Jessica Nina Lester

Constructing Hopes and Fears Around Technology: A Discourse Analysis of Introductory Qualitative Research Texts

Graduate students often receive their first training in qualitative methods during an introductory course. The textbook that is chosen often sets the tone for how qualitative research is understood. We conducted a discourse analysis of the ways in which 11 introductory qualitative methods texts took up the relationship between technology and qualitative research. One text included virtually no mention of technology use; five discussed technology only in relation to the data collection, transcription, and analysis domains of research; and the remaining five discussed technology primarily in relation to those three domains with minimal attention to how it could support the additional domains of researcher reflexivity, literature review, representation of findings, ethics, and collaboration. We contrasted texts that took up a discourse of possibility with those that took up a discourse of caution around technology use. We call for greater dialogue around how emergent technologies might inform the qualitative research process.

Is Evidence-Based Practice a Threat to the Progress of the Qualitative Community? Arguments From the Bottom of the Pyramid

Although scholars have gone to great lengths to illustrate the value of qualitative research and ensure that it is well represented in all areas of academic life, there remains a gap of equality when compared with quantitative research, which is still viewed by many as superior, specifically in applied fields such as health. This has become particularly true as the evidence-based movement has continued to find its way into discussions around the legitimacy of qualitative research. In this article, we argue that the evidence-based movement, particularly in medicine and health, continues to pose challenges for us as a qualitative community—challenges that we will need to grapple with in the coming years.

“That teacher takes everything badly”: discursively reframing non-normative behaviors in therapy sessions

While some scholars have emphasized the culturally contingent nature of disabilities, far less research has attended to the situated and discursive contexts within which those with disabilities and their communities make relevant their own understandings and representations of disability. Drawing from a larger ethnographic study, in this article we report findings generated from the analysis of audio and video data from therapy sessions and waiting room conversations among children with autism labels, their parents and therapists. We share a detailed analysis from one therapy session, using selected excerpts to illustrate the patterns noted across the corpus of data. We drew upon a discursive psychology framework informed by critical notions of disability, poststructural understandings of discourse, and certain aspects of conversation analysis to explore ways in which therapists reframed non-normative behaviors. We found that, rather than orienting to their work as “fixing” the child, therapists supported the child in making sense of how others (outsiders) might interpret their words and bodies. We illustrate how participants discursively worked to co-construct an account for how problematic behaviors may have been “misunderstood.” We argue that practitioners and others should consider ways in which they might reorient to and reinterpret children whose communication and behaviors fall outside of the norm.

Should Autism Be Classified as a Mental Illness/Disability? Evidence from Empirical Work

Is autism a disability? Fundamentally, this question also raises additional questions, including: What is a disability? Who makes the definition valid? What function does such a label serve within society? The answers are perhaps dependent upon varied points of view and affiliations with particular theoretical frameworks. Indeed, there has been inconsistency regarding the terminology that has been utilised, with this terminology continuing to evolve. In the latest incarnation of autism in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5), autism has been defined as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) (American Psychiatric Association, 2013), while other terms are still used within the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Controversially, the diagnostic label of ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’ has been removed from DSM-5.

Children’s claims to knowledge regarding their mental health experiences and practitioners’ negotiation of the problem

OBJECTIVEnThe objective was to identify how childrens knowledge positions were negotiated in child mental health assessments and how this was managed by the different parties.nnnMETHODSnThe child psychiatry data consisted of 28 video-recorded assessments. A conversation analysis was undertaken to examine the interactional detail between the children, parents, and practitioners.nnnRESULTSnThe findings indicated that claims to knowledge were managed in three ways. First, practitioners positioned children as experts on their own health and this was sometimes accepted. Second, some children resisted this epistemic position, claiming not to have the relevant knowledge. Third, some childrens claims to knowledge were negotiated and sometimes contested by adult parties who questioned their competence to share relevant information about their lives in accordance with the assessment agenda.nnnCONCLUSIONnThrough question design, the practitioner was able to position the child as holding relevant knowledge regarding their situation. The child was able to take up this position or resist it in various ways.nnnPRACTICE IMPLICATIONSnThis has important implications for debates regarding childrens competence to contribute to mental health interventions. Children are often treated as agents with limited knowledge, yet in the mental health assessment they are directly questioned about their own lives.

Burundi Refugee Students in Rural Southern Appalachia

For the last three years, we have been engaged in ethnographic work with commitments to a postcritical perspective (Noblit, Flores, & Murillo, 2004). From 2008 to 2011, we have been learning and teaching with Burundian children and families with refugee status who live in southern Appalachia. We met the children and their families originally as English as second language [ESL] tutors. Each week we joined them to study English, play games, and complete homework at a ministry center or on a front porch or soft couch in the apartments in the public housing project where many of the Burundian families live.

Introduction: The Social Construction of Normality and Pathology

Mental distress has been a focus of discussion for centuries, and, over time different views, perspectives, terms, treatments, and organisations have been utilised in response to people deemed to fit the label. In contemporary Western culture, psychological constructs in the context of mental health have been framed in biomedical terms and understood as dispositional within the suffering individual. This prevailing medicalised discourse of mental distress ostensibly offers a more legitimate and ‘scientific’ understanding of the problems encountered by the individual, family, and society. Importantly however, these ideas have been subject to extensive criticism from a broad range of fields, disciplines, scholars, and practitioners.

Conceptualizing Practitioner-Scholarship for Educational Leadership Research and Practice:

In this conceptual article, we draw upon recent literature to describe the theoretical, epistemological, and methodological anchors that can inform a working conception of practitioner-scholarship. We position practitioner-scholarship at the intersection of an individual’s work as a practitioner and researcher, wherein a practitioner focuses on understanding localized problems of practice through in-depth inquiry. Through our discussion, we highlight three implications for leadership programs. First, practitioner-scholarship demands that all program faculty take a learning orientation. Second, research experiences provided to students should be immersed in leadership practice and directly situated within schools and districts. Third, we advocate increased consistency, rigor, and theoretical depth in methods training for educational leadership students.

Discursive Psychology: Implications for counselling psychology

In this article, we present discursive psychology (DP), a qualitative approach that focuses on the study of conversational and textual materials, including everyday interactions. Although DP is well-established methodologically and theoretically, and is used widely in Europe and in the Commonwealth countries, it is relatively unknown in counseling psychology in the United States. As such, the purpose of this article is to provide a general overview of DP and offer guidance for researchers who may be interested in studying and using DP. We thus discuss practical considerations for utilizing DP, including the development of research questions, carrying out data collection, and conducting DP-informed analyses. We also provide a general overview of the history of DP and key resources for those interested in studying it further, while noting the usefulness of DP for counseling psychology.

Engaging in Performance Ethnography in Research Methods Courses

In this article, we share the process and practice of integrating a performance ethnography, in the form of a written play, into research methods and education courses, as well as methods-based workshops. We begin by briefly sharing some of the ways in which we have come to position this work within our classroom and instructional workshops and point to its possibilities as a pedagogical approach. We then illustrate the process of introducing this methodological perspective to our students in research courses. We also highlight the implications for introducing alternative, arts-based approaches to data representation to students and describe the impact on their trajectories as producers, critics, and consumers of qualitative research.