Results by title

479 books match the query 'Methodology' and 12 start with n

Sort by

Naked Fieldnotes

Denielle Elliott

University of Minnesota Press, 2024

Creative and diverse approaches to ethnographic knowledge production and writing

Ethnographic research has long been cloaked in mystery around what fieldwork is really like for researchers, how they collect data, and how it is analyzed within the social sciences. Naked Fieldnotes, a unique compendium of actual fieldnotes from contemporary ethnographic researchers from various modalities and research traditions, unpacks how this research works, its challenges and its possibilities.

The volume pairs fieldnotes based on observations, interviews, drawings, photographs, soundscapes, and other contemporary modes of recording research encounters with short, reflective essays, offering rich examples of how fieldnotes are composed and shaped by research experiences. These essays unlock the experience of conducting qualitative research in the social sciences, providing clear examples of the benefits and difficulties of ethnographic research and how it differs from other forms of writing such as reporting and travelogue. By granting access to these personal archives, Naked Fieldnotes unsettles taboos about the privacy of ethnographic writing and gives scholars a diverse, multimodal approach to conceptualizing and doing ethnographic fieldwork.

Contributors: Courtney Addison, Te Herenga Waka—Victoria U of Wellington; Patricia Alvarez Astacio, Brandeis U; Sareeta Amrute, The New School; Barbara Andersen, Massey U Auckland, New Zealand; Adia Benton, Northwestern U; Letizia Bonanno, U of Kent; Alexandrine Boudreault-Fournier, U of Victoria; Michael Cepek, U of Texas at San Antonio; Michelle Charette, York U; Tomás Criado, Humboldt-U of Berlin; John Dale, George Mason U; Elsa Fan, Webster U; Kelly Fayard, U of Denver; Michele Friedner, U of Chicago; Susan Frohlick, U of British Columbia, Okanagan, Syilx Territory; Angela Garcia, Stanford U; Danielle Gendron, U of British Columbia; Mascha Gugganig, Technical U Munich; Natalia Gutkowski, Hebrew U of Jerusalem; T. S. Harvey, Vanderbilt U; Saida Hodžić, Cornell U; K. G. Hutchins, Oberlin College; Basit Kareem Iqbal, McMaster U; Emma Kowal, Deakin U in Melbourne; Mathangi Krishnamurthy, IIT Madras; Shyam Kunwar; Margaret MacDonald, York U in Toronto; Stephanie McCallum, U Nacional de San Martín and U de San Andrés, Argentina; Diana Ojeda, Cider, U de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia; Valerie Olson, U of California, Irvine; Patrick Mbullo Owuor, Northwestern U; Stacy Leigh Pigg, Fraser U; Jason Pine, Purchase College, State U of New York; Chiara Pussetti, U of Lisbon; Tom Rice, U of Exeter; Leslie A. Robertson, U of British Columbia, Vancouver; Yana Stainova, McMaster U; Richard Vokes, U of Western Australia; Russell Westhaver, Saint Mary’s U in Nova Scotia; Paul White, U of Nevada, Reno.

[more]

Narrating Their Lives

Examining English Language Teachers' Professional Identities within the Classroom

Edited by Lia Kamhi-Stein

University of Michigan Press, 2013

“…a groundbreaking book that will…engage, inform, and connect with present and future teachers and teacher educators.”

---Stephanie Vandrick, Foreword to Narrating Their Lives

The field of TESOL has called attention to the ways that the issues of race and ethnicity, language status and power, and cultural background affect second language learners’ identities and, to some degree, those of teachers. In Narrating Their Lives, Kamhi-Stein examines the process of identity construction of classroom teachers so as to make connections between their personal and professional identities and their instructional practices. To do that, she has selected six autobiographical narratives from teachers who were once part of her TESL 570 (Educational Sociolinguistics) class in the MA TESOL program at California State University, Los Angeles. These six narratives cover a surprisingly wide range of identity issues but also touch on broader instructional themes that are part of teacher education programs.

Because of the reflective nature of the narratives—with the teachers using their stories to better understand how their experiences shape what they do in the classroom—this volume includes provocative chapter-opening and reflective chapter-closing questions. An informative discussion of the autobiographical narrative assignment and the TESL 570 course (including supplemental course readings and assessment criteria) is also included.

[more]

Narrative Policy Analysis

Theory and Practice

Emery Roe

Duke University Press, 1994

Narrative Policy Analysis presents a powerful and original application of contemporary literary theory and policy analysis to many of today’s most urgent public policy issues. Emery Roe demonstrates across a wide array of case studies that structuralist and poststructuralist theories of narrative are exceptionally useful in evaluating difficult policy problems, understanding their implications, and in making effective policy recommendations.
Assuming no prior knowledge of literary theory, Roe introduces the theoretical concepts and terminology from literary analysis through an examination of the budget crises of national governments. With a focus on several particularly intractable issues in the areas of the environment, science, and technology, he then develops the methodology of narrative policy analysis by showing how conflicting policy "stories" often tell a more policy-relevant meta-narrative. He shows the advantage of this approach to reading and analyzing stories by examining the ways in which the views of participants unfold and are told in representative case studies involving the California Medfly crisis, toxic irrigation in the San Joaquin Valley, global warming, animal rights, the controversy over the burial remains of Native Americans, and Third World development strategies.
Presenting a bold innovation in the interdisciplinary methodology of the policy sciences, Narrative Policy Analysis brings the social sciences and humanities together to better address real-world problems of public policy—particularly those issues characterized by extreme uncertainty, complexity, and polarization—which, if not more effectively managed now, will plague us well into the next century.

[more]

Nation on Board

Becoming Nigerian at Sea

Lynn Schler

Ohio University Press, 2016

In the 1940s, British shipping companies began the large-scale recruitment of African seamen in Lagos. On colonial ships, Nigerian sailors performed menial tasks for low wages and endured discrimination as cheap labor, while countering hardships by nurturing social connections across the black diaspora. Poor employment conditions stirred these seamen to identify with the nationalist sentiment burgeoning in postwar Nigeria, while their travels broadened and invigorated their cultural identities.

Working for the Nigerian National Shipping Line, they encountered new forms of injustice and exploitation. When mismanagement, a lack of technical expertise, and pillaging by elites led to the NNSL’s collapse in the early 1990s, seamen found themselves without prospects. Their disillusionment became a broader critique of corruption in postcolonial Nigeria.

In Nation on Board: Becoming Nigerian at Sea, Lynn Schler traces the fate of these seamen in the transition from colonialism to independence. In so doing, she renews the case for labor history as a lens for understanding decolonization, and brings a vital transnational perspective to her subject. By placing the working-class experience at the fore, she complicates the dominant view of the decolonization process in Nigeria and elsewhere.

[more]

Navigating Academia

Writing Supporting Genres

John M. Swales & Christine B. Feak

University of Michigan Press, 2011

Navigating Academia is a bit different from the other volumes in the series because it focuses on the supporting genres that facilitate the more public genres that form the building blocks of an academic and/or research career. Included are statements of purpose for graduate school applications, letters of recommendation, and responses to journal reviewers.

One feature that these genres have in common is that they are largely hidden from public view; it is difficult to find examples of them in university libraries. Although guidance about these genres can increasingly be found on the Internet, this guidance is often too general to be helpful in an individual particular situation. This is unfortunate because in almost all cases, the individual needs to be seen as both a serious scholar, researcher, or instructor (whether beginning or getting established) and as a collegial but objective person. As a result, many of these academic communications need to be carefully considered, particularly with regard to the likely effect this communication will have on its intended recipients, who, more often than not, are established figures in the field (as with a job application letter). Because of the roles of these genres, this volume also differs somewhat from the others in that it is as much concerned with social academic practice as it is with more formal academic texts.

This volume represents a revision and expansion of the material on academic correspondence that appeared in English in Today's Research World.

[more]

Network Sense

Methods for Visualizing a Discipline

Derek N. Mueller

University Press of Colorado, 2018

In this book, the first published in the #writing series, Derek N. Mueller offers a methodological response to recent efforts by scholars in rhetoric and composition/writing studies to account for patterns indicative of the discipline's maturation. Influenced by work on distant reading (Moretti, 2005) and thin description (Love, 2010 & 2013), this monograph attends to forms of knowledge newly available via computationally mined, aggregated data from large collections of texts, which is then used to build experimental models for discerning non-obvious relationships. By shedding light on large-scale patterns, the models promote what Mueller refers to as a network sense of the field, which regards these as crucial structures of participation for orienting newcomers to the shifting terrain of disciplinary knowledge and for sustaining a generalist's wherewithal in the midst of a growing archive of increasingly specialized scholarship.

[more]

New Narratives for Old

The Historical Method of Reading Early Christian Theology: Essays in Honor of Michel Rene Barnes

Anthony Briggman

Catholic University of America Press, 2022

Guilds and conferences have grown up around historical theology, yet no volume has ever been dedicated to the definition and illustration of the method undergirding historical theology. This volume both defines and illustrates the methodology of historical theology, especially as it relates to the study of early Christianity, and situates historical theology among other methodological approaches to early Christianity, including confessional apologetics, constructive theology, and socio-cultural history. Historical theology as a discipline stands in contrast to these other approaches to the study of early Christianity. In contrast to systematic or constructive approaches, it remains essentially historical, with a desire to elucidate the past rather than speak to the present. In contrast to socio-historical approaches, it remains essentially theological, with a concern to value and understand the full complexity of the abstract thought world that stands behind the textual tradition of early Christian theology. Moreover, historical theology is characterized by the methodological presupposition that, unless good reason exists to think otherwise, the theological accounts of the ancient church articulate the genuine beliefs of their authors. The significance of this volume lies in the methodological definition it offers. The strength of this volume lies in the fact that its definition of the historical method of studying theology is not the work of a single mind but that of over twenty respected scholars, many of whom are leaders in the field. The volume begins with an introductory essay that orients readers to various approaches to early Christian literature, it moves to two technical essays that define the historical method of studying early Christian theology, and then it illustrates the practice of this method with more than twenty essays that cover a period stretching from the first century to the dawn of the seventh.

[more]

New Perspectives on the Origins of Americanist Archaeology

Edited by David L. Browman and Stephen Williams

University of Alabama Press, 2002

In this landmark book, experienced scholars take a retrospective look at the developing routes that have brought American archaeologists into the 21st century.

In 1996, the Society for American Archaeology's Committee on the History of Archaeology established a biennial symposium
named after Gordon R. Willey, one of the fathers of American archaeology, to focus on the history of the discipline. This volume grew out of the
second symposium, presented at the 1998 meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Interest in the intellectual history of the field is certainly nothing new—the first such volume appeared in 1856—but previously, focus has been on individuals and their theories and methods, or on various government agencies that supported, developed, or mandated
excavations in North America. This volume, however, focuses on the roots of Americanist archaeology, including its pre-1915 European connections, and on some of the earliest work by women archaeologists, which has been largely overlooked.

Full of valuable insights for archaeologists and anthropologists—both professional and amateur—into the history and
development of Americanist archaeology, New Perspectives will also inspire and serve as a model for future research.

David Browman is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Interdisciplinary Program in Archaeology at Washington University. Stephen Williams is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at Harvard University.

[more]