The Art and Science of Educational Inquiry: Analysis of Performance-Based Focus Groups with Novice Bilingual Teachers

2009 ◽  
Vol 111 (11) ◽  
pp. 2535-2559
Author(s):  
Melisa Cahnmann-Taylor ◽  
Jennifer Wooten ◽  
Mariana Souto-Manning ◽  
Jaime L. Dice
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Teacher Education ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Bilingual Teachers ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Educational Inquiry

Background/Context For over two decades, the boundaries between the social sciences and the humanities have become blurred, and numerous articles and books have been written about the infusion of the arts in qualitative research as a means to collect and analyze data and to represent findings. Yet these arts-based research processes, although present in the social sciences, are still largely invisible in a research climate that privileges (e.g., through publication, funding, and recognition) work claiming to be exclusively scientific. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study To fully develop the potential of the arts for a transformative educational inquiry, the synthesis of scientific and artistic methods must be fully explicated through clear examples that address theoretical and empirical concerns. This article focuses on explicit arts-based approaches that the authors employed in a 3-year teacher education study of professional conflicts experienced by novice bilingual teachers. Authors describe how they used the arts and to what end, addressing questions of artistic processes, expertise, and research validity. Research Design The research design included theatrical and literary techniques alongside more traditional qualitative methods of inquiry (e.g., participant observation, audio- and video-recorded focus group interactions, interviews, and surveys). Authors initiated performative focus groups based on the work of Paulo Freire and Augusto Boal in which participants share and act scenes from power-laden experiences of conflict, rehearsing strategies for personal and social revolution. This embodied data enabled the research team to focus empirical and pedagogical attention on both participants’ physical and verbal “scripts” or trans/scripts: compressed renderings of original transcripts that utilize techniques from poetry and the dramatic arts to highlight the data's emotional “hot points” and heightened language from the original discourse. Conclusions/Recommendations This study illuminated the range of experiences and emotions involved in novice bilingual teachers’ professional lives, signaling the value and validity of research that is both artistic and scientific. Such hybridity may at first appear to make for unexpected and potentially haphazard methodological mergers. The authors do not claim to have resolved these epistemological tensions, but to have exploited both traditional and artistic research methods to broaden the notion of what counts as “research” in teacher education and to conduct research that is engaging to researchers and participants alike.

Conducting Comparative Participant Observation

2020 ◽  
pp. 57-87
Author(s):  
Corey M. Abramson ◽  
Martín Sánchez-Jankowski
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Causal Processes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Methodological Approaches

Following the argument for the importance of comparative participant observation for approaches descendent from the conventional scientific tradition (CST), this chapter outlines how the behavioralist foundations summarized in chapter 1 translate to procedures and techniques for charting causal mechanisms in comparative ethnographic research. The chapter begins by examining the practices and techniques of the behavioralist approach in detail and describes the mode of research design, sampling, data collection, analysis, and explanation associated with this approach, giving examples from prior empirical works. The chapter then turns to longstanding concerns about ethnographic reliability and replication and explains how this approach addresses them. In doing so, it shows how behavioralist criteria align with, and diverge from, other methodological approaches to the collection, analysis, and extension of ethnographic data. The chapter concludes by explaining the contributions that can be made by repositioning participant observation within the spectrum of approaches to understanding causal processes in the social sciences.

scholarly journals The Pitfalls and Promise of Focus Groups as a Data Collection Method

2015 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Cyr
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Focus Group ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Focus Groups ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Collection Method ◽  
Unit Of Analysis ◽  
Individual Unit ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual

Despite their long trajectory in the social sciences, few systematic works analyze how often and for what purposes focus groups appear in published works. This study fills this gap by undertaking a meta-analysis of focus group use over the last 10 years. It makes several contributions to our understanding of when and why focus groups are used in the social sciences. First, the study explains that focus groups generate data at three units of analysis, namely, the individual, the group, and the interaction. Although most researchers rely upon the individual unit of analysis, the method’s comparative advantage lies in the group and interactive units. Second, it reveals strong affinities between each unit of analysis and the primary motivation for using focus groups as a data collection method. The individual unit of analysis is appropriate for triangulation; the group unit is appropriate as a pretest; and the interactive unit is appropriate for exploration. Finally, it offers a set of guidelines that researchers should adopt when presenting focus groups as part of their research design. Researchers should, first, state the main purpose of the focus group in a research design; second, identify the primary unit of analysis exploited; and finally, list the questions used to collect data in the focus group.

scholarly journals Research Design – Composition, Configuration and Interdependencies

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
Peter Kastberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Integrative View ◽  
The Social ◽  
Abstract Level ◽  
Science Methodology ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Knowledge Communication

In this essay I will present an integrative view on research design. I will introduce what Itake to be the skeleton components of any research design within the social sciences, i.e.the elements of research question, philosophy of science, methodology, method and data.With this as my point of departure I will go on to focus on a presentation, a discussionand an evaluation of a new appreciation of the interdependencies of the elements in theresearch design. An appreciation that favors a relational rather than an atomistic outlookand which gives rise to an ecological conceptualization of research design. A research design,in other words, which promotes plasticity and fluidity over adherence to static protocol.And which, at the same time, does not relinquish control over project-relevant, multifaceteddecision-making processes – and their respective interdependencies – but which deliberateseach and every one of them. The aim of the paper is twofold. At a more abstract level, itaims at paving the way for establishing a reflexive approach to research design which, in turn,would be in tune with the tenets of the field of Organizational Knowledge Communication(e.g. Kastberg, 2014). At a more concrete level, it aims at presenting an idea of researchdesign which would – hopefully – be an inspiration to (young) scholars.

Marcel Mauss and the Turn to the Gift

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Colesworthy
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Experimental Writing ◽  
Market Society ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Gift ◽  
New Material ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
Leonard Woolf

Chapter 1 takes a cue from recent anthropologists who have stressed the influence of Mauss’s socialism on his sociological work. Returning to Mauss’s The Gift, the chapter argues that what links his essay to the experimental writing of his literary contemporaries is not their shared fascination with the primitive, as other critics have suggested, but rather their shared investment in reimagining social possibilities within market society. Mauss was, as his biographer notes, an “Anglophile.” Shedding light on his admiration of British socialism and especially the work of Beatrice and Sidney Webb—friends of Virginia and Leonard Woolf—as well as competing usages of the language of “gifts” in the social sciences and the arts, the chapter ultimately provides a new material and conceptual framework for understanding the intersection of largely French gift theory and Anglo-American modernist writing.

scholarly journals Has the Credibility of the Social Sciences Been Credibly Destroyed? Reanalyzing the “Many Analysts, One Data Set” Project

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 237802312110244
Author(s):  
Katrin Auspurg ◽  
Josef Brüderl
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Causal Reasoning ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Skin Tone ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Many ◽  
Definition Of

In 2018, Silberzahn, Uhlmann, Nosek, and colleagues published an article in which 29 teams analyzed the same research question with the same data: Are soccer referees more likely to give red cards to players with dark skin tone than light skin tone? The results obtained by the teams differed extensively. Many concluded from this widely noted exercise that the social sciences are not rigorous enough to provide definitive answers. In this article, we investigate why results diverged so much. We argue that the main reason was an unclear research question: Teams differed in their interpretation of the research question and therefore used diverse research designs and model specifications. We show by reanalyzing the data that with a clear research question, a precise definition of the parameter of interest, and theory-guided causal reasoning, results vary only within a narrow range. The broad conclusion of our reanalysis is that social science research needs to be more precise in its “estimands” to become credible.

scholarly journals Editorial Foreword

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. viii-viii
Author(s):  
Muhamad Abdul Aziz Ab Gani ◽  
◽  
Ishak Ramli ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Editorial Boards ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Art Design ◽  
Global Initiatives

We are very pleased that IDEALOGY JOURNAL, Journal of Arts and Social Science is presenting its 6th volume and 2nd issue. We are also very excited that the journal has been attracting papers from a variety of advanced and emerging countries such as Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, etc. The variety of submissions from such countries will help the aimed global initiatives of the journal. We are also delighted that the researchers from the Arts and Social Science fields demonstrate an interest to share their research with the readers of this journal. This issue of Journal of Arts and Social Science contains five outstanding articles which shed light on contemporary research questions in arts and social science fields. All the 13 papers of this issue studies the are discussing about culture, art, design, technology, creativity and art & design innovation. There is also discussion about art, design and culture in various area. In this issue, most of the articles are discussing on the topic of arts and the social science. In social science it is very important to have a combination of different discipline to ensure the survival of knowledge. By combining knowledge from different fields, it could produce new innovation that could lead to solutions to many important problems or issues. Hence Idealogy Journal of Arts and Social Sciences is a platform for many fields of knowledge to share research findings as well as literatures. As we were aware at the first issue, a journal needs commitment, not only from editors but also from editorial boards and the contributors. Without the support of our editorial board, we would not dare to start and continue. Special thanks, also, go to the contributors of the journal for their trust, patience and timely revisions. We continue welcome article submissions in all fields of arts and social sciences.

scholarly journals Something for Everyone: A Review of Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing among Five Approaches

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Tarnoki ◽  
Katheryne Puentes
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Family Therapy ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Doctoral Programs ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nova Southeastern University

Qualitative Inquiry and Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches (2018), by John W. Creswell and Cheryl N. Poth was written for anyone who is considering themselves to be researchers or interested in learning more about qualitative research. As students in doctoral programs studying family therapy at Nova Southeastern University, we felt that parts of the text were explicitly tailored toward the social sciences; however, the chapters are useful for anyone interested in qualitative research from many angles and aspects.

scholarly journals Realizing the transformative potential of conservation through the social sciences, arts and humanities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Bennett ◽  
Robin Roth
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Conservation Practices ◽  
Arts And Humanities ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Conservation Actions

Conservation actions most often occur in peopled seascapes and landscapes. As a result, conservation decisions cannot rely solely on evidence from the natural sciences, but must also be guided by the social sciences, the arts and the humanities. However, we are concerned that too much of the current attention is on research that serves an instrumental purpose, by which we mean that the social sciences are used to justify and promote status quo conservation practices. The reasons for engaging the social sciences, as well as the arts and the humanities, go well beyond making conservation more effective. In this editorial, we briefly reflect on how expanding the types of social science research and the contributions of the arts and the humanities can help to achieve the transformative potential of conservation.

Archive Fevers

2020 ◽  
pp. 24-41
Author(s):  
Albena Yaneva
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Architectural Practice ◽  
The Arts ◽  
The Social ◽  
Paul Ricœur ◽  
Empirical Turn

This chapter reviews several developments in the social sciences and the arts that date back to the 1990s and motivated this study of archives as practice. It refers to Jacques Derrida and Paul Ricoeur as key protagonists that led to the rethinking of the role of archiving as a tool of memory. It also details the emergence of the trend of “archival ethnography,” which witnessed the advent of the archival turn in anthropology. The chapter elaborates how archival scholarship took an empirical turn in the mid-1990s, coinciding with the “archive fever” in the arts and the “archival turn” in anthropology that opened venues for investigating architectural archiving. It explores the realm of architectural practice wherein the computer radically changed working dynamics and led to the practice's own archival turn in the mid-1990s.

Social science, methodology of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Philosophy Of Science ◽  
Research Design ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Physical Science ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
The Social

Each of the sciences, the physical, biological, social and behavioural, have emerged from philosophy in a process that began in the time of Euclid and Plato. These sciences have left a legacy to philosophy of problems that they have been unable to deal with, either as nascent or as mature disciplines. Some of these problems are common to all sciences, some restricted to one of the four general divisions mentioned above, and some of these philosophical problems bear on only one or another of the special sciences. If the natural sciences have been of concern to philosophers longer than the social sciences, this is simply because the former are older disciplines. It is only in the last century that the social sciences have emerged as distinct subjects in their currently recognizable state. Some of the problems in the philosophy of social science are older than these disciplines, in part because these problems have their origins in nineteenth-century philosophy of history. Of course the full flowering of the philosophy of science dates from the emergence of the logical positivists in the 1920s. Although the logical positivists’ philosophy of science has often been accused of being satisfied with a one-sided diet of physics, in fact their interest in the social sciences was at least as great as their interest in physical science. Indeed, as the pre-eminent arena for the application of prescriptions drawn from the study of physics, social science always held a place of special importance for philosophers of science. Even those who reject the role of prescription from the philosophy of physics, cannot deny the relevance of epistemology and metaphysics for the social sciences. Scientific change may be the result of many factors, only some of them cognitive. However, scientific advance is driven by the interaction of data and theory. Data controls the theories we adopt and the direction in which we refine them. Theory directs and constrains both the sort of experiments that are done to collect data and the apparatus with which they are undertaken: research design is driven by theory, and so is methodological prescription. But what drives research design in disciplines that are only in their infancy, or in which for some other reason, there is a theoretical vacuum? In the absence of theory how does the scientist decide on what the discipline is trying to explain, what its standards of explanatory adequacy are, and what counts as the data that will help decide between theories? In such cases there are only two things scientists have to go on: successful theories and methods in other disciplines which are thought to be relevant to the nascent discipline, and the epistemology and metaphysics which underwrites the relevance of these theories and methods. This makes philosophy of special importance to the social sciences. The role of philosophy in guiding research in a theoretical vacuum makes the most fundamental question of the philosophy of science whether the social sciences can, do, or should employ to a greater or lesser degree the same methods as those of the natural sciences? Note that this question presupposes that we have already accurately identified the methods of natural science. If we have not yet done so, the question becomes largely academic. For many philosophers of social science the question of what the methods of natural science are was long answered by the logical positivist philosophy of physical science. And the increasing adoption of such methods by empirical, mathematical, and experimental social scientists raised a second central question for philosophers: why had these methods so apparently successful in natural science been apparently far less successful when self-consciously adapted to the research agendas of the several social sciences? One traditional answer begins with the assumption that human behaviour or action and its consequences are simply not amenable to scientific study, because they are the results of free will, or less radically, because the significant kinds or categories into which social events must be classed are unique in a way that makes non-trivial general theories about them impossible. These answers immediately raise some of the most difficult problems of metaphysics and epistemology: the nature of the mind, the thesis of determinism, and the analysis of causation. Even less radical explanations for the differences between social and natural sciences raise these fundamental questions of philosophy. Once the consensus on the adequacy of a positivist philosophy of natural science gave way in the late 1960s, these central questions of the philosophy of social science became far more difficult ones to answer. Not only was the benchmark of what counts as science lost, but the measure of progress became so obscure that it was no longer uncontroversial to claim that the social sciences’ rate of progress was any different from that of natural science.

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