Confessions of a Quantitative Educational Researcher Trying to Teach Qualitative Research

Abstract

T idea for this article grew from a chart with Alan Peshkin at the 1993 AERA Annual Meeting. As I was walking through the exhibit area, I noticed Professor Peshkin, clean shaven, sitting at the Longman booth. Because Professor Peshkin is a former colleague and because I use his textbook (Glesne & Peshkin, 1992), I thought I might pick up some hints on teaching qualitative research. Parenthetically, for over 25 years I have taught measurement and statistics. In describing my professional training to Professor Peshkin, I mentioned also that I have an AB and MAT in sociology and that, as an undergraduate, I had taken several courses in anthropology. Professor Peshkin responded that my background was better than most of the first generation of professors of qualitative research. Fve been chewing on that first generation label since last year. This article is the result. Although I have no formal training in qualitative research, for the past 2 years I have taught a graduate course entitled Ethnography in School and Community Settings. Because of the terminal illness of one faculty member and the failure of a formal search, I have become the little Dutch boy with his thumb in the dike. Through this article I can share my successes (some) and can ask for help in those areas that need improvement (many). Most of all, I wish to initiate a dialogue with those of the first generation who, although not trained formally in the area, nevertheless teach qualitative research methods, either as a unit in the introductory educational research course or as a stand-alone ethnography or qualitative research course. Following Van Maanen (1988) the perspective of this article is that of a confessional tale, a tale whose concern [is] how the fieldworker's life was lived upriver among the (p. 75). Obviously, the natives are my ethnography students. A secondary perspective, in a pedagogical if not philosophical sense, is constructivism, as used in science and mathematics education. In the language of realtors I am having an open house so that others can examine my construction of qualitative research and its instruction, and perhaps suggest some additions and improvements.