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The Qualitative Report

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Pre-Conceptual Map Methodology: Development And Application, Shellie Hipsky Dec 2006

The Pre-Conceptual Map Methodology: Development And Application, Shellie Hipsky

The Qualitative Report

The objective of this article is to present the Pre-Conceptual Map methodology as a formalized way to identify, document, and utilize preconceived assumptions on the part of the researcher in qualitative inquiry. This technique can be used as a stand alone method or in conjunction with other qualitative techniques (i.e., naturalistic inquiry). This document explains how to utilize the process and includes specific examples based on a formal study of the pilot of The Drama Discovery Curriculum. The article highlights the Pre-Conceptual Map methodology for use by other researchers by examining: the need for the methodology, how it is related …

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Elaborating The Grounding Of The Knowledge Base On Language And Learning For Preservice Literacy Teachers, Carolyn L. Piazza, Cynthia Wallat Dec 2006

Elaborating The Grounding Of The Knowledge Base On Language And Learning For Preservice Literacy Teachers, Carolyn L. Piazza, Cynthia Wallat

The Qualitative Report

This purpose of this article is to present a qualitative inquiry into the genesis of sociolinguistic s and the contributions of eight sociolinguistic pioneers. This inquiry, based on an historical interpretation of events, reformulates the concept of validation as the social construction of a scientific knowledge base, and explicates three themes that offer a set of sociolinguistic constructs, questions, and propositions that can provide aspiring teachers with a frame of reference and set of guidelines for teaching language and literacy. An implication section, at the end of the article, illustrates sociolinguistic components that can be added to course syllabi in …

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Qualitative Research And Quilting: Advice For Novice Researchers, Leigh Ausband Dec 2006

Qualitative Research And Quilting: Advice For Novice Researchers, Leigh Ausband

The Qualitative Report

This paper relates how the author, a novice qualitative researcher, uses the familiar process of quilting to help her clarify the research process. Other novice researchers are advised to look around for similar connections they can make in their lives to assist with their research.

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Preservice Teachers’ Professional Development In A Community Of Practice Summer Literacy Camp For Children At-Risk: A Sociocultural Perspective, Janet C. Richards Dec 2006

Preservice Teachers’ Professional Development In A Community Of Practice Summer Literacy Camp For Children At-Risk: A Sociocultural Perspective, Janet C. Richards

The Qualitative Report

This inquiry applied an innovative sociocultural framework to examine transformations in preservice teachers’ professional development as they worked with children at-risk in a summer literacy camp. The camp incorporated a community of practice model in which teams of master’s and doctoral students mentored small groups of preservice teachers. The study examined preservice teachers ’ learning following Rogoff’s (1995, 1997) notions of the personal, interpersonal, and community planes of analysis. The research also employed a postmodernist crystallization imagery to capture multiple perspectives on the preservice teachers’ growth. The study assigns importance to the contextual dimensions in which learning takes place, and …

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Southern Rural Public Schools: A Study Of Teacher Perspectives, Leah P. Mccoy Dec 2006

Southern Rural Public Schools: A Study Of Teacher Perspectives, Leah P. Mccoy

The Qualitative Report

This ethnography explores teachers’ perspectives of the cultural issues affecting academic performance in twelve public high schools in rural Mississippi and Louisiana. Fr om a thematic analysis of the tape-recorded interviews of forty-one mathematics teachers, five categories emerged, each comprising a qualitative aspect of teaching high school in an economically depressed area of the deep South: society, race, students, families, and schools. Each of these categories is discussed and explicated using exemplars from the interviews to show how each category emerged from the data. In addition, the relationships among these categories, which form a destructive cycle of poverty, low expectations, …

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Meeting The Needs Of A Latino English Language Learner Through Teacher Research, Sylvia R. Taube, Barbara E. Polnick, Jacqueline Minor Lane Dec 2006

Meeting The Needs Of A Latino English Language Learner Through Teacher Research, Sylvia R. Taube, Barbara E. Polnick, Jacqueline Minor Lane

The Qualitative Report

Over the years, Ms. Lane’s third grade mathematics classroom had become increasingly diverse. Challenged by the growing population of English Language Learners (ELL) and he r need to change her teaching practice to meet their needs, Ms. Lane selected to study how best to teach one of her greatest challenges, Ana, a Latino ELL who also had a learning disability. Ms. Lane and her two university mentors found that using a collaborative action research model provided a structure for researching, designing, and implementing strategies that helped Ana improve her mathematics performance. The university mentors found that they, too, benefited from …

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The Scope Of Justice For Muslim Americans: Moral Exclusion In The Aftermath Of 9/11, Chris L.S. Coryn, Catherine Borshuk Sep 2006

The Scope Of Justice For Muslim Americans: Moral Exclusion In The Aftermath Of 9/11, Chris L.S. Coryn, Catherine Borshuk

The Qualitative Report

The Scope of Justice for Muslim Americans: Moral Exclusion in the Aftermath of 9/11.

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Cadets’ Perceptions Of Gymnastics Instruction For Officer Development, Jeffrey D. Coelho, Lynn R. Fielitz Sep 2006

Cadets’ Perceptions Of Gymnastics Instruction For Officer Development, Jeffrey D. Coelho, Lynn R. Fielitz

The Qualitative Report

The United States Military Academy has offered gymnastics instruction since 1838. Gymnastics continues to be an integral component of the physical education curriculum. The purpose of this study was to investigate cadets' perceptions of their experiences in a required gymnastics course using the critical incident technique. Students described experiences in the gymnastics class that they believed had a positive or negative influence on their development as cadets and future Army officers. Key elements of their responses were classified into 16 positively perceived and 11 negatively perceived categories. The top positive categories were confidence, encouragement, fear management, modeling, additional instruction, and …

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Creating And Using Learning Objects In Qualitative Research Education, Ronald J. Chenail, Jennifer L. Spong, Jan Chenail, Michele Liscio, Lenworth G. Mclean, Holly G. Cox, Brenda Shepherd, Nura C. Mowzoon Sep 2006

Creating And Using Learning Objects In Qualitative Research Education, Ronald J. Chenail, Jennifer L. Spong, Jan Chenail, Michele Liscio, Lenworth G. Mclean, Holly G. Cox, Brenda Shepherd, Nura C. Mowzoon

The Qualitative Report

Based upon the lessons learned and the educational materials generated from a doctoral course on qualitative data analysis, a group of doctoral students, their professor, and a linguistics consultant launched an on- going project to create a series of reusable learning objects designed to help other groups of students and professors learn how to analyze qualitative data. The results of the first six months of this project are shared, as the team describes how they have begun to use instructional design and software applications to create a digital learning environment in the form of a series of activities engineered to …

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Intrusive Music: The Perception Of Everyday Music Explored By Diaries, Helen Gavin Sep 2006

Intrusive Music: The Perception Of Everyday Music Explored By Diaries, Helen Gavin

The Qualitative Report

This paper describes research investigating the perception of intrusive music, that is, music heard when choice, volume, and occurrence are not under the control of the participant. Participants were directed to record diary accounts of episodes in which music was played in instances when they were not in control of the decision to play the music or any characteristic of it, and to record various items about the music, together with any effects on themselves. Strong reactions were discovered during thematic analysis- reactions influencing mood, energy, distractibility, desire to stay or return, and intention to purchase. The implications for commercial …

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Conceptual Metaphors As Interpretive Tools In Qualitative Research: A Re-Examination Of College Students’ Diversity Discussions, Bruce Kochis, Diane Gillespie Sep 2006

Conceptual Metaphors As Interpretive Tools In Qualitative Research: A Re-Examination Of College Students’ Diversity Discussions, Bruce Kochis, Diane Gillespie

The Qualitative Report

In this contribution to the growing literature on conceptual metaphor as a fruitful heuristic for qualitative analysis, the authors re-analyzed transcripts of college student discussions of problematic situations involving cultural diversity and interpersonal conflict. The authors show how they identified metaphorical linguistic expressions and from them derived three conceptual metaphors (life is a journey, the problem is a barrier/maze, and the self is divided) that in turn formed patterns or constellations of meanings in students’ problem-solving strategies. As an interpretive tool, conceptual metaphors link certain isolated individual metaphors to these larger patterns of meaning, including ideological frameworks readily available in …

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Small Business Apparel Retailing In Jamaica: An Exploratory Investigation Into Product Development Processes And Practices, Natalie Johnson-Leslie, Luann R. Gaskill Sep 2006

Small Business Apparel Retailing In Jamaica: An Exploratory Investigation Into Product Development Processes And Practices, Natalie Johnson-Leslie, Luann R. Gaskill

The Qualitative Report

While the process and practices of retail product development in developed countries have been documented, avoid exists in descriptive analysis regarding retail product development in an international setting. The primary purpose of this study was to explore small business apparel retailing, and specifically the retail product development process and practices in Jamaica. Using the case study approach, five apparel retailers in Jamaica who engaged in retail product development are profiled. In- depth interviews, observations, and documents were used to collect data and results were presented after analysis. The findings revealed that the process of product exclusivity, training of workers, modern …

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Insuring The Uninsured: Reducing The Barriers To Public Insurance, Cynthia M. Saunders Sep 2006

Insuring The Uninsured: Reducing The Barriers To Public Insurance, Cynthia M. Saunders

The Qualitative Report

Health insurance is one of the essential enabling resources to gain access to medical care and ultimately increase health status. Over 11 million or one quarter of the nation’s uninsured individuals are eligible for Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), but are not enrolled. Interviews with 368 individuals from 1999 through 2003 identify eight primary barriers to enrollment in public insurance. These include: economic aspects of qualifying, lack of knowledge, benefit design of public programs, poor experiences and stigma, complexity and literacy, immigration status, poor customer service, and fear of fraud. These results suggest policy options alone …

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Linking Research Questions To Mixed Methods Data Analysis Procedures 1, Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie, Nancy L. Leech Sep 2006

Linking Research Questions To Mixed Methods Data Analysis Procedures 1, Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie, Nancy L. Leech

The Qualitative Report

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development of research questions in mixed methods studies. First, we discuss the ways that the goal of the study, the research objective(s), and the research purpose shape the formation of research questions. Second, we compare and contrast quantitative research questions and qualitative research questions. Third, we describe how to write mixed methods research questions, which we define as questions that embed quantitative and qualitative research questions. Finally, we provide a framework for linking research questions to mixed methods data analysis techniques. A major goal of our framework is to illustrate that …

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Brief Note On The Origins, Evolution, And Meaning Of The Qualitative Research Concept Thick Description, Joseph G. Ponterotto Sep 2006

Brief Note On The Origins, Evolution, And Meaning Of The Qualitative Research Concept Thick Description, Joseph G. Ponterotto

The Qualitative Report

The origins, cross-disciplinary evolution, and definition of “thick description” are reviewed. Despite its frequent use in the qualitative literature, the concept of “thick description” is often confusing to researchers at all levels. The roots of this confusion are explored and examples of “thick description” are provided. The article closes with guidelines for presenting “thick description” in written reports.

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Focused Group Interviews As An Innovative Quanti- Qualitative Methodology (Qqm ): Integrating Quantitative Elements Into A Qualitative Methodology, Brian J. Grim, Alison H. Harmon, Judy C. Gromis Sep 2006

Focused Group Interviews As An Innovative Quanti- Qualitative Methodology (Qqm ): Integrating Quantitative Elements Into A Qualitative Methodology, Brian J. Grim, Alison H. Harmon, Judy C. Gromis

The Qualitative Report

There is a sharp divide between quantitative and qualitative methodologies in the social sciences. We investigate an innovative way to bridge this gap that incorporates quantitative techniques into a qualitative method, the “quanti-qualitative method” (QQM). Specifically, our research utilized small survey questionnaires and experiment-like activities as part of the question rout e in a series of five focused group interviews on nutrition education. We show how these quantitative-type activities fit naturally with our question route and contributed to testing the hypotheses within the context of the five important characteristics of focused group interviews. The innovative use of QQM in focused …

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The Photo Essay: A Visual Research Method For Educating Obstetricians And Other Health Care Professionals, Gwendolyn P. Quinn, Terrance L. Albrecht, Charles Mahan, Bethany A. Bell-Ellison, Tabia Henry Akintobi, Beth Reynolds, Delores Jeffers Jun 2006

The Photo Essay: A Visual Research Method For Educating Obstetricians And Other Health Care Professionals, Gwendolyn P. Quinn, Terrance L. Albrecht, Charles Mahan, Bethany A. Bell-Ellison, Tabia Henry Akintobi, Beth Reynolds, Delores Jeffers

The Qualitative Report

When it comes to issues related to low-income women seeking early, adequate, or continuous prenatal ca re, the public health and medical communities continue to tell women to take responsibility for their actions. Rarely are messages aimed at providers. To help physicians see how factors in their offices and clinics can affect service utilization, the photo essay, a visual qualitative research strategy was developed using low- income minority and disenfranchised women who had recently given birth or were near to giving birth. Eight photo essays were completed. Together, the narratives, in collaboration with the photos, provided an opportunity for physicians …

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Narratives Of Developing Counsellors’ Preferred Theories Of Counselling Storied Through Text, Metaphor, And Photographic Images, Gina Wong-Wylie Jun 2006

Narratives Of Developing Counsellors’ Preferred Theories Of Counselling Storied Through Text, Metaphor, And Photographic Images, Gina Wong-Wylie

The Qualitative Report

Reflective practice is integral for developing counsellors to maintain self- awareness and to recognize influences upon one’s personal theory of counselling. In this exploratory narrative inquiry research, four doctoral level counselling psychologists participated to uncover “What are the personal stories of developing counsellors and in what ways are lived stories reflective of counsellors' personal theories of counselling?" The researcher employed a butterfly metaphor, and photographs to illustrate lived stories. Dawn, East, Crystal, Sean, and the researcher’s own lived stories elucidated personal counselling theories and approaches. The view that all theories are constructed portraits of theorists' lives is substantiated. A strong …

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Understanding Implicit Texts In Focus Groups From A Systems Psychodynamic Perspective, Brigitte Smit, Frans Cillers Jun 2006

Understanding Implicit Texts In Focus Groups From A Systems Psychodynamic Perspective, Brigitte Smit, Frans Cillers

The Qualitative Report

Many researchers have been inquiring into focus groups as a qualitative data collection method (Barbour & Kitzinger 1999; Krueger 1998; Morgan, 1998), but only a few have been able to analyse the different levels of understanding in focus groups, which we focus on in this article. The guiding research question is how do focus groups offer deeper levels of understandings from a systems psychodynamic perspective. Research participants were purposively sample d using maximum variation (Patton 2002). Data were collected during the focus group, and group data were analysed during data gathering. Meaning making and interpretation of data was done from …

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Ring Of Silence: African American Women’S Experiences Related To Their Breasts And Breast Cancer Screening, Eileen Thomas Jun 2006

Ring Of Silence: African American Women’S Experiences Related To Their Breasts And Breast Cancer Screening, Eileen Thomas

The Qualitative Report

The purpose of this study was to explore women’s memories and feelings concerning their breasts and breast cancer screening experiences in relation to their current breast cancer screening behaviors. Twelve African American women shared stories that were generated in written narratives and individual interviews. Two core themes emerged from the data analysis: silence and societal contradictions. On further review and interpretation of the core themes, one integrative theme became apparent: Ring of silence. Contradictory messages women receive from society, both voiced and unvoiced, can have a long- term effect on how some women perceive their bodies, and how they value …

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Lived Experience Of Women Suffering From Vitiligo: A Phenomenological Study, Leili Borimnejad, Zohreh Parsa Yekta, Alireza Nikbakht Nasrabadi Jun 2006

Lived Experience Of Women Suffering From Vitiligo: A Phenomenological Study, Leili Borimnejad, Zohreh Parsa Yekta, Alireza Nikbakht Nasrabadi

The Qualitative Report

Vitiligo is a chronic skin disease, which through change of appearance and body image, exerts a devastating effect on people, especially women. The objective of this study is to explore lived experience of women with Vitiligo by the hermeneutic phenomenology method. The purposive sample consisted of 16 Iranian women. Data analysis followed Diekelmann, Allen, and Tanner (1989). The results showed four main themes: (1) Perceiving myself in a different light; (2) Vitiligo: Worry about others’ perceptions; (3) Vitiligo, Being influenced by cultural beliefs; and (4) Accepting and fighting the disease; Variations in experiences of living with Vitiligo. The women affected …

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“The Times They Are A Changing” 1 : Undertaking Qualitative Research In Ambiguous, Conflictual, And Changing Contexts, Lea Kacen, Julia Chaitin Jun 2006

“The Times They Are A Changing” 1 : Undertaking Qualitative Research In Ambiguous, Conflictual, And Changing Contexts, Lea Kacen, Julia Chaitin

The Qualitative Report

This article explores qualitative research issues that arise when researchers engage in study within their own ambiguous, unstable, conflictual, and rapidly changing society. We explore the topics of the relationship between the researcher and the context, the difficulty in choosing relevant research quest ions under such conditions, and the relevance of generalizing or transferring findings from such contexts to other sites and populations. We present two research cases from the Israeli context: one that demonstrates an external conflict (between Israelis and Palestinians) and one that demonstrates an internal conflict (between Israelis and Israelis), analyzing them according to these three main …

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Goals And Distractions: Explanations Of Early Attrition From Traditional University Freshmen, John L. Rausch, Matthew W. Hamilton Jun 2006

Goals And Distractions: Explanations Of Early Attrition From Traditional University Freshmen, John L. Rausch, Matthew W. Hamilton

The Qualitative Report

This grounded theory study was designed to investigate the factors that influenced 20 "traditional" university freshmen to withdraw prior to the end of their first year at two Midwestern universities. A two-hour audio- taped interview was conducted with each of the participants, and the grounded theory method was utilized to analyze the interview data. Eighteen of the twenty participants had strong high school GPAs and ACT scores, and would not have been identified as being at-risk for attrition. The grounded theory that emerged from the participants' data indicated that an absence of clear educational goals, as well as individual and …

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Understanding Student Self-Disclosure Typology Through Blogging, Vernon B. Harper, Erika J. Harper Jun 2006

Understanding Student Self-Disclosure Typology Through Blogging, Vernon B. Harper, Erika J. Harper

The Qualitative Report

Significant research indicates that student self-disclosure plays an important role in the learning experience and producing positive learning outcomes. Blogging is an increasingly popular web tool that can potentially aid educators by encouraging student self-disclosure. Both content analysis and focus groups were used to assess whether student self-disclosure reveals in descriptive, topical, and evaluative categories. The results indicate that blogging encourages student self-disclosure, and the implications of these findings are also discussed.

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Contextualising The Research Process: Using Interviewer Notes In The Secondary Analysis Of Qualitative Data, John Goodwin, Henrietta O'Connor Jun 2006

Contextualising The Research Process: Using Interviewer Notes In The Secondary Analysis Of Qualitative Data, John Goodwin, Henrietta O'Connor

The Qualitative Report

In this paper we argue that for the secondary analysis of qualitative data to be effective, researchers need to subject any accompanying interviewer notes to the secondary analysis process. The secondary analysis of interviewer notes can provide important insight into the research process and the attitudes, experiences, and expectations of those collecting the data. Such information is essential if meaningful analyses are to be offered. Using interviewer notes from a little known research project on youth transitions form the 1960s, this paper explores how the interviewers’ experiences of the research process and their perceptions are documented in the interviewer notes.

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Studying Hiv Risk In Vulnerable Communities: Methodological And Reporting Shortcomings In The Young Men’S Study In New York City, Ananya Mukherjea, Salvador Vidal-Oritz Jun 2006

Studying Hiv Risk In Vulnerable Communities: Methodological And Reporting Shortcomings In The Young Men’S Study In New York City, Ananya Mukherjea, Salvador Vidal-Oritz

The Qualitative Report

This article considers demographic categories used in the Young Men’s Study on HIV risk for men who have sex with men. We critique oversimplified pan-ethnic categories and the polarization of US racial discourse. We also interrogate the use of certain gender and sexuality markers that produced confusing results in this study. We use a critical standpoint derived from cultural studies to suggest that quantitative and qualitative methods of studying health risks and intimate behaviors in vulnerable populations require reorganization to more accurately represent the lives of members of these groups. Interviews, surveys, and statistics can be crude and lacking in …

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A Necessary Evil: The Experiences Of Managers Implementing Downsizing Programmes, Ernesto Noronha, Premilla D'Cruz Mar 2006

A Necessary Evil: The Experiences Of Managers Implementing Downsizing Programmes, Ernesto Noronha, Premilla D'Cruz

The Qualitative Report

This paper presents the findings of a phenomenological study, which describes the experiences of human resource (HR) managers implementing a downsizing programme in a steel manufacturing organisation in India. Data were collected through conversational interviews. Following van Manens sententious analytic approach, the core theme of a necessary evil, emerged, which indicates that while participants were pained by their task of having to terminate workers and deprive them of their livelihood, they believed that they had no choice in the matter if they had to ensure the competitive position of the organisation and their own survival as employees. The findings of …

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Low Self-Esteem Of Psychotherapy Patients: A Qualitative Inquiry, Jacob D. Van Zyl, Elsje M. Cronjé, Catharine Payze Mar 2006

Low Self-Esteem Of Psychotherapy Patients: A Qualitative Inquiry, Jacob D. Van Zyl, Elsje M. Cronjé, Catharine Payze

The Qualitative Report

In this article the story of 11 male psychotherapeutic patients with low self- esteem is told within the context of the research process. The literature suggests that the concept of “self-esteem” has a significant influence on the way an individual experiences his/her world. Therefore, the meaning that the psychotherapeutic patients associated with negative and positive labels, as it relates to self-esteem, was examined using grounded theory. The main storyline is conceptualized as follows; negative suggestion from the patient’s past leads to low self-esteem which is, within his emotional problematics and by means of a negative thinking scheme, unhealthily handled. Therapy …

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Moving From Separate Subject To Interdisciplinary 1 Teaching: The Complexity Of Change In A Preservice Teacher K-1 Early Field Experience, Janet C. Richards, Kim T. Shea Mar 2006

Moving From Separate Subject To Interdisciplinary 1 Teaching: The Complexity Of Change In A Preservice Teacher K-1 Early Field Experience, Janet C. Richards, Kim T. Shea

The Qualitative Report

This phenomenological inquiry looked at 28 preservice teachers as they participated in a field-based curricula restructuring initiative that connected the disciplines of creative arts, science, and reading. The preservice teachers offered weekly interdisciplinary lessons to kindergarten and first grade students . A survey, teaching cases, and a group exit interview informed the study. Throughout most of the semester, the preservice teachers struggled with procedural and pedagogical content knowledge, concerns directly related to effective teaching. By the end of the semester, they felt comfortable teaching interdisciplinary lessons. Results suggest that preservice teacher curricular restructuring efforts are complex and that teacher educators …

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Community Research Mythology, Barabara Walden Mar 2006

Community Research Mythology, Barabara Walden

The Qualitative Report

This article is dedicated to an in-depth discussion of the theme “community” and the implications the multiple meanings of community hold for the field of qualitative research. This theme surfaced from Waldern’s 2003 study entitled Resistance to Research in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, which dealt with participant resistance to joining research efforts, and deserves the attention of all social researchers. In this article, the politics of the rese arch process are discussed to evaluate and suggest improvements for reflexive methods of inquiry. Determining that the idea of “community research ” is a myth, this work is concerned about making qualitative methods …

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