21st Century Scholar

Last week, I discussed the difference between deficit and surplus perspectives in education. A surplus of cultures exists in many low-income neighborhoods. And yet, current research, policy, and practice often assume a deficit perspective. I argued, instead, that scholars, policymakers, and practitioners ought to consider a surplus perspective. Such a perspective refocuses discussions from what [...]

In education, scholars, practitioners, and policymakers often espouse a deficit cultural perspective to explain academic success and failure; students who succeed exemplify a mainstream culture whereas students who fail represent an oppositional culture. Unfortunately, by “blaming the victim,” such arguments echo previous culture of poverty debates, reinforce stereotypes, and do little to move us forward. [...]

Ethnography, like culture, is a contested and complex term. How one conducts ethnography, the role of the author, one’s stance to those under investigation, and the like are topics that have consumed ethnographers and social scientists for over a century. However, because a term is contested does not mean that one can say whatever he [...]

First of all, you may be wondering, “What’s CAQDAS?” It’s a (not so simple) acronym for Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis. Have you heard of Atlas.ti? Or HyperRESEARCH? Or NVivo? How about Dedoose? These are CAQDAS programs. The purpose of all CAQDAS programs is to support data analysis. The platforms differ in subtle ways from [...]

This is the first of a two-part blog where I discuss the use of social media in research and practice. Today’s blog emphasizes methodological concerns. Next week, I will discuss social media in schools. As regular readers of the blog know, I am conducting an ethnography that focuses on the lives of 17- and 18-year-old [...]

In late December, Collegeology game designers Elizabeth Swensen, Sean Bouchard and I traveled to Texas  to conduct a case study at a Houston area high school. Our goal was to playtest the card game (Application Crunch) and soon-to-be launched online game (Mission: Admission) with a group of predominately African American, low-income students. We arrived right [...]

My interest in college readiness includes organizations and individual actors; therefore, the case study methodology is an appropriate research tradition. After receiving approval from the Institutional Review Board (IRB), and gaining entrée and access to the respective case, the data collection begins. However, one of the first elements established for my projects is determining reciprocity: [...]

Today’s Thursday is TechDay is a critique and a celebration. I recently attended the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) annual meeting in Charlotte and there is much to report about the role online communication technologies are (and aren’t) playing in the postsecondary research community. The critique is the obvious stuff: No wifi [...]

Credibility is the first (and most important) criteria for establishing trustworthiness in qualitative research. Credibility, like it’s step-sibling validity, is often the subject of much debate; scholars argue about what it can and cannot do and what strategies researchers should and should not use to ensure rigor in research (see “Varieties of Validity: Quality in [...]

Thursday is TechDay Today’s Thursday is TechDay blog is an introduction to the future of qualitative research software: the online platform. If you haven’t heard the news, there’s a new qualitative software player in town. It’s called Dedoose, and it’s worth a look for two reasons. First, within the qualitative research community, it pioneers the [...]