Games for learning research method overview: interviews

Note-taking for Research on Games and Simulations with Jan Plass Magnusson, C., Rassmus-Gröhn, K., Tollmar, K., and Deaner, E. Haptimap User Study. Gomoll, K. & Nicol, A. (1990). User Observation: Guidelines for Apple Developers. The Apple developer guidelines recommend incorporating user observation and feedback early and often in the software design process. Rather than receiving …

Descriptive Participant Observations on the Culture of the Park Slope Food Coop

Writing assignment for Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry with Colleen Larson The Park Slope Coop (PSFC) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1973. It offers sustainably and ethically produced food and grocery items. Because it needs only to cover costs rather than turn a profit, the PSFC’s prices are substantially lower than a typical Brooklyn grocery …

The Interpretive Turn: From Sociological Positivism to Constructivism

Note-taking for Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry with Colleen Larson Willis, J.W., (2007) Foundations of Qualitative Research, Sage, chapters 1-4. The simplest way to define the difference between quantitative and qualitative research methods is that one uses numbers and the other uses words. But in reality, qualitative researchers use stats too, and all quantitative studies contextualize their …

More salsa-dancing social science

Note-taking for Principles of Empirical Research with Catherine Voulgarides Continuing with Salsa Dancing Into The Social Sciences by Kristin Luker. See the first part of the discussion here. Canonical sociologists usually have well-bounded sets of questions, and answer them using well-bounded sets of theories and previous findings. Qualitative researchers have questions that emerge out of theoretical and …

The role of culture in interpretive inquiry

Note-taking for Approaches to Qualitative Inquiry with Colleen Larson Geertz, C. “Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture.” In The Interpretation Of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, pp. 3-30, 1973

The Craft of Research and Salsa Dancing

Note-taking for Principles of Empirical Research with Catherine Voulgarides The Craft of Research by Wayne Booth, Gregory Colomb and Joseph Williams is a sober and traditional guide to humanities scholarship.

Cultural hegemony in music education

Music education in American colleges and universities focuses almost entirely on the traditions of Western European aristocrats during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, known conventionally as “common practice music.” This focus implies that upper-class European-descended musical tastes are a fundamental truth rather than a set of arbitrary and contingent preferences, and that white cultural dominance …