QI+abstract

toc =QI Conference: Abstract Page= Started from class discussion on 11/1

3rd Annual Congress of Qualitative Inquiry May 2-5, Urbana, Illinois (U of Illinois Campus)**
 * Center for Qualitative Inquiry

URL for conference: http://qi2007.org/

=Posted Proposals (Final Versions)=
 * Panel Title: Where does knowledge live when using collaborative technology? A performative multi-voiced act exploring politics of evidence in local and global contexts.**

Using a four-bodied cacophonic, rhizomatic performance, we will explore how knowledge is disciplined, heard, silenced and constructed through a collaborative technology called wiki, which is a type of website allowing users to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change content, as demonstrated in [|http://www.wikipedia.org]. Grounded in the presenters’ embodied experiences in a qualitative methods class, the combined performances of one instructor and three students lie at the intersection of local and global knowledge traversing the lumpy terrains of access, class, race, nationality, voice, power, silencing, and disciplining. Specifically, we explore questions such as whose knowledge gets re-presented and legitimized and how knowledge functions in wikis through shared voices. Moreover, we interrogate the limits and possibilities of training future qualitative researchers through/with/against de/colonizing epistemologies and methodologies within the current discourse of qualitative inquiry and politics of evidence.
 * Panel Abstract**

My performance reflects rhizomatic re-presentations of an instructor’s perspective while taking students on a de/colonizing journey of exploring the relationship between knowledge, technology, power relations, voice, and disciplining through qualitative inquiry. The students in this advanced qualitative methods class collaboratively created scholarly repositories of information grounded in topics of their interest. Hence, questions such as who defines scholarly or what kinds of knowledge needs to be “in play” became critical points of performances while as a class we grounded ourselves in wikis, a collaborative technology that is currently redefining the process of acquiring and sharing knowledge. In an effort to not be in the sidelines of our own game where qualitative inquiry is disciplined, governed, restricted, and dismissed as the “Other” purge-able research methodology in the U.S., I explore the limits and possibilities of decisions made to incorporate a democratic process of construction of knowledge in an open communication system like wikis.
 * Paper 1: Kakali Bhattacharya**
 * Title: Have you seen my wiki? Performing de/colonizing approaches to training future qualitative researchers through wikispaces**

Qualitative research is touted for providing a voice for those who often go unheard. In lifting up these voices, qualitative inquiry has both broadened and deepened the human conversation. My performance will examine a classroom experience intended to help students find their voice within that conversation. I will discuss how an open source system of communication (commonly referred to as wiki) can be used within a qualitative methods class to democratize the processes of knowledge construction. Using the framework of my experience as a student in such a class, I will answer such questions as: How does knowledge get constructed through a democratic process of collaboration in wikispaces? Where in the current spectrum of politics are these discussions situated? What role does collaboration play in hearing voices and using shared voices to construct knowledge? What is considered evidence for the knowledge that is constructed?
 * Paper 2: Gary Schneider**
 * Title: Raising our voices: Performing through shared and heard wikispaces**

This performance is grounded in my experiences as a graduate student in an advanced qualitative methods class using wiki technology to create scientific knowledge as a community exercise. I will focus on the process by which our group of novice wiki users developed the necessary skills to collaborate effectively and create shared academic work. I will highlight the following questions: In what ways do wikis contribute to creating collaborative learning environments? What are the implications on social inclusivity (or exclusivity) presented by the use of wiki technology to create shared scientific work? What are some implications for the use of wikis in qualitative research and education? Using a shared performance, I will explore the potentials and pitfalls of shared knowledge through wikis in the local and global context of open source of communication, construction, and legitmization of scholarly (or Othered?) knowledge.
 * Paper 3: Sandy Schaeffer III**
 * Title: Can wikis be part of “scientific” inquiry in qualitative methods? Performing embodied experiences of “knowing” and re-presenting**

Wiki, the democratic form of knowledge construction, excludes potential collaborators without access to the technology. Will it be that those who "have" get to contribute (and maybe even get to know) and those who "have not" don't even know there is a discussion and a collaboration. Are non-contributors by virtue of their lack of access without knowledge? How does discussion of scholarly knowledge in qualitative research change when all who have a contribution also have access to collaboration? What might be the implications for wikis in qualitative research in considering voices that need to be heard beyond restrictive boundaries of access, power relations, race, location, nationality, and other myriad forms of marginalization? Through narrative performances, I will explore possibilities of collaboration in the fourth world that identifies least developed countries or voices in the margin living in any part of our rank ordered First, Second, and Third World.
 * Paper 4: Karen Thurmond**
 * Title: Un-knowledged voices: Performing a fourth world scenario**


 * Panel Title: The weight of evidence and accountability: A performance in four acts**

Amidst the current discourse of evidence, accountability, and what is deemed as “scientific” research, this multi layered, multimedia integrated embodied performance re/acts to and resists the disciplinary gazes shaping the construction of knowledge in four contexts of praxis including working in a research institution, being a science-educator in the K-12 system, working with a deaf population, and working with an aging population. The purpose of these performative acts is to unsettle, interrogate, and challenge assumptions that discipline the construction, maintenance, and dissemination of knowledge in our individual professional contexts. Since we are committed to establishing dialogues across our praxis for academically rigorous work in qualitative research, we will explore possibilities for reframing “scientific,” that inform fluid, contingent, and multiple levels of knowing and re-presenting the production of lived experiences. Grounding our acts in Richardson’s (cited in Denzin, 2003) five criteria for interpretation and re-presentation, we not only challenge taken-for-granted assumptions around academic rigor, but chart possibilities for future dialogues.
 * Panel Abstract**


 * Paper 1: Kakali Bhattacharya**
 * Act 1: Dumb it down and make your study “clear” in 5 pages: Re/acting to guidelines for internal faculty research grant at a public institution**

In this autoethnographic performance I re-present the tensions of being a qualitative methodologist at a research institution whose application for an internal faculty research grant was rejected by “informed” researchers. The feedback from the decision-makers asked for the dependent variable and questioned the lack of depth in a study that outlined 6 participants and 1500 pages of raw data through interviews, observations, and archived documents. While I am not the first to be rejected by an internal institutional grant committee, such rejection speaks to the disciplining of knowledge and dismissal of what is poorly understood by the decision makers. How does the understanding of “worthy” research get informed if qualitative research is put at a distinctive disadvantage? Thus, in this performance, I will explore issues of subversive resistance and accommodation to produce a discursive understanding of qualitative research situated under multiple gazes within a public research institution of higher education.


 * Paper 2: David Ogdon**
 * Act 2: Can you hear the “experts?” Silencing, disciplining, and re-imagining praxis through a science-educator’s performance**

Re/acting to the uninformed education experts who use criteria based review systems to make decisions in science education, I perform the role of such requirement in shaping science education and silencing qualitative research. From the perspective of a science educator and as a student of qualitative research I will embody the challenges and reframe answers to the question, “What makes research scientific?” Current criteria based quality review systems only use positivist, quantitative, measurable set of answers that do not capture the lived experiences and barriers to administrative policies enforced on science-educators. How can accountability be extended beyond numerical ways of measuring people, their performances, and their experiences? What might be considered evidences of academic merit given the current dismissal of qualitative methods as unscientific? Who gets to be an expert in scientific discourses and who is in the room when decisions are being made to “standardize” teaching and learning?


 * Paper 3: Anita Wells**
 * Act 3:** **When you don’t hear, what do you communicate? Un/settling accountability in qualitative research when working with deaf population**

In this current moment of qualitative research, we are faced with issues of academic rigor and trustworthiness. Evidence-based inquiry and discourses around accountability seem to encourage confidence in the merit of research. In this autoethnographic performance, I re/act to the challenges of working with a deaf population and to the multiple barriers of communication, including interviews and member checks. Situated within a research institution, I demonstrate the disciplining on qualitative methods when constructing knowledge about the deaf population. How does a qualitative researcher work with/against/through the various communication barriers that flatten and reduce the experiences of the deaf participants and ensure rigor, trustworthiness, and merit? What disciplinary gazes do I accommodate to and what do I resist? How do I further co-opt qualitative methods while questioning the issues of mitigated voice by using an American Sign Language interpreter, an always already inadequate form of communication with deaf participants?


 * Paper 4: Carol Lane**
 * Act 4:** **Memories of the future: Performing and imagining a politics of possibility in the evolving faces of those aging**

In the next decade, a large number of people will retire. What might be the politics of possibility in qualitative research to address the production of experiences of the aging? In this performance I highlight memories of the future as experienced by the aging who are soon to retire. Through this embodied performance I aim to unsettle, interrogate, and re-frame traditional qualitative research methods to construct knowledge about aging, retirement, and quality of life by blurring boundaries of race, class, and gender. Drawing on the folk epistemologies of the aging in the U.S., I offer multiple re/actions to engage the audience while exploring issues of rigor, merit, trustworthiness in qualitative research when constructing knowledge about aging. Through performing memories of the future, my goal is to inscribe my utopian dream (Denzin, 2003) shaped by a need to flatten social structures of hierarchy to position a politics of freedom in aging research.

Abstract Aging has many faces and reflects the reality that development is an ever-evolving process.The aim of this research is to explore how to ensure rigor and trustworthiness in human research that deals with aging issues. With the prolific amount of new information that is being continuously generated and disseminated from those in the medical and nutritional fields in regards to healthy aging, including those offering alternatives to traditional health and medical ideas, the question emerges as to how do we determine the trustworthiness of evidence? How can qualitative research speak to the issues facing the enormous number of retiring people in the next decade? It is suggested that the main issue for the aging is the quality of life, and that those quality issues can best be addressed through research that gives voice to those individual concerns in an effort to engender understanding of the aging experience.

Team 1: Politics of Evidence & Wikipedia

The Qualipedia Team from The University of Memphis __Theme:__ Politics of Evidence __Format:__ Paper presentation and panel discussant

Who defines scholarly? The politics of evidence in the creation of new knowledge and who defines are "at play" in an era when new collaborative technologies are redefining the process of acquiring and sharing knowledge.
 * __Panel Topic:__**

I just wanted to share my current experience with the FRG (faculty research grant) people regarding a rejection of a research proposal. gary said that i should put it up on this wikipage to discuss what is considered evidence in research. I submitted a research proposal that would look at the experiences of students in my qual methods classes and explore how they made sense of their learning through wikis and what that meant to them in terms of understanding issues in qual methods. I suggested that i will work with 6 students and conduct 3 interviews per student and have access to their performance data, my observation notes, and data in the wikipages. The feedback I got stated (keep in mind that i described purpose of qual research with citations)
 * Fleeting thoughts on Politics of Evidence in Internal Grant Funding at the University of Memphis**

- where is the dependent variable? - 6 people will not allow you to have an in-depth understanding

When I spoke to the person in charge she said that apparently there were 3 people in the decision-making committee who were familiar with qual research. I could not reconcile the feedback with the familiarity and suggested that they have someone in the committee who could directly speak to qual methods in an informed manner otherwise it puts qual researchers at a distinct disadvantage. I was told that the committee will not change for another year and that the incommensurability with qual methods was akin to just subject matter jargon and all i had to do was to make everything clear in 5 pages.

Unheard voices, where are the experts?
The issue of the politics of evidence has many facets; one of those is that non experts are using criteria based review systems to make decisions that negatively affect the field of qualitative research. From my perspectives as a science educator and as a student of qualitative research I will discuss the problems that arise when two different sets of semantics are used to give the same answer to the question,” What makes research scientific?” Current criteria based quality review systems only use one set of answers and those answers often result in qualitative research being discounted as not scientific. My discussion will be grounded in a personal vignette, our class wiki project and relevant contemporary literature.

Updated abstract from Gary (11/29):
Paper Title: "Raising our Voices" Qualitative research is touted for providing a voice for those who often go unheard. In lifting up these voices, QI has both broadened and deepened the human conversation. My paper will examine a classroom experience intended to help students find their voice within that conversation. I will discuss how an open source system of communication (commonly referred to as wiki) can be used within a qualitative methods class to democratize the processes of knowledge construction. Using the framework of my experience as a student in such a class, I will answer such questions as: How does knowledge get constructed through a democratic process of collaboration in wikispaces? Where in the current spectrum of politics are these discussions situated? What role does collaboration play in hearing voices and using shared voices to construct knowledge? What is considered evidence for the knowledge that is constructed?

Abstract ideas for Gary Schneider
How does knowledge get constructed in a qual methods class through a democratic process of collaboration in wikispaces? Where is the current spectrum of politics are these discussions situated? What role does collaboration play in hearing voices and using shared voices to construct knowledge. What is then considered evidence for the knowledge constructed?

Abstract Draft: S. J. (Sandy) Schaeffer, III
//(updated 11/29/2006 after class - The focus of my idea has been significantly narrowed and altered to function as a "mechical grounding" for the related, but different, discussions from Karen and Gary.)//

__Paper Title:__ //**Using Wikis to create shared scientific knowledge: Experiences as a qualitative graduate student**//

From the perspective of a graduate student in qualitative studies, I will describe my personal experiences in a class context using Wiki technology to create scientific knowledge as a community exercise. Focus will be on the process by which our group of novice Wiki users developed the necessary skills to collaborate effectively and create shared academic work. Questions to be explored include: How does collaborative development differ in a Wiki space versus traditional online learning environments? What are the implications on social inclusivity (or exclusivity) presented by the use of Wiki technology to create shared scientific work? What are some implications for the use of Wikis in qualitative research and education? My discussions will be grounded in pertinent contemporary literature.

The very democratic form of knowledge construction that is wiki excludes potential collaborators without access to the technology. Will it be that those that "have" get to contribute (and maybe even get to know) and those who "have not" don't even know there is a discussion and a collaboration. Are they by virtue of their lack of access without knowledge? How does the discussion of scholarly knowledge change when all who have a contribution also have access to the collaboration? Collaborative technologies hold great possibility, but the collaboration is marred if it is exclusive by nature. How can we ensure that voices with knowledge have access to the collaboration? Using current literature concerning emerging technologies for access and availability, this paper will take the form of a short story about the possibilities of collaborative knowledge construction in [|Michael Castells] "forth world."
 * //Unknowledged voices: A fourth world scenario-Thurmond//**

Carol Lane
 * The Evolving Face of Aging:**

Aging has many faces and reflects the reality that development is an ever-evolving process.The aim of this research is to explore how to ensure rigor and trustworthiness in human research that deals with aging issues. With the prolific amount of new information that is being continuously generated and disseminated from those in the medical and nutritional fields in regards to healthy aging, including those offering alternatives to traditional health and medical ideas, the question emerges as to how do we determine the trustworthiness of evidence? How can qualitative research speak to the issues facing the enormous number of retiring people in the next decade? It is suggested that the main issue for the aging is the quality of life, and that those quality issues can best be addressed through research that gives voice to those individual concerns in an effort to engender understanding of the aging experience.

=Exploring the Intuitive Mind= Beth Newman

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. – Albert Einstein

Those individuals referred to by our society as "gifted" are most often misunderstood and sometimes reviled when compared with what is thought of as the norm in dominant cultures of today's world. The motivating factors and experiences of these people that serve to drive them down different roads in life are very poorly understood and documented. I argue that there is a great need to gain further understanding into what leads so called "gifted" individuals to create, write, produce, or do whatever it is that provides catharsis for them so that we, as a society, may learn to value and cultivate the contributions of these unique personalities. Through personal interviews, examination of documents and products, and photographic representation I hope to add to the small body of knowledge that defines the intuitive mind.

Anita Wells - According to literature, communication is the greatest barrier for deaf individuals.The aim of this discussion is to explore how to ensure rigor and trustworthiness in qualitative research that involves deaf participants. How does a qualitative researcher overcome the communication barrier to ensure rigor, trustworthiness, and merit? Even when using an American Sign Language interpreter to break that communication barrier, how can I ensure that the voice of deaf participants’ is adequately heard? Will the third voice (of the interpreter) impede or enhance the transcription of the translation? What limits will I face in my study? Can I appropriately verify my data during member checks through the aid of an interpreter? By transcribing voice to written data, the deaf participants can verify proper translation during member checks and triangulation methods.

=Class Discussion Notes=

= =

**Abstract Idea from Sandy:**
Paper presentation and discussion on the topic of Wikipedia as a valid form of scholarly presentation and the ongoing debate of its validity with respect to "traditional" scholarly representation media. In particular, is the fact that Wikipedia exists as an increasingly viable scholarly resource concrete evidence that we are, in fact, existing in a post-modernist society?

= =

**Abstract Idea(s) from Kakali**

 * I am just putting together some ideas for the conference. feel free to add your own.

Panel 1 - Who is in the room when making scholarly decisions? Politicizing use of wikis in constructing knowledge in qualitative research.** I am thinking about either doing one panel going with Sandy's idea about politics of evidence using wikis and how knowledge can be constructed through collaborative efforts. We can then discuss the politics of evidence given the current discourse about the role of wikipedi! as a resource. the question we can explore is that when considering a repository of qualitative methods, what would such wikis look like in the current discussion of politics of evidence.

Sandy Schaeffer Karen Thurmond GarykSchneider Kakali Bhattacharya

This can be a panel where we can discuss from our individual perspectives what politics of evidence means for us in our professional lives as we use qualitative inquiry. So for example, I will talk about how designing a qualitative methods class is informed by the current politics of evidence discourse. David can talk about what it means for him to be science educator and taking qualitative methods at the same time. Karen, Gary, and Sandy can talk about politics of evidence in their own areas of interest and Sandy can still do the wikipedia aspect from his perspective. David Ogdon Anita Wells Carol Lane Kakali Bhattacharya
 * Panel 2 - Situating politics of evidence in praxis**

**People attending**
- karen thurmond - david ogdon - sandy schaeffer - anita wells - gary schneider - carol lane