Jean A. Patterson

Response to Tracy’s Under the “Big Tent” Establishing Universal Criteria for Evaluating Qualitative Research

In this paper, we consider Tracy’s proposal for universal criteria to judge the goodness of qualitative studies, and we explore her criteria by applying them to our own work. As a test of Tracy’s claim to universality, we situate her ideas within a womanist caring framework, using it as an exemplar to theorize deliberately Tracy’s criteria. We do this to evaluate just how theoretically limber Tracy’s criteria actually are. We conclude that Tracy’s criteria are useful because they are universal but not fixed and we build on her thinking to foreground ethics as an overarching framework for criteria rather than a standalone category. We highlight the urgency of returning the debate about criteria for qualitative work to the qualitative research community during a period when the legitimacy of qualitative work is under assault.

School leadership in context: Narratives of practice and possibility

In this paper, we critique the study of school leadership for its normative, singular, and evolutionary tendencies. Through an empirical study of leadership we offer an approach that suggests new possibilities for the field. Through the use of a qualitative, grounded theory methodology, we developed profiles of principals that illustrate a variety of different leadership types. We describe the types of leadership that teachers and principals negotiated in the contexts of reform and principal succession. Our exploratory analysis suggests that different types of leaders were considered effective in different settings. The notion that there are many effective types of leadership distinguishes our work from much of the leadership literature, which tends to maintain that one kind of leadership is effective in any setting.

Making Sense of an Urban District's Adolescent Literacy Reform.

Weick’s theory of sensemaking is used to analyze findings from a qualitative study of the implementation of a district-initiated adolescent intervention literacy course in two urban secondary schools. The authors concluded that implementation of the literacy course was hampered because district administrators, building leaders, teachers, and students all constructed multiple meanings of the course’s purpose and priority within the district. Teachers expected to implement the initiative constructed their identities as Language Arts and English teachers and did not see themselves as literacy specialists.

Organisational Learning and Leadership: On Metaphor, Meaning Making, Liminality and Intercultural Communication.

This article discusses sensemaking as a broad framework for understanding organisational learning and its implications for leadership in a global context. Organisational metaphors, the concept of liminality and understanding organisations as interpretation systems are presented as possibilities for enhancing intercultural communication within organisations. The article concludes by identifying challenges and how to overcome them, and raises questions for future dialogue and action.