LessonByLesson

Qualitative Research Methods (EDCI 580)
Winter 2015: JAN 06 2015 to MAR 31 2015
Wolff-Michael Roth (Lansdowne Professor)
mailto:mroth@uvic.ca

The detailed lesson plan will be available [here]. The lesson plan will be modified to meet the [changing] needs of students and instructor. Specific lesson outlines and additional information will be made available in an ongoing manner.

My Philosophy
Qualitative research methods, as any other human practice, cannot be learned by talking or reading about it but requires that we participate in it. Thus, even the slightest description of how to collect data or interpret data inherently underdetermines just what you have to do. It is through your own doing that you find the relevance in and of the description.
Take a cookbook recipe as an example. However explicit the recipe, you will find yourself in situations where you do not know what a particular instruction means. It is only through cooking—and sometimes through your knowledge of what the end product is supposed to look like—that you know what an instruction means. Only when you actually are able to do the real thing does the description of it really become meaningful.
So throughout this course, we engage in two types of activities, doing qualitative inquiry and talking about it. These two activities stand in a reflexive relation that together constitute each other, that is, interpretive inquiry as an accountable (rather than tacit) research practice.
My research has shown that human knowing is constituted in participation in authentic activity and changing participation is equivalent to learning. Thus, reading and participating in discussions prepares you to read scholarly articles and participate in scholarly discussions. Doing research prepares you to do research. Listening to lectures prepares you to listen to lectures. (Nevertheless, I may, as needed, use mini-lectures to share some of my experiences in doing research.) Central to your learning will therefore be active participation, so far as to propose activities or make changes to the course as I have prepared it. It is only when your learning is truly in your hands that the course can achieve its objective, helping you learn.

Process
In this course, we will discuss major forms of qualitative research that can be done in classrooms, how to design it, how to produce data sources, how to produce data and analyses, and how to write research. The ultimate purpose is for students to experience the research process in all its facets write to the preparation of a manuscript.
Each meeting, I will take some time for brief summaries/ presentations, whole-class discussions of the readings for the day, and activities related to data analysis and development of project.
In this course, students will
* engage in background reading to prepare research design,
* engage in class discussions to design research, plan interview questions, practice interview skills
* engage in qualitative data analysis both collectively (in class) and individually (or with partner, as per below),
* receive feedback on draft interpretations of their data and draft versions of their paper
* draw conclusions,
* and write a final paper in which they present results.

Tentative Outline
A tentative outline is available online. The outline will be modified to meet the [changing] needs of students and instructor. Specific lesson outlines and additional information will be made available in an ongoing manner.

Text and Readings
Roth, W.-M. (2007). Doing teacher-research: A handbook for perplexed practitioners. Rotterdam: SensePublishers.
(In their course assignment, students will show evidence that they are familiar with all aspects of doing research, analyzing data sources, and writing research that are presented in the text.)
Students should do additional readings as required by their research project. Students will be expected to make occasional presentations regarding the readings they have done. To be able to participate in the conversations during our meetings, students (an professor) are expected to have read the selection for the day.

Resources
FQS: Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/Forum Qualitative Social Research is a tri-lingual (English, German, Spanish) online journal for issues related to qualitative research.
The Qualitative Report is an online journal dedicated to qualitative research and critical inquiry since 1990. It has lots of links to resources for qualitative research on the Internet.
PRAAT is a program that allows you to prepare very detailed transcripts and do a variety of analyses, including that of prosody.

Grading
A student's grades will be made up of the following components:

Participation in class discussion (15%)
Videotapes, transcriptions, reference list towards final assignment (FEB 3, 2015) (15%)
30 min presentation of research, including video, outline of analysis, results (MAR 24, 31) (15%)
Final assignment (APR 7, 2015) (55%) (Please note that any unreferenced material will be treated as plagiarism)

Presentation
Each student will present the contents of the final assignment to the entire class. It is suggested that students prepare a PowerPoint based presentation and also show the video that they have downloaded from the Internet, (parts of) the transcription, and talk about the main results that they have obtained.

Final Assignment
1. The students will write a research paper based on the data collected as part of this course; students will download a relevant video--depending on your (research) interests--and transcribe the video and analyze it for knowing, learning, etc. (For an example of an A+ paper see the one written by a student in a previous course [sample paper].)
2. To achieve an A or A+, students should be prepared to write a paper at a very high, near publishable quality (see the sample paper), which includes description of research design, literature, etc. To achieve a B grade or less, students will have to show clear deficiencies (faking assignments, evidence of whole or partial plagiarism, etc.), clear evidence of not being prepared for class in terms of readings and assignments.
3. For the description of the assignment and materials go to ASSIGNMENT.
4. All text assignments are submitted electronically as ".doc" (WORD), ".rtf," or pdf files to my email address; all other files, including movie (mov), image (jpg), and audio files (aif) should be submitted on a CD. (Alternatively, you may make all of these available on a personal website.)
5. The assignment will consist of different parts, which students will accomplish as the course unfolds

Contact
I hold an electronic office. Appointments are made by special arrangement sufficiently in advance using Skype. You may find it more convenient to write an email, which in most cases, deals with many issues. Also email me at least a day or two advance for any special Skype appointment (mailto:mroth@uvic.ca).

Assignment: Qualitative Research Methods (EDCI 580)
(Due date of complete version: APR 07, 2015)

Assignment Description
This assignment was designed both as a context for learning how to do qualitative research and as an evaluation of what you know and can do.

General description of what you need to expect to do
The assignment requires you to
* prepare a paper that is in the form of a published article, that is, contains the major sections of introduction, purpose, theory/background, methods, results, conclusions, and references -- though you may actually chose more descriptive titles appropriate for your paper;
* search for, read, and submit abstracts of at least 4 articles (due dates see lesson-by-lesson outline) pertaining to the theme of your research;
* do additional reading concerning the theme and research methods and include this in the final written piece;
* collect data sources in the form of a recording of a televised event;
* make sure that final paper conforms to APA 6th edition style; and
* submit your paper electronically including scanned documents, transcribed text, video. Format should be WORD (doc), rtf, or pdf files for texts, jpg for images (scans), mov for movie files, aif for audio files.

Specific description

Collection of data sources (You need to have all the pieces with your assignment shown below.)

Record some televised or YouTube-based event (Because it is public, no ethics approval is required)
Prepare a digitized version (320x240) (mov file)
Prepare a digitized audio file (aif)

Prepare a rough transcript
Prepare a transcript suitable for doing different forms of discourse analysis
Prepare a transcript suitable for doing conversation analysis
Prepare an ethnographic description
Conduct at least 2 forms of analyses that show you understand the method of discourse analysis
Conduct a conversation analysis
Prepare a report which contains the following elements

Introduction (bring the reader into the topic that you subsequently provide more data and understanding for)
Background (should contain some references to the literature on the kinds of phenomena your different analyses is revealing)
Methods section (provide details on the preparation of data sources and their analysis, as you would find it in good research journals, those listed in ISI Thompson Web of Science)
Results section (Here you will write [a] an ethnographic report [about 3 pages], [b] 2 different discourse analyses [content analysis, discourse], and [c] a conversation analysis.)
Discussion, conclusions, implications
Reflection (write about your experience of doing qualitative research for this assignment)
References
Appendices (video clip, full rough transcript, transcripts for discourse analytic purposes, full transcript for conversation analytic purposes [a few minutes, some 50 lines of transcript], any other relevant materials)

Collaborative Option
You may want to work with no more than one partner. If you choose to do a collaborative paper, the final product should provide evidence of the work of two people -- more data, double the amount of readings, more of everything. The advantage of collaborative work resides in the opportunities for critical analysis of your own work.

Any creative work is inherently difficult to evaluate. I know from the peer review process that an article may be rejected by one (or more) reviewer and be unconditionally accepted or accepted with minor revisions by another (or more) reviewers. Above all, an article has to be convincing and has to have a logical structure. A sample assignment that received an A+ can be found [here]. Other A+ assignments can be found online:
Collyer, V. M. (2009). Influence of interlocutor/reader on utterance in reflective writing and interview. Cultural Studies of Science Education. DOI: 10.1007/s11422-009-9228-z
McRae, N. I. (2009). Linking experiences with emotions and the development of interpretive repertoires. Cultural Studies of Science Education. DOI: 10.1007/s11422-009-9226-1
Starr, L. J. (2009). Does anyone really know anything? An exploration of constructivist meaning and identity in the tension between scientific and religious knowledge. Cultural Studies of Science Education. DOI: 10.1007/s11422-009-9227-0

A typical evaluation grid that a journal such as the Canadian Journal of Education would use looks like this:

	Excellent	Very Good	Good	Poor
1. Contribution to advancement of knowledge in education	...	...	...	...
2. Originality	...	...	...	...
3. Method	...	...	...	...
a. Central question	...	...	...	...
b. Theoretical framework	...	...	...	...
c. Data analysis	...	...	...	...
d. Interpretation	...	...	...	...
e. Substantiation	...	...	...	...
4. Structure of the argument	...	...	...	...
5. Conclusion	...	...	...	...
6. References (APA 5th style)	...	...	...	...

Evaluation
Scholarship is inherently difficult to evaluate -- a published article can be considered a published article. I therefore begin from the principle that all students get an A-. A lower grade shall be assigned if there is, for example, evidence that additional methodological and background readings have not been done, additional data have not been collected, writing is sloppy, APA style evidently not been followed, etc. (Please make sure not to plagiarize anything whatsoever.)
The grades A and A+ are reserved for exemplary and outstanding work, respectively (as per faculty evaluation policy). For example, to receive an A+, a student or student pair has to submit a paper that is at or near publishable quality. Similarly, to receive an A, the paper has to show clear promise to be, with further rounds of revisions, to come to or be near publishable quality.
A sample assignment submitted to a previous course is available online. (This particular paper was in fact subsequently published.)
Another sample assignment done by a six-student class was ultimately submitted for publication. You can see how the paper developed, its different versions, the reviewers' comments, and the final accepted version by following this link: Senanus water problems.
For this assignment particularly, to achieve an A+, students have to show that they master one or more of such things as doing gesture analysis, producing video offprints, drawings, voice analysis.

Process
If you would like specific feedback, if you have questions, etc. please send request to mroth@uvic.ca and do not forget to attach your draft analyses (paper, texts) as WORD or rtf documents. If files are not in pdf format, then I generally convert them in such a format, mark up the file, and return to the student.

Additional Information