Qualitative Research Methods: A Retrospective -- Part Deux

It seems I prematurely declared the end of my blogs about my research methods class. This may be the last of these blogs, but who knows? Maybe not. Either way, I wanted to add a few observations/assertions to my list from last week:

Most research is messy; most stories are neat. After reflecting on the reading I've done for this course, I'm beginning to wonder if my discomfort with the neatness of many of the ethnographies we read this semester was really a recognition of the tension inherent in ethnographic studies. Ethnographies are essentially research stories (as opposed to simply research studies), which poses a huge problem for the writers of these texts. Most research is messy, especially when that research involves living people with their own issues and agendas, but an ethnographer is more than a researcher. She is also a story teller, and most stories require a plot, a climax, and some sort of resolution that makes sense to the reader . This leads to an inevitable tension between the messiness of the research and the coherence of the story.


My colleagues have really good taste in reading material. Here's a partial list of the things my colleagues read that I have/will now read:

• AJ Banks' Race, Rhetoric and Technology
• Eric Turley's “The Scientific Management of Writing and the Residue of Reform”
• Olson and Land's "A Cognitive Studies Approach to Reading and Writing Instruction"
• Stuart Selber's  Multiliteracies for a Digital Age

Research needs theory, but theory also needs research. The things I read in my "Contemporary Rhetorics" class last semester have become foundational for me as a student, writer, and teacher. The work of bell hooks, Levinas, Lyotard, Diane Davis, Sullivan & Porter, and Heidigger have informed the way I read the ethnographies and articles in my research methods class. But these works wouldn't have been nearly so vital to me had they not also affected the way I teach, perform my own research and construct my own narratives and arguments. Research needs theory, and not just as a framework or lens to make the research appear more cohesive. Theory forces us to question our own suppositions and biases and to refocus on new ways of seeing and thinking, but, for me at least, theory also needs a place to perform. What good is reading Levinas or Diane Davis if I don't have a place to live my responsibility to other? How can I know what responsibility looks like, in what ways certain actions are efficacious for the other, if I (and those around me) don't test practices?