Qualitative Research and Intercultural Understanding by Deborah Court

Author:Deborah Court [Court, Deborah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781138080089
Google: i41ItAEACAAJ
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Group
Published: 2018-01-15T04:36:59+00:00

Coloring outside the lines: An example

But does the report always have to be ‘standard?’ I would say that researchers should learn how to write a ‘standard’ report before deviating from this well-trod path. Also, know your audience. This professor, that academic journal or the people who paid you to do this research, may well want a standard report. If you feel you can spread your wings a bit, do consider, sometimes, coloring outside the lines. The goal of every research report is to explain research findings and their significance, and to awaken in readers new understanding. Enhancing intercultural understanding requires just that, awakening new understanding. Sometimes an unexpected format, or variations from the standard format can do this better.

An interesting example of writing that deviates from the standard format 1 can be found in article entitled “On the Bus with Vonnie Lee” (Angrosino 1994). The researcher tells the story of how he met Vonnie Lee, a man in his thirties with mental disabilities who was living in a treatment facility after a lifetime of living on the streets and before that, a childhood in which he was abused by his mother’s boyfriends and labeled ‘retarded’ by the many schools he attended and then left. The researcher was in the facility to conduct life history interviews with residents. The person who was supposed to help Vonnie Lee travel by bus to the new group home and job for which he was deemed ready, did not arrive, and the researcher volunteered to ride the buses with Vonnie Lee. As they traveled, Vonnie Lee spontaneously told seemingly disjointed stories about his youth, stories which consisted largely of bus rides that seemed to have no particular destination. The researcher traveled with Vonnie Lee on a series of bus rides which were long and (to the researcher, a car owner who had never traveled in his city by bus) tedious. There were many transfers, the weather was swelteringly hot, and the buses stopped at every stop. But Vonnie Lee’s animation did not waver. He seemed much more excited by the bus rides than by the new group home or the new job. The researcher finally understood Vonnie Lee’s excitement, and the fact that he told his life story around bus rides. In this large American city only the poor and disadvantaged ride the buses. Everyone else has cars. When Vonnie Lee was a child he walked everywhere, too poor even to ride the bus, and the rare rides he had were the highlight of his youth. Now, with a new home and job and money to ride the bus, he has arrived. The bus for him is the symbol of empowerment. It is both a practical achievement and a metaphorical embodiment of his life goals. Finally, Vonnie Lee is a man with money to ride the bus, and somewhere to go.

The researcher presents this story as he discovered it. There is no literature review, no methodology section. His telling of the story follows his slowly

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