiple, and diversified. However, somewhere during the journey we may have lost our vision of this kind of relationality and collectivity. The paradigm and dialogue of difference can also be problematic since it is often guided by dualism and hierarchization leading toward methodological barricades, partition, ontological erasure, and epistemological colonialization. Furthermore, from the perspective/paradigm of difference one can also more easily locate and narrow down the ‘toxic methodological other’ simultaneously forming master subjects and methodological narratives. I think it is important to remember that perceived methodological differences are not natural but constructed. Provocation 2: Turn off the lights and sense the material you are sitting on. What methodologies become possible? If your momentary relationality to matter could speak, what might it say? In addition, I want to remind us about qualitative dreams, dreams of qualitative researchers, and the power of the unexpected. How might us, qualitative scholars, live our inquiries and allow more and infinite spaces for adventures of ideas and concepts created and crafted by scholars, surrounding materiality and all citizens of the entire world- not just the citizens of global North. For Whitehead (1967) adventures (of ideas) illustrate slow drifts of mankind toward betterment and civilization; a historical movement and adventures of framing the explanations influencing history. Not only the western history but the history of all humans (and non-humans). Adventures include a wide variety of mental experiences shaping human lives and their histories in diverse global contexts. Ideas also experience their own local histories. How do ideas arise and are infused, how ideas and concepts related and blend? How do ideas multiply in the infinite pluriverse? Furthermore, it is interesting to think with Whitehead also in the context of methodology. Methodological language has rarely been ‘correct’ and accurate and more importantly methodology has rarely been independent from other processes. Rather, I imagined methodologies outside the fixed, pre-determined and premeditated steps. Methodologies function as spaces for experimentation and as experiential experiences themselves. These processes have always had drifts, movements, and own collective histories potentially without causal and individual history and necessary linear logic. These kinds of methodologies still excite me. More specifically, speculative methodologies and experimental plurality seduce. Thinking with thought pragmatically—guided by transformation, application, and practice—has produced a series of experiments in my work including experiments with text, language, discourse, concepts such as data, slowness, seduction, academic conference machine, (methodological) darkness, methodological landscapes of desert, write-scapes, matter such as writing-feeling flamingos, ghost, shadows, monsters… and more. I practice methodologies while simultaneously recreating, reshaping, and reformulating the world we collectively live with and within. Methods do not order or predict the world, but they create an emerging sense of worldly events. Erin Manning (2016) noted that “Thought must not be mapped onto practice: it is an emergent, incipient tendency to be discovered in the field of activation of practices co-composing. To map thought in advance of its speculative propositions would diminish the force of study and reduce the operation to the status of the creation of false problems and badly stated questions.” (p.41). Experimental and plural methodological history does not start or end. Slowly and gradually, one may become interested in open-ended inquiry, problematization, and been drawn toward multiple simultaneous and conceptual shifts. Theoretical and pragmatic ruptures lead to inquiry and seductive forces of matter and images. For example, some years ago I was drawn to Baudrillard. Baudrillard’s work prompted me to consider how the signs of reality create a duplication, a virtuality, hyperreal, which made it impossible to separate true and false, real and imaginary data, matter, and concepts. Baudrillard helped me to see that objects and data can have their escapes, strategies, and resistance. “The more object is persecuted by experimental procedures, the more it invents strategies of counterfeit, evasion, disguise, disappearance” (Baudrillard, 2000, p. 79). During my qualitative research methods courses students produced virtual and hyperreal data, they ate their interview transcripts and documented the possibilities and impossibilities outside Cartesian dualism. Collectively with my peers I sensed methodologies and processes in dark rainy forests, words formed 3-dimensional cartographies, and sounds moved me toward more than human and beyond singular and humanistic dialogues. My scholarly body grew tired of linear logic, clear argumentation structures, and valid research processes. Academic conference machine took over my international collaborations and our ‘crazy gang’ willingly allowed tables, dolls, gorillas, pacifiers to take over and participate in our becoming and knowing. Materiality produced us slowly but steadily, relationality heavily guided our collective thinking-doing and enabled us to sense the world around us and thinking in action. The AcademicConferenceMachine and its striated spaces and regulatory intellectual organization created disturbing effects and we saw this machine as a reliable, regulatory, structured organizational space, a space of (non)repetition — which runs the risk of becoming so regulating, normalizing and standardizing. We had to conference otherwise and desire to craft alternative spacetimes collective grew upon us. Later, our sensing outside sensibilities and exploring text outside textual practices were guided by Poly-experimentalism, a multifaceted experimentation addressing multiplicity and plurality in their various forms. Following the practices of Delamont and colleagues (2010) who encouraged scholars to make the familiar strange, listening Norman Denzin’s (1970) proposal that sociological imagination should shape methodological thinking and practices, and more recently being inspired by imagination and performance philosophies that have emerged through representational innovations such as interactional theaters where “scientific” research is performed. Furthermore, methodological experimentation acknowledges the diverse processual, intellectual, and methodologic examining and forays that take place when scholars extend discourses and habits of thought as well as extend on common routines that seem to become habitual practice in research projects. Drawing from my work with Linda Knight we argue that methodological experimentation is difficult to pin down with a singular author, text, meaning, practice, discipline, tradition, discourse, or even example because it can vary in scale and impact as experimentations are diversifying practices. Instead of focusing on conceptual singularity and practical linearity of the methodological past, seemingly fragmented thoughts and acts are united through the concept of “poly” and multiplicity of methodologies across different flows. In my recent work on navel gazing my collaborators and I started thinking about research assumptions and practices that we keep hidden. This led us to think about ‘navel-gazing’ as one practice of excessive focus on the ‘self’ through aggrandizement, ornate reflection, or even self-plagiarism and self-citation. We laughed at the idea of looking at one’s navel--the image is a silly one--but we decided to try it. One by one, we tried gazing at our own navels and then discussed the experience, theoretical and methodological insights, and silly recordings of our philosophical conversations. The proximity of navel created an interesting paradox. One’s navel (including one’s scholarship, knowledge, reality, truth, practices and so on) became intimately c…

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Episode 24: Episode 23: QR SIG Conference Overview Mar 30, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Jessica Van Cleave (SIG Chair)
discusses with Cassie Quigley (Program co-chair) and Alexandra Panos (Program co-chair) what the Qualitative Research SIG has planned for the 2021 AERA conference. Below is the transcript of the conversations.
VanCleave, Jessica: Hello everyone, welcome to qualitative conversations a podcast series hosted by the qualitative research special interest group of the American educational research association. I'm Jessic vancleave the current chair of the qualitative research special interest group. And i'm happy today to be joined by our program co chairs cassie quickly and Alex panelists and will be providing an overview of the 2021 annual meeting, which will be virtual for the first time this year and will take place from April 8 to April 12. Doctor cassie quickly as an associate professor of science, education and associate chair and the Department of teaching learning and leading at the school of education at the University of Pittsburgh.She received her doctorate and curriculum and instruction at indiana University in 2010. Dr quigley's expertise and qualitative research is focused on methodologies that Center the participants, such as Community based methodologies and using data collection methods like photo methods. In the past 11 years she has published over 50 articles and book chapters focused on those methods, including in journals, such as the International Journal of qualitative studies and education. Qualitative inquiry and the journal of mixed methods for search she also co authored a book on steam education entitled and educators guide to steam education, which is published by teachers college press. She has presented her qualitative work at numerous conferences, both nationally and internationally, she teaches qualitative research methodology courses on topics such as participatory action research, validity and reliability for qualitative work and ethics around educational research.
VanCleave, Jessica: Alexandra panels as an assistant professor of literacy studies and affiliate faculty and measurement and research in the college of education at the University of South Florida. She earned her doctorate in literacy language and culture, education, with a minor in inquiry methodology at indiana university bloomington in 2018. Dr panels takes an interdisciplinary stance in her work as a critical qualitative methodology. And grounds her theoretical methodological and empirical work in her substantive field of literacy studies. She has published numerous articles and book chapters that focus on the critical environmental and spatial dimensions of qualitative methodologies and literacy studies. Most recently, she has served as senior guest editor on a special issue, focusing on the spatial dimensions of taken for granted qualitative research practices related to masking. And anonymous ation to be published in the international Journal of qualitative studies and education, this year.And, as a co author for a book project under contract with teachers college press titled confronting denial literacy social studies and climate change, thank you both for joining me today to talk about this year's Program.
Alexandra Panos: happy to be here.
Quigley, Cassie (she/her/hers): Thank you JESSICA.
VanCleave, Jessica: So, to get started on can you just offer an overview of the program how many sessions are included, and what is the range of topics we're going to see.
Quigley, Cassie (she/her/hers): sure. So this year we are really excited to have 14 different sessions 15 if you include the mentoring session and 16 with the business. Meeting, as well as the sessions include a variety of sessions around well being and care as well, we have a session around advocacy and justice. there's a wide variety of critical work that ranges from critical race practices post-human position ality feminist approaches and critical participatory inquiry. We are especially looking forward to learning from scholars in one session called disruption interruption change it's not enough what we need is sabotage critical participatory inquiry as sabotage in and out of the Academy this work draws from black and Asian feminist and D colonial stances.
VanCleave, Jessica: Wonderful that sounds really exciting and thought provoking so, can you tell us a little bit about how many submissions the singer seen this year and how many slots were allotted to the same by eight yeah.
Quigley, Cassie (she/her/hers): yeah absolutely so this year we had 46 submitted proposals and symposia 37 of those for paper or poster Roundtable sessions we had, A really a ton of symposium submitted, which were we had 10 symposium submitted this included a mentor session which we'll talk about a little bit later. And so, our process for reviewing and accepting these submissions really takes a lot to ever viewers like you all, and so we were really fortunate that. All of our reviewers accepted that the numbers of submissions that they proposed. That they could handle and really turned those sessions those reviews around in it in a short amount of time, so we just wanted to extend that thanks to our reviewers for that. Each of the proposals reviewed by three different people and including at least one graduate student reviewer. At that time, then it's turned over to Alex and me, and we spent almost about a month going over the process of looking across the reviews we do utilize the scores as you'll remember if you're a viewer you're often you're asked to score on a numerical basis, but that is not used to accept or reject our sessions instead we look holistically across the reviews, which really just helps to ensure that there's a bias towards one type of research over another, and so that kind of gives you a description of the process for the AERA sessions for the qualitative Research SIG.
VanCleave, Jessica: It is a lot of work to put this program together both by you and Alex and all of the Members who service reviewers and we are so so grateful for all of that service. It really is a big job and seeing what we can expect at this year's annual meeting I'm very, very appreciative of the range of opportunities and the thoughtfulness that was put into that process.
VanCleave, Jessica: So uhm one of the sessions that Members will have the opportunity to attend is the business meeting, can you tell us about the business meeting and what Members can expect if they attend that session.
Quigley, Cassie (she/her/hers): Yes, absolutely we're really hoping that everyone is able to attend the business meeting.Because it really is our one time to gather together as a group, and of course we are wishing that we could be you know in community with one another, together face to face. But we still would love to see everybody join us online for this session, the session is about an hour long and we were able to pack quite a bit into this session, including a program report awards, and we will have a speaker which i'll talk to you about in just a minute, so our program report moves us through the various committees that are on that qualitative research day, including the Program mentor session for the mentor Committee, among others, the award session, which is quite a heavy lift for that committee includes outstanding book award outstanding dissertation award, which will be presented by the committee chairs, then we will have the Egon Guba speaker this year and we are so fortunate to have Mirka Koro accept that award and she is going to be speaking on speculative experimentation and methodological … . Our discussant will be Aaron Kuntz. And then we will be JESSICA will be introducing that session will end the business meeting with some closing remarks and some an opportunity to give input from our sig membership, so please join us for that one hour session if you're a.
VanCleave, Jessica: Are we so grateful, when many of our Members attend that business meeting it's a nice opportunity to have a little bit of Community and connect with one another, even if we're doing so virtually this year, so, in addition to our business meeting one of the things that the sig supports each year or mentoring opportunities so, can you talk a bit about the mentoring session that's going to be offered and the other mentoring opportunities that are on the Program.
Alexandra Panos: Sure, I can take that one JESSICA. Um the mentoring session we're really excited about i'm Kelly and the committee have worked really hard to create a space where. Members of the SIG can get guidance and feedback and discuss their work as either graduate students early career scholars. And I know we opened it this year to associate level faculty for mentorship into the next stage of their career as well, but that's sessions, going to be Sunday at 230 and it's a closed session so if you haven't signed up this year, that means it's not open but. This summer, and next fall calls will be going back out for applications to join the mentoring session as a mentee and then. I know that Kelly, and her committee work to invite and solicit members of the sig to lead in their mentorship capacity and this year, as well as past years, I know they focused on the concept of sickness, so if you're feeling stuck if there's something that's. Challenging in your work right now, this is the session for you to consider for next year.
VanCleave, Jessica: um well, as you mentioned Kelly on the committee have lots of opportunities they not only support on our Members at a era, but they also provide opportunities for mentorship in the proposal process so keep an eye out for announcements on the list about those opportunities. There's also informal office hours with members of the same that are available during the annual meeting again that process as Alex mentioned is already concluded for this year but, but if you are interested in connecting with more senior members in the segue for mentoring opportunities at any stage of your career be on the lookout for opportunities as they come through the listserv.
VanCleave, Jessica: On, so this is a lot this program has a lot to offer and a wide range of things across every day that the annual meeting is active, so what suggestions, do you have for Members, maybe, especially first time attendees to navigate the eight year a program and take advantage of the exciting QR saying sessions.
Alexandra Panos: yeah thanks JESSICA, I agree, it can be a lot it's one of the reasons that orienting to the conference via the QR sig can be so helpful because it directs you to the kinds of sessions that as a qualitative researcher. And you would be especially interested in, so if you're already a member of the sig JESSICA has sent out A Google Doc that gives a really sort of straightforward overview calendar overview of each day. So you can see what's coming up and then at the bottom of that document there's a description of each of the sessions, with the abstract and the speakers and their titles of their papers and Roundtable session presentations and the symposia etc. But once the the system itself gets underway, and we have access to our virtual conference program if you're registered as an attendee or a presenter discussing or chair you'll be able to access that virtual conference platform through the AERA website and You can search for us via the sig so that you can find those sessions, you can search by presenter you can search by paper title. So it's it's pretty helpful, especially if you've already sort of done some of that homework of what is the QR sig doing and what are the, what are we up to in this space. I think it's also important to remember that if you're assigned to a session as a presenter co presenter a chair or discuss it or have some active role in a session. One of the cool things that they've shared with us about the virtual platform is that the system will just sort of plop you into this space that you need to be at that time, like there's no clicking or searching for you as a presenter or someone with a role in a session. If you'd like to attend a session within the platform, we believe, what i've come to understand, about the platform is that you'll be able to design your own schedule and joining session simply by clicking within the platform itself And we also strongly recommend that, given the nature of these new spaces, we know now, after a year For many of us of attending other virtual conferences that each virtual platform is unique and we should have access to it honor around April 2 and we want to recommend that you And, especially if you're presenting you and your co presenters spend some time getting used to the conference space use it to develop your own schedule and Just sort of stick in there and and get your get your hands on it era has made a number of videos available that describe the conflict conference platform and answer some questions about that, but we expect that getting in there ourselves will be the most instructive and we're waiting waiting with great with bated breath to get in there ourselves so we hope that's helpful and if you have any questions about the conference platform, the annual meeting website is a place where help will be found, and we are also always available to send you information that we might be able to share.
VanCleave, Jessica: there's some really great tips, thank you for helping us think about how we might orient ourselves and and navigate both the platform and the content of this year's annual meeting so.
VanCleave, Jessica: you're interested in the qualitative research say you've got you've been checking out our Program.
VanCleave, Jessica: On but you're not yet a member, so can you talk to us a little bit about how you become a member of the qualitative research special interest group and what some of the benefits of membership might be.
Alexandra Panos: Of course. Well, we think that you should be a member. Of the QR SIG definitely, especially if you're listening to this podcast which is produced by the QR SIG, so this is one of the Member benefits that extends beyond membership, but that you'd be supporting But when you become a member of AERA one of the things that you have the opportunity to to do is to select a division and sig. For free so most of the time you have to pay a small fee that helps support the sake, but you can when you register get one of those those free memberships and if you select the call say you're a member. Benefits include receiving emails specifically for the membership, which includes many opportunities for connecting with other members of the same with mentorship with workshops calls for special issues sort of a first pass at important content related to qualitative research and our personal favorite with membership to the sig includes opportunities to review for the Conference, which is so beneficial to our field to. The sig itself and to your fellow call researchers, so if you have any questions about membership, you can reach out to any of us and we're happy to answer them and we really hope that if you aren't yet you will join us.
VanCleave, Jessica: Absolutely, we are very lucky to participate in such a vibrant Community that is continuously growing, and we hope that as many folks as are interested well will join us and continue to diversify and broaden our Community. So thank you so much cassie and Alex for joining me today and providing an overview of what Members can expect from the qualitative research same program this year. I hope to see all of you who are listening at our business meeting and I hope you'll consider joining the sake and contributing to our Community thanks again for being with us today on qualitative conversations.
Alexandra Panos: Thanks JESSICA.
Quigley, Cassie (she/her/hers): Thank you.

Episode 23: Episode 22: Decolonial Feminist Research Mar 22, 2021

Show notes

In this episode Dr. Kakali Bhattacharya (University of Florida) interviews Dr. Jeong-eun Rhee (Long Island University) about her scholarship in the field of qualitative research and her notion of 'transnational intergenerational decolonial feminist knowledge' and her recent book, Decolonial Feminist Research: Haunting Rememory and Mothers. The following presents a transcription of the conversation. Dr. Bhattacharya 0:24 Welcome everyone listening in it is my honor to be your guest podcast host today. My name is Dr. Kakali Bhattacharya. I'm a qualitative research professor at the University of Florida. With me is Dr. Jeong-eun Rhee, professor of education at Long Island University. This podcast, Qualitative Conversations, is produced by the qualitative research SIG at AERA. Professor Jeongeun Rhee recently authored a text the Decolonial Feminist Research: Haunting Rememory and Mothers, which is part of my Futures of Data Analysis and Qualitative Research series hosted with Routledge. The book has already created a lot of buzz, and challenged people's understanding of home memories relationality transnational existence, and multiple forces of oppression that cross borders without being categorized as a specific kind of qualitative research. It is my distinct pleasure to welcome Dr. Jeong-eun Rhee, welcome.Dr. Rhee 1:27 Thank you for that wonderful introduction. Kakali, I feel so honored to be here. Dr. Bhattacharya 1:34 So to begin our conversation, give us an overview of your academic journey and how you came to write the book. Dr. Rhee 1:43 There are so many different ways which I think I can answer that question. But at the same time, I'm not sure if I can clearly they up out of past I have, walked. that let me write this book. At least what I can share, though, is that my academic journey has been never separable from my personal, cultural, geopolitical and even spiritual journey. And I think this recognition is in fact how I was able to write this book. But, of course, it was not simply my journey, either. Right? So my journey has intersected or integrated with my family's journey in the context of larger historical relations. As well, as having said that, I also think if we assume that we can now and explain how we've come to where we are, in certainty, I think it can be our arrogant assumption. And I think that's also point I make I made in my book. I mean, the question that I pursued in the book was, what do we do with What do we can never explain? Right? So I think there are certain aspects that I do not know how to explain in terms of how, you know, my last four years of academic life, including my graduate school experiences, etc, has led me to write this book. But, But I know is that I could write this book, because I have learned or remembered how to connect with my mother's not just singular but plural, right, my mother's and ancestors of this land, and then their lands who have prepared a space for me to do my work. And this book is in fact a testimony or or even a question about my journey, both academic and spiritual, that reveals these connections. Dr. Bhattacharya 4:48 Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. It is really interesting. Like, it's not like something that you can like, fully map, but it could be another book and in and of itself, if you just write it. The the journey to writing this book like it's a prequel to the book, perhaps you know, I know that I introduced your book as something that doesn't really fit a certain category or certain type of qualitative research very distinctively, it would be really lovely to hear how you see this book in the larger context of the terrain of qualitative research.Dr. Rhee 5:25 So let me first express my gratitude to you Kakali as a series editor on feature of data analysis and qualitative research, who really encouraged me to think of your series as an outlet of my book. And as I actually talked about, in my book, I had worked on this book almost five years. And during those years, I actually didn't plan out to slate, my work as a qualitative research role, per se. I mean, in fact, I didn't know how to characterize the book until I completed the manuscript. I mean, what I knew was that this work was an inquiry, my inquiry, but but I was unsure if the qualitative research field itself was big enough to include my work as a qualitative research. And so I'm Kakali your gesture of welcoming however, you know, slight that move was like in the context and the large context of the whole field, still made a such a big impact on how I saw potentials of both my work and the field of qualitative research. So I just want to thank you for your vision for your field. And also, you're using our editorial position to open up and expand the boundary of the field.Dr. Rhee 7:12 From my perspective, as a qualitative researcher, what I hope that my will contribute to is to offer more possibilities. So producing, sharing, and then remembering killing knowledge. I think it's interesting that, you know, technically, as I also shared in the book, I didn't have a proposal, research proposal for this book, I didn't have a human subject, nor methodology. You know, my field work included both physical and metaphysical interactions. In my theoretical perspectives came from Toni Morrison's fiction, beloved, and ... experimental autobiographical poetry ... In my research question was like, What do you do when you're haunted by your mother's rememory? But in this writing, as the inquiry process would, I was able to notice and learn was that, in fact, there have been so much work done that I could build on to pursue my question. Also, my question was not simply my question. There have been so many other women, particularly of color, who have asked similar questions. This was how I realized that my work was a part of a larger knowledge project, which I named, eventually, in the book, transnational intergenerational decolonial feminist knowledge process. I hope that my work shows how our deeply personal question is, in fact, a way to connect with a larger collective question that many interconnected diverse communities have pursued. And when we build those connections between our personal and collective we can produce different knowledge different. I think here what mattered was not about following particular techniques or mythology is in terms of technicality, utility, productivity, and also rules and regulations, but about being able to ask and work with and live with our questions. Yeah, soDr. Bhattacharya 10:00 You know, your question? I mean, your response to my question makes me think about how qualitative research broadly is moving away from being like this technocratic social science, to a more humanistic oriented inquiry, versus, you know, certain steps and procedures we do. To think in very technocratic social science way we do these steps, we collect this data, we analyze it, we doing four or five different strategies or steps or approaches, then we triangulate everything to make everything check and confirm with everything else and have verifiability. And then we know we got something, whereas you are doing this work. And you're saying that the unknown is this, this fertile ground of inquiry, and it can still remain unknown as a result of the inquiry to, or it can create many types of knowings, without any certainty or any members check or any triangulation, or any peer debriefing, it can still remain a very open ended inquiry as a result of an inquiry. Dr. Rhee 11:10 Right. So at the level of, you know, I think methodology like, absolutely, I think that's kind of what I tried to, I guess, a share, not purposefully, but because that's what happened, but then at the level of epistemology, and then even episteme, I think what I tried to show is that actually, by really paying attention to this intergenerational transnational, decolonial feminist knowledge that have existed across the globe, right, that I was able to actually connect with it in the name of science, and how that opened up a new way, or different way, or, you know, relational kind of way of actually noticing the part of reality that I actually forgot. Dr. Bhattacharya 12:18 Yeah, yeah. And that's, that's a Western training and colonizing training that teaches us to forget our own knowledge is and that's so that's always a question that I keep asking myself, what knowledge am I forgetting? What knowledge am I forgetting? There are two anchoring ideas in your book that are re-memory and haunting, which is appropriate for forgetting knowledge or haunted by the met the notion of losing our connectivity? Could you talk a bit about how you came across this ideas, and why they become such critical anchoring for you. Dr. Rhee 12:57 So, read memory and hunting are affective concepts, meaning that to now what they are, you have to feel them. That's how you learn what rememory and haunting are no amount of reading will allow you to know what they are, how they work, and how they change you. And so I want to kind of put this out first, and, you know, conceptually, remember, it was first coined and introduced by Toni Morrison in our book beloved. And according to Morrison rememory is worth remembering and forgetting at the same time, that stays both in person and place that can be encountered by others. This notion, or even existence of remembering completely ruptures how empirical modern science functions. And then think about it. What does this mean that we memories, both remembering and forgetting, at the same time? How is it possible for one's rememory stay both in and outside a person's mind? If remember his base in place, as well, who's remembering? I mean, I can go on with all these questions, right that come from our scientific intelligibility. And to me, rememory of place has become like the source of a haunting as it is someone else's rumery that changes us. And so hunting becomes a demand from those who refuse to be forgotten. And I highlighted effective aspects of remembering and hunting, because I have read beloved so many times. But I really didn't get it. I mean, I cognitively understood what they were when the after my mother's death, and after my mother left to her remote memory for for me to encounter, I became able to see what rememory and hunting were. And so I think like this is the the point that I wanted to put out in terms of like, what I meant by affective concepts. And I think, you know, the famous instruction of Audrey Lorde, who said that masters tool cannot dismantle the masters house, it is very relevant here. I don't think I could figure out how to ask my questions with my academic training only. But with this absolutely non scientific concepts of remembering and haunting, which doesn't mean that they're not true, right. But with those, I started my super personal inquiry through my mother's death, and her remote remember is haunting. And and, in fact of her life was deeply implicated in US Imperial War in Korea. And through my work, now I'm carrying her memor, in this territory of the United States, where my mother's rememory interact with other mothers of colors from memories. And without this kind of embodied the spiritual relationships that have been that have become the source of knowledge. I don't think I could have made this and so my experience and wrote this work.QR SIG Add 17:26 The qualitative research special interest group was established in 1987. To create a space within the American Educational Research Association. For the discussion of ethical, philosophical and methodological issues in qualitative research. We invite you to consider joining the qualitative research SIG today, for members of a era the annual fee for joining qualitative research special interest group for regular non graduate student members is $10. And the annual fee for graduate students is $5. As members of the QR SIG, you will gain access to a network of fellow qualitative scholars, as well as are many activities ranging from mentoring opportunities to our podcast series to update to news related to recent qualitative publications and jobs, please visit the American educational research associations website at www dot era dotnet to join the qualitative research sake today.Dr. Bhattacharya 18:20 You know, this is such a good reminder of the value of other ways of knowing and being then just using the the way that is, and that disconnects you from your body and from your emotionality is, this is like deeply embodied very, very emotion based but not just that, but there is a, there is a sort of like a beautiful spiritual understanding as well, you know, and those sorts of culturally grounded Ways of Knowing that can't all be translated and, you know, like, repurposed in research language and put it out for the world to consume, either you sort of know how to be in those ways of knowing and being and in those connections, or you don't, and that's okay, either way, but those are the connections that spoke to you, which is interesting, because as I was reading your work, I found myself crying, cheering, laughing, cussing, and just going on this journey with you, which was ultimately very healing, you know, from bearing witness, and also from my own embodied experience as well. So could you talk about the role of healing in your work and how it might have shaped your thinking?Dr. Rhee 19:42 So I think I want to reiterate that it took me five years to complete this book. The whole process of writing this book was a process of intentional process of bringing in justice to my mother's life. I mean, as I mentioned briefly already, I want to emphasize that, you know, this wasn't only about my biological mother, but also other mothers of color, who had prepared place for me to come and encounter, there were memories in this territory. So while that was my intention, the process has also become also the process of healing and re storytelling for me. And in fact, those five years became the time I needed to be healed. Through my loss, while I was fighting for justice, to my mother's of color, through my writing as inquiry. I think before I actually talk other things, I must acknowledge that, you know, this time luxury, my taking five years, partly came from my positional privilege is a full professor where I didn't have to worry about, you know, creating, getting tenured or, or getting promoted, etc. But at the same time, I want out other quality researchers to consider or have some time, we need this long staying in a certain kind of work, especially if the work is healing us. In fact, through this work, I have reaffirmed how important it is for us to produce work that heals us as researchers in the process of working on it, working through it, because the work that heals us, as researchers will help others as well, whether they are our participants, readers or communities we work for. So perhaps now we can even ask what is a mean that we as researchers work toward the healing knowledge? What different methodologies reveal bearable for us to do such?Dr. Bhattacharya 22:40 That's, that's a lot, you know, I think, like I have always taught about the work of justice, you know, is it has to be complemented with the work of healing, you know, so the work of justice, or the work of equity, or the work of creating space and visibility from previous unjust things, you know, requires a healing, it doesn't require it's almost foolish to require the dominant group to be responsible for creating anything because the privilege are not incentivized to do anything for those that they oppress. Right. So then how do we do this work without alwa…

Full show notes at the publisher

Episode 22: Episode 21: Disability, Activism, and Qualitative Research Jan 14, 2021

Show notes

In this podcast, Emily Nusbaum interviews Alice Wong, disability rights activist and founder of the Disability Visibility project. Their conversation Alice describes the relationship of research to her activism, her experience in the academy, and key questions that scholars should consider when embarking on research with marginalized communities. Below is a transcript of this talk. Alice 0:25 All right,Emily 0:27 my name is Emily Nussbaum, and I'm here with Alice Wong talking with her this evening for the Qualitative Research SIG of AERA. And I am super thrilled to be interviewing Alice for this episode. Alice is the director of the Disability Visibility Project, a thought leader known everywhere in Disability Justice and access issues and author of the recently published acclaimed book Disability Visibility. So Alice, thank you so much for talking with me.Alice 1:11 Thank you for having me, Emily. You know, I also want to say that we have been friends for a long time, and I just don't want it to be a conversation with you.Emily 1:24 Yeah, me too. So, since this is for a group focused on qualitative inquiry, I reached out to you thinking about your work through various forms of social media and the Disability Visibility Project and ways that the qualitative research community can start to think more expansively about what counts as qualitative research, and that kind of thing. But I think if I'm correct, and clarify, of course, that you began a more academic career in sociology. So I wondered if you could just give us kind of that background of how you started thinking about research and what that background was, and then we can talk more about the shift you made to the super important and impactful work that you're doing now? Well,Alice 2:31 Just a long story short...I really...my initial career goals, my vision was to be an academia, I love to Sociology, every semester, I stroke fast, and, you know, I feel like sociology gave me the lens to really see the world and analyze the world. Especially, you know, toward the event of disability, you know, beyond, you know, to create a better model. So, you know, I went to undergrad I majored in sociology, you know, I keep in touch with a bunch of professors. It is a sociology department at Indiana University, in Indianapolis. I can't remember who it was who gave me my first experience as you know a research assistant at, you know, to tell you the truth, I am so grateful for their support and their belief or in me to be their student really activated it, you know, I saw a lot of gaps in the literature. You know, just gaps in research, just, you know, where are the disabled people? You know, there's you know,Emily 4:10 like, in terms of only talks about talk about gaps and disabled people in terms of voice and in terms of like representation outside kind of more deficit based perspectives. Yeah.Alice 4:28 Health care very simple. You know, there's a lot of work guys out there equalities it's so such a structure of medicine but you know, also maybe I've been thinking about like, well what about you know, disability and there's a, you know a lot of work on devious and stigma, you know, Eving Goffman, it was it was earlist people. Goffman and Foucault as well, just really If you think about what are the disabled perspectives, disable scholarship, advance these kinds of ideas, extend these ideas. It wasn't until, you know, that's really where I started studying about disability studies, work of Erving K. Yes, his work. People of the UK, so despite all of herEmily 5:37 social model,Alice 5:41 those were trying to like, wow, like, there are these, you know, there are people doing this work. And, you know, I thought this to be my contribution, I think, to a person particular, that's really was kind of a model of what I wanted to do. To date, Barbara Waxman.Emily 6:04 Yeah, I just need to share if you can share a little bit about who she is, I only just learned about her and her work recently, in the last few months, helping a longtime activist sort of organize some of their materials for an archive for the San Francisco Public Library. And Amazing, amazing. So do you want to just mentioned who Barbara Waxman is?Alice 6:33 Yeah. So Barbara Fay Waxman is a disabled woman, she was both a scholar and an activist. She is no longer with us, you know, rest in power Barbara, and, you know, she was one of these. So, like, unapologetic badass disabled women just totally grounded in the love of her body, the love of her sexuality. She did a lot of work on reproductive sexual health, of disabled women. And that was traditionally one of the areas that I really wanted to focus on. You know, as I did, various, undergrad, you know, just searching, you know, just so, lucky for a bit of people that are out there, that I could kind of connect with or at least identify with. though, you know, I think Barbara was one of those people. And, you know, she had a really long career of being both a scholar and an activist. And she both. She did. She did both. they were hand in hand. Emily 8:06 Yeah, I'm interested in that. And I want to get back to, to more of your work or how you're thinking about it, but this nexus of being a scholar and an activist, and what more traditional kind of thinkers or people who are in more traditional academic spaces, what we what we could take away from that, or what any of those people could take away from that. Because I think that, that that Nexus is very, very important when we think about advancing that critical games of qualitative research.Alice 8:41 Yeah, I would say that, you know, people like Barbara [inaudible] and Paul or his story here. Also they are really both activist, that says a lot about the academy and, you know, marginalized people who are entering the academy they can't separate the lived experiences from the way they teach from the way they relate to students, faculty, staff, I think, you know, what academia does, it sectors normative perspectives, normative body-minds. clearly, you know, white perspective white norms. And you know, this is this place is a lot of pressure to force people to like, separate parts of themselves. It does not encourage people to be who they are or every state that they are. If you think about the way scholars of color are really just not welcome, you know, somebody marginalized students at university scholars enter academic spaces, but they often don't at that staying. this says a lot about structural racism, ableism, and classism, that is pretty much permiated. Yeah. So you know, I think sometimes people ask when I became an activist, you know it is a very simplistic answer, but, you know, being disabled in a in a non-disabled world did not give you a choice. This is not a privilege. [inaudible] You know a lot of what I admired in both Paul and Barbara is that they used their positions, they used their research, they used all of their expertise and skills to serve us as the disability community. I mean, it shouldn't be a radical notion. But I think it still is. Because it goes against every sort of conventional wisdom about getting tenure or being professional. and this is wha I did. So there's different motives. Oh, why they are stroller? Did I beat myself? You know, initially, I wanted to contribute to the field I, you know, thought my perspective my I would like to be somebody that does research as a disabled person, with disabled people versus about or at disabled people.Yeah. Thanks. And I want to just just pause for one second and reinforce that to people that are listening like that, that kind of distinction is really the crux of, say, the academic field of disability studies. And then also the way community scholars are working around and within in disability, right, which is research isn't about or on, or to fix or anything like that for abled people, right. But it's about centering disabled people and non normative body minds and thinking of disabled people as research partners, as well, in the process, so come kind of turning Inside Out of the framework.Yes. I did. Also, I want to share that, you know, lived experience in addition to other skills, they are not mutually exclusive. The big idea misconception or binary that's I want to smash. Because I think people presume that I just have to have the research skills that's it and a theory and all that stuff. And disabled people are the ones who are the ideas or the ones to give feedback versus active partners in the development of theory.Emily 14:33 That's super powerful AliceAlice 14:35 It should be obvious, but it's not. You know, there's still a lot of power dynamics. You know, disabled people are treated in a very tokenistic, exploitative and extractive ways,Emily 15:03 And especially when we think of multiple marginalized disabled people. Absolutely. SoAdvertisement 15:18 the qualitative research special interest group was established in 1987. To create a space within the American Educational Research Association. For the discussion of ethical, philosophical and methodological issues in qualitative research, we invite you to consider joining the qualitative research SIG today. for members of era, the annual fee for joining the qualitative research special interest group for regular non graduate student members is $10. And the annual fee for graduate students is $5. As members of the QR SIG, you will gain access to a network of fellow qualitative scholars, as well as our many activities, ranging from mentoring opportunities to our podcast series to updates and news related to recent qualitative publications and jobs. Please visit the American educational research associations website at www dot era dotnet to join the qualitative research sake today.Emily 16:15 So I'm curious, because I think this is this notion. I mean, I wrote it down. And I'll just say it again, that is so powerful, this notion of lived experience versus academic skills are not mutually exclusive. Right? And it's like this question of who? Who gets to make knowledge, right? Like, it's a question of epistemology, really, and who, who gets to, to create knowledge. And so it makes me think about why I wanted to reach out to you to do this interview, thinking about your work in the public domain, right. And that you have a very strong social media presence, of course, and can speak about different different, like on Twitter with crypto vote, but also thinking about the Disability Visibility Project. And the way you're kind of work in those areas can help academics. You know, people who are, are in the, in, you know, academic spaces, really think more expansively about this idea of knowledge production. So do you mind sharing with us a little bit about the Disability Visibility Project, sort of how it emerged, what it is? And we can go from there?Alice 17:47 Yeah, sure. Before I get to that response, I want to also say, you know, think who gets to ask and form research questions is really central in terms of just really everything. Not just for creating knowledge.But who gets to ask the question, because evenEmily 18:21 a step before that, right.Unknown Speaker 18:22 I think that asking the question is really about identifying that something is a phenomenon? I feel like, you know, what people did before in all disciplines that academia is more people with, you know, a variety of perspectives, but also located different places, different different contexts. You know we don't ever use the term research questions. Disabled people ask a lot of amazing questions all the time. But this is actually such a rich, you know, rich kind of intellectual work. But the think is that it doesn't take place within certain structures, so it's not recognized as intellectual work. So, you know, we need to also kind of unpack all of that stuff about, you know, really research. Yeah, asking question to produce in new knowledge, because, again, it's often Those who do have the means of production are the ones driving the qeustions. You know should it really be in the hand of those who are the focus of inquiry.Emily 20:16 I know, like I asked a previous question, I brought this up, but this thing even brings up this notion of like, I mean, I think a lot about this and some of the partnerships I have with community scholars about like, what do we then do with like, those questions and what comes out of them? Right, and how do we not use it? How do we use it for the purposes of the individuals that have framed the questions? Right, versus the purposes that people in the academy often use use them for? That?Alice 21:02 All of these kind of feelings and thoughts about who has control, you know creative control, just the ability to essentialize and articulate ideas, you know, that doesn't take place in a vacuum. These things happen, you know, in collaboration with others, did offer, you know, building on, you know, past work or past ideas. I think that leaves a lot of people out. Right now, I'm kind of not limiting myself to do stuff inside or outside the academy. I feel like I can be wherever I want to be, you know. I might just like have a day pass. [inaudible] that's fine by me. Because, you know, I like to kind of, kind of get by. You know, [inaudible] at a bit of [inaudible] but also, they will be engaged, to be what's really exciting that I don't think of these days as separate. I believe that disabled people belong everywhere.Emily 22:48 Yes.Alice 22:49 And you know while I have clearly, just to be honest, I do think that I have been driven out of academia. For a lot of reasons, But I don't regret it. You know, I just I think it was probably the smartest decision I ever made. To be honest.Emily 23:26 Can I offer before you start, like, I want to say that this project and thinking about this project as research, is, to me so transformative and powerful. And when we think about wanting to win, we're a part of an upcoming book project that I have with another colleague and our purposes in this edited volume to I think we called it quote, radical possibilities, maybe I can't quite remember but thinking about how something like the Disability Visibility Project can allow us to think so much more expansively. Right about this question of what counts, right. So I just wanted to give that intro of why of the super important connection, I think, between the DVP and qualitative research and the qualitative research community.Alice 24:32 I did yeah, we could use the terms content, media, culture and research of us interchangeably. whatever you want to call it. It's, it's useful. it's valid its a certificate. So the reason why I started it was out of my own frustration at the history about disabled people by disabled people. Yeah, I started in 2014. it was stories by disabled people here at artist history, nonprofit or storyboard, it leads up to the 25th anniversary. Yeah, what is it? 2015. I did that as a way to generate and document our stories, not to kind of wait around for historians. You know, I feel like that today was one of the most exciting days. Yeah. Because people say like, your story matters. You don't have to be an icon. You don't have to be a leader or famous. You know, your story is part of this growing collective of like, what is the disability experience like in the 21st century? Why can't we participate in the creation and documentation of our history? And the fact that story core has a relationship with our library of congress, that allows participants to have their story archived there. You know, this isn't just for academics for historians. It's for the public. And that's, that feels powerful. Yeah, feels really good. It feels like…

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Episode 20: Qualitative Research in a Digital World Dec 18, 2020

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In this episode, Alexandra Panos interviews Jessica Nina Lester and Trena Paulus about doing qualitative research in digital words. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for digital methods and strategies has never been stronger. This conversation addresses important practice and theoretic questions for approaching digital inquiry. Digital Tools for Qualitative Research - Trena M. Paulus, Jessica N. Lester, Paul DempsterDoing Qualitative Research in a Digital World - Trena M. Paulus, Jessica N. LesterThe following includes the transcript of the talk. (please excuse minor transcription errors)Alexandra Hello there and welcome to qualitative conversations a podcast hosted by the qualitative research special interest group of the American Educational Research Association. I'm Alexandra Panos an assistant professor of literacy studies and an affiliate faculty member in research and measurement at the University of South Florida. I also have the pleasure to serve as program coach with Cassie Quigley for the call SIG. And I'm delighted to be here with doctors Trina Paulus and Jessica Nina Lester to talk about the role digital tools play in qualitative research. Dr. Paulus is a professor in the Research Division of Family Medicine and director of undergraduate research and creative activities, as well as an affiliate faculty member with the Applied Social Research Laboratory at East Tennessee State University. Dr. Paulus's scholarship is primarily in the area of methodological innovation, especially as it intersects with new technologies. Dr. Lester is an associate professor of inquiry methodology in the School of Education at Indiana University Bloomington. Her scholarship focuses primarily on discourse and conversation analysis, disability studies, and more general concerns related to crop qualitative research. Dr. Paulus and Dr. Lester have co authored with sage, the 2014 book digital tools for qualitative research, and an exciting new and in press volume, titled doing qualitative research in a digital world. Thank you both so much for joining it today and sharing your time and energies. Thanks for inviting us. Yes, thank you so much. I'm truly excited to learn from you both and really just want to dive right into our conversation if that's okay. And I wanted to start withAlexandra a question that situates us in the here and now, given the shifts that have happened worldwide over the last 10 months with the covid 19 pandemic? Can you share a bit about what from your perspective, this really means for qualitative researchers? And how digital tools might play into this?Trina Yeah, so it's kind of this been this weird experience of being in the right place at the right time, or being in the right place at the wrong time? I don't know. But you know, COVID-19 is impacted all researchers in significant ways, for sure. And, you know, we had started writing this new edition of the book,Trina fully revamped book that's coming out shortly, a couple of years ago, actually. And then when COVID-19 hits sage really asked us to try to wrap it up, because researchers really needed some guidance for how to basically do their research in a new way.Trina And so how do we make sense of those spaces? How do we look at online interaction as a source of data as qualitative researchers, you know, we are interested in the human experience and understanding it as qualitative researchers, and that is now completely emeshed with, you know, doing business, doing education doing everything online. So, you know, there's new opportunities here, even though you know, most people have been, you know, there there are researchers have been doing this for a while, we all kind of have to consider how online spaces might be treated as a source of data, how our experiences are different.Trina And so while I think kind of one of the first things people want to know is how do we do interviews in zoom? It's, it's more than that. It's that we're all now spending lots and lots of time in zoom. So how can we understand what's happening there? So we've got digital tools, digital spaces, and also the digital space as a phenomenon in and of itself. Those are just a few of my initial thoughts. Jessica, what do you think?Jessica Yeah, I mean, I think that one of the things that's really helpful to keep in mind and in this moment, even though there's this you know, it feels like such a significant and even forced shift for qualitative research, I do think it's helpful to remind ourselves that this move to doing qualitative work and online spaces is not particularly new. And there's really a vast body of literature that we can draw upon to support us and offer some guidance to the questions that we're facing. And even really provoke us to think more about what it means to do qualitative research and be a qualitative researcher in a, you know, a historical moment where we're not just using technologies, but we're living through them even as researchers, and we're making meaning with them. So I think that's something for us to kind of use as a way to frame this particular moment. And that there's resources that we can turn back to, but that also, these are important questions that we should be asking ourselves about our work, and about what it means to make sense of meaning making in a space where technologies are really intersecting with everyday life.Alexandra Thanks, yeah, it's, it's, um, it's a lot to process. And I appreciate your point about that. Sometimes it does feel for Steven F, for we're all going through it. And it makes me think a little bit about design, designing scholarship right now designing qualitative scholarship right now. So I wonder if you can speak a little bit about how you work through as a qualitative researcher having to adjust your expectations about a research project, when what you'd hope to do isn't currently feasible. Given realities? Yeah, IJessica can speak to that a little bit. You know, one thing that I often talk with about this question in relationship to students coming to me and saying, I can't do what I hope to do, particularly in this, this given moment, what are my options, and I think it is helpful to think about that, you certainly can return back to your original design and think about if there are ways that you can transform some of those methodologies and methods in engaging with digital tools, that you could digitize some of them, for instance. And then also, it is possible that you actually have to go back to the drawing board. And one of the things that you could potentially engage with is really thinking about designing a study, from the get go, that really engages in with digital spaces. And what that might mean is that you expand definitions of data. And this can be really exciting. And you can engage with new kinds of data that you hadn't even envisioned engaging with before. And so I think, you know, there are those two pathways to think about turning back to that original design and potentially, in some way, digitizing that original design or really rethinking it. And I think that this is an okay thing. I think that, you know, part of part of methodology writ large, is that it's always in the making. And so right now, our methodologies are in a really real way intersecting with technologies. And so what that means is that methodology is being remade. And that's, there's something also really both challenging, and also, potentially really exciting about kind of that moment. So at the same time, I think what that also means is, as we think about re envisioning a study, that we also have to keep in mind that the technologies that we engage with are, of course, not neutral. And they are, of course, you know, always fraught with consequences, including, you know, political consequences and equitable access. And so this is certainly something that we also want to set with as we think about our design, and particularly as we think about redesigning a study.Alexandra It's so helpful. I wonder if there are theoretical perspectives that have you found particularly helpful for conducting this kind of Digital Research and turning to to the stat sitting with process that you spoke of?Jessica Yeah, I can speakJessica to this, this idea of theories that have informed our work, and I think I'll just share a little bit of a story of how we're coming to think with theory now. So. So first off, so just in general, if you were to engage with the literature around technology and qualitative research over the last, you know, about decade, you would probably conclude that qualitative researchers have historically kind of held on to this view of what's often referred to as technological determinism. So that's this orientation that humans are essentially passing And therefore, they must adapt to changes that technology forces upon them. So this particular view is one that often assumes that it's intrinsically best and most efficient technology will be adopted regardless of the context. And so this particular view is one that when Trina and I wrote the our first book, around digital tools and qualitative research, we really explicitly wanted to counter this perspective that was in the methodological literature. And in some ways, we did this implicitly, but what we really argued for was thinking about the ways in which we as qualitative researchers could really use technology to do things that we wanted it to do. So we didn't position ourselves that's passive. And so within this viewpoint, then qualitative researchers could be thought of as kind of retaining control of qualitative data analysis software, for instance, and not assuming that the software would control the study. So technology, and from this perspective, would be theorized and viewed as not just instrumental, but really positioned as what a human qualitative researcher can use it to do. But after we were wrote our first book on this topic I ran across a book that Katherine Adams and Terri Lynn Thompson had written, which was titled, researching a post human world interviews with digital objects. And in their book, they engaged with new materialistic post qualitative perspectives, and really offers some interesting ideas about how we as qualitative researchers are really intermingled intertwined with digital technologies. And as a read, I saw some references to our book. And so I immediately texted Trina and Katrina, someone has something to say about our book. And, and ultimately, it was a critique, it was a critique of our view of technology that we crafted in the first book was really not engaging and a full way with the ways in which technology really can be conceptualized and theorize as being co researchers with us that there's a dialectic. And so in our newest book, we really take up this critique and have begun to think more with you've been realistic ideas of technology, as well as some of the critical theories related to technological use. And we have found that to be really helpful, and generative, and pushing our thinking about how technologies are co researchers with us and are entangled with us in the process that is then something that we have to really think carefully about, and think about the implications of the tools that we use, and the ways that we're engaging in meaning making.Alexandra That I love hearing the story of how these texts evolve over time one, it also makes me wonder, the about the ethical and privacy considerations is something that's important when you do that kind of Digital Research when you are intermingled. So I wonder if you could share a little about that.Trina Yeah, I can talk a little bit about that. Because it does these issues come up a lot. In the work that I do. And the researchers that I work with these, I'm primarily looking at Digital spaces, online communities and online groups as a source of data. So I think the first thing to think about is that, you know, we always are dealing with ethical issues and privacy considerations when we're doing qualitative research as qualitative researchers, you know, we're often looking very deeply and intensely at people's lives. And so it's always different than if you're giving a survey or doing you know, lab based research is different kinds of ethics. The good thing is that there's actually been a lot of scholarship around ethics and Digital Research for many years. In fact, when we were writing this book, I couldn't believe the proliferation of entire texts on digital ethics that appeared since we wrote the first book in 2014. So there's a lot of guidance out there for sure. A couple of the things that issues that come up frequently for me in in when I'm giving talks and talking with people about it, is the issue of digital traces. And the fact that so much of us are so much of our lives now even before the pandemic world lived on the internet and in the cloud and with mobile devices. And as we go through the world, we're live leaving digital traces everywhere. And whether or not those should be treated as a source of data is the is one of the big issues, right? Who owns those traces? And whose permission Do you need to get to look at those as a data source? institutional review boards often are getting better about having policies around this, but they don't always know how to guide researchers. And sometimes, even though technically, the IRB approves the study, because they don't consider looking at online discussion posts as human subjects research because they're publicly visible, just because they say it's not human subjects research may not automatically mean that it's ethical to look at online discussion posts as a source of data without telling anyone. So I think that thinking about who owns these spaces, who's interacting on these spaces, who has access to them? I think, you know, there, there are no hard and fast rules, because the landscape is changing all the time, right? Like we have Tick Tock now, and we didn't even have that before. So how do we think about Tick Tock as a source of research data. But a few things to think about is, you know, I'm working in a medical school context now. So I hear a lot more about you know, the do no harm, first, do no harm mandate. And so you want to first be sure you're not harming or putting anybody at risk, whether that's an entire online community that no one would have known about until you wrote a paper about it, or if it's about an individual who was posting under their real identity, about a very sensitive illness online, and you bring attention to them inadvertently, or, or on purpose. really thinking about that is, of course, the basis and the fundamental issue around ethics. I've been also thinking about privacy. Do they expect that that this community is private? You know, is it really just for insiders? How can you respect people's privacy? At what point do you need to get informed consent, which may be very difficult when people are in online communities not as themselves, but under an assumed identity assumed identity? How do you navigate that? And so keeping identities private, protecting the data? If you do store? If you do treat it as data, then how can you make it as hard to track down the original sources possible? And then if you do do that, is it changing the essence of the data, or the essence of those online interactions, so that it actually might impact how you interpret it? So those are things that we have to struggle with? how sensitive are the topics that people are talking about? And again, you know, just trying not to put…

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Episode 19: Outstanding Dissertation Award Winner Dr. Maureen Flint Nov 22, 2020

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In this episode, Maureen Flint, recipient of the QR SIG Outstanding Dissertation Award, discusses her work with the QR SIG Dissertation Award Committee Chair Jennifer Wolgemuth. You can follow more of Dr. Flint's work on her website: www.maureenflint.com. Below is the transcript of this interview.Jennifer Hello, everyone, and welcome to qualitative conversations, a podcast series hosted by the qualitative research special interest group of the American Educational Research Association. I'm Jennifer wolgemuth, the current chair of the qualitative research special interest group outstanding dissertation award committee. I am excited to be joined today by Dr. Maureen Flint, who is the recipient of the 2020 outstanding dissertation Award for her dissertation titled, methodological orientations, college student navigations of race and place in higher education. Dr. Flint is an assistant professor of qualitative research at the University of Georgia, where she teaches courses on qualitative research design, analysis and theory in the College of Education. The research agenda focuses on the theory, practice and pedagogy of qualitative inquiry. In particular, she's interested in artful methodologies, as well as questions of social justice, ethics and equity in higher education. Her research has been published in qualitative inquiry, cultural studies, critical methodologies, the review of higher education, Journal of college student development, and art slash research international and many other outlets. Her current work is interested in audio, visual and multimodal approaches to inquiry and representation. And some of her explorations in this area can be found on her website at www.maureen.flint.com. That's www.maureenflint.com Thank you for joining me today. Dr. Flynn. MaureenI'm really thrilled to learn more about you and your work. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here.Jennifer I think it would be helpful for our audience just to learn a little bit more about your dissertation work. So can you talk about your dissertation? What was the scope? What was its methodological focus?Maureen 2:27 Yeah, absolutely. Um, so my dissertation explored the socio historical context of race on campus, and particularly through new materialist and critical spatial, I'm going to critical spatial lens. So maybe we'll back up a little bit, I have a background in student affairs. And then I also have a background in the arts. And so both of those things really came kind of to the fore when I started my dissertation, as I've worked as an administrator, and it kind of started from this question, this gap between what I saw between what we was doing as an administrator, and then the things that we said that we valued and things that actually happened. And so I was really interested in kind of getting at that gap, particularly around the question of belongingness. and ended up finding theory is kind of this entry point to really work that tension. So a question of focus on place, and the way that place and the histories of place mattered, and students belongingness. And so this kind of starting there, I started with kind of traditional methods of interviews and focus groups. And then kind of found they necessarily getting at getting at the complexity of place that I kind of felt on the day to day or that my, my students kind of were alluding to in their interviews and so I started thinking about what kind of throughout my dissertation there's this question of faithfulness to theory is the way that I talked about it and how, how am I continually orienting to theory and the ways in which I'm designing and writing and representing engaging with my participants and thinking, thinking about kind of engaging with the space of campus and my research questions as a whole so throughout my dissertation, I can move in and out of these various methods and analytic approaches things like walking interviews and student I had students make maps that visually represented the police of Canvas and and kind of walk them through them. And then when I moved in de analytics started, I started to think with sound as a way to kind of explore the this layered pneus of place and and then that also, that kind of question. fullness also came out. And the ways in which I wrote through my dissertation is I can continually pausing and stopping and thinking about, you know, how is theory guiding you in this moment? Or have I fallen away from theory. And so I think, you know, that that really became the guiding threads throughout at all. And it closes and closes with this kind of question of ethics and theory, and faithfulness in the way that all those things in our twine, particularly in relationships with participants and kind of questions of futurity, and who are we as methodologists, in the future to come? So, yeah.Jennifer Wow, thank you. It sounds like what one of the things that I really heard you say, and I think would be really of interest to the listeners is, you you started out with what we might call traditional or conventional qualitative inquiry. And then it was a combination of engaging theory, new materialist theory and other sorts of theories that opened up different kinds of methodological possibilities for you. So can you give some advice to doctoral students who might be on that particular path right now as we speak? Maureen 6:23Yeah, absolutely. Um, I think, well, I now I think about it, I teach because I teach one of the classes that I teach is our design course. And one of the things that I have the students in that class do, we have an of this traditional three interview project, that's traditionally the outcome of that course. And one of the things that I do in that class is have students have do one of those interviews as a non traditional scare quotes, non traditional interview, and it opened the door for them to do something different with it, with their their dislike of their interview, the research questions, this idea of interview itself. And I think that I see that for them really opening the door to think about how other things matter beyond just like an interview script, and sitting across from someone and asking them a series of questions help.You know, things like objects, or changing the place of the interview, or even going beyond, I've had students really challenged what an interview is, and like engage interview documents or going to go into different types of analysis, but always guided by the theories and their literature and the research questions that are guiding them. So I think maybe, I think that that is an entry point. They're thinking about advice to other students. And, yeah, I think in my own work, it was also reading interdisciplinarily. So I was reading a lot in critical geography studies. I was reading in like, literary fiction, poetic authors like Claudia Rankin, and Saidya Hartman, who write in a very, like literary poetic style, speculative fiction, like nk jemisin. And so those little really inspired mythological choices that I made in terms of like, thinking differently, or thinking otherwise about representation or methodology.Jennifer Um, so, you mentioned new materialism and new materialist theory and philosophy. So in addition to all this interdisciplinary reading that you're doing, and this sort of practicing with innovative methodologies, what recommendations might you have for new materialist readings for students? Maureen 9:02 Who, um, yeah, I think, Rosie Brady's My, my, my girl, um, so she was really what guided my dissertation. Um, she has a new book out on post-human knowledges that I think really speaks to this present moment that we're in a precarity and exhaustion and capitalism and white supremacy and the ways that all those things are colliding all at once. And I've also, Sara Ahmed has been although she's not necessarily a new materialist writer, she's really informed my work, particularly around thinking around feminism.And who else in a thing. work has been really important and I think she just had she has a new website out that's beautiful. That's thinking in these really layered ways about the Anthropocene. And I guess maybe more broadly, the thing that I would say about reading is that I've really been inspired by reading with other people who are working in other spaces and places. And so I end up reading things that I never would have coming out of my discipline, in educational research, but also with this background in higher education, we become, especially in higher ed become really siloed. And so thinking with people who are in math, education, or English, or geography or other spaces has been really an expansive,expanded my reading in productive ways.Jennifer This is some really great sources and great suggestions, and I appreciate the injunction right to to read widely and read across disciplines. It's It's impressive what opened up for you, your dissertation?Maureen 10:58 Well, I guess maybe what I think I found reading, really, I have always enjoyed reading a lot. And I think reading with people has been something that has been incredible. It's one of my favorite things about being an academic or getting to be an academic of thinking with people. And so me, I think finding people who you enjoy, who bring joy to your reading, is perhaps another thing. So that's great advice, finding anyone who brings joy to anything, it's probably important.So, in addition to everything that you've said, there are lots of graduate students right now who are writing dissertations. There are lots of faculty members who are writing books.Jennifer Can you talk about your process of writing your dissertation? What was it like what helped? What got in the way?Maureen 12:00 You know,I guess where to start. Susan, can I actually just wrote a chapter for an edited book that you and Kelly guy have put together. And we we actually were writing converting our distributions together, we met era, through the QR SIG, which, which actually to back up a little has been huge was hugely helpful for me in a variety of ways. my academic career trajectory as a grad student from doing putting together proposals for a year a,like suddenly getting descended to a senior scholar in the field and getting feedback I think I sent you in this could be like a 40 page manuscript, and she was like, Oh, you might need to cut this little bit. Um, but I just had no idea right of what to do. And so the cure was really helpful in mentoring me along in how to become a member of qual community. And so Susan, and I had met at the mentoring session at a year and ended up reconnecting and icti. And then reading together over the summer. And then both were kind of separately told their advisors to stop reading, insert writing, because we want it both on to graduate, but spring. And so I think, you know, that was hugely helpful having someone in a similar place to talk through not just and share writing, not just around like the literal parts of the dissertation, but all of that other stuff that goes along with it, like the excesses of like the hoops in the job market, and the worry and the anxiety.And so we read about in that chapter is like the swarming of like, coming together of texts, and others, other folks that were writing within our advisors and our writing is this kind of collaborative move, even as we were writing separately, we were writing together. So finding that type of community. And I also had a group of people. It was kind of a mix of faculty and other graduate students, who we would write together really early in the mornings. We had kind of this set schedule of Tuesdays and Thursdays, we're needed Starbucks or McDonald's at like seven in the morning or 630 in the morning. For me, that was really helpful because it was a time when like, there were no other distractions, or someone else who is expecting me to be somewhere there is some accountability. So that that helped a lot. And then I think starting at both the season and with the people ever with starting to think about your dissertation is like chipping away at small pieces of it, rather than thinking about it as a huge month long endeavor. I remember staring at a set, actually, my committee let me put a picture of it in my dissertation. But I stared at a stack of printed out transcripts, I think for like three weeks just staring at them not knowing what to do. So finding ways to chip away at it was helpful. And one of those things that I did, but that's how I like turned to sound, because I couldn't deal with the stack three inch stack of paper. So I started taking audio clips and layering them together to think about it differently.Jennifer That's, that's so interesting. Because you you notice something that wasn't working for you, right? Um, and it sounds like your dissertation emerged through that process you you had collected interviews to answer a question and you found them wanting in one way, shape, or form. And then you went to analyze that when you found that process that you were meant to do wanting. And so you chose something new. And that's something that comes out really loud and clear in your dissertation and in the rest of your work is that you're not just a scholar, you're not just an analyst, you are a creator, you're an artist. So can you talk about what being an artist and producing art?Maureen 16:26 I know, I didn't send you this question in advance. Apologies for putting you on the spot. But it's so fascinating. How,yeah, how that how that plays into your work and your identity as a scholar? Yeah, Mmm hmm. Well, I when I was growing up, I always wanted to be an artist, my mom was an art teacher. And I went to school to be trained as a pattern maker. So what that means is like the construction of garments, so like a designer drugs, a sketch, and the pattern maker looks at it and tries to figure out how to make that real or possible. And that often means like, being very creative, or inventive, and the fabrics that you use, or like the ways in which it gets seams or cut or the ways in which is put together. And so when I took my first qualitative research class, there's this kind of click that I was like, oh, like design is really, there's this there's this a parallel ness between, you know, creation, art creation, through this pattern, making lens and then design, it's like this puzzle that you're figuring out how stuff fits together. And there might be multiple ways for things to go together. Or maybe along the way, as you're trying to put stuff together, something else becomes possible. That's way more exciting than your initial idea. And so I think that's always like an under that's always been an undercurrent of my work. And then there's other places or spaces where I've thought more explicitly with art making practices as I mean, I think this having this happens in research design, but I also think it happens in art making where there's this ethic of experimentation or process. Actually, I was in a talk with Anna Sing last week or the week before, and she was talking about, like this idea of the detour or of contingencies and following this thing.And I'm always found in art making that those are things like those are things you should follow that you should see what what they make possible. And I also find that true.QRSIG ADD 18:49 The qualitative research special interest group was established in 1987. To create a space within the American Educational Research Association. For the discussion of ethical, philosophical and methodological issues in qualitative research. We invite you to consider joining the qualitative research they today are members o…

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Episode 18: Book Award Winner Dr. Aaron Kuntz Nov 14, 2020

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In this episode, Aaron Kuntz, recipient of the QR SIG Outstanding Book Award, discusses his work with the QR SIG Book Award Committee Chair Travis Marn.Travis Speaker 0:24 Hello everyone and welcome to qualitative conversations a podcast hosted by the qualitative research special interest group of the American Educational Research Association. I'm Travis Marn the current chair of the qualitative research special interest groups outstanding Book Award committee. I'm excited to be joined here today by Dr. Aaron Kuntz, who is the recipient of the 2020 outstanding Book Award for his book, qualitative inquiry, cartography and the promise of material change published by Rutledge in 2019. Dr. Aaron Kuntz is professor of research methodology and department chair of counseling, recreation and School Psychology at Florida International University, where he currently holds the frost professorship of Education and Human Development. Dr. Kuntz. His research focuses on developing materialist methodologies, ways of producing knowledge that takes seriously the theoretical deliberations of critical theory, relational materialism, and post structuralism that have emerged in social theory over the past 50 years. He grounds his work in empirical questions about the production of inquiry in the K through 16 Arena, faculty work and activism and post secondary institutions and the impact of the built environment on learning. Dr. Kuntz, his publications appear in a diverse array of research and methodological journals. His co authored book projects include qualitative inquiry for equity in higher education, methodological implications and negotiations and responsibilities, leading dynamic schools implementing ethical educational education policy, and citizenship education, global perspectives, local practices. In 2015, Dr. Kuntz published his first solo authored book, the responsible methodologist inquiry, truth telling and social justice also with ratledge, which was selected as honorable mention for the 2017 ar, a call SIG Book Award, and a book that all the members of the Book Award committee just love. Thank you for joining me today. Dr. Kuntz.Aaron Speaker 2:18 Great, thanks. Thanks for having me. And thanks for the nice introduction, it's brought back a lot of memories.Travis Speaker 2:25 huge body of work that you just should be so incredibly pleased with. So in a highly competitive field, your book really stood out to the members of the Book Award committee, the timeliness of your topic really cannot be overstated. Any events that have occurred in the United States subsequent to the publication of the book, really have completely underscored its value. With COVID, the renewed vigor of Black Lives Matter, and the threats to democracy, we currently face it all that in mind, I'd like to read two very present lines from your introduction that have really stuck with me. In some ways, we perhaps need to lose faith in our present moment in order to maintain the hope of a different future. That is, we need to believe that our contemporary times can become something different altogether. So why don't you start off with telling our listeners a bit about your book? So what are the central questions and dilemmas that you really face in this book?Aaron Speaker 3:17 Sure. Yeah, thanks. So I, you know, I started thinking through the book, because materialism had become such a force in qualitative inquiry. A lot of people I saw just the notion of materialism was popping up, but no ice, CQ AI and the AI era called StG presentations. And people were really sort of starting to work through this idea of new materialism. Which, of course, in the book, I kind of play with that term a little bit, because there's, you know, as they are, you know, there's nothing new about new materials, and we have to recognize, you know, indigenous philosophies and the like, that have been doing this for centuries. So then I started thinking, Okay, so what's the problem that materialism is trying to address? Like, why is it happening right now that this is this this term, and this way of thinking is really come to the surface. And so that kind of shifted my my perspective and instead of trying to explain materialism, or you know, what I term relational materialism, I tried to understand, what are the things that you know, what are the issues problems, that the materialist perspective can really try to try to take on and I will say I was, it came out of a bit of, I don't know that annoyance is the right word, but I take materialism very seriously. And I felt like there is the tendency, or the potential for folks to play a little fast and loose with the term. So I thought, well, I want to go back and really try to understand the sort of the historical trajectory of materialism as well as how it's articulating now. So that's the kind of like that early the early part of the book is kind of working through the notion of materialism. In relation to inquiry and philosophy, and then I always try to be hopeful, which speaks to the quote that you you nicely read in the beginning. Because I don't like the feeling. I don't like feeling stuck. And so I thought, well, what happens if change this notion of difference, right? People bring in de luces notion of difference and losing lotteries. If we want to make a difference, or if we want to produce difference, what what does that ask of us. And in that way, I guess I'm, I was influenced by Rosie Brady's work, that kind of idea of sort of, okay, you really have to lose faith, you have to just let go. And if we're gonna lose faith in our convention, the conventional times that it really adds a lot of us but I it also can be exhilarating, because you're not penned in by normalization, you're not penned in by the norm. So you're able to sort of move beyond or move through. That's the other thing like I don't want to go around, I want to move through these pesky questions. So you do something, something new, and that is central, actually to this book is a very small kind of someone see it maybe as a linguistic shift from questions of possibility to questions of potential. Because possibility really want you to imagine what is possible. Like when I think about working with kids, they work and even you know, as a parent, I work with my kids. Now you can, you know, imagine what's possible, but actually the possible is determined by the contemporary moment of now. And actually, what we need to work for then is a type of impossibility, which links us to potential potential is about something that's yet to be realized or actualized. And so that, I think is the work of inquiry, in many ways is to sort of point towards a different feature, or a feature of difference. And, and then that's sort of linked this to, to my mind, anyways, this, this is ethical work, that we have an ethical determination to make difference to make a difference. And so that kind of links together the main tenants of the things that I was speaking to, I think, within the field, one being materialism, the question of materialism, and that and the issues that it can address, another being the sort of notion that we have to lose faith in our in our contemporary moment in order to create something new. And another, yet again, to try and imagine that we can move forward, out of possibility and into potential driven by a force of motivation that is ethical. And that, you know, I think I think inquiry has a place for all of that. Yeah.Travis Speaker 7:48 Yeah, it's really interesting that you talk about kind of moving just beyond the thought experiments and moving beyond just this endless notion of Oh, what, what else? What else might even be out there? And to talk about potential? And I really wanted, I'm really interested, how do you see your work differently? Or as an extension, considering everything that's gone on in 2020?Aaron Speaker 8:11 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's 2020 has been, you know, everyone's making this joke, but it feels like a decade and a year, right? And exhausting in so many ways. And as a new resident of Florida, I have to say, like, I feel this and very material waves. So, I think, you know, I've been writing lately about fascism. This is my latest. My other thing, because I also see this is you can apparently make a life's work out of recognizing terms that pop up and then wanting to interrogate them, because people are talking a lot about fascism right now. Someone great in really good and articulate and smart ways. And then some, I think, in a little simplistic, but you know, I think that the the issues that are present right now, around fascism around fatality, right ism around what does it mean to engage to be an engaged democratic citizen? What does it mean to be a participant in the public? Like, these are issues that I was I was trying to work through and grapple with, in my book, certainly not envisioning that it would come to this but you know, writing it during the time of an administration that many people are labeling and working through as sort of fascism in order and and art and certainly embracing a particular type of convention. That one wants to move beyond and, you know, the first few lines of the text, I'm like, okay, we're living and operating within a white supremacist society. What does that mean? And how do we sort of operate within it in an ethical way? If this is the given, and I think it is, you know, I think certainly 2020 has shown it to be that way. So in many ways, you know, No, it's it's not comforting, but it is a an additional recognition of some of the issues that I was trying to address. And I also will say like, what I'm really interested in, in many ways, and I try to work through in this text are the more subtle micro instances of these things. So, you know, one of the things I'm thinking through right now, in terms of fascism, and this is none of these are new ideas. I also want to say that, but I think I'm trying to address them in our in the ways they articulate in our present moment. But, you know, the Foucault is talking about the fascism in our heads, right. I mean, Deleuze is dealing with this, a lot of folks have been, you know, on a rant, like there's a long tradition here, of folks who are dealing with these types of issues in to address something like fascism, and it's sort of micro inactions. And I think that's really important. I think I've learned quite a bit from the sort of like the Black Black Lives movement, and the like to sort of recognize like, okay, yeah, it's one the privilege of opting out. I don't feel like we can ethically embrace anymore like to step away and say, like, you know, it's not me, I can't, I can't address these type of issues we, we shouldn't feel comfortable with anymore. I speak of it as the as the sort of all white middle class, man, like, I don't get to do that. Because you take a breath, pause and take a breath is a very privileged thing. And some folks don't get to do that. So you know, that brings that right to the forefront, I think of some of these issues that I'm trying to address for sure.Travis Speaker 11:39 And I so relate to the idea that we can't just, you know, we're all professors, we're in academia, we can't just hide away and pretend like what's happening is not what's happening. And that has struck me as a qualitative researcher as an early career qualitative researcher. I'm wondering what's my ethical obligation to not not just my intellectual community, but to the world around me? And so I'm just wondering, could you just say a little bit more? I mean, what, what should qualitative researchers? How should they refocus their research or kind of re envision how they see their research fitting into a world that faces problems that they they need to respond to?Aaron Speaker 12:20 Yeah. Well, I think that is a great question. I think you have to begin with the premise that qualitative inquiry can't be everything, right? Like, and if I'm a if I'm an inquiry, if I'm qualitative inquiry, that's not my entire subjectivity. So if we're just, if we're just good at qualitative inquiry, my guess is we have to do more. With this notion that quality it, it can't be everything. So you know, we need to move away from that totalizing sense that like, okay, it needs to be everything. However, I will say that we've moved, or at least I've moved to think of it more as as as a way of being or a way of becoming right to use this sort of language at the time, that it's no longer about technique or procedure, or it's no longer just about technique or procedure. But for me, it's about an ethical orientation within the world. And that that orientation matters. Now, sometimes that orientation will articulate in practices that are aligned with like my position, which, as you noted, as the, you know, the faculty role teaching and working in thinking through research methodology and inquiry and that like, and an extension of that, and it is also this notion of me as a citizen, right, engaged citizen who wants to work with as a participant in democracy. So I think that that, you know, I often when I talk with folks, I'm like, okay, it's hard to counter the Yabba response, which is like, Yeah, but you should do this. And yeah, but that, right, yeah. But comes from this notion that it has to be everything for everyone. No, it's going to articulate in different ways. So, you know, that's why I have a section in there, right. I, you know, I work through this notion of philosophy as a type of inquiry, because the type of philosophy that I'm interested in, really addresses the sort of ontological notion of living, right, and is infused with an ethical notion that we need to be sort of more than we currently are. And I point out, I'm very interested in the book and sort of working through the notion of virtue. And because what virtue does is it points to what we might be if we come from an ethical orientation, and so it's pointing towards this type of access that I think is, is really important. So, you know, the question of sort of what Who are we now in this time and how do we operate? I, you know, I hope I hope that we're more more than we can even imagine. And I hope that we can work towards disrupting these patterns of like, Oh, I'm only a faculty member. No, I We should all be something more than that, right? We're living and operating in these circumstances that we can't fully understand. So when I shift back to the notion of inquiry, I think, Well, part of the work of an inquiry is cartographic that is, we need to map before we can actually find an entry point for resistance, or an entry point to sort of produce change, we need to be able to map our contemporary moment was really hard to do, right. So if a code talks about the history of the present, we have all these different examples. But to map to create a cartography of the present moment, you can do it by looking at the effects of select practices. So now Okay, now we're getting down with like, okay, where's your work? Well, what Where's your entry point? Where do you invested in studying and examining, where you look at practices, and you look at the effects of those practices? And then you might say to yourself, Am I comfortable with those effects? Right, ethically? And if and then there, you are now situated, as opposed to whereas before this, the critique of being distanced, right, we're not you know, that that idea of near and far, I think, has been usefully complicated. So t…

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Episode 17: Dr. Travis Marn Apr 13, 2020

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In this episode, Dr. Travis Marn, recipient of the QR SIG Outstanding Dissertation Award, discusses his work.

Episode 16: Disrupting the Podcast with an International Research Collective Oct 22, 2019

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In this special episode, host Jessica Lester is joined by an international research collective to discuss unexpectedness and disruption in qualitative inquiry. This engaging episode challenges the notion of what a podcast "should" be, include, sound like, and do. Please enjoy!

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