Discovering Alliances

My lecturer in my Academic Discourse Writing module told us about alliances, how you can refer the to reference section and know where an author stood on matters, and which academic discourse community he or she belonged to.

Today, I just spotted an alliance, in the most indirect of manners. *Sigh* I think these people have been citing one another, and I only just noticed.

I have a favourite book called Writing Up Qualitative Research by Harry F. Wolcott. I so love his writing that I bought two other of his books. They have equally interesting ideas, but not written in as easy a style as my favourite book. Okay, on the sideline, I somehow stumbled upon the book I talked about in my previous post by Tom Schram. I must have stumbled upon his book in the library. And he cites Harry F. Wolcott! No big deal, as Wolcott is quite a big shot. I happen to really like Tom Schram's writing and was upset for him that he's not as popular, because I think he ought to be, having written that very interesting book. I think anyone who can explain qualitative research that well, and make me fascinated, should be more famous, i.e., well-read! I really expected him to have multiple editions of his book, especially since edition 2 was published in 2006. That was 10 years ago! This book deserves to be updated and republished!

Okay, so I went to refer to Harry F. Wolcott's book because Tom Schram kept referring to him, and... Lo and behold, so many similar ideas... I was getting worried, thinking about plagiarism and stuff like that... Until, from the book The Art of Fieldwork, I realized Tom Schram was Harry F. Wolcott's former student and later on colleague... NO WONDER they had such similar ideas!

And so... I spotted an alliance! I... happen to like very much this alliance. :)

What is Qualitative Research?

I really like Thomas H. Schram (2006)'s book "Conceptualizing and Proposing Qualitative Research".

Here is a long quotation from his book on page 7:

A Qualitative Predisposition

As a qualitative researcher your position on the continuum will indicate a predisposition toward working with and through complexity rather than around or in spite of it. You will embrace the challenge of turning familiar facts and understandings into puzzles. You will see value in seeking out your subjectivity as a means to explore how your assumptions and personal biography may be shaping your inquiry and its outcomes. From an enlarged awareness of how your own assumptions may be informing or affecting your understanding will emerge a still greater appreciation of complexity.

You will undertake inquiry not so much to achieve closure in the form of definitive answers to problems but rather to generate questions that raise fresh, often critical awareness and understanding of problems. Your distinctive contribution will lie in raising questions about ideas otherwise taken for granted or left unasked (Barone, 2001; Page, 2000).

In this way you might begin to identify yourself as a qualitative researcher: embracing complexity, uncovering and challenging taken-for-granted assumptions, feeling comfortable knowing your direction but not necessarily your destination. If we view the nature of qualitative inquiry in these terms, it becomes even more apparent that, while there are numerous ways to construct qualitative understanding, there is no one way to be a qualitative researchers.

Reference
Schram, T. H. (2006) Conceptualizing and proposing qualitative research. 2nd edn. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson, Merrill Prentice Hall

Patriotism Trilogy

Today, I submitted journal article #3, and that's the end of the Patriotism Trilogy. It started with journal article #1 which discussed whether teachers thought that patriotism involved loyalty to the government, did they dare cross boundaries in their teaching, and discussed about controversial issues that may make the government look bad at times? Journal article #2 focused specially on two teacher who dared to do so, they exhibited "constructive patriotism" as opposed to blinder forms of patriotism. Lastly, in the crowning article, journal article #3 tells us that each teacher's patriotism was unique! There were four kinds of patriotism: cosmopolitan, nationalistic, social-movement, and person-oriented.

I like this third one the best! Because it says there's no good or bad patriotism, just different kinds of patriotism! It is the crowning article. And yes, we have ended the Patriotism Triology, the three articles published from my work on my Masters thesis. Now... time to move on and start a new series with my Ph.D work! ;)