Johnny Saldaña

Dramatizing Data: A Primer:

Due to the lack of “how-to” pieces in the methods literature, a theatre artist who later became an ethnographer offers this personal primer in playwriting with qualitative data. Ethnodramatic research representation should be chosen not for its novelty but for its appropriateness as a medium for telling a participant’s story credibly, vividly, and persuasively. An overview of such fundamental playwriting principles as plotting, characterization, monologues, dialogue, and staging is given. The author also proposes that collaborative ventures between ethnographers and theatre practitioners should be initiated to heighten the artistic quality of ethnotheatrical presentations.

Ethical Issues in an Ethnographic Performance Text: the ‘dramatic impact’ of ‘juicy stuff’

Abstract This confessional tale describes the authors first time venture with producing an ethnographic performance text, an alternative mode of research presentation. In ethnotheatre, significant selections from a qualitative studys field notes and interview transcripts are carefully arranged, scripted, and staged for an audience to enhance their understanding of the participants’ lives. This particular project dramatised the story of Barry, an adolescent who dreams of becoming a professional actor. Barry participated in a longitudinal study of drama and theatre as he progressed from kindergarten through sixth grade. A follow‐up study from his sophomore (tenth) through senior (twelfth) years in high school observed his continued and exemplary participation in the art forms. Barry, his mother and his two high school theatre teachers were interviewed to assess the social influences on his career goals and to gain multiple perspectives on his ways of working. Unknowingly, the researcher was to grapple wit...

Second Chair: an autoethnodrama

Second Chair, an autoethnodramatic one-man play, explores the reminiscences by an older adult of his high school band years and his quest to become first chair clarinetist through an epiphanic challenge. The play is a metaphor for the feelings of lesser status experienced by the marginalized individual in a competitive mainstream society. The full play script is included, accompanied with the authors reflections on the development and performance of the piece, and its implications for narrative inquiry.

Popular Film as an Instructional Strategy in Qualitative Research Methods Courses

The purpose of this article is to provide university instructors pedagogical applications for popular film in graduate-level qualitative research methods courses. Media instruction has a longstanding tradition in Grade K-12 classrooms, and the power of “edutainment” in our visually oriented, electronically mediated, and performative culture should not be underestimated or dismissed by university professors for their masters- and doctoral-level classrooms. Excerpts from strategically selected popular films introduce qualitative research topics, illustrate basic principles and techniques of inquiry, generate classroom discussion and reflection, clarify misunderstood constructs, function as referential mnemonics, and teach selected principles more effectively than traditional classroom pedagogy. In these film excerpts, art imitates qualitative life, and art is used to teach the science of naturalistic inquiry.

Blue-Collar Qualitative Research A Rant

This here’s a kick-ass article ’bout a pissed off qualitative researcher who feels that some of you higher ed profs out there got a lotta attitude and need to be brought down a notch. I speak my mind in this piece ’bout a lotta stuff, like me, positionality, voice, labels, method, theory, ethics, and other crap like that. I write like a redneck ’cause that’s what’s in my blue-collar soul. I keep it real. Take it or leave it.

Lifelong Impact: Adult Perceptions of Their High School Speech and/or Theatre Participation

This study sought first to determine in what ways participation in high school theatre/speech classes and/or related extracurricular activities may have positively influenced and affected adults after graduation, and secondly, it sought to identify and advocate the potentially beneficial and “lifelong” impacts that speech/theatre participation during adolescence can contribute to adulthood. A mixed-methods survey was purposively distributed to North American adults who participated in these activities; 234 responses were received and analyzed. The key assertion of this study is: Quality high school theatre and speech experiences can not only influence but even accelerate adolescent development and provide residual, positive, lifelong impacts throughout adulthood.

Social class and social consciousness: Adolescent perceptions of oppression in forum theatre workshops

Two workshops on Augusto Boals Forum Theatre were conducted with two high school student groups coincidentally divided by class: one lower to lower‐middle, and one upper‐middle to upper. Students created oppression scenarios for improvisation that focused primarily on horizontal hostility: the group versus the stigmatized individual. The two workshop environments, however, differed in quality due to the facilitators perception of class as an influential variable. Students in the upper middle‐class to upper‐class group made choices and exhibited actions characteristic of those living in the culture of affluence and privilege. I reflect critically on the events implications for multicultural educators.

Goodall’s Verbal Exchange Coding An Overview and Example

This article provides a descriptive overview and brief example of Bud Goodall’s Verbal Exchange Coding, a method profiled in his book, Writing the New Ethnography. Verbal Exchange Coding categorizes conversation into five forms of verbal exchange, then into five practices or cultural performances of everyday life. Written reflection stimulates the analyst to create storied accounts that weave the researcher’s personal experiences into meaning in ways that serve as an analysis of culture. The example is a poignant verbal exchange between the author and a stranger at an airport boarding area.

Researcher, Analyze Thyself:

This article attempts to answer the phenomenological question, “What does it mean to be a qualitative researcher?” and an ancillary question, “What does ‘making meaning’ mean?” The author, in collaboration with selected participants at the 2018 The Qualitative Report and the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology’s Qualitative Research Methods conferences, proposes that research is devotion. Three major categories or components of devotion are purpose (personal and professional validation), belonging (communal grounding), and meaning (an enriched life). Ten subcategories or “elements of style” as qualitative researchers include meticulous vigilance of details, unyielding resiliency, visionary reinvention, social savvy, humble vulnerability, representational responsibility, finding your methodological tribes, emotional immersion, gifting your ideas, and knowing and understanding yourself.

Environmental Coding: A New Method Using the SPELIT Environmental Analysis Matrix

The purpose of this article is to describe a new coding and data analysis method for qualitative and evaluation researchers. We label this method Environmental Coding, an adaptation of Schmieder-Ramirez and Mallette’s (2007) text, The SPELIT Power Matrix: Untangling the Organizational Environment With the SPELIT Leadership Tool, into the frameworks for qualitative data analysis outlined in Saldaña’s (2016) The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers. Environmental Coding employs an eclectic combination of coding approaches in hermeneutic cycles to generate a multidimensional analysis of an environment’s culture and its drivers. This article uses one of Donald Trump’s initial candidate speeches for the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign to illustrate Environmental Coding in action.