Introductory Qualitative Methods Courses

The College of Education offers several courses that serve as introductions to qualitative research methods. While specific course content may vary somewhat, each encompasses attention to the basics of qualitative inquiry (e.g., formulating research questions, devising a plan of data collection, conducting effective interviews, taking fieldnotes, assessing validity, addressing ethical issues, and presenting results in a final write-up).

• 7C:338, Essentials of Qualitative Inquiry in Education.
  Professor Elizabeth Whitt, CRSD (summer 2007)

• 7B:373, Introduction to Qualitative Research.
  Professor Carolyn Wanat, EPLS (spring semesters).

• 7P: 331, Special Topics: Qualitative Educational Research Methods, Professor Kathy Schuh, P & Q (fall semesters beginning fall 2008)

• 7E/7S:370, Methods of Literacy Research: Qualitative Studies in Classroom Settings.
  Professor Anne DiPardo, T& L (not currently offered)

This course is an introduction to historical methodologies. The primary focus is on locating  primary sources, analyzing sources, and presenting results. Topics for exploration include archival research, oral history, and online resources.

Course Objectives:
By the end of the course, students should be able to...

1. define history
2. identify the functions and varieties of history
3. identify problems in historical thinking
4. identify elements of historical method
5. identify forms of historical evidence
6. identify, locate, and utilize standard reference works, online 
   resources, government documents, archives, and interviews
7. identify current issues/debates in historical research
8. write a research proposal
9. complete/write a "Human Subjects" application
10. write a paper synthesizing information from class

This course explores the contemporary ethnographic essay--as it appears in the disciplines of English, American studies, communications studies, cultural studies, journalism, and the interpretive social sciences (anthropology, education, folklore, sociology).  Although the common readings represent those fields, you will want to pursue (and share with colleagues) your own combination of interests as you follow your own working plans.  We will consider the features of ethnographic essays by reading, researching, and writing.  The ethnographic essay is cultural critique; the result of a relationship between what goes on in a culture and how it appears on paper.  And, of course, that relationship depends on the lenses and tools of the writer.  We will engage in, as John Van Maanen writes, "the peculiar practice of representing the social reality of others through the analysis of one's own experience in the world of these others."  Together we will attempt to define what we might mean by "the ethnographic essay."

"Ethnography" is not just a research method; it is its own written genre.  It is both a post-modern critique and a paradigm for seeing how particular cultures construct their knowledge.  This course/seminar offers both a practical and theoretical background for conducting ethnographic field studies in literacy, schooling, or language.  We will draw methodologies and perspectives from anthropology, sociology, folklore, literary criticism, feminist theory, composition theory, and fiction writing.  We will read ethnographies and view ethnographic films from education, folklore, sociology, anthropology and popular culture.   We'll discuss the roles and responsibilities of writer, reader, and viewer, and informant.  We'll try using the ethnographer's tools and methods, and then experiment with the writer's techniques for rendering ethnographic text.  We cannot become ethnographers in one semester, but we can try the methods, consider the theories, and read the texts.