Sunday, March 27, 2011
Where I stand today....
Dear members of Qualitatively Speaking, Okay, so in my self reflection, one of my goals was to better use the blog as a tool to reflect on my growth as a researcher. In an attempt to do so, I decided I would post the answer to the final two questions on the mid-term self assessment on the blog. I think that the answers to these questiosn will change greatly as the semester nears the end and we have all had the experience of completing our mini-inquiry project. I would love to get your feeback and thoughts on my repsonses and to see where you are all at, too. :) Christy How can I use qualitative approaches to uncover answers to important questions? Qualitative research allows me to uncover answers to important questions in a way in which my personal experience, background, philosophies, etc. can be used as a lens to interpret data. I believe that qualitative allows for this type of interpretation and discourse in a way in which quantitative does not; however, I am not able to clearly articulate this point at this time. Who am I as a reseracher? I am still struggling to answer this question. Perhaps because I do not yet see myself as a researcher rather a researcher in progress. However, maybe that is what all researchers are? Researchers in progress because I would imagine that being engaged in the process of inquiry forces one to continuosly involve and grow. Right now, I am keenly aware that I, as a researcher, postion myself as an advocate of students with learning disabilities. I feel it is important, when possible, to include the voice or lens of the participant whenever possible so as not to have my lens or view dominate. For instance, in my case study, I plan to interview the teacher after taking field notes to clarify. I supsect that this will be a very useful and meaningful activity in addtion to serving as a source of data triangulation. Note: I just noticed an interesting phenomenon. I typed the answers to these questions in word and uploaded to drop box. I then decided to publish this on the blog. However, I am not able to figure out how to cut and copy text from word into the text field and so I ended up looking back at the original word document and then answering the questions again. This time, the answers to my questions were more thorough, reflective, and quite frankly better written! I can't wait to see how these answers change at the end of the sememster! :) Disclaimer: Since I am challenged in terms of knowing how to upload from Word, there maybe typos in this post. I apologize!
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This is so frustrating! I typed in headings and used spacing in the field when I wrote this and then when it published, it is published as one continuous paragraph! HELP ME! What am I doing wrong?
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your post, Christy. I was thinking, too, about how qualitative inquiry allows us to use our experience, knowledge base, and views to interpret phenomena we are studying. In the past, my only experience was with quantitative research, where we are supposed to remain objective and keep our views (our "lens"?) out of our analysis -- but can we ever really do this? In qualitative research, we can, and need to be, upfront and honest about our biases. Thinking this way will help me be more aware of my own influences and biases in quantitative research, and of those things I need to state and clarify outright when doing quantitative research, too.
ReplyDeleteThe one thing that I am realizing is that even though I too struggle with the formatting of certain technologies, for example, why do my level two and three headings automatically go onto a different page leaving me lots of white space. I realize that I have to live with APA to figure this all out. That being said, I am realizing that I am biased in much of my thinking and have to work real hard to keep it in check if I am going to experience any success in this qualitative business. I can see the ease of quantitative as being so concrete, but I am not a number person, I am a word person
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