Brizuela+et+al.


 * Acts of Inquiry in Qualitative Research, by B. M. Brizuela et al.**

Brizuela, B.M., Stewart, J.P., Carrillo, R.G., & Berger, J.G. (2000) //Acts of inquiry in qualitative research//. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Educational Review.

John Gleason described this book as useful if we wanted to know what sorts of things were happening in qualitative research now. The book is a compilation of articles previously published in Harvard Educational Review and as a result are pertinent to the field of education. Articles are grouped according to theme with an introduction to each section highlighting how each article relates to the theme and the key ideas of each article.

Note that because the book is a collection of articles, each article should in theory be cited seperately when refered to, I think. I have not done that here. Also, although I am reading all the articles, some ofthem speak more to our situation than others. I have not put in all articles in the book; I am just including the ones that merited sticky notes as I read.

//I have only read the articles in the first section so far, but will continue to update this as I do more. -Ann//

The six sections of the text are:
 * habits of thought and work
 * ethics and validity
 * the relationships of the researcher and the participants
 * data collection
 * data analysis and interpretations
 * the uses of research

__Habits of thought and work:__ Many disciplines contirbute to qualitative research traditions in education.
 * Anthropology (Spindler & Hammond): Qualitative research in education draws methodology from various other fields, the most obvious of which is anthropology. Ethnography in the field of anthropology often has all of the following characteristics: (1) observation, particularly participant observation; (2) researchers remain on-site for long periods of time; (3) researchers collect volumes of field notes, artifatcs, and data; (4) "the ethnographer should not work out specific hypotheses or even highly specific categories of observation" (p.19); and (5) researcher must put aside their viewpoint and take the viewpoint of the native. For educators, ethnography is not the end of inquiry into a topic (as it is in anthropology), but rather one step in solving an educational problem. Educational anthropology can help define a problem, and can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a solution with an explanation of how that solution looks as applied. Teachers doing educational anthropology may have more difficulty with numbers 4 and 5 above. Although teachers are often participant observers, they may have trouble putting aside their view to see the view of the "native" (e.g. the children being studied). In addition, becuase their goal is to solve a problem, the openness to any hypothesis or specific categories of observation is often difficult.
 * Linguistics (Heath): Linguistics help us analyze what is being said to see what is actually happening.
 * Sociology (Metz): Qualitative sociologists: (1) understand a groups' worldview in its own terms; (2) have a long contact time to develop and insider perspective; (3) bring their own sociological lens to the analysis; and (4) study groups within complex social settings. The first three of these attributes are necessary components of ethnography. There is a distinction between anthropological and sociological ethnographic research: anthropologists study a cultural whole or a smaller setting as if it were a cultural whole, sociologists study settings as parts of complex cultural systems. This makes sociological ethnography especially effective for studies of schools' organization and structures.
 * Psychology (Rogers): Psychology helps us illuminate the viewpoints of others and ourselves.
 * Research on Teaching (Lampert): //still to come....//