QI ‘inc.

“A professional notebook is a record of what you observe, hear, overhear, think about, wonder about, and worry about that connects your personal life to your personal one” writes Goodall (p. 88).

I have started keeping a researcher’s notebook that contains both personal and professional reflections to see how they overlap. I like the idea, but it is not part of my training.

“Nothing we can know about a culture or about ourselves is free from interpretation… You write what you ahve been attracted to and convinced by. You write what you have read as meaningful; you interpret what you have read as a meaningful pattern. The story of who you are, where you’ve been, what you’ve read and talked about  and argued over, what you believe in and value, what you feel compelled to name as significant” (Goodall, p. 87).

This week I have been reading Writing the New Ethnography by H. L. Goodall, Jr. (2000, AltaMira Press). I purchased this book in the spring of 2003 while I was writing my ethnographic-portraiture dissertation. I picked the book up again this fall, four years later, when I began teaching Introduction to Qualitative Inquiry and wanted to explore the aspects of new ethnography. Teaching the qualitative inquiry course this fall has ignited this personal quest to write in a way that engages readers while also has an impact on social science. As a “new ethnographer,” we have the desire to “make positive contributions to knowledge and create differences in people’s lives” (p. 29). Richardson (2005) also asks that ethnography contributes to “our understanding of social life” (p. 964).

In Chapter 1: On Becoming an Ethnographer in the Academy, Goodall’s writes, “To become a writer in a genre called ethnography is a choice that more accurately finds you, and then defines you” (p. 22). This comment rings true. I keep coming back to ethnography even though it is a long, labor-intensive style of writing.

What I enjoy about the new ethnographies I have read is each writer’s inclusion of self. As the reader I appreciate the writer’s honesty; but as the writer this requirement scares me as well because there is a vulnerability that shows up putting one’s truth out there, which is why I am practicing through this blog. I know it is important and I will follow through even at the risk of criticism because I already know there will be criticism. New ethnographers include “self” (Richardson, 2005) in their writings and “have an obligation to write about their lives” (Goodall, 2000). Goodall explains that obligation comes from the requirement that “observations and evaluations of others be firmly rooted in a credible, self-reflexive “voice,” which is a believable, compelling, self-examining narrator. In life’s conversations, whom do you trust- the person who never discloses her or his own feelings, who has no interesting life stories to offer in exchange for the details of yours? Or do you trust the person who emerges in the talk as someone living in a passionate and reflective life, someone willing to share with you its joys, its pain, its speculations, its ambiguities?” (p. 23).

The chapter concludes with the following statements that have resonated with me and that I will continue thinking about as I go about my day:

• Goodall advises: “You must learn to engage readers in an evolving conversation”….The characters in your story have to learn something out off what happens to them. They must grow into an understanding and maybe change, forever. They must get deeply in touch with something vital within themselves. Good writing, like good conversation is transformational” (p. 41).
• “Writers write to discover, and to further themselves, and they write for audiences outside of themselves. They have stories borne of personal experience that don’t end with just retelling the personal experience, but instead are designed – through conscious, stylistic deployments of language – to connect readers to larger patterns of lived experience and cultural meaning” (p. 41-42).

Transformation, discovery, lived experience, and cultural meaning seem to be the connection. Meanwhile, I must stop writing for now and hem my daughter’s dress for homecoming tonight. Her lived experiences and discovery is about being a senior in high school.

This Monday in September brings morning rain and adds a blush of autumn color to the Ash tree’s leaves outside my window. Today I am thinking about Laurel Richardson and Elizabeth Adams St. Pierre’s chapter: Writing: A method of inquiry. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Handbook of qualitative research (pp. 959-978. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. I decided to start my blog again after reading Richardson’s work. I wanted a place to go where I could combine my narrative voice with my research. I feel like I am expanding beyond just using portraiture (Lawrence-Lightfoot, 1997).

I was so excited to find Richardson’s work because she speaks to honoring one’s own voice. She writes, “The more different voices are honored within our qualitative community, the stronger- and more interesting - that community will be” (p. 959). Richardson encourages writing as a method of inquiry and explains how one writes and evaluates a CAP ethnography - Creative Analytical Processes (CAP) ethnography.

In CAP ethnography, the researcher “crystallizes” the research by writing in a way that “draws from literary, artistic, and scientific genres” (Richardson, p. 963). She evaluates CAP ethnographies on four high standards: 1.) Substantive contribution; 2.) Aesthetic merit; 3.) Reflexivity; 4.) Impact. The questions she writes in the section are worth reading again.

Further in the chapter, Richardson asks the questions: “How can I make my writing matter? How can I write to help speed into this world a democratic project of social justice?” (p. 967). These are the questions that I will take with me into the week of inquiry.

I created a blog in June, yet I let it sit empty all summer too “shy” to speak after my first bold entry about my son on my other blog (http://summersonline.blogspot.com/). The usual ego thoughts went through my mind, “What if someone thinks my writing is stupid?”

My other self replies, “Well, then so they will. It isn’t about what other people think. This space is about what you think. Folks can choose not to read it if it wastes their time.”

Then, I decided that I wanted to write, to voice my thoughts, even if it is only to document my own journey through my inquiry process. I need to be writing about what I am reading, thinking, and learning during the 40th year of my life; my first official year as a tenure-track assistant professor; the last year my daughter is living at home before going away to college; and the first year my son is a teenager.

Inquiry means to “seek truth, information, or knowledge.” In qualitative, constructivist inquiry there are multiple truths so as a qualitative writer/researcher, I must state that this is my truth. Two people can go to the same event, or experience, and will have two different versions because of the previous experiences and knowledge s/he brings into the experience.

My disclaimer is that I am just learning… there is so much to read and discover that this space will change and grow as I do.