I am feeling optimistic about this course after our first meeting. This course is an important part of my PhD journey and I am happy to be completing my coursework with a deeper understanding of qualitative methods. My supervisor has asked me to explore both quantitative and qualitative methods separately so that I may have a more robust understanding of both before planning a mixed methods design.

When I applied to become a PhD student, I was initially drawn to qualitative research methods as I thought that these designs would be best for telling the stories of educational innovation. Since completing a more in-depth methods course I have learned about the volume of work required in qualitative methods. Qualitative research is not as straightforward as some quantitative designs and requires many decisions prior to beginning and adjustments throughout the process. My underestimation of qualitative research may speak to the limited emphasis placed on these methods in my masters program. By focusing solely on stories told through qualitative research, I became uncomfortably aware of contributing to the diminishment of this complex methodology. The stories I gather will be very important, but the interpretation, analysis, and synthesis of these stories, situating them in existing research and theories, coding and theming transcripts, and disseminating what I learned is where these stories become research. My assumptions about the easy joy-filled work of sharing story summaries was misguided and remained unchallenged by excellently written qualitative articles that caught my attention like well-written stories.

My supervisor insisted that I begin writing a reflective journal from the day I was notified of acceptance in the program. After we were assigned a reflexive journal in this course I needed a better understanding of reflexivity. I already know that journaling can be used as both a data source in qualitative research and also as a triangulation method (Janesick, 1999). As a novice university instructor, I have had students use blogs to reflect on their learning as an opportunity for collaborative meaning making and to crosscheck understanding. Journals can serve as memory anchors (Mackenzie et al., 2013) for researchers and reveal our positionality and bias if we are willing to share the minutiae of our thinking and processes. The primary threat to validity to watch for in this particular writing is that our words are for an audience who will assess us, which has the potential to alter what we may say (Phelps, 2005). This is excellent practice in preparation for writing field notes.

References

Janesick, V. J. (1999). A journal about journal writing as a qualitative research technique: History, issues, and reflections. Qualitative Inquiry, 5(4), 505-524. https://doi.org/10.1177/107780049900500404

Mackenzie, C. A., Ricker, B., Christensen, J., Heller, E., Kagan, E., Osano, P. M., Long, L., & Turner, S. (2013). “dear diary” revisited: Reflecting on collaborative journaling. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 37(4), 480-486. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2013.868080

Phelps, R. (2005). The Potential of Reflective Journals in Studying Complexity ‘In Action’. Complicity: An      International Journal of Complexity and Education 2(4), 37-54. https://doi.org/10.29173/cmplct8726