Nvivo; software for qualitative data analysis

Hey folks,

Today I went to the second UBC Library Research Commons workshop on using NVivo; this is a program used for qualitative data analysis. Essentially, if you are going to be using qualitative data, this is the software that will help you organize and manage it all. When I gave my presentation in class, I had only a vague idea of how I might practically analyze the PDF files I will be working on; I had imagined a series of Excel files and loads of notes!  I now know more about the actual nuts and bolts of managing qualitative data and, as many of you guys mentioned that you’d be using interviews and/or surveys in your research, I think it would be useful to become familiar with this amazingly powerful tool.

There doesn’t seem to be another workshop scheduled for a while, but you can see here for more details and to book a 1-on-1 consultation on how to use the software.

K

Welcome back -- to our final class of the term for EDUC 500

Hello everyone! Looking forward to seeing you this evening in what will be our last class of the term

•I've missed seeing you all in person, but I have been listening in/ reading all your posts on our virtual class over the past two weeks, and I have been impressed by the high quality of the discussion overall, and the very interesting reflections, extensions and 'stops' you found in the video and the reading.

I've noted that almost everyone has contributed at least four substantial posts to our virtual class. The exceptions are:

Lilian: only 1 post

Crystal: 2 posts

Jingyu: no posts

Your participation in the virtual class will count as a significant part of your blog mark, and we really want to hear your ideas and thoughts. So if you haven't yet completed your 4 contributions, please try to do so today. Jingyu, the intention was to contribute over the two week period, but if you can add to several different parts of the discussion, that will be ok too.

I am sorry that the Postpositivism reading was one that people found a bit too challenging. (I had chosen

it because I thought it was clear and well-written...!) I do understand that this kind of theoretical/ philosophical reading may be quite new to many, and I really appreciate that you took the time to look up terms, wrestle with the ideas, and in the end, had quite a good discussion about the article and its relationship to the TED talk video on "big" and "thick" kinds of data. Good work!

•Six people have posted their certificates of completion for the online research ethics course that you are required to complete, and five haven't. If you have not completed the course and posted your certificate, please do so today or talk to me about when you will do so. Again, it is a significant part of the class, and you are expected to complete it.

•Looking forward to this evening's presentations! To clarify, we have approximately 13-14 minutes per

person for your presentation, questions from the group, and simultaneous changeover to the next presentation. That means you should spend:

* 5-8 minutes presenting 

* 5 minutes for questions and discussion with the group (while the next person sets up for their presentation in the background)

Your presentation may include slides (Powerpoint or other format), or may be done without slides. If possible in the short time given, please include some element of participation for the rest of the class, brief though it may be. It will make your presentation more engaging and help people do more than just listen in a passive way.

• Your final papers are due today, and should be emailed to me. If you need extra time, that's no problem: just let me know, and you can automatically have up to a week's extension (to April 10). After that, I will need to have time to mark everything  in time for the end of the term, so extensions beyond April 10 would be a bit more difficult.

Thanks everyone, and see you by 4:30 today!

Warm wishes

Susan

Our virtual class: Thinking about science, ethnography, post positivism and education research

Our Virtual Class is officially scheduled for the week of Tuesday March 27 - Tuesday April 3, with  March 20- 27 designated as our class Reading Week.

However, I would encourage you to find times anywhere in the period from March 14 - April 1 to participate asynchronously in our Virtual Class discussion on this blog. That will give you more time to do the reading and viewing for this class, and to take time to reflect on the ideas and the ongoing discussion, without rushing things.

You are expected to:

• Respond in the 'comments' section at the end of this post.
• Add at least four substantive responses over the course of the March 14 - April 1 period. (Please space your responses apart by at least a day or two, and read everything up to that point so that you understand where the discussion has been so far). 
• By 'substantive', I mean 'full of ideas and meaning' -- they don't need to be very long, and each response should ideally be 1-2 medium length paragraphs long.
• Keep your responses closely connected to the video and article. While we may mention things from outside these two 'texts', each response should tie back to something in them -- a quote, an idea, etc.

I've chosen two things that everyone should read and view for our Virtual Class, with the hope that these will be helpful to you as you consider your own Masters research ideas for your graduating project, thesis or capstone project:

1) Please view this 16 minute TEDx video from 2016: Tricia Wang on The human insights missing from big data. This interesting and controversial video from the world of business research considers the relationship between data mining and ethnographic approaches (and other quantitative and qualitative approaches) in doing research that leads to making good decisions for the future. Although it comes from the world of business, we may be able to extend the ideas to educational settings as well.

(Optional: If you would also like to view another short video (6 min.) outlining ideas about research methodology in a straightforward way, you might take a look at Dr. Mark Peace's 'On Methodology' as well).

2) Please read this chapter from Phillips & Burbules (2000), Postpositivism and educational research.

I will not propose writing prompts for our virtual class, but will just ask you to pay attention to "stops" that you encountered in the video and the article, and then to respond to your classmates' responses as well.

The virtual class gives us the luxury of a longer, more slow-motion online discussion of some big ideas, with time to consider what we want to add and what others have said. I hope you enjoy it very much!

Ethnography: Jennette, YuXi, Kieran

·       Ethnography

• "Ethnography is the recording and analysis of a culture or society, usually based on participant-observation and resulting in a written account of a people, place or institution"
• A systematic study of people designed to explore cultural phenomena where the researcher observes society from the POV of the subject of the study
• Branch of anthropology and qualitative sociology
• Today, they are just as likely to focus on a particular aspect of contemporary social life (e.g. A study of Canuck fans)
• “Gerhard Friedrich Müller developed the concept of ethnography as a separate discipline whilst participating in the Second Kamchatka Expedition (1733–43)”
• Use of fieldnotes in researchers’ observation
• “you put yourself in a strange position; you must let go of your own presumptions and assumptions about a group of people in order to effectively learn anything about them”
• Objectivity and neutrality essential

Phenomenology

Phenomenology:

Started in the first half of the 20th century in Germany. The following are influential in the creation and proliferation of phenomenology: Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Jean-Paul Sartre

Focuses on the nature of how a person experiences a situation. Ex: "lived experiences"


Explore the judgements, perceptions and emotions of people, and their experiences of situations in addition to reactions.


Methods provide descriptions and classifications.




(Jingyu and Sarah)

Phenomenology-Hui and Crystal

Pursuant to Wikipedia, ‘Phenomenology’ is defined as as “the philosophical study of the structures of experience and consciousness’. This concept was originally founded by Edmund Husserl. Husserl argued that phenomenology is a methodology to study the pure ‘phenomena’ and examine how things are appearing to their own consciousness. Phenomenology is driven by the action word of “describe”, to describe the phenomenon as accurately as possible to pursue pursue objectivity while trying to stay away from any pre-justices, any existing framework, but only to the facts. This type of methodology applies very well with study of lived experiences. There are some variations of phenomenology which may include transcendental constitutive phenomenology, naturalistic constitutive phenomenology, and etc. Groenewald (2004)’s paper on “A Phenomenological Research Design illustrated” is a phenomenological research.

Citation:
Groenewald, T. (2004). A  phenomenological  research design illustrated.   International  Journal of  Qualitative  Methods, 3(1). Article  4. Retrieved [INSERT  DATE]  from http://www.ualberta.ca/~iiqm/backissues/3_1/pdf/groenewald.pdf

Ethnography - Lilian & Naureen

The Definition of ethnography by Merriam Webster is:

the study and systematic recording of human cultures;  
also: a descriptive work produced from such research

............................................................................................................................................

We don’t think the definition serves the term justice, and so we’re providing some examples based on our own experience.

I took a course on video ethnography and it was very relevant because we learned how to consider aspects of visual data that commonly go by unseen; from facial gestures to landscape and cultural elements. The course focused on video data collection and analysis. (Lilian)

A few years ago, I read this book called “Gang Leader for a Day” where a sociologist student in Chicago decided to conduct non-traditional ethnography research in order to understand gang culture. Basically, Chicago having huge inequities between rich and poor, he wanted to understand how the poor were living. He started by just going door to door in the projects asking people if he could observe their livelihood, which unexpectedly turned into building a relationship with a person who was a member of one of the prominent gangs in the area (oh and his mom too!). What he ended up learning through this ethnographic experience was how these communities actually served as their own economy, bartering with people in the neighborhood. And especially fascinating is how the gangs served as law enforcement, protecting the neighborhoods they live in (since the police dared to show up). (Naureen)

Great read – here’s a link with more details! http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/16/books/16grimes.html

Phenomenology - Katy and Haynam

Phenomenology is the study of "phenomena" - it is a s study of conscious experience of a specific phenomena or object.  The focus of the study is the subjective observer and their individual conscious experience and the meaning of this experience.

Phenomenology is a branch of philosophy.  Championed by philosophers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merlau-Ponty and Satre in the 20th century these men believe phenomenology is the foundation of all philosophy (rather than just another branch of philosophy).

The other branches of philosophy are:
Epistemology (knowledge)
Ontology (being or what is)
Logic (reasoning)
Ethics (right and wrong)

Phenomenology allows us to appreciate first-hand experiences of students and recognise they are all different. Phenomenology is also important when considering the positionally of the researcher.  Each researcher will have a different conscious experience of a given phenomena or object and therefore their phenomenological approach affects the research they undertake.

Notes related to Toni Lazarova's guest talk

Here is a link to Toni's garden-based learning workbook for teachers.  You are free to use and share it! It has lots of great ideas for activities for home economics, science, math, language and arts activities.

You can contact Toni at antonia_lazarova_@hotmail.com

Whiteboards related to her presentation:

I forgot to include this in our course outline!

Our wonderful guest speakers for next week!

Joanne Price

I, Joanne Price, am an educator in “abeyance”: privileged to have had the opportunity to study and journey with many of the root-prints of this elusive word.

 Since beginning my PhD seven and a half years ago I have engaged with contemplative practices … acts of remembrance and creation through the world of walking and the world of dreaming. This journey led me to an amazing place in the territory of my own culture in mid Wales. An area of woodland known as bwlch or gap, situated between farmland and mountains, a kind of connecting place of the end points of human experience. 

I was taken, alone, on a move to one of the really dark backgrounds of our age. It was traumatic to learn about the losses that happen to forgotten peoples in our own homelands. Even on encountering many of my ancestors, especially creatives and lesbians who were not seduced into thinking they had to conform or escape, I felt tremendous loss. A loss of life, land, and language from realising that although we were raised to respect nature, we still weren’t aware of the power of relationships among people and places, spirits, trees, waters, wildlife, and wild plants. It was really tough because I encountered thinking that exacerbated climate change and directed violence toward others including the non-human and more-than-human worlds. 

And yet this journey is also teaching patience, to remain hopeful when the response is slower than it should be. To let go of the temptation to present lies and withdrawals, and stay still enough to encounter an enduring silence capable of ushering us closer to the wonder, wisdom, and infinite possibilities of the past. Moving us into an era of true stewardship because the wonderful thing is, the response is growing and all together it is going to be healing for Wales and Canada and the relationships with our only home. 

As a passionate advocate of life’s diversity, I am for the land and ancestors past, present, and future. I am for the protection of sacred places and their capacity to nourish the well-being of all those who feel different. We must learn to walk our own paths, have the courage to sing our own songs, and find the words to gift this world its fullest and richest meaning.

*****************************************************

Philip Kimani Karangu was born and raised in Kenya. Philip, a current first year PhD student at UBC completed his Master of Arts in Curriculum Studies at UBC in 2017. His research focused (and will continue) on improving education in refugee camps around the globe such as Dadaab in Kenya (world’s largest refugee camp). He completed his teaching certificate at Machakos Teachers Training College and his Bachelor of Education from Kenyatta University in 2013 (Kenya) with a focus in History and Kiswahili. Philip has taught in primary schools in Kenya and his last position was head teacher and Kiswahili teacher at a charity-run primary school.

Introduction to sensory ethnography

First of all, what is meant by terms like ethnography and phenomenology? Where do these practices

and ideas come from?

And then, how is visual or sensory ethnography different from more 'classical' ethnography?



How might ethnography, senory/ visual ethnography and phenomenology play into educational research? What stories can these approaches tell that other approaches might leave out?

Homework readings for our March 13 class

Homework readings for Tuesday March 12

This week we'll read 3 articles that focus on visual research approaches that include photo, video, or drawings.

1) O'Donoghue, Donal (2007) "James always hangs out here": making space for place in studying masculinities at school. Visual Studies, 22(1), 62-73.




2) Pink, Sarah (2007) Walking with video. Visual Studies, 22(3), 240-252.

3) Merriman, Brian & Guerin, Suzanne (2006). Children's drawings in child-centered research. Irish Journal of Psychology, 27(1-2), 48-57.

When reading your article, consider the following:

•what does the particular visual research method offers and what it doesn't offer.
•how does this method compare to interviewing both in terms of collection strategies and analysis methods

More on triangulation in research

Kwesi mentioned triangulation of data in his research talk this evening. He and I pointed out that, although the image of a triangle has three corners, triangulation can be done with two or more sources, methods, etc. Here is a link with a bit more detailed information in the concept of triangulation in research.

The metaphor of triangulation comes from trigonometry and surveying, where measuring a side and the two contiguous angles of a triangle can give you all the rest of the information about that triangle.

The importance of observing things from several points of view is illustrated by this optical illusion video -- and this silly video about a magic trick. Things are not necessarily what they appear to be at first glance, and a new point of view is what allows you to see the contradictions that point to the truth!

Some notes from our guest speakers Kwesi and Diana Feb 27

Handy tool for formatted PDFs

Hey folks,

I just wanted to let you know about this tool I just found as it might be useful for you for the coming weeks. When we copy/paste from a PDF, sometimes the text comes out like this

The video-stimulated post interaction

interviews with participants provided complementary data for understanding their

experiences with the language learning system.

rather than the much tidier

The video-stimulated post interaction interviews with participants provided complementary data for understanding their experiences with the language learning system.

because of the line breaks formatting in the original. If you are copying/pasting a lot of text, it can be quite time consuming to fix it all up by connecting the parts of the sentences. However, if you go here you can use this tool to quickly delete the line breaks and then copy/paste the text back into your notes. Easy and free; happy days.

Research ethics tutorial

Every researcher who works with human subjects at UBC is required to complete the online ethics
tutorial called TCPS 2, posted by the Canadian Tri-Councils (i.e., SSHRC -- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council; NSERC -- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council; and CIHR -- Canadian Institutes of Health Research).

The tutorial takes approximately 3 hours to complete. We will start working on it in class tonight, and complete it over the next week or two. You will need to work on your own personal completion of the tutorial, but I suggest that you will learn more by working collaboratively with one or two partners from your reading circle -- which is how we will begin today in class.

Here is the link to the tutorial. Once you complete the tutorial, you will receive a certificate of successful completion, which you should post to your blog before the end of our course.

FYI, here is a link to a historical timeline of cases related to the development of research ethics. This one is largely US based, but the events listed had reverberations in Canada too.

As you go through the ethics tutorial, keep notes on a blog post about your own impressions, ideas and thoughts about the examples given and the ethical issues raised for researchers. We will discuss these as we go along.

Homework readings for our March 6 class

This week, we will be reading the opening chapters of three UBC Masters theses to get the feel of the
ways that research theoretical grounding and methodology can be written.

1) Alayne Armstrong, Group flow in small groups of middle school mathematics students. Please read pp. 5 - 49.

2) Wang Yifei, Designing chatbot interfaces for language learning: Ethnographic research into affect and users' experiences. Please read pp. 1-53.

3) Jacyntha England, Histories of forgetting, geographies of remembering: Exploring processes of witnessing and performing in senior secondary humanities classroom(s). Please read pp. 1-42.

Your blog writing prompts:
• What surprised you about this thesis writing?
• What are three ideas you can take away from this to bring to your own research writing?

Our two guest speakers for our March 6 class: John Ames and Toni Lazarova

Here are our wonderful guests for our upcoming class!

John Ames: My first Masters degree specialized in Literature and Science of the Late-Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries, focusing on how scientific trends in English and French circles of thinkers, such as Erasmus Darwin (C. Darwin's grandfather) and numerous French Philosophe scientists, influenced 1st and 2nd generation Romantic literature, such as that of John Thelwall, William Wordsworth, Percy & Mary Shelley, and John Keats.

In becoming a teacher I quickly became attracted to problems in special education research, embarking on a second Masters' degree in the field that continues to this day as a PhD student. During my Masters I was a Research Assistant for The Libretti of Learning: Portraits of Journeys to Operatic Accomplishment, examining how opera singers overcame learning disabilities through opera instruction: research that sparked my interest to this day.

Building upon my interests in community- and place-based learning and evolutionary roots of human emotional articulation, my PhD research looks at how multimodal arts-based methods, especially children's “muzik-theatre,” may promote literacy in writing and reading for students with learning disabilities.

One of my collective public aims is to create classroom adaptable training methods that will teach children the elements of creating their own short operas from conception to completion, thus promoting emotional growth through narrative development. It is my hope that through facilitating this method -- adapting one representational signing system to another -- greater cognitive understanding of writing and reading will generalize to learners.



My name is Toni Lazarova and I have been a highschool teacher in North Vancouver for the past 6 years. I have taught a variety of subjects, including Foods, Textiles, Fashion Design, Yearbook, and Learning Assistance. I have also held some roles as a teacher leader, including Department Head and Pro D committee, and I have been a club sponsor (Interact, Sewing for a cause, Yearbook, Fruit and Vegetable Delivery, Girls club etc.) I hold a degree in Food, Nutrition and Health, Education and a masters in Curriculum and Pedagogy from UBC. My interests include creating innovative new ways of teaching the curriculum, garden based education and many others.

The Arts-Based Educational Research (ABER)- Jennette, Hui, JingYu

The ABER provides a mechanism for academic scholars to conduct researches from an artistic approach. It is widely used in the interdisciplinary studies. Different from traditional methodology, it enables the researchers to apply their artistic skills to engage studies in various ways including art making, musical performances, poetry, visual products, critical dialogues and other artistic format.

The ABER helps artists, researchers, and teachers to foster a better understanding about the complexities in teaching and learning with incorporation of social transformation and interventions. It could be done in diverse settings either formal or informal. ABER is an effective way to allow scholars to engage deep conversations to integrate their own conscious awareness in order to create a new understanding about their work and the world they live in.

Poetic Inquiry

"The International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry brings together international poets and scholars from diverse contexts and interdisciplinary fields to share their work. Presentations are offered in various formats."

The first symposium was held in Vancouver, BC in 2007, by the Faculty of Education of the University of British Columbia. The first speaker of the first symposium explains poetry "as a way to know the world, as a way to be and become in the world." There has been a symposium bi-annually in different cities around the world (mainly in Canada so far)! The symposium offers an opportunity to learn about how poetic inquiry can be used in many genres and fields of study, as well as how poetic inquiry is understood and applied across different cultures and educational backgrounds.

Sean Wiebe is a contributor to the International Symposium on Poetic Inquiry, and wrote a research paper called Poetic Inquiry: A Fierce, Tender, and Mischievous Relationship with Lived Experience

This paper aims to explore:

1. How the richness of lived experience can be sustained in poetic inquiry 
2. The terms fierce, tender, and mischievous as qualities of engagement that are often exemplified in the ways poetic inquirers live and work. 

Some of the main ideas are:

1. Examining Rapport and Hartill’s (2012) article. To review: E.g.: Poetic inquiry as a powerful way of engaging the world. What makes poetic inquiry powerful? And what the most suitable analytical methods are. 
2. Learning how the terms fierce, tender, and mischievous might have potential for enriching the discussion of poetic inquiry that are more methodological 

We also learned that in practice poetic inquiry was used within the Inside Age Care, which is an organization that helps people to realize the elders' living condition. They used the photo voice methodology as well as the poetic inquiry. Some photo and poetry exhibitions were organized by the organization. According to the article Poetic Inquiry: Creating poems from interviews with residents, the The author believed that “ special, dramatic language of poetry enables an imaginative and empathetic identification, drawing the audience into each residents’ uniquely intimate world.”

A/R/Tography

Performative inquiry:

• Using theatre as the basis for researching and understanding issues; e.g. culture or traumatic ideas etc. 
• Performances used to understand the issue so as to better provide resources / supports necessary to uncover hidden / traumatic issues.

Music as Inquiry

• Danny Bakan wrote a dissertation at UBC (2014) looking at “how songs and stories about songwriting can serve as a means for theorizing new ways of conducting research in music education”. He uses the term a bricolaged métissage approach; this seems like a term needs quite a bit of investigating! Looking identity of musicians through their music can give insight into their own creative process; an inquiry into lived creative experience with song as the “method, results, and interpretation of research”

Our two guest speakers for our Feb. 27 class!

Here are the bios supplied by our wonderful guest speakers for our Feb. 27 class:

Diana Ihnatovych is a PhD student in Cross-Faculty Inquiry in Education. Her academic career in music performance and pedagogy, choreography, and literature, combined with her passion for nature, sustainability, holistic medicine and nutrition led her to pursue inter-disciplinary research in music and sustainability. Volunteering with the UBC Intergenerational Landed Learning on the Farm and witnessing the challenges that children experience in relation to nature became the driving force behind her research question: ‘How will the integration of music into elementary environmental education enhance the process of learning about nature and sustainable living, and influence students’ perceptions and attitudes toward our planet’s eco-system?’ Examining the connections between music and nature to advance practices in environmental education through the lenses of a/r/tography and autoethnography will facilitate exploration and discovery of new connections and prospects between music and nature.