On writing: train of thought, experiential text, problem statements, and lit reviews

This week’s readings from Piantanida and Garman’s (2009, Kindle edition) The Qualitative Dissertation: A Guide for Students and Faculty provided a jolt.  That brief moment of glory following the proposal defense is definitely over. It’s time to get back to work, and by “work,” I mainly mean writing. 

I have a love-hate relationship with writing. One of my favorite quotes about writing, variously attributed, goes something like this: “I hate to write. I love to have written.”

What follows are reflections and questions on past and future writing endeavors. I then conclude with ideas for my first project report for EP 659, due Feb. 14.

Writing (riding?) my train of thought

As I began reading chapters 9-12, a message from last week’s class stood foremost in my mind: THE ONLY THING YOU ARE GOING TO CHANGE WITH YOUR RESEARCH IS YOU. This resonates with Piantanida and Garman’s assertions about the "centrality of writing as a way of coming to know" (Ch. 9, “Experiential Text as a Content for Theorizing,” para 12). This is the nature of interpretive and practice-based dissertations, and I best get on board with it.

It’s not like I haven’t heard this stuff before. Piantanida and Garman remind me of things I’ve read recently (Kilbourn’s extremely helpful essay on crafting the qualitative proposal and Richardson’s classic, “Writing: A Method of Inquiry”) and things I have read not so recently, such as Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings. I read that in high school!

When preparing my proposal earlier this winter, I found the Kilbourn piece to be especially comforting; Kilbourn provides explicit guidance on technical aspects that Piantanida and Garman do not. For instance, his description of the research problem as a gradually narrowing “train of thought” helped me considerably in writing my first chapter. Kilbourn’s advice on tackling the problem statement from a qualitative perspective is much more practical than Piantanida and Garman’s recommendation to abandon the problem statement altogether. (I will elaborate on this in a moment.)

Nonetheless, it’s there in Kilbourn too: the needling awareness that your train of thought runs on a short, messy track. Eventually you reach the end of the line, and “you have tvo construct the path you want to take” (pp. 569-570).  Kilbourn echoes Piantanida and Garman’s theme of deliberation when he writes, “Thus, the framing and wording of the proposal should reflect an attitude of genuine inquiry—it involves a spirit of genuinely finding out rather than proving" (p. 537).

Expressing the problem, defining the dilemma

In Chapter 11 Piantanida and Garman describe parts of the proposal. In acknowledgement of the fact that A) the proposal must be organized in a way that  supports the student’s line of reasoning and B) each institution has its own rules for format, the authors take extra care to avoid prescribing an order of the parts.

I experienced this quandary myself and was glad that my department’s PhD handbook allows flexibility in use of headings and sequencing. For instance, due to the number of technical terms related to my topic as well as the general “newness” of my frameworks to my field, I felt it was necessary to include a lengthy list of definitions fairly early in my first chapter. Also, for purposes of improved flow, I incorporated a thorough treatment on study significance after my Chapter 2 literature review. Kilbourn’s suggestions for “sign-posting” and “metawriting” gave me the confidence to try this (p. 563).

As I mentioned earlier, I found the whole discussion of problem statements to be…a problem. Piantanida and Garman recommend not having a "statement of the problem" because it is a holdover of positivist/scientifically framed studies. Then, they go on to describe how interpretive research is concerned with  "perplexing aspects" of "complex" human affairs -- in other words, problems. I don't think stating a "problem" necessarily carries the assumption that a solution exists. Qualitative researchers make it their business to "problematize" taken-for-granted situations, to make the ordinary problematic. So why not a problem statement? 

Or, better, what about the term "dilemma"? Maybe we should call it the "statement of the dilemma." For example, in my current project, the broad issue or topic under examination is teaching and learning with and through technology, which most reasonable stakeholders would agree is not a problem per se. But, it is inherently dilemmatic. Explaining what this means is the problem statement.

So, like the case of Marjorie (“Henny Penny” from Chapter 8), who “aimed to elucidate the nature of the dilemmas so that she could make more conscious and deliberate choices about her teaching practice" (Ch. 11, "Practice-Focused Dissertations," para 3), my goal is to problematize conventional thinking around instructional technology and teacher development, that is, the traditional view that problems in IT are often conceptualized as “gaps”(gaps in access and performance, gaps in discrete skills sets, and so on). However, as these concrete and discernable gaps are closed (with more computers, more networks, more training, etc.), new (and less transparent) inequities arise. Hutchison and Reinking (2011) surveyed literacy teachers across the country and confirmed that, while issues related to network access and technology support were largely becoming resolved, two distinct levels of use and integration existed in schools. They referred to these levels broadly as “technological integration” and “curricular integration,” with the former reflecting a lower-level, superficial stance toward technology as “add-on” (p. 314).

I return now to Piantanida and Garman, who jettison the problem statement entirely and replace it with something called a "statement of intent." But this, to me, sounds like the classic "purpose of the study" section? Don’t I need both a problem (a perplexing phenomenon) and a purpose (what I intend to do about it)? 

Crafting experiential text

As discussed last week in class, Piantanida and Garman’s concept of “experiential texts” equates to what we traditionally call the “findings.” The researcher must create "as textured and nuanced a 'picture' of the study context as possible” (Ch. 9, “Purpose of Experiential Text,” para 2). The process of writing experiential text, linking conceptual points, and constructing the core thesis is recursive and arduous.

Compared to the painstaking attention to detail that quantitative researchers apply to the design and execution of their studies, the rigor of qualitative studies lies in the crafting of  experiential texts. These texts must evoke an empathetic response in the reader. More importantly, they must evoke questions. The reader should question simplistic interpretations and taken-for-granted assumptions in the workaday world. The reader should ask, "What would I do in this situation?" This sets the stage for the theoretic text and the concepts that the researcher will offer as "a heuristic map" to guide "wise action” (Ch. 9, “Experiential Text as a Context for Theorizing,” para 7).

Piantanida and Garman use the term "iterative interpretation" for this process of bridging situational details (the raw data from the study context) to the conceptual issue being studied. This opens the door for "theoretic interpretation," which means drawing on formal discourses and concepts to make meaning of the situation.

This is an area of need in my academic writing. I am creating those bridges, but they are shaky. As my committee members pointed out to me, I have this undeniable tendency to end my paragraphs with a quote from the literature. Their advice is straight out of AP senior English class: I must take better care to couch other's words with my own interpretation and commentary. Ack! I used to teach this stuff. Why can't I do it?

For this reason, I found the last question in Reflective Interlude 9.1 to be relevant but challenging: What can I do to practice iterative and theoretic interpretation? Now that my consciousness has been raised, I am not sure how to proceed other than to revise the most offending passages in my proposal and then turn my sights on future writing efforts, such as my imminent plunge into the case study literature.

Reviewing the literature

The literature review is a “discursive text” that represents “the diversity of thinking associated with key concepts in one’s study” (Ch. 11, “Discursive text versus review of literature,” para 3). The literature review should also support one’s rationale for choosing a specific research genre/approach through construction of a “logic-of-justification.”

When too little time is spent with the literature, students encounter the pitfall of merely justifying qualitative inquiry against dominant positivist and postpositivist traditions. However, a well-written logic-of-justification does more than that. It justifies the qualitative inquiry against ongoing debates and discourses within its own traditions.

Like every other aspect of qualitative research, this process is disorienting and stress-inducing. Last fall, as I delved into readings on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, I stumbled into “pockets of discourse where scholars are engrossed in discussions that one finds meaningful" (Ch. 11, “Preparing to construct a logic-of-justification,” para 3). I was in the middle of writing my frameworks when I discovered divergent opinions about CHAT between two leading theorists.

I had aligned myself with one theorist only to discover that another was making an equally compelling argument that seemed dismissive of the first guy. Did this mean I had to choose sides? I quickly sent off an email to one of my committee members whose methodological opinions I had come to rely on. She responded, “The issues you are dealing with do not have a right or wrong answer. It is an area that need cultivating, and you can join the conversation to do that.” Upon reflection, her reply now seems very much in alignment with Piantanida and Garman’s point of view (and Kilbourn’s).

And I am still not done constructing my logic-of-justification. In my readings on CHAT, I realized that, while drawn to design-based research (often used in CHAT studies), the opportunity to propose a design experiment had long since passed. It would be impossible for me to both follow this approach and meet the expectations of my committee chair, who also happened to be the lead instructor in the context under investigation (complicated!).

In my continued review of activity-theoretical studies, I learned that case study is another time-honored approach within the CHAT tradition. I am now poised to delve into that literature, but I am a little nervous. Although I have no reservations about CHAT as a coherent and compatible match to my own assumptions and research "proclivities," I have no idea how or if I can successfully locate myself within the case study tradition.

Will I find a reasonably strong and coherent link connecting the case study genre to my own "proclivities for making meaning"?  Will all my early data collection efforts, done without tether to a specific methodology, be in vain? Isn’t it too late for me to ask these questions?

I am hopeful that, as I explore the case study literature more deeply in the coming weeks, my process in comparing and interpreting them (Yin, Stake) will help me sort out some answers to these questions. I am also wondering if my documentation of this process (through writing) could serve as the bulk of my first project report for EP 659. 

References

Hutchison, A., & Reinking, D. (2011). Teachers’ perceptions of integrating information and communication technologies into literacy instruction: A national survey in the United States. Reading Research Quarterly, 46(4), 312–333.

Kilbourn, B. (2006). The qualitative doctoral dissertation proposal. The Teachers College Record, 108(4), 529–576.

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

On writing: train of thought, experiential text, problem statements, and lit reviews