Qualitative Research recent issues

Narrative methodologies: subjects, silences, re-readings and analyses

Stanley, L., Temple, B. — 2008-07-24

Re-imagining the narratable subject

Tamboukou, M. — 2008-07-24

In this article I problematize sequence as a necessary condition for defining and making sense of narratives and argue that it is to the consideration of process that the interest in narrative research should shift. Process as an organizing plane focuses not on what stories are but on what they do and how their meaning is ceaselessly deferred, breaching the narratological conventions of coherence and closure. Drawing on my work with Gwen John's letters, I trace three methodological movements in narrative analytics: a) creating an archive of stories as multiplicities of meanings, b) following the emergence of the narratable subject, and c) making narrative connections in the political project of re-imagining the subject of feminism.

Common knowledge: reflections on narratives in community

Seaton, E. E. — 2008-07-24

Drawing on ethnographic and narrative research with eighth grade students from rural New Hampshire, this article explores the rich complexity of narratives built in a communal context. In close-knit rural communities, such as the one at the center of this article, personal stories may become part of a larger communal history. As such, narratives retold as communal stories highlight the relational context in which stories are crafted and underscore the ambiguity of memory, the multiplicity of truth, and the dynamics of power within a community. Here, communal stories strip individuals of the ability to craft individual narratives, as personal stories serve to create a larger communal understanding of events and history. However, for narratives of trauma in particular, as in the case at the center of this article, communal narratives may also serve as therapeutic, lightening the burden of unspeakable knowledge through the shared experience of knowing, remembering, and retelling what might otherwise remain silent. Consequently, narrative researchers must attend to the relational context in which all stories are constructed.

Seeking a usable methodology: The production of the fin-de-siecle female prostitute

Jansdotter, A. — 2008-07-24

The idea of a usable methodology, one which will both retain the idea of `a subject' at the heart of research and also recognize that in historical research the researcher necessarily has to work with textual remains, is discussed. Piecing this together is explored in relation to researching correspondences and other archival materials relating to two women who were fin de siècle prostitutes and also a deaconess who helped and `rescued' them.

Desire, delight, regret: discovering Elizabeth Gibson

Greenway, J. — 2008-07-24

My research into the life of a relative, poet and feminist Elizabeth Gibson, problematizes the boundaries and interrelationships between `academic' and `family' histories, narratives and identities. The desire for, and impossibilities of, control over the components of research and the stories that can be produced from it are discussed. The interrelated narratives of the research into Gibson, my experiences of researching my own family, and the structuring of the material into an academic paper, are analysed and combined to argue that the production and presentation of narratives is itself a form of methodology. The creative juxtaposition of narratives can generate a positive methodological anarchism that relinquishes control and challenges boundaries and hierarchies.

Narrating life stories in between the fictional and the autobiographical

Leskela-Karki, M. — 2008-07-24

This article discusses the processes of identity formation in different textual narratives, particularly in the intersections of fictional and epistolary texts, the in-between spaces where the autobiographical self becomes constituted. An important question concerns how to write about other people's lives and engage with the different textual narratives they have left behind. The Finnish writer Helmi Krohn (1871—1967) and her fictional and particularly epistolary texts offer a case study for exploring these methodological issues. In her letters to her artist colleagues, she constructs a narrative connecting her novels and her own life. I will also explore my narrative role by considering how as a historian I strive to make ethically valid analyses at the intersections of these different types of materials.

Tensions and aporias in the narrative construction of lives

Watson, C. — 2008-07-24

Narratives teach us how to conceive of ourselves, in two interrelated ways. The way in which we experience narrative becomes an important organizing principle for our understanding of how lives are lived; and the narratives that surround us teach us about our world and how to narrate our place within it. Narratives therefore enable us to make sense of our lives. But narrative is a paradoxical form suspended between the expected and the unexpected, which drives it forward but also constantly threatens to undermine it. This article explores the paradoxical nature of narrative and the tensions that this gives rise to in considering the narrative construction of lives.

Plotting the lives of others: narrative structure in some recent British autobiography

King, N. — 2008-07-24

Some recent British memoirs or autobiographies are discussed, focusing on narrative structure, using theories developed by Bernstein, Ricoeur, Cavarero and others to explore the relationship between `life', `story' and the effects of emplotment. Writing the lives of others, it is argued, always has an ethical dimension, as the writer is able to take advantage of the hindsight not available to his or her subjects — here parents or grandparents. The means by which the writers concerned negotiate this privilege of hindsight, and the implications of the narrative choices they inevitably have to make, are explained.

Masculinities and narrating the past: experiences of researching white men who refused to serve in the apartheid army

Conway, D. — 2008-07-24

This article reflexively analyses the construction of identity and the representation of the past in qualitative interviews with white men who refused to serve in the apartheid-era South African Defence Force (SADF). The contribution that white male objectors made to the anti-apartheid struggle occupies an ambivalent and increasingly forgotten aspect of South African liberation history. In a reflexive research story, I argue that the gendered, sexual and raced subjectivities of the researcher and researched are central to the joint construction of meaning in the interview and in the creation of self-narratives. The article also analyses how the narratives of white men's involvement in resisting apartheid are defined by their perceived position and wider power struggles in contemporary South Africa.

Narrative analysis of written texts: reflexivity in cross language research

Temple, B. — 2008-07-24

This article examines how researchers address cross language narratives. Research and writing by migrants suggest that a change of language can lead to changes in both how people perceive themselves and how others perceive them. That is, changing language involves more than a simple change of words. However, researchers rarely consider the consequences of moving between languages in analysing and writing up narratives. This is particularly surprising for those who see narratives as contextually produced by researchers and participants and have an interest in the influence of the research process. Reflexivity is not extended to include the move across languages. I focus on some of the methodological and epistemological issues of analysing written texts produced by researchers in a language that participants did not use.

Re-reading as a methodology: the case of Boer Women's testimonies

Dampier, H. — 2008-07-24

Re-reading as a methodology is often invoked in literary and historical work, but seldom specifically delineated. The substantive focus herein concerns Boer women's testimonies of the 1899—1902 South African War, in particular testimonies of the British military scorched earth policy of forced removals and concentration camps. The methodology of re-reading such texts against each other is explored so as to `re-read the record' of the Mafeking concentration camp, using a set of unpublished testimonies. Re-reading reveals tensions and disjunctures in these testimonies, and highlights the pervasiveness of established, rehearsed narrative structures which characterize in effect all women's testimonies of the concentration camps of the South African War. The processes of re-reading are examined as a methodology which interrogates a particular text's context of production, and, crucially, the context of reading and the ways in which this shapes readerly responses to the text.

Analysing narratives as practices

De Fina, A., Georgakopoulou, A. — 2008-07-24

Departing from a critique of the conventional paradigm of narrative analysis, inspired by Labov and the narrative turn in social sciences, we propose an alternative framework, recommending combining a focus on the local occasioning of narratives in interaction with the analysis of their participation in a variety of macro-processes, through mobilizing the notions of social practice, genre and community of practice.

Analysing men's written friendship narratives

Guy, L., Montague, J. — 2008-07-24

People make sense of their lives through their narratives, which provide a set of culturally shared plots that give their lives meaning and represent belonging. A range of personal and cultural experiences is made available through analysing these narratives. Here, analysis of men's personal narratives is considered as a valuable means by which the culture of men's friendship can be explored and defined. We present a method for generating narratives, where respondents were asked in an online survey to describe a deep connection or fall-out with a friend. One of these written narratives is analysed here by adapting Labov's framework for analysing narrative in conversation and supplementing it with insights from discursive work.

What can be known and how? Narrated subjects and the Listening Guide

Doucet, A., Mauthner, N. S. — 2008-07-24

This article grapples with the question of `what can be known?' about research subjects and how we can come to know them. Set against a backdrop of theoretical tensions over the concept of subjectivity in feminist theory, our article makes a three-fold argument. First, we argue that theoretical impasses between critical and constructed subjects can be addressed through the evolving concept of a narrated subject. Second, we suggest that this concept needs to be further interrogated by asking what can be known about narrated subjects both inside and outside of narrative. Third, we argue that greater attention must be given to how narrated subjects can be operationalized within research methodology, and we suggest that an emerging interpretive approach, the Listening Guide, provides a multi-layered way of tapping into methodological, theoretical, epistemological, and ontological dimensions of the narrated subject.

The narrative potential of the British Birth Cohort Studies

Elliott, J. — 2008-07-24

This paper draws attention to the narrative potential of longitudinal studies such as the British Birth Cohort Studies (BBCS), and explores the possibility of creating narrative case histories and conducting narrative analysis based on information available from the studies. The BBCS have historically adopted a quantitative research design and used structured interviews and questionnaires to collect data from large samples of individuals born in specific years. However, the longitudinal nature of these studies means that they follow the same sample of individuals from birth through childhood into adult life, and this leads to the creation of data that can be understood as a quantitative auto/biography.

Cancer narratives and methodological uncertainties

Thomas, C. — 2008-07-24

This article considers the methodological uncertainties arising in the early months of a research project that involves the secondary data analysis, using narrative analysis methods, of lengthy interview transcripts with cancer patients and their main informal carers. It revisits the particular social contexts, purposes and intentions involved in the creation of the interview transcripts, then considers the new methodological challenges involved. A sociological preference for the analysis of narrative content rather than narrative form is examined, before being set aside in favour of exploring both content and form in broader social context.

Madness to the method? Using a narrative methodology to analyse large-scale complex social phenomena

Stanley, L. — 2008-07-24

Building on earlier research, two related narrative inquiry projects were conducted, concerned with Boer (later, Afrikaner) women's testimonies of their wartime and concentration camp experiences, and with commemoration of the people who died in these camps. Putting the design into practice, and the advantages and disadvantages of the approach, are both discussed. Overall, using a narrative inquiry approach for investigating large-scale complex social phenomena, in this case connected with the rise of proto-nationalism in South Africa and women's role in it, was methodologically and analytically problematic although interesting and instructive.

Persona non grata: dilemmas of being an outsider researching immigration reform activism

Armitage, J. S. — 2008-04-15

Sociologists may encounter myriad obstacles in the research process that affect the research design and outcomes. There is, for example, a certain measure of resistance and hostility experienced in sociological research on distasteful social movements that is seldom acknowledged or included in published findings. The present analysis explores the emotional conflicts between the research program and the 'gatekeeping' activities of research respondents and the professional academic community in the USA. Politically sensitive, even volatile subjects such as the US immigration reform movement may rest on the classic affective/cognitive dichotomy found in sociology. I suggest that moralistic or politically positioned emotional resistance complicated the research process in two ways: 1) academic associates and mentors likened involvement with the immigration reform movement to scholarly complicity that marginalized the study's validity; and, 2) activists were inherently distrustful of the research and its goals given what they claimed to be a history of misinterpretation and scholarly 'bad press.'

Cross-cultural researching: Maori and Pakeha in Te Whakapakari

Carpenter, V. M., McMurchy-Pilkington, C. — 2008-04-15

This paper focuses on evolving Maori centred qualitative research methods, and the cross-cultural relationship between two researchers who identify respectively as Maori and Pakeha New Zealanders. The researchers discuss methodology issues which surrounded the school based Te Whakapakari research project. The project's aim was to raise the academic achievement of Maori (indigenous New Zealanders) mainstreamed children. The writers discuss their theoretical and personal backgrounds, and the accommodations they each made to meet the goals of the project. The writers argue that the face-to-face aspects (he kanohi kitea) of the project were integral to the project's success. The qualitative research based project included action research, and Maori-based professional development. A Freirean approach was integral to professional development. The writers worked alongside six teachers and school leaders.

Fieldnotes in team ethnography: researching complementary schools

Creese, A., Bhatt, A., Bhojani, N., Martin, P. — 2008-04-15

Ethnography has typically been seen as a singular research journey in which the lone researcher engages in the study of a community. However, increasingly within the social sciences, ethnographic research takes place in teams. This article explores the processes of using fieldnotes to develop team ethnography in a study of Gujarati complementary schools in a diverse English city. Complementary schools are also known as supplementary, heritage and community language schools. They are voluntary, usually run by local communities, and outside the state education sector. The article looks at how fieldnotes are used by researchers to constitute a team, contest interpretations and produce nuanced accounts of complementary schools. For the purpose of this article, a set of fieldnotes has been selected and presented as a case study to illustrate the role fieldnotes played in the team. The article explores their iterative use by the four-member team to settle upon particular research themes. We consider the role fieldnotes played in the team's reaching contested but shared accounts of social and linguistic action in one particular complementary school.

Positivity in qualitative research: examples from the organized field of postmodernism/poststructuralism

Koro-Ljungberg, M. — 2008-04-15

This article emphasizes the essential role of positivity, an organized field of knowledge, in qualitative research and how positivity enables and limits qualitative data, design, and research process. First, I describe some possible objects and subjects of knowing in qualitative research and discuss potential conditions of postmodernist/poststructuralist qualitative research. I then illustrate how different systems (such as language and power) within the organized field of postmodernism/poststructuralism regulate approaches to qualitative research and possible methodological functions available to researchers. Throughout the article, I make reference to my own research process focusing on the studies of academic achievement and 'scientific giftedness' to produce an article that blends subjective, empirical, and theoretical ways of knowing.

Motives and social organization: sociological amnesia, psychological description and the analysis of accounts

Housley, W., Fitzgerald, R. — 2008-04-15

During the course of this article we explore the sociological tradition of analysing motives and accounts. In doing so we contrast this with more recent methodological developments that have analysed similar phenomena as part of a strategy of respecifying psychological theories of cognition. Through the use of analytic examples we demonstrate how accounts and the invocation of 'inner' or 'underlying' states must be understood not only in terms of situated action but also in terms of the situated accomplishment of social organization. In this way the theoretical amnesia enveloping the analysis of accounts and motives can be confronted and their status as empirical sociological phenomena sustained within future avenues of qualitative research.

Book review: CALVIN MORRILL, DAVID A. SNOW, and CINDY H. WHITE (eds.), Together Alone: Personal Relationships in Public Places. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005, 320 pp. ISBN 0 520 24522 9 (hbk) $50.00, {pound}32.50; ISBN 0 520 24522 7 (pb) $19.95, {pound}12.95

Ian Borer, M. — 2008-04-15

Book review: PALOMA GAY Y BLASCO and HUON WARDLE, How to Read Ethnography. London: Routledge, 2007, 214 pp. (index included). ISBN 0 415 32866 7 (hbk) {pound}60.00, 0 415 32867 5 (pbk), {pound}18.99, 0 203 39096 2 (ebk)

Atkinson, P. — 2008-04-15

Book review: THOMAS L. CHARLTON, LOIS E. MYERS and REBECCA SHARPLESS (eds.), Handbook of Oral History. Oxford: Altamira Press, 2006, 625 pp. ISBN 0 759 102 295 (hbk) {pound}90.50

Hurdley, R. — 2008-04-15

Book review: GILLIAN ROSE, Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials (Second edition) London: SAGE, 2007, 287 pp. ISBN: 978 1 4129 2190 9 (hbk) {pound}70.00, 978 1 4129 2191 6 (pbk) {pound}21.99

Hurdley, R. — 2008-04-15

Book review: JOHANNA MOISANDER and ANU VALTONEN, Qualitative Marketing Research: A Cultural Approach. London: SAGE, 2006, 227 pp (including index). ISBN: 1 41290380 7 (hbk): {pound}77.00, 1 41290381 5 (pbk): {pound}24.99

Smallbone, T. — 2008-04-15

Book review: LARRY T. REYNOLDS and NANCY J. HERMAN--KINNEY, Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism. Walnut Tree, CA: Altamira Press, 2003, 1077 pp. ISBN 0 7591 0092 6. $110.00

Housley, W. — 2008-04-15

Book review: SARAH PINK, Doing Visual Ethnography: Images, Media and Representation in Research (Second edition). London, Thousand Oaks, New Dehli: SAGE, 2006, 224 pp. ISBN 10 1 4129 2348 4 (pbk) {pound}21.99

Prosser, J. — 2008-04-15

Contrasting perspectives on narrating selves and identities: an invitation to dialogue

Smith, B., Sparkes, A. C. — 2008-01-24

In recent years, qualitative researchers have in varied ways conceptualized selves and identities as narratively constructed. In this article, we offer a typology for viewing, the various conceptualizations of narrative identities and selves. Five perspectives are presented for discussion. These are, the psychosocial, the inter-subjective, the storied resource, the dialogic and the performative perspectives. Insights into contrasts between them are also generated by exploring the emphasis given by each perspective to both the social and individual in creating selves and identities. These contrasts are organized along a continuum, with perspectives that adopt a `thick individual' and `thin social relational' view to the self and identity at one end, and those that adopt a `thin individual' and `thick social relational' view at the other. We close by suggesting that each perspective is worthy of consideration in its own right and that coexistence is possible despite their differences.

Power and pleasure in ethnographic home-work: producing a recognizable ethics

Youngblood Jackson, A. — 2008-01-24

The author uses Michel Foucault's power/knowledge/pleasure combination to analyze the production of ethical practices in qualitative research. Through two data stories, the author recounts her own pleasurable acts while carrying out an ethnographic study in her hometown high school. The pleasures of conducting such home-work are analyzed to point out the ethics of constituting the experience of the self in qualitative research.

Educational ethnography as performance art: towards a sensuous feeling and knowing

Bagley, C. — 2008-01-24

The article methodologically positions and subsequently describes an ethnographic-based performance art piece staged as the author's keynote address at the UK's first international conference on Arts-Based Educational Research held at Queen's University Belfast. The article draws on existing arts-based research literature and a range of participant `voices' — including the voice of the author as `impresario' whose research provided the ethnographic data and facilitated the performance, the voices of the artists as `performers' who created and staged the piece, and the voices of the audience as `spec-actors' who made the journey through the performance — to make its case and hopefully encourage other qualitative researchers to a performative (re)presentational embrace.

Focus groups and the study of violence

Poso, T., Honkatukia, P., Nyqvist, L. — 2008-01-24

The article examines the focus group method as a tool to study violence in youth residential care based on an empirical study of 38 young people in two Finnish reform schools. The key issue here is to reflect upon the processes of knowledge production as we trace the ways in which the institutional and situational context and the very form of focus groups affect the ways of talking about violence. Special attention is given to strong and weak themes in the focus group interviews.

`Entering the blogosphere': some strategies for using blogs in social research

Hookway, N. — 2008-01-24

Since 1999 blogs have become a significant feature of online culture. They have been heralded as the new guardians of democracy, a revolutionary form of bottom-up news production and a new way of constructing self and doing community in late-modern times. In this article I highlight the significance of the `blogosphere' as a new addition to the qualitative researcher's toolkit and some of the practical, theoretical and methodological issues that arise from this. Some of the key ethical issues involved in blog data collection are also considered. The research context is a project on everyday understandings and experiences of morality.

The tip of the iceberg: working on the Victoria Climbie Data Corpus Project

Taylor, Y. — 2008-01-24

In this article I provide an overview of the methodological approaches of the Victoria Climbié Data Corpus Project, which aims to provide researchers, educators and policy makers with an invaluable source of data, based upon the coding of witness statements given to the Victoria Climbié Inquiry. I assess my own research role within this, making a case for the need to incorporate more grounded theory techniques, research reflexivity and subjective interpretation, alongside the `objective' coding frame being used, derived from a Delphi exercise. I include witness testimonies to highlight the kind of issues that lay beyond the codes and which cannot be effectively grasped by them. In using the specific example of the Climbié case, I argue that research surrounding emotive issues must be qualitatively sensitive to the social and discursive nuances present in the data, as opposed to solely relying upon objective a priori codes.

Naturalistic inquiry and the saturation concept: a research note

Bowen, G. A. — 2008-01-24

Saturation is mentioned in many qualitative research reports without any explanation of what it means and how it occurred. Recognizing the saturation point presents a challenge to qualitative researchers, especially in the absence of explicit guidelines for determining data or theoretical saturation. This research note examines the saturation concept in naturalistic inquiry and the challenges it presents. In particular, it summarizes the saturation process in a grounded theory study of community-based antipoverty projects. The main argument advanced in this research note is that claims of saturation should be supported by an explanation of how saturation was achieved and substantiated by clear evidence of its occurrence.

Editorial

Delamont, S., Atkinson, P. — 2007-10-30

The process of sample recruitment: an ethnostatistical perspective

Thomas, M., Bloor, M., Frankland, J. — 2007-10-30

This article draws on the authors' fieldwork experiences in four different research studies to address the gap in the methodological literature on the practical activities of sample recruitment. Boundaries between ineligibility and refusal are considered along with the `emotional labour' required during the recruitment process. In particular, the article aims to draw attention to the necessary indeterminacies in the recruitment process to show how the practical reasoning and situated action of researchers in the field critically determine the constitution of the study sample and the recruitment rate. It is concluded that, while no rules can adequately specify the process of recruitment, more resources, particularly to allow team recruitment, would reduce researcher stress and allow greater quality control.

Reflexive accounts about qualitative interviewing within the context of educational policy in North Cyprus

Mertkan-Ozunlu, S. — 2007-10-30

Located within policy studies and politics of education in North Cyprus, this article is a medium through which methodological quandaries about reflexive accounts of qualitative interviewing arise in a dialogic fashion within the arena of education reform. Relying primarily on field notes, it explores the two-way management and negotiation of identity work, its effects on data gathering, and the public and private sides of interviewing. The researcher, present author, argues through numerous examples that both interviewees and the interviewer are actively engaged in identity crafting. These co-constructed identities influence the data-gathering process and the emerging intersubjective narratives of lived experiences in social worlds. She also makes a case that reflexive accounts of identity work are intersubjective, co-constructed identities are not genuinely knowable and the identity work is not genuinely comprehensible.

Pivoting the centre: reflections on undertaking qualitative interviewing in academia

Gunasekara, C. — 2007-10-30

Researchers studying the role of universities in economic development have paid little attention to methods issues relating to the influence of researcher identities in interviews. Yet in this field of work, researcher identities can have a significant influence on the validity and reliability of `data' and their interpretation, not least because the researchers and at least some of their interviewees, ostensibly, are from the same sector and perhaps even are known to each other. This article considers the influences on the data of multiple identities occupied by an early career researcher doing qualitative interviews for a doctoral project on the role of universities in regional development. The identities occupied by the author were novice researcher, academic insider, career changer and former public sector executive who was a client of university academics. The article demonstrates the potential impact of these identities on the data collected and their interpretation, and the researcher's attempts to negotiate these identities. In thus demonstrating that the `how' of data collection can have important effects on the `what' of data collection and interpretation, the article argues that qualitative interviews in higher education policy research should pay more attention to the social construction of interview `data'.

Ethnic-matching in qualitative research: reversing the gaze on `white others' and `white' as `other'

Hoong Sin, C. — 2007-10-30

Writings on inter-racial/ethnic research tend to posit `nonwhite' as the researched `other'. There is scant literature dealing with `others' within whiteness or treating whiteness itself as an `other'. This article draws on the experience of a project looking at the quality of life of older people in Britain to illuminate often implicit assumptions underpinning the practice of ethnic-matching in qualitative research by reversing the research gaze. By examining the procedures involved in matching majority and minority ethnic researchers to a range of `white' respondents, this article unveils the often unscrutinized values and assumptions of certain sets of practice in qualitative research that can influence the process and products of research. Reversing the `ethnic' research gaze can help to illuminate new perspectives on the construction of otherness and positionalities within research. While this article looks at the influence of ethnicity on the research process, it acknowledges that ethnicity may not always be the primary social signifier and may also intersect with a range of other identifiers such as age, gender, class and geography.

Negotiating the politics of identity in an interdisciplinary research team

Lingard, L., Schryer, C. F., Spafford, M. M., Campbell, S. L. — 2007-10-30

This article explores the politics of identity in an interdisciplinary health research team that has been engaged in a qualitative research program for over five years. We draw on sociological theories of power and knowledge to explore our experiences of identity conflict, team socialization, and knowledge production. Structurally, our article integrates individual and group perspectives through personal narratives and collaborative critique as we explore the complex negotiations required to realize and maintain our team dynamic. These negotiations take place not only with one another as particularly positioned individuals, but also with the ideological and organizational forces that structure our scholarly worlds. We conclude with articulating `lessons learned' that we hope will enable other interdisciplinary research teams to realize the rich potential of their collaborative qualitative work.

Embodiment, academics, and the audit culture: a story seeking consideration

Sparkes, A. C. — 2007-10-30

In response to the plea by Pelias (2004) for a methodology of the heart, this article presents a story about the embodied struggles of an academic at a university that is permeated by an audit culture. It is based on informal interviews with academics at various universities in England and selected personal experiences. Thus, the constructive process is inspired by partial happenings, fragmented memories, echoes of conversations, whispers in corridors, fleeting glimpses of myriad reflections seen through broken glass, and multiple layers of fiction and narrative imaginings. Methodological issues abound in the telling and showing but, quite rightly, remain dormant on this occasion. In the end, the story simply asks for your consideration.

Book review: GEOFFREY WALFORD (Ed), Investigating Educational Policy Through Ethnography: Studies in Educational Ethnography Volume 8. Oxford: JAI Press, 2003, vi+255 pp. ISBN 0 7623 1018 9 (hbk) {pound}60

Ivinson, G. — 2007-10-30

Book review: CATHY CHARMAZ, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis. London: Sage, 2006. 208 pp. (including index). ISBN 0 7619 73524 (hbk) {pound}65.00; ISBN 0 7619 7353 2 (pbk) {pound}19.99

Smit, J. — 2007-10-30