Writing Qualitatively

The Selected Works of Johnny Saldaña

Johnny Saldana

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9781351046015
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Research & Methodology
• Index: Social Sciences

Writing Qualitatively: The Selected Works of Johnny Saldaña showcases the diverse range of writing styles available to qualitative researchers through the work one of the most internationally cited and referenced methodologists. The traditional academic journal article still holds its place as a convention of published scholarship, but Saldaña illustrates how a variety of approaches to research documentation can evocatively represent social life and one's self in intriguing ways.

Writing Qualitatively assembles journal articles, book chapters, ancillary materials, texts from keynote addresses, and previously unpublished work that illustrate Saldaña's eclectic body of inquiry. Each piece is prefaced with author comments on the selection, and how readers themselves might venture into comparable writing styles. Multiple methodologies and writing examples are included, ranging from case studies to action research; from poetry to ethnodramatic play scripts; from confessional tales to autoethnographies; and from textbook materials to classroom session designs. An introduction to the collection discusses Saldaña's writing processes and how qualitative researchers and educators can extend their own imaginations and creativity to find new forms of scholarly presentation and representation.

Writing Qualitatively serves as a supplemental text for undergraduate and graduate courses in qualitative inquiry, educational research, ethnography, and arts-based research. This unique anthology demonstrates to students, professors, and professional researchers how academic scholarship can be reported through a breadth of literary genres, elements, and styles.

1 Writing Qualitatively

Purpose Statement

The purpose of this book is to anthologize selected writings representing a diversity of qualitative genres and styles by research methodologist Johnny Saldaña.

I begin this volume with a purpose statement because, as a qualitative researcher, it’s what I was taught to do. My long-distance mentor, the late educational anthropologist Harry F. Wolcott, advised in his methods writings that all research reports should begin this way. And though this introductory chapter is not a report in the traditional academic sense, the purpose statement frames both the writer and reader for what follows. For the research writer, it forces clarity and focus of intent. For the reader, it establishes an informal contract of understanding between you and me.

Lest you think I adhere slavishly to the traditions and standardized conventions of scholarly writing, know that that is not the case. I both follow the rules and break them. But I had to learn the rules first. One of choreographer Twyla Tharp’s most famous quotes is, “Before you can think outside of the box, you have to start with a box.” A student once remarked to me that I could “get away with” deviations from the norm in my later writings because I had established myself first as a traditional researcher. I firmly believe the same applies to everyone entering the field of qualitative inquiry: Before you can think outside of the box, you have to start with a box.

Influences and Affects

I developed the phrase influences and affects in my methodological writings as the qualitative paradigm’s parallel to quantitative research’s “cause and effect.” In our lives, multiple influences shape who we are and who we are becoming. Every action, reaction, and interaction cannot be attributed to a single, isolated factor. An intricate combination of influences works in tightly interwoven interplay to make something happen. As for affects, the term suggests not just measurable outcomes but internal, emotional responses rooted in belief systems to those influences. Affects are discovered forms of intrapersonal awareness and new interpersonal relationship dynamics as well as the observable consequences of lived experience.

The subsections that follow contribute nothing directly to the purpose of the book, but they present necessary contextual background information about how I became who I am now. If you want to know the writer and his writings, you need to know a few things about his life.

Learning About Teaching

One of the most significant influences on my life and on my career as a qualitative researcher has been education, in its broadest sense. As a child, I loved learning though I may not always have enjoyed schooling. As early as first grade I knew I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up. I was fascinated by the teacher’s editions of textbooks that sat on my instructors’ desks. The answers to all the questions posed in the teachers’ versions were printed in red ink. At school and at home I wrote and designed my own four-page textbooks with all the answers included. Decades later I’m still writing textbooks, but this time for adult researchers.

First through twelfth grade schooling exposed me to a variety of teachers. Most were quite good at their jobs, a few were less than satisfactory, and three in particular were intolerable. Teaching was still my life goal during high school, and in classes I paid attention not only to content but also to pedagogy. I believe that every one of us has had that one special teacher who significantly impacted (influenced and affected) our lives in some way, and Ann Whitehouse – my eleventh-grade high school language arts teacher – was mine. No one to date or since has shown Mrs. Whitehouse’s instructional mastery in the classroom. I’ve replicated her teaching style and methods throughout my university career, and I call upon her spirit to enter me before every class and workshop I facilitate so that I too might teach with the same exceptional quality.

Learning About Theatre and English

My university undergraduate degree is in theatre and English education. Both emphases have served me well as a qualitative researcher. Theatre training taught me how to write plays and detailed character analyses. English education acquainted me with a variety of literary genres and the necessity of effective composition. These skills transferred readily into my scholarly writings, yet there were other unforeseen benefits to a theatre and English education.

Actors are first taught to look at everyday life carefully to observe people’s physical and vocal mannerisms in order to create believable characterizations in performance. How relevantly these skills transfer into participant observation fieldwork as I study social life. Directing and theatrical production design training enabled me to look at things in the world conceptually, symbolically, and metaphorically for rich artistic renderings. Those design skills and viewpoints come into play as I analyze and interpret qualitative data as evocative symbol systems of meaning.

Literature courses exposed me to the world’s great literary masterpieces in a wide variety of forms ranging from the prosaic to the poetic to the dramatic. My knowledge of the possible approaches to writing has informed my own eclectic body of work. Teaching English to high school students required that I mastered the fundamentals of grammar and composition principles. And these skills make it so much easier to write – painfully sometimes when at a loss for ideas, but easier when publication deadlines must be met.

Teaching About Teaching

A folk saying among professional educators goes, “To teach is to learn twice.” My university teaching assignments consisted primarily of methods courses – teaching future teachers how to teach. The principles of effective classroom pedagogy were not only taught but practiced on my feet. I learned that teachers tend to teach the way they were taught for approximately their first seven years as professional educators. If that is so, then I have a responsibility in the classroom to model the best methods possible. Teaching how to teach reinforced within me the concepts of good pedagogy. Being a teacher educator taught me how best to communicate and how to design instruction in order to maximize learning. I write like I teach. I write as if I’m teaching. To write is to learn twice, too.

Professional Development

I never stopped learning during my 35 years as a professor in higher education. I get bored easily, so I actively seek new opportunities to expand my knowledge base. Conference attendance introduced me to the intriguing work of figures such as theatre artist and activist Augusto Boal, and the figurehead of qualitative inquiry, Norman K. Denzin. I enrolled in graduate level qualitative research methods courses during my sabbaticals and learned the diverse approaches to inquiry from Arizona State University professors Tom Barone and Mary Lee Smith in education, and Saran J. Tracy and Amira De la Garza in communication. Every student I taught, every course I designed, every thesis and dissertation I supervised, and every faculty member I interacted with all taught me something in one way or another.

I keep up to date as much as possible with the academic literature from several disciplines but particularly with books, journal articles, and newsletters about qualitative research methods. I read voraciously, and I yellow highlight on hard copy any passages I deem significant and worth citing in the future. I have never boxed myself into one methodology exclusively. I am fascinated by all approaches to qualitative inquiry. I find a few suspect and I question their legitimacy and trustworthiness, but I acknowledge their place for other scholars intrigued by them.

I also find professional development learning opportunities in the strangest of places. The syndicated television series Judge Judy is admittedly one of my favorite programs to watch. Judge Judy herself is certainly engaging when she presides in the courtroom, but my fascination lies with observing the everyday people who appear as plaintiffs, defendants, and witnesses. Their personalities and authentic dialogue exchanges in conflict-laden situations inform me greatly about the human condition. I even use video clips from the program as “data” in my research methods workshops to teach field note and analytic memo writing.

I was trained as a theatre artist that all the world’s a stage. Virtually every experience outside my home is a theatrical living laboratory of the social world. Whenever I interact with a restaurant server, retail store sales clerk, a homeless woman asking me for spare change, or the grandchildren I take care of after school one day a week, part of me makes inferences about their lives. Qualitative research training keeps me grounded in reality to prevent implausible conjectures, but there are times when I am too inquisitive and cannot turn off my inquirer’s mind. Life to me is one long research study.

Good People, Bad People

No one succeeds alone. I have been remarkably blessed with parents who nurtured my dreams; teachers who inspired me to pursue those dreams; a few faculty colleagues and administrators who enthusiastically supported my work; compassionate professionals in the field who give me opportunities to succeed; an understanding husband who provides me time and space to write at home; and good friends who listen to my woes and celebrate my victories. I have always been amazed at how significantly a single action from just one person can set in motion a new life pathway for a fellow human being. I use the metaphor that, throughout my life, good people have opened doors and invited me in.

Unfortunately, I have also been cursed with hostile actions from bad people who did not want to see me flourish. I identify myself as a gay Hispanic without a PhD. These cultural markers are sometimes perceived by others as stigmas. I have been victimized with: hate mail from a White supremacist; racist graffiti scrawled on my personal property; student refusals to work with me due to my ethnicity or sexual orientation; and condescending dismissal by faculty peers of my qualifications and achievements. Not everyone in the scholarly community finds my writing appealing. A few are even offended by some of my works and, at times, my challenging point of view at professional gatherings. “Haters gonna hate,” and those actions have made me feel “lesser than.”

Yes, I do indeed feel that throughout my career I’ve had to work twice as hard to be considered half as good. It wasn’t until my research output surpassed those with PhD degrees that I realized working twice as hard made me twice, not half, as good. Though I greatly enjoyed teaching and working with students, I retired early from academia due to what I perceived as its micro-aggressive, elitist, and inequitable work environment. But through time I’ve learned to find my tribes and affinity groups where collegiality, empathy, and support encourage and motivate me to continue on my professional pathways.

All of the above are the salient influences and affects on my life and career. There are many others but the details are unnecessary. I have yet to address the purpose of this book (to anthologize selected writings representing a diversity of qualitative genres and styles), so let me now transition toward the thematic thread of this volume: writing qualitatively.

My Writings, My Writing

If you want to know who I was and who I am, read what I’ve written. A writer’s works embody his mind at particular stages of his life.

Research Studies in Journal Articles and Book Chapters

Since I bore easily, I try new things constantly. When my early quantitative research studies (Saldaña & Otero, 1990) fatigued me, I turned to qualitative inquiry, as had the majority of scholars in the area of theatre education at the time. I conducted a mixed methods study comparing Hispanic and White children’s responses to the same play production (Saldaña, 1992), and a generic interview analysis of artists’ and educators’ recommendations for working with Hispanic youth (Saldaña, 1991). My first supervised study, as accompanying fieldwork for a qualitative research methods course, was an educational ethnography of an inner-city drama teacher (Saldaña, 1997). Now that I was better informed of qualitative data analysis methods, I conducted a grounded theory analysis of interviews with child audience participants (Saldaña, 1995b). I then reanalyzed seven years of qualitative data collected as part of a longitudinal study (Saldaña, 1996, 2002a, 2008a) in grades K-6 child audience response using assertion heuristics.

I next immersed myself in multicultural education, theatre for social change, and performance ethnography, so my research projects delved into action research (Saldaña, 2005b), critical pedagogy (Hager, Maier, O’Hara, Ott, & Saldaña, 2000; Saldaña, 1999b), and the writing and production of ethnographic performance texts, or ethnodrama and ethnotheatre (Saldaña, 1998b, 1999a, 2002b, 2003a, 2008b, 2008c, 2010a, 2010c, 2017). Selected participants from these projects also served as case studies (Saldaña, 1998a, 2010b). Autoethnography was now cultivating a substantial following, so I too explored writing autoethnography (Saldaña, 2014b) and its theatrical presentation as autoethnodrama (Saldaña, 2008d). Yet another mixed methods study opportunity arose, but this time with a multisite research team with qualitative and quantitative data collected from an online survey (McCammon, Saldaña, Hines, & Omasta, 2012). Methodological studies were then conducted in cultural conversation analysis (Saldaña, 2016a) and new coding methods (Saldaña, 201...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Republication Credits and Permissions
• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Writing Qualitatively
• 2 Writing About Action Research
• 3 Writing the Case Study
• 4 Writing About Critical Pedagogy
• 5 Writing the Confessional Tale
• 6 Writing About Method and Methodology
• 7 Writing for the Research Studio
• 8 Writing Research as Reader’s Theatre
• 9 Writing Autoethnography
• 10 Writing Poetry
• 11 Writing Ethnodrama
• 12 Writing in Role
• Index