Core 3. Logics of Inquiry
(3 credits; 30 hours plus conferences; 15-20 students per offering)

  Proposed Course Outline

1. The Uses of Research in Education

• Seeking significant and researchable issues in a field site
• Matching methods to research concerns: the multiple methods approach
• Theories, data, and methods:
  a. theories as determinants of method research questions b. as determinants of method data types as determinants of c. method methods as determinants of research questions d. data and theories
  

2. Introductions to Useful Research Methods and Techniques

• Ethnographic field notes, observation protocols
• Interviewing, focus groups, stimulated recall, sociolinguistic interviewing
• Audio, videotaping, transcribing
• Document collection, database archives
• Text analysis (hermeneutic, critical), linguistic discourse analysis, CA
• Visual analysis: nonverbal communication, behavioral action, visual semiotics
  

3. Philosophical Approaches to Method, Methodology, and Meaning

• Ethnography, micro-ethnography, participant observation
• Semiotics, discourse analysis, visual analysis
• Phenomenology, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis
• Hermeneutics, grounded theory
• Critical theory, historical analysis, action research
• Feminisms and postmodernisms
• Cultural psychology, social psychology, activity theory
• Actor-network theory, systems theories
  

4. Issues and Debates in Qualitative-Interpretive Research Methodology

• Relationship between interpretive and experimental methods
• Units of analysis and single versus multi-scale approaches
  a. material versus semiotic units
  b. micro- versus macro-analysis
  c. multiple scales: spatial-extensional, temporal-durational
• Focus on ecological interactions versus meaning systems  

5. Critical Perspectives on Research Methodology

• Critiques of quantification, causal analysis, and controlled experimentation
• Critiques of classification, formal models, static representations
• Frontiers of methodology: affect, process, multimodality, heterochrony
  

6. Sample Research Debates in the Published Literature

7. Ethics and Politics of Research

8. Writing and Presenting Research Reports

Preliminary Bibliography

METHOD AND METHODOLOGY

Agar, M.H. Speaking of Ethnography. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1986.

Ball, M.S. and G.W.H. Smith. Analyzing Visual Data. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1992.

Creswell, J. Research Design: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. London: Sage, 1994.

Delgado-Gaitan, C. "Researching change and changing the researcher," Harvard Educational Review, 63, 1993, 389-411.

Denzin, N.K. and Y.S. Lincoln. Handbook of Qualitative Research. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1994.

Eisner, E.W. and A. Peshkin. Qualitative Inquiry in Education: the Continuing Debate. NY: Teachers College Press, 1990.

Eisner, E.W. The Enlightened Eye: Qualitative Inquiry and the Enhancement of Educational Practice. New York: Macmillan, 1991.

Eisner, E.W. "Forms of understanding and the future of educational research," Educational Researcher, 22 :7, 1993, 5-11.

Emerson, R., R. Fretz, and L. Shaw. Writing Ethnographic Fieldnotes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995.

Erickson, F. and J. Shultz. "The viewing session as a source of ethnic data," in The Counselor as Gatekeeper. New York: Academic Press, 1982.

Feldman, M. Strategies For Interpreting Qualitative Data. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995.

Fetterman, D.M. Ethnography: Step by Step. Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1989.

Fiske, D.W. and R.A. Schweder. Metatheory in Social Science: Pluralisms and Subjectivities. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986.

Goodwin, C.J. Research in Psychology: Methods and Design. New York: Wiley, 1995.

Glaser, B.J. and A. Strauss. The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Chicago: Aldine, 1967.

Glesne, C. and A. Peshkin. Becoming Qualitative Researchers. White Plains, NY: Longman, 1992.

Guba, E.G., ed. The Paradigm Dialogue. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1990.

Gubrium, J.F. and J.A. Holstein. The New Language of Qualitative Method. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Hammersley, M. What's Wrong with Ethnography?: Methodological Explorations. London & New York: Routledge, 1992.

Hammersley, M., ed. Social Research: Philosophy, Politics and Practice. London: Sage, 1993.

Hargreaves, A. "Past, imperfect, tense: Reflections on an ethnographic and historical study of middle schools," in Geoffrey Walford, ed., Doing Sociology of Education. London: Falmer Press, 1987, 17-44.

Heshusius, L. and K. Ballard, eds. From Positivism to Interpretivism and Beyond. New York: Teachers College Press, 1996.

Miles, M.B. and A.M. Huberman. Qualitative Data Analysis: an Expanded Sourcebook, 2d ed. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1994.

Hustler, D., A. Cassidy, and E.C. Cuff, eds. Action Research in Classrooms and Schools. Boston: Allen & Unwin, 1986.

Jayaratne, T. "Quantitative methodology and feminist research," in M. Hammersley, ed., Social research: Philosophy, Politics and Practice. London: Sage, 1993, 109-123.

Lather, P. Getting Smart: Feminist Research and Pedagogy Within the Postmodern. New York: Routledge, 1991.

Lincoln, Y.S. and E.G. Guba. Naturalistic Inquiry. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1985.

Manning, P.K. Semiotics and Fieldwork. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1987.

Maykut, P. and R. Morehouse. Beginning Qualitative Research: a Philosophic and Practical Guide. London: Falmer Press, 1994.

Mischler, E.G. Research Interviewing: Context and Narrative. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.

Nau, D. "Mixing Methodologies: Can Bimodal Research be a Viable Post-Positivist Tool?," The Qualitative Report, 2:3, December, 1995. [http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR2-3/nau.html].

Patton, M. How to Use Qualitative Methods in Evaluation. London: Sage, 1987.

Potter, W.J. An Analysis of Thinking and Research about Qualitative Methods. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1996.

Psathas, G. Conversation Analysis: The Study of Talk-in-Interaction. Thousand Oaks: Sage, 1995.

Reason, P. and J. Rowan. Human Inquiry: a Sourcebook of New Paradigm Research. Chichester: John Wiley and Sons, 1981.

Riessman, C. Narrative Analysis. Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993.

Scheff, T. J. Microsociology: Discourse, Emotion, and Social Structure. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Schratz, M. and R. Walker. Research as Social Change. London: Routledge, 1995.

Silverman, D. Interpreting Qualitative Data: Methods for Analysing Talk, Text, and Interaction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1993.

Smith, J.A., R. Harre, and L. Van Langenhove. Rethinking Methods in Psychology. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995.

Spradley, J. Participant Observation . New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich College, 1980.

Strauss, A. and J. Corbin. Basics of Qualitative Research. London: Sage, 1993.

Van Maanen, J. Tales of the Field. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988.

Wolcott, H.F. The Art of Fieldwork. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press, 1995.

  PHILOSOPHICAL AND THEORETICAL: Influential Perspectives

Bateson, G. Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine, 1972.

Bateson, G. Mind and Nature: a Necessary Unity. New York: Bantam Books, 1979.

Berger, P.L. and T. Luckmann. The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Anchor Press, 1966.

Bourdieu, P. The Logic of Practice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990.

Bruner, J. Acts of Meaning. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990.

Cole, M. Cultural Psychology: A Once and Future Discipline. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.

Derrida, J. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.

De Saussure, F. Course in General Linguistics. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959.

Erickson, F. and J. Shultz, "When is a context?" in J.L. Green and C. Wallat, eds. Ethnography and Language in Educational Settings. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing, 1981, 147-160.

Feyerabend, P.K. Against Method. Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge. London: New Left Books, 1975.

Foucault, M. The Archeology of Knowledge. New York: Random House, 1969.

Freire, Paolo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Seabury Press, 1973.

Gadamer, H.G. Truth and Method. New York: Seabury Press, 1975.

Garfinkel, H. and H. Sacks. "On formal structures of practical actions," in J.C. McKinnery and E.A. Terakian, eds., Theoretical Sociology. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1971, 337-366.

Geertz, C. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, 1973.

Geertz, C. Local Knowledge. New York: Basic Books, 1983.

Gergen, K.J. Towards Transformation in Social Knowledge. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1982.

Goffman, E. Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor Books, 1959.

Goffman, E. Interaction Ritual. New York: Anchor Books, 1967.

Halliday, M.A.K. Language as Social Semiotic. London: Arnold, 1978.

Harre, Rom. Social Being: a Theory for Social Psychology. Totowa, NJ: Littlefield & Adams, 1979.

Hasan, R. "Coherence and cohesive harmony," in J. Flood, ed., Understanding Reading Comprehension. Newark, DE: International Reading Association, 1984, 181-219.

Husserl, E. Cartesian Meditations: an Introduction to Phenomenology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1960.

Hymes, D. "Models of the interaction of language and social life," in J. Gumperz and D. Hymes, eds., Directions in Sociolinguistics: the Ethnography of Communication. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972.

Kendon, A. Conducting Interaction. London: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Kuhn, T.S. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Latour, B. Science in Action. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Leontiev, A.N. Activity, Consciousness, and Personality. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1978.

Levi-Strauss, C. Structural Anthropology. New York: Basic Books, 1963.

Merleau-Ponty, M. The Phenomenology of Perception. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1962 [1945].

Ochs, E. "Transcription as theory," in E. Ochs and B. Schiefflin, eds., Developmental Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, 1979.

Peirce, C.S. "Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs," in J. Buchler, ed., Philosophical Writings of Peirce. New York: Dover, 1955.

Piaget, J. Structuralism. New York: Basic Books, 1970.

Ricoeur, P. Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning. Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976.

Ricoeur, P. "What is a text? explanation and understanding," in J.B. Thompson, ed., Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, 145-164.

Sacks, H. Lectures on Conversation, G. Jefferson, ed. London: Blackwell, 1992.

Sinclair, J. and M. Coulthard. Towards an Analysis of Discourse. London: Oxford University Press, 1975.

Walkerdine, V. The Mastery of Reason. London: Routledge, 1988.

Whorf, B.L. Language, Thought, and Reality, J.B. Carroll, ed. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1956.