Day 41-42: Lantern - - A Great Concept to Explain Quali Research

Orange Juice
Originally uploaded by Hadjek.

I've not been well for these past few days, so I'm combining the 2 days' worth of blogging together.

And because I'm not feeling well, I feel I need some huge injection of Vitamin C. And look what kind of photo I found! Don't you just love Flickr? This photo is so amazing! It literally made me thirsty! heh-heh

Now, back to business. I just wanna continue on Shank's book. I really like how he differentiate among the 3 types of "seeing." The "mirror" way to see things is more of a speculative style while the window type is more scientific. Neither of which is going to be my focus.

Lantern, however, is what qualitative research is all about. On page 11 of his book, I found what I need to use to defend my decision to go for qualitative in my ph.d. study despite the "norm" in my school to go quantitative. I would probably be the first, or second, to have this so-called "deviant behavior!" hee hee hee

Here is some excerpt from p.11:

• "...When we look at qualitative researchers over the decades as they have struggled to craft conceptual tools for their trade, we find an implicit reaching for illuminative concepts. We see them use such words as "illumination" and "insight" and "understanding."

• "...We see researchers going to faraway places and to ordinary settings, seeking to make the strange familiar and the familiar strange. We find researchers struggling to see the world through the eyes of others, to understand acts in terms of strange motives, and to fathom cultures in terms of strange presuppositions..."
  

• "...We find other qualitative researchers using interpretative tools and techniques to decipher cultural codes and social mores ranging from marriage rituals to dealing with uncommunicative students..."

• "...Therefore, the goals of qualitative research are insight, enlightenment, and illumination. We are neither contemplative mirror researchers nor unbiased window researchers. We are searchers and discoverers and reconcilers of meaning where no meaning has been clearly understood before, and we do not feel that our understanding of meaning is complete until we discover and understand its role in practice and experience...."
  

Wow, I'm literally moved by his words. Thank you, Professor Shank! You have made me feel good about my determination to do what I'm doing! Gee, it is really uplifting reading your book! It's not just a "how to do a qualitative research" book, if you ask me. It helps give the readers more the "sense of purpose." And that's why I like it so much!

(p.s. I already gave it a 5-star and positive comment on Amazon.com!)

Day 28: An Ecclectic Mix of New Learning

• Today I feel like a child in a candy store. Well, literally and figuratively. Yes, I over-consumed (again) on the sweets and chocolate. But, I'll continue to use stress as my convenient excuse for the time being!

• Now, the figurative part, the windfall benefit of tidying up my bookshelf the other day means I ran into old textbooks that I found most useful at this time! One that is worth mentioned here is "Qualitative Research: A Personal Skills Approach" by Professor Gary D. Shank of Duquesne University.

• It was written in a pleasant-to-read, natural way. It is as if he were standing in front of you, telling the stories of his experience. His approach to effective quali research really rang a bell: he bases it on our sensory awareness! This is exactly what I have been doing while I was working in advertising! More importantly, what the book says is exactly what I have been telling people what vipassana or mindfulness meditation is all about!

• This means I've been on the right track all along! Cool! This book gives me more confidence! Moreover, I was pleasantly surprised to find it discusses, among others, semiotics as well. It was grouped together with Grounded Theory and Phenomenology under the Chapter on "Interpreting" your qualitative research.

• The book began with teaching the observing and listening skills, both skills required in a good quali researcher. The more I look back, the more I see the similarities between vipassana meditation and quali research!

• In essence, Lord Buddha has shown the world how to conduct an effective qualitative research: observing without judgement! He did it so well, observing what goes on with his own body and mind until he got Enlightenment!

• If we only apply this same mechanism to whatever we observe, we would then be likely to get Enlightened, too, so to speak! But first, we must build the "Baramee" or the charisma and all the charactertistics fit for a Buddha first! The first thing that came to my mind is "Kanti Baramee!" A good researcher needs to be patient, believe me! That's the thing you'll need the most!

• And while performing some search on the net today, I came across several terms relating to semiotics that I would also like to pursue also as a reference to my Literature Review Chapter of my dissertation. And that is about Morphology, Lexicon, and Philology.

• First, I must say that I want to use these approach to explain my discovery about the word "Nen" in Japanese. I won't divulge in details here. But let's just say I plan to explain it in light of the following studies.

Morphology (linguistics) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morphology_(linguistics)

Note created May 3, 2007

Lexical morphology

Lexical morphology is the branch of morphology that deals with the lexicon, which, morphologically conceived, is the collection of lexemes in a language. As such, it concerns itself primarily with word-formation: derivation and compounding.

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Etymology - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etymology

Note created May 3, 2007

Etymology is the study of the history of words - when they entered a language, from what source, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.

In languages with a long written history, etymology makes use of philology, the study of how words change from culture to culture over time. However, etymologists also apply the methods of comparative linguistics to reconstruct information about languages that are too old for any direct information (such as writing) to be known. By analyzing related languages with a technique known as the comparative method, linguists can make inferences about their shared parent language and its vocabulary.

• Basically, this is it for today. I'm going to read the rest of the chapter of that book by Professor Gary Shank now. Good night! :-)