PRODUCTS

It’s clear that American public education has been under assault for more than the last 30 years. So much of this current "age of accountability" has focused on blame, both of teachers and those who prepare them. Somehow, unlike in other professions, declarations were made to the effect that anyone could teach better than teachers, including business leaders and people from tony universities without teacher preparation. The Age of Accountability scrutinizes the attack on teachers through weaponized data. While an effective corporate tool to improve bottom-line goals, its use in education became more sinister and misanthropic. International PISA scores imply the mediocre ability of American students, fueling a belief that American education needed more than an upgrade. The only answer that would placate many was a complete upheaval, a redefinition of a teacher and who should be permitted to become one. We teachers ceded authority to these business and legislative forces. Their subsequent fervor for testing overwhelmed teaching and drove the joy out of schooling for students. It is time for a recounting of what has been done to the profession and to our children. Young teachers need encouragement and veteran teachers need reminding of their valiant and effective efforts.

In what ways can performance be mobilized to resist? This is the question that the present volume explores from within the context of qualitative research. From an arts-based approach, authors suggest methods on how artistic practice resists. The volume addresses how critical performance autoethnography might retain its ethical and democratic potential without falling into dogmatism or hegemony. This vision for democracy can even be accomplished through improvised, process-centered pieces that weave together thoughts from several key scholars, all to give us a critical perspective on how performative autoethnography is paradigmatically situated. The performance texts collected here question and resist, showing how the experience of art-making can move us through political and public spaces with liberatory potential, challenging social and ideological hegemonies and to generate social movements. Imaginative arts-based practices allow us access to emotional and embodied phenomena that remain otherwise foreclosed by traditional forms of inquiry. From poetics to public performances, subversive interventions, and more, these chapters bring a radical performative discourse to the fore. In so doing, the chapters work to create a framework for just performance, showing us how we might live performance as resistance.

What can it mean to resist in these troubled times, and how can we do so through theory? This volume presents novel ideas on how to accomplish this in the context of the field of qualitative research. The authors show us how we might go beyond pre-existing, systematized research methodologies to find our way. They challenge us to go beyond facile modes of thought and slow down any mechanistic practices of research, a slowing that can be surprisingly generative regarding pedagogy and knowledge production. The articles think through theories such as ones theorizing the postcolonial for the purpose of responding to global hegemony regarding institutional experiences of academe. They engage with practices of new materialism and show the multiform ways in which theory can be a companion to us in our journey of research. Further, the articles question hold-overs from humanist and modernist thought so that we might perform an inclusive pedagogy. Rather than falling into the cynical view that the world is too troubled to change, this volume presents a sound vision that we have no option but to engage in theoretical practice, for now, there’s no time not to think.

Focus Groups: Culturally Responsive Approaches for Qualitative Inquiry and Program Evaluation takes an in-depth look at how culturally-responsive focus groups are developed and implemented within the context of qualitative inquiry broadly, and program evaluation more specifically. The book showcases various forms of focus groups and how they can be responsive to specific communities across different disciplines. This book provides: an historical perspective on focus groupsa theoretical foundation helpful for supporting focus groups with marginalized groups, vulnerable populations (older adults, children), and participants within non-Western settingsbasic procedures for conducting focus groupsguidelines for cultural responsiveness andcase examples of alternative approaches to focus groups that target specific communities and those in different contexts. It also considers ethical issues around the use of culturally responsive focus groups, while providing guidance on analyzing and interpreting your data and establishing the credibility of your study. Focus Groups is an information rich resource for qualitative researchers and program evaluators at various levels who want to learn about or enhance their knowledge on designing and conducting culturally responsive focus groups.Perfect for courses such as:Foundations of Culturally Responsive Focus Groups | Culturally Responsive Approaches to Program Evaluation Practicing Qualitative Program Evaluation | Qualitative Research: Culturally Responsive Methods | Focus Groups in Research | Introduction to Qualitative Methods | Methods in Educational Research | Program Evaluation Practice | Designing Qualitative Research

Novice and early career researchers often have difficulty with understanding how theory, data analysis and interpretation of findings “hang together” in a well-designed and theorized qualitative research investigation and with learning how to draw on such understanding to conduct rigorous data analysis and interpretation of their analytic results. Data Analysis, Interpretation, and Theory in Literacy Studies Research demonstrates how to design, conduct and analyze a well put together qualitative research project. Using their own successful studies, chapter authors spell out a problem area, research question, and theoretical framing, carefully explaining their choices and decisions. They then show in detail how they analyzed their data, and why they took this approach. Finally, they demonstrate how they interpreted the results of their analysis, to make them meaningful in research terms. Approaches include interactional sociolinguistics, microethnographic discourse analysis, multimodal analysis, iterative coding, conversation analysis, and multimediated discourse analysis, among others. This book will appeal to beginning researchers and to literacy researchers responsible for teaching qualitative literacy studies research design at undergraduate and graduate levels.

This volume on arts-based research explores the transformative power of arts for qualitative inquiry and beyond. The chapters address multiple approaches from within arts-based research and suggest that art can be mobilized to reorient the political, especially when we find the political aim straying from its proper target of truth and justice. Artistic representation is never an end in itself, for the goal is to change the way we think about people and their lives. Arts-based research makes the world visible in new and different ways, in ways ordinary scholarly writing does not allow. The Arts develops a utopian idea of belonging, illustrating how moments of history, biography, culture, politics and lived experience come together in the aesthetic. Ultimately, the content of the book examines how artistic insights resonate in arts-based research, something that not only gives us criteria for assessing the quality of ethical engagement in arts-based research practice, but also provides a conceptual framework for living more just lives through art.

The chapters in this volume collect together perspectives on Indigenous epistemologies. These Indigenous ways of knowing pay particular attention to the relational aspects of language, culture, and place. They are not identified as specific themes, but as integrated parts of a philosophy, for Indigenous epistemologies think within a relational framework, so that all aspects are best understood from this perspective. Indigenous ways of knowing have resisted colonization and oppression, and as such, Indigenous research perspectives exemplify a commitment to social justice, one that recovers knowledges that have been silenced or subjugated. When such knowledge is shared, we can see how to challenge oppressive regimes. We can see how to seek truth in a relational way that’s attendant to being together. Indigenous Research takes up issues of social justice in a way that is informed by Indigenous epistemologies, an important practice in contemporary research, particularly qualitative inquiry.

This is a collection of interdisciplinary and logically interconnected papers from nationally and internationally acclaimed researchers in philosophy, psychology, history of education, teacher training, educational leaders and practitioners, child advocates, and educators who have been motivated by the philosophy and pedagogy of Dr. Janusz Korczak (1878-1942), a world famous moral exemplar and champion of children’s rights. The book provides answers to timely questions of how to respect children’s rights in K-12 schools, community centers, summer camps, and colleges; how to create an atmosphere of trust and safety, and provide social-emotional learning in the classroom; how to become a genuine child advocate; and how to support growing child agency. It also tells the story of Korczak, his life, and the lives of the children in his charge. Nurture, Care, Respect, and Trust details how Korczak’s legacy encourages and stimulates new projects and spreads around the world. The volume serves as a rich resource of practical materials for teachers and university instructors, introducing a number of innovative lesson plans, examples of students’ works, and school projects inspired by Korczak’s pedagogy.

The most effective and long-lasting student strike in U.S. History took place at San Francisco State College in 1968. The first Black Student Union, the first Black Studies Department, the only College of Ethnic Studies, and the admission of thousands of students of color resulted from this four-and-a-half-month strike which shut down 80% of the campus. It has been called the movement which “changed academia forever.” Black students were only a small percentage of those on campus, but they managed to engage thousands of white, Latino, Asian, and indigenous students; SDS and the Third World Liberation Front; the faculty union; and a huge portion of the San Francisco Community. In the end, they were able to win most of their 15 demands. The book is written by two participants in the strike, one a member of the BSU leadership. Oral histories of strike leaders are integrated with discussion of the events and significance of this movement. What were the politics and strategies? Why was the strike successful and what are the insights for today’s mass movements?

The concept of difference occupies a central place in the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze. In this work, David Bright explores how Deleuze’s difference can be put to work in critical qualitative research. The book explores research and writing as a creative process of dynamically pursuing problems. Following Deleuze’s advice not to think of problems in terms of solutions, the book offers important methodological insights into the ways the subjects, objects, and processes of research might be conceived and represented in writing, exploring the problem of thinking and writing about difference in complex ways without reducing thought to static representations of identity. Bright uses the example of foreign teachers and international schooling in Vietnam to show us how Deleuze’s difference can be used in critical qualitative research, demonstrating the limits of traditional ways of thinking about difference in learning and teaching. Exploring Deleuze's Philosophy of Difference is a book that will interest all those with an interest in the application of Deleuze’s philosophy to critical qualitative research.