Basics of qualitative research: Grounded theory procedures and techniques

Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982.

Men and Women of the Corporation

Should qualitative researchers be members of the population they are studying, or should they not? Although this issue has been explored within the context of qualitative research, it has generally been reserved for discussions of observation, field research, and ethnography. The authors expand that discussion and explore membership roles by illustrating the insider status of one author and the outsider status of the other when conducting research with specific parent groups. The strengths and challenges of conducting qualitative research from each membership status are examined. Rather than consider this issue from a dichotomous perspective, the authors explore the notion of the space between that allows researchers to occupy the position of both insider and outsider rather than insider or outsider.

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The Space Between: On Being an Insider-Outsider in Qualitative Research

International evidence suggests that educational reform’s progress
depends on teachers’ individual and collective capacity and its link with schoolwide
capacity for promoting pupils’ learning. Building capacity is therefore
critical. Capacity is a complex blend of motivation, skill, positive learning,
organisational conditions and culture, and infrastructure of support. Put together,
it gives individuals, groups, whole school communities and school systems the
power to get involved in and sustain learning over time. Developing professional
learning communities appears to hold considerable promise for capacity building
for sustainable improvement. As such, it has become a ‘hot topic’ in many
countries.

Professional Learning Communities: A Review of the Literature

The conditions under which women academics work provide the impetus for this article. Current trends in feminist and other writing are moving us away from dwelling on the disadvantages women experience in the academy. Yet the findings from the two Canadian studies reported here suggest that issues around children and career, anxieties about evaluation, and fatigue and stress shape the daily lives of women academics. The women do find ways and means of coping and resisting, ­sometimes collectively, although one of the major responses—working harder and sleeping less—might be considered somewhat short of empowering. We also look at what the prospects are for changes in university policies and practices.

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Sleepless in academia

Drawing on in‐depth interviews with 27 women academics in faculties of education in Canada, this article explores some of the consequences of the gendered division of labour in universities. Jean Baker Miller's phrase, ‘doing good and feeling bad’, characterised the women in the study. They reported working excessively hard, taking responsibility for supporting others, including colleagues and students, and being ‘good department citizens’. Yet they seemed disappointed by the results. Their ‘feeling bad’ is related to the reward system in academic life; a sense that there is an unequal division of labour, with women ‘working harder'; and an expectation that women will take greater responsibility for the nurturing and housekeeping side of academic life. The article explores ‘individual’ and ‘structural’ explanations for the findings and raises further questions about caring in university teaching, the situation of tokens and outsiders in university departments and the prospects for altering univer...

Doing Good and Feeling Bad: the work of women university teachers

This paper is based on an ethnographic study in one English primary school, ‘Hillview’. First, I review feminist and other approaches in the literature to the familiar association between women and caring. After a description of the school and the study, I consider Hillview teachers’ caring activities in the classroom and whether maternal imagery is justified. Sources of stress and struggle, which lend a sober side to romanticized notions of teachers as mothers in the classroom, are noted. Next, I look at the ways in which the Hillview teachers cared for each other, creating a workplace culture characterized by collaboration, compassion, and community. Although a gender analysis is extremely important in understanding teachers’ work, this does not mean that teachers’ caring activities or workplace cultures are simply derived from any essential qualities of women. Hillview teachers struggled with ‘their’ children and with material conditions that contained sources of stress and frustration. Their close‐kni...

Carry on Caring: the work of women teachers

This article considers issues of "outsiderness" and "insiderness" that arose in the context of a feminist qualitative research project on the experiences of academics, especially women, in faculties of social work, education, pharmacy and dentistry. Members of the research team had connections to the four fields, and originally believed that their insider status in that regard would facilitate access to the participants, rapport in the interviews, analysis of the data and communication of the results. The article identifies some of the problems and puzzles that emerged around the determination of who is an insider or outsider and who has the greater insights in which situation. One possibility is that the insider-outsider question cannot be fully resolved, but that we can try to work creatively within its tensions.As a sociologist, I am used to that uncomfortable feeling of distancing myself from what is happening around me, whether it be a party, a meeting, or a dinner with relatives -- all potential grist to the mill of sociological analysis. As a woman, I have been in many situations where I have been acutely conscious of being the "other" in a world dominated by men. What does it mean to be an outsider or insider? Might it simply be a fleeting aspect of subjectivity, like the discomfort at the start of a social occasion? Alternatively, when does it mark all one's perceptions and actions? When is it a key to insightful analysis? When does it stand in the way of clear thinking? How do we even know when we are inside or outside or somewhere in between?This paper is about issues of insiderness and outsiderness that arose in the context of a feminist qualitative research project on academic life. Although some quotations from the project data are used to illustrate the arguments, the results of the study itself are not featured here as the purpose is to focus on a particular issue rather than to report study findings, some of which can be accessed elsewhere (see, for example, Acker & Feuerverger, 1996; Acker, 1997, 1999a; Wyn & Acker with Richards, in press).Questions around insider/outsider standpoints are readily found in sociological writings, especially those concerned with the methodology and epistemology of qualitative research. For example, a major concept for Max Weber (1947), a founder of sociology, was Verstehen, which is sometimes translated as "understanding." It concerns the extent to which we can imaginatively project ourselves into the position of another person, in order to try to comprehend the reasons that person has for her/his actions. Comprehending a situation and explaining it to others is at the heart of qualitative research, though it has been much troubled in recent years by an increased sensitivity to the problems inherent in such an exercise (Britzman, 1995). Several other classical sociologists (Simmel, 1908/1971; Schutz, 1944) have considered the role and special perceptions of "the stranger," and in the early 1970s, Robert Merton (1972) directly tackled the question of insider and outsider perspectives in research. More recently, Patricia Hill Collins (1991) has developed the concept of "the outsider within" with regard to Black women sociologists, and James Banks (1998) has identified a number of possible insider/outsider categories. Feminist researchers regularly raise questions about the positioning of the researcher and the researched (Stanley & Wise, 1983, 1990; Smith 1987; Cook & Fonow, 1990; Reinharz, 1992; Harding, 1993; Edward & Ribbens, 1998).Despite the work that has gone before, in some ways my colleagues and I felt that we were in new territory. One reason for this belief is that we were conducting team research. Team research has its shares of disasters but many consider its strengths to outweigh its problems (Woods, Boyle, Jeffrey & Troman, 2000). Nevertheless, it is one thing to reflect critically upon one's own self in relation to one's work, and quite another to reflect upon relationships among colleagues in a research team and upon colleagues' relationships to the other academics we are studying. …

In/out/side: Positioning the Researcher in Feminist Qualitative Research

Part 1 Setting the scene: studying teachers the workplace. Part 2 Doing the work: the teacher and the class beyond the classroom managing the drama colleagues, cultures and caring. Part 3 Crossing the boundaries: school boundaries parents. Part 4 Changing people and places: teachers' careers educational reform.

Sandra Acker

Papers

Sleepless in academia

Doing Good and Feeling Bad: the work of women university teachers

Carry on Caring: the work of women teachers

In/out/side: Positioning the Researcher in Feminist Qualitative Research

The Realities of Teachers' Work: Never a Dull Moment