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Qualitative research instructors seek information to help students actively engage in qualitative inquiry. They desire to learn about innovative, constructivist approaches that connect and empower students as a community of learners. Empowering Students as Self-Directed Learners of Qualitative Research Methods meets these needs with practices and approaches instructors may use to position students as active, empowered, self-directed learners who learn to do qualitative research by doing qualitative research.

Students will find this book useful because it includes authentic student work, student reflections, factual classroom scenarios depicting professors guiding students as they devise research questions and determine the qualitative genre to best answer those questions as well as a chapter that includes a checklist to help students plan, revise, and edit the academic writing critical for communicating qualitative research.

The book blends the thoughts of international scholars with the voices of students of qualitative research methods who participated in the transformative practices described in the book. The collective ideas meet the instructional, cultural, and psychological needs of diverse learners, including students from various disciplines, exceptionally able students, those with creative and artistic aptitudes, those from marginalized populations, English language learners, and those who struggle to master qualitative research methods.

Contributors are: Christy Bebeau, Alisha Braun, Franz Breuer, Suzanne Franco, Anna Gonzalez-Pliss, Steven Haberlin, Alfredo Jornet, Yew Jin Lee, Erin Lunday, Janet Richards, Wolff-Michael Roth, Kia Sarnoff, Margrit Schreier, and William Thomas.

Abstract

In this chapter, I (Janet) describe how university mandates related to the COVID pandemic required me to teach a qualitative methods #1 class online – a learning platform with which I, an advocate of social constructivist pedagogy, was unfamiliar. The extant literature did not offer much help, but collaboration with my former student and volunteer technical expert, research assistant, Christy, proved highly successful. With Christy as a technical advisor, I was able to follow my usual course curriculum and design and support my students as they learned how to create a priori research questions as a first step to structuring an inquiry; devise simulated inquiries through problem-solving teamwork; engage in all group collaborative projects; and write weekly critiques of published inquiries that employed case studies, phenomenology, arts-based research, narrative, oral history, autoethnography and grounded theory, followed by small group discussions about each method of inquiry. As a final individual assignment, my students devised and presented a simulated inquiry followed by class members asking questions and offering their suggestions for improvement. Scholars note that traditional course evaluation surveys are not adequate for online courses (). Therefore, Christy and I provide students’ responses to an informal pilot end-of-semester survey we designed to ascertain their perceptions of the class. We based the survey questions on tenets of three constructs identified in the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, which presents critical prerequisite factors for student understanding and satisfaction in online learning environments (, ; ; also see ). We close the chapter with an overview of our concerns and accomplishments about the course.

In: Engaging Students in Socially Constructed Qualitative Research Pedagogies
This volume is an innovative, practical contribution to the developing field of qualitative research pedagogy. It is also applicable more broadly to the active teaching in higher education. Based upon constructionist tenets, this book contains three parts that offer strategies and approaches to actively engage students in qualitative inquiry. Chapter authors with roots in six countries (United States, Lithuania, Canada, Israel, China and Russia) offer practical and creative strategies and theoretical foundations for engaging students in active learning of research. The book will be of interest for instructors who wish to enhance their pedagogy and creativity in teaching, and for students who will appreciate the inclusion of students’ assignments and authentic scenarios through which instructors support students in student learning and doing of qualitative research.
In: Engaging Students in Socially Constructed Qualitative Research Pedagogies
In: Engaging Students in Socially Constructed Qualitative Research Pedagogies
In: Engaging Students in Socially Constructed Qualitative Research Pedagogies

Abstract

Hormonal profiles of captive individuals show that bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops spp.) are seasonally polyoestrous, but little is known of reproductive behaviour among free-ranging bottlenose dolphins. In Shark Bay, Western Australia, we have documented for the first time patterns of female attractiveness that may correspond to multiple oestrous cycles. Male bottlenose dolphins in stable alliances of 2-3 individuals form temporary consortships with individual females. Consortships often are established and maintained by aggressive herding. Consortships are associated with reproduction and are a useful measure of a female's attractiveness. Following reproduction, females may become attractive to males when their surviving calf is about 2-2.5 years old or within 1-2 weeks of losing an infant. Individual females are attractive to males for variable periods extending over a number of months, both within and outside of the main breeding season. The duration of attractive periods is greater during breeding season months than during the preceding months. Males sometimes are attracted to females for periods exceeding the reported duration of rising estrogen levels during the follicular stage of the oestrous cycle. Males occasionally have consorted or otherwise been attracted to females in several unusual contexts, including late pregnancy, the first two weeks after parturition, and the day after the loss of a nursing infant. Individual females were consorted by up to 13 males during the season they conceived, supporting predictions of a promiscuous mating system in bottlenose dolphins. Thus, consorting is a strategy by males to monopolize females, but not a completely successful one. Multiple cycling by female bottlenose dolphins may be a strategy to avoid being monopolized by particular males. Given the duration and agonistic nature of many consortships, the benefits to females of such a costly strategy are not obvious. Multiple cycling may reduce the risk of infanticide by males or allow females to mate with preferred males after being monopolized by less desirable males.

In: Behaviour