This autobiographical paper describes the teaching of an adjunct faculty member at Washington University in Saint Louis, Missouri, and the doctoral and postdoctoral students he taught. The paper discusses the author's study of the area of biography and autobiography; the use of ethnography, history, and biography in qualitative research; the…

This paper presents a review of the literature on reliability in qualitative studies. Reliability is defined as the extent to which studies can be replicated, using the same methods, and getting the same results. It is the degree to which data are independent of the accidental circumstances of the research. The review includes the following three…

This paper outlines a classroom technique that conveys to students some of the complexities of naturalistic and systematic observation. Most research methods textbooks devote only a single chapter to all of the descriptive techniques of research. This activity involves students in the observation and recording of "fidgets" during a five-minute…

Although the demand for formal evaluation of alternative schools is greater than for conventional schools, the unique characteristics of these schools make evaluation especially challenging. Use of traditional instruments and methods may yield misleading results. Evaluators must understand the issues associated with the evaluation of alternative…

This paper reports on field research conducted by students in undergraduate methods courses for secondary social studies in 1996-97. Journal entries, lesson plans, oral history reactions, and interviews were used to gather data. Objectives were: to describe the role of the interviewer in an oral history setting; and to identify and clarify the…

This paper describes the way in which the author moved from what might have been a textual explanation of a narrative analysis of qualitative data to a poetic rendition. The focus is on the work of a female graduate student working collaboratively with another graduate student. The story emerged as a teacher-as-researcher study on graduate…

The objective of a graduate course at North Dakota State University was to move students beyond a prescriptive approach for conducting qualitative research to a holistic consideration of the ethical dimensions involved in qualitative methods. Successive discussions allowed students the opportunity to fully consider ethics in a multi-faceted…

A qualitative study of Head Start teachers sought to discover their perception of the impact of their life experience upon their professional pedagogy. The study focused on long-term Head Start teachers (16 to 28 years) who began their association with the program as parents and lived and worked in the classroom. Lessons learned about the…

When students use concept maps to construct and represent their understandings, these concept maps can be analyzed for representation of understanding from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives. In this study, a qualitative approach was utilized to extend the interpretations from the quantitative analysis of students' conceptual…

Theories concerning cognitive development or complexity include one developed by W. G. Perry, Jr., and his colleagues (1970). Research related to Perry's scheme is analyzed to suggest ways by which this particular theory can be validated. The first part of the paper describes Perry's scheme and assumptions of cognitive development theories in…

This paper offers reflections on personal beliefs and practices used to construct and communicate knowledge about social studies teaching and learning with preservice elementary teachers. The paper draws upon one person's personal experiences, student journals, student interviews, course documents, field notes, and audio tapes of an instructor.…

Based on the premise that multimethod approaches that integrate quantitative and qualitative research methods are best suited to contextual studies of media audiences, two studies of mass media use and meaning were conducted with college undergraduates. Research grew out of a classroom assignment wherein students avoided all media products (films,…

A study investigated the nature of a sixth-grade community of readers from the emic perspective (participants' point of view). A qualitative interpretive case study was conducted in one sixth-grade language arts classroom with the researcher acting as participant-observer. Data in the form of fieldnotes, interviews, and written samples of…

Giving a human face to the wealth of statistical information on literacy problems in Canada, a qualitative study investigated the experiences and views of socially and educationally disadvantaged people in Canada. Open-ended interviews were conducted with 105 persons with low literacy skills from every province and territory in Canada. In…

Computer software that is intended to assist the qualitative researcher in the analysis of textual data is relatively new. One such program, the Data Collector, is a HyperCard computer program designed for use on the Macintosh computer. A tool for organizing and analyzing textual data obtained from observations, interviews, surveys, and other…