Not Rapley, but another book

I usually don't wait until the 11th hour to post my blog, but I was having a particularly hard time thinking of something to say other than, "meh" about Rapley's Doing Conversation book. I sat on this book for a week--and I even went out trying to find some other interesting subject to post on, but nothing was very inspiring. I kept wanting to write about Rapley, even though the world is filled with words to think about and play with. All of this starting from an exigent point to write a post that reflected my actual excitement and interest on DA. I wouldn't be able to do that if I wrote a summary/reflection on Rapley's text. His book just didn't say anything new to me. He brings up some great points, but the end motto was, "language offers us a variety of insights." <sigh> Call me a "erudite humanist curmudgeon," but I would not have invested so much of my young adulthood in an English program if I didn't think language has varieties, which then offers us space for exploration. Acknowledging variations is part of our rhetorician's credo...that is, if we had one, but we couldn't agree on how/what/when to say anything. Bazinga!--a little rhetorical pun for you.

Ok, so my point: Rapley's work is good...if you haven't read it before. And really, after a while, these "intro to data collection/mining/crafting" books all say it. So I'm not giving him a high-five for it, out-right.

Thus in search of something to spark interest, I turned to a group who keep me jazzed and happy: my fellow 631 peers and their blogs. I visited a couple of pages, and Jackie's blog spoke the most to me because of our similiar experiences. In her commentary, she discusses her experience teaching ENG 102, which includes a qualitative research unit. The shared experience of managing the class, while simultaneously trying to better our understanding of this methodological approach got me thinking: where are the books informing us to become qualitative research teachers?

I feel very fortunate that I completed my MA specifically in composition/rhetoric pedagogy, with a subculture that focused on the "unfamiliar genre project." This experience pushed me to think about how to relate issues of writing, especially when people don't understand the style in which to write. I used to be terrified of writing classes--because of its seemingly subjective evaluation--but that really isn't the case. There are heuristics and standards to classify and define writing, as long as you make sure you have corroborating it with the appropriate audience, context, and exigence. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying that writing is easy, or teaching is easy. But there are ways to create evaluation and assessment features, which allow people to learn, practice, and develop these skills.

So where are the pedagogical books for qualitative research? I think I'd like to read one of those because it would require an author to detail the rhetorical situation of a learning experience that produces a specific style of writing. And that's a new topic that I would like to ingest. I understand that qualitative research is difficult to contain because, as researchers, we are trying to take a societal temperature. That means a lot thermometers for a variety of orifices; definitely not for the faint of heart. So writers, like Rapley, share their stories of collecting data because it shows us moments of how those "temperatures" are acquired, processed, and interpreted. I know I developed my dissertation theory from another researcher's work, even though she was discussing a totally different group, religion, presence, etc. Her work inspired me. But I get hung up that I'm asking the wrong questions, in the wrong way. I think I want a qual-research-ped book because it would allow me to understand the evaluative criteria used to assess projects. I don't need to hear about varieties of language, but evaluative models on research.

But the night is closing down, and so must I. Definitely things to think about--including a book hunt in the library and on Amazon. Trena, any title suggestions?!?