Qualitative research, wicked problems, and the teacher-learner

This past week, as I began reading Piantanida and Garman's (2009, Kindle edition) The Qualitative Dissertation: A Guide for Students and Faculty, it occurred to me that qualitative research is akin to a "wicked problem."   

The "wicked problem" truism originated from a 1973 essay by Rittell and Webber, titled "Dilemmas in a General Theory of Planning." The authors describe the impact of pluralism and postmodernism on skilled professionals (teachers, academics, policymakers, city planners, and so on). Societal challenges once deemed simple, e.g. the formulation of school curricula, had evolved such that "professionalized cognitive and occupational styles that were refined in the first half of the century" were no longer adequate for addressing them (p. 156). 

I first encountered the concept of "wicked problems" in the instructional technology literature, in which researchers refer to the wicked problem of teaching with digital tools. Teaching, an already complex activity, is made more unpredictable by pressure to integrate continually evolving and "protean" technologies (Koehler & Mishra, 2008). Moreover, the recent influx of digital and mobile technologies into society arrived on the heels of another sweeping societal trend: the school reform movement and its demands for domain mastery and content area expertise. 

The convergence of these trends imposes a significant dilemma for teachers. One begs for structure, accountability, and standardization of practice; the other requires "flexible and integrated bases of knowledge" (Koehler & Mishra, 2008, p. 3). One defines expertise as a matter of curriculum implementation; the other views expertise as a matter of design, teacher as both designer and student of the curriculum. Wicked problems, indeed.

Recognizing qualitative research as wicked problem

Wicked problems are ill-defined and require an entirely new orientation to work/job performance, goal formulation, and one's own self-understanding as a competent expert. "This is partly because the classical paradigm of science and engineering -- the paradigm that has underlain modern professionalism -- is not applicable to the problems of open societal systems" (Rittell & Webber, p. 160). I initially interpreted this as a profound mandate in favor of qualitative research.

And yet, according to Piantanida and Garman, the study and conduct of qualitative research itself suggests another wicked problem! 

Piantanida and Garman characterize qualitative research as an ill-defined and complex domain, encompassing a variety of ideas, definitions, methods, and strategies. "Tremendous amounts of time, energy, and money can be consumed in a fruitless quest for a straightforward explanation of a complex field of study," they warn (Ch. 2, "Variations in deliberative inclination," para 1). 

Photo by adamr, courtesy of freedigitalphotos.net

How many of us have the bowed bookshelves and bulging Amazon balances to back up that claim?

Further, doing qualitative research is especially difficult for the aspiring teacher-researcher, whose workaday world is framed by innumerable top-down mandates and externally imposed performance standards. When teachers return to graduate school, they may be taken aback by the expectation of self-learning and introspection associated with writing a dissertation, much less a qualitative one. They may experience frustration when they discover there is no "recipe, formula, or template" to address their "action-oriented concerns" (Piantanida & Garman, Preface, para 5). 

Becoming a teacher-learner
Lovitts (2005) describes the "critical transition" that graduate students make between completing coursework requirements and embarking on independent research projects. At some point, the graduate student must move beyond the role of knowledge greeter/consumer to knowledge seeker/producer. In this process, the attainment of discrete knowledge and skills is less important than the student's ability to leverage a variety of "personal and social resources" (p. 140). According to Lovitts, these "variables" are poorly understood due to "the educational system's over-valuation of analytical intelligence and other norms in graduate education that promote intellectual conformity" (p. 151).

This should come as no surprise to anyone acquainted with the U.S. educational system. Schools in general (and the researchers who study them) put a premium on cognition at the expense of creativity, sociability, and other "idiosyncratic" processes. Why would it be any different for students at the highest levels of academe? This over-emphasis on accountability to predefined standards of excellence creates, at best, throngs of "good course-takers" and, at worst, murderous rampages, such as the one Lovitts describes at the beginning of her article.

Enter the teacher-as-student. According to Piantanida and Garman, the critical transition is unsettling for K-12 teachers, long socialized as consumers and disseminators of knowledge. The teacher's transition ironically may be hindered rather than helped by his or her years of practical classroom experience. This is the problem of "encapsulation," in which classroom teachers, who have come into their own as professionals within contexts that prize efficiency, conformity, and certainty, must re-orientate to the "false starts," "blind alleys," and "failures" of scholarly inquiry (Ch. 2, "On the discursive nature of deliberation," para 3). 

It's inherently dilemmatic that to become a better teacher (that is, to advance oneself professionally by seeking additional degrees and certifications) one must stop thinking like a teacher!

Piantanida and Garman define the encapsulated mindset as "the self lost in the tension between the professional role and the student role that manifests in a form of estrangement and keeps one from a deliberative frame of mind" (Ch. 2, "Encapsulation versus deliberation," para 3). I recognize this tendency in myself, recalling my struggle over the last several semesters to find value in certain methodologies I viewed as too esoteric (conversation analysis) or two time-intensive (ethnography) to have any practical significance for my desired research context and participants (secondary literacy teachers and their students). 

Developing creativity, or a "deliberative mode of learning"

In their preface, Piantanida and Garman hint at the problem of encapsulation and recast it as an opportunity, suggesting that the novice teacher-scholar leverage the tensions and use "practical issues to surface issues of worldview and issues of worldview to inform the decisions associated with crafting and conducting a qualitative dissertation." 

The dissertation, then, is not a procedural hoop, not just a means to an end. Insofar as it nurtures "a scholarly stance in practitioners," the dissertation is an end in itself. 

Thus, the qualitative dissertation is an excellent orientation to a life of scholarly inquiry and "deliberation." The novice researcher becomes versed in the literature and discourses of his or her discipline, enabling a creative cross-pollination of ideas to occur with respect "to intellectual roots and traditions" (Piantanida & Garman, Ch. 1, "Entering into the study of qualitative research," para 9). Piantanida and Garman's "deliberative mode of learning" is the route to developing creativity, a topic that figures prominently in the Lovitts article.

Lovitts upholds creativity as "inherent in and integral to graduate education" (p. 140). Creativity "exists in degrees" and is not "an all or none phenomenon" (p. 141). As a society we value cognitive performance because it is easy to measure against predefined norms and expectations, but it is our capacity for "creative performance" (p. 151) that will ultimately determine the quality of our scholarship and our ability to tackle society's greatest challenges -- "wicked problems," such as education reform. 

Lovitts presents a hopeful view of creativity as sociocultural phenomenon.  Unlike conventional notions of talent and intellect, creativity is not something we are born with but is the result of sustained interaction between an individual and his or her disciplinary field. As such, "it may be possible to enhance the individual's creative performance through appropriate interactions with the domain and the field" (p. 142). Likewise, Piantanida and Garman implore the teacher-learner to engage with the broader discourse community of their discipline: "Preliminary ideas grounded in personal experience undergo revision and refinement as one reviews formal bodies of literature" (Ch. 2, "On the discursive nature of deliberation," para 3).

Further, because the creative experience is so variable, it cannot be evaluated or measured but "should be judged relative to the student's capabilities and not a universal standard" (Lovitts, p. 142). Based on these assertions, Lovitts concludes with a number of implications for changing the "social structure and organizational culture of graduate education" (p. 151).

Lovitts focuses mostly on the influence of "micro-" and "macroenvironments" on the graduate student experience. Piantanida and Garman, on the other hand, acknowledge the shortcomings of higher education contexts but focus their advice squarely on students themselves, who must develop a deliberative stance in light of (in spite of?) the fact that "formal graduate programs and courses in the United States are not organized so that students can be independent learners" (Ch. 2, "Encapsulation versus deliberation," para 5).

"Sloshing" around wicked problems

As much as I like the illustration of "steps to graduation," there really are no neat and tidy checklists or rubrics by which to gauge one's progress. The process is messy, much like Piantanida and Garman's metaphor of sloshing through puddles. Qualitative inquiry, after all, is no “tame” problem, for which “ an exhaustive formulation can be stated containing all the information the problem-solver needs for understanding” (Rittell & Webber, p. 161).

Qualitative research is wicked. It demands “conceptual grappling” (Piantanida & Garman, Ch. 4, last para).

This grappling can take place within "think pieces," a mode of writing somewhere between a personal journal entry and formal, polished academic writing. Blog entries (such as this) or reflective memos can serve this purpose. (I myself have come to rely on the format and coding of memos that Richardson describes in the 1994 version of her essay "Writing a Method of Inquiry.") 

It seems to me that the production of think pieces (or, simply put, writing) is part and parcel to pacing and shaping the dissertation, which Piantanida and Garman take up in chapters 3 and 4, respectively. These issues have certainly weighed heavily on my mind in recent semesters, when it seemed I would never "find" a topic. 

On the subject of pacing, Piantanida and Garman say it "depends less on what one is doing than on what one is coming to understand. Forward movement occurs as the conceptual structure and content of the inquiry become increasingly clear and coherent” ("Staying the course of the dissertation," para 3). 

Similarly “shaping” a dissertation topic is not an outward search but a matter of fashioning “nebulous, inner images” into “credible and worthy studies” (Ch. 4, “Deliberations on topic,” para 2), also suggestive of the writing process. The willingness of the teacher-researcher to engage in the messines and to resist traditionally linear problem-solution formulations, is the hallmark of Piantanida and Garman’s deliberative stance.

References

Koehler, M. J., & Mishra, P. (2008). Introducing TPCK. In AACTE Committee on Innovation and Technology (Ed.), Handbook of Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPCK) for Educators (pp. 3–29). New York: Routledge.

 Lovitts, B. E. (2005). Being a good course-taker is not enough: A theoretical perspective on the transition to independent research. Studies in Higher Education, 30(2), 137–154.

 Piantanida, M., & Garman, N. B. (2009). The qualitative dissertation: A guide for students and faculty (Second Edition, Kindle edition.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

 Richardson, L. (1994). Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research (pp. 516–529). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc.

 Rittel, H. W. J., & Webber, M. M. (1973). Dilemmas in a general theory of planning. Policy Sciences, 4(2), 155–169.

Qualitative research, wicked problems, and the teacher-learner