Cresswell's writing exercise #2 on pg. 24 (using our current project as the topic).

Take a topic that you would like to study, and, using the four combinations of knowledge claims, strategies of inquiry,and methods in Figure 1.2, discuss how the topic might be studied using each of the combinations.

Quant research:
We could set up an experiment in which we had a very tightly controlled task (I'm thinking of something like having all of the students do a basic rhetorical analysis of a common text). In one class we would use the CIQ throughout the process of teaching and helping the students complete the tightly controlled task. The other class would be the control group and the teacher would have to be different because she might bring in her knowledge from the other group's CIQs. Then, we would compare both the process and the outcome differences. Perhaps this experiment might involve video taping the classes for that small segment of the course, as well.We'd want to both watch for apparent stasis points and see how students identify them. This would allow us to talk about how different our perceptions of stases are from their perceptions.

Qualitative research: (constructivist)
What we're planning to do: continuing collecting the CIQs weekly, use grounded theory to try to develop categories for the types of stasis points we see emerging in both teacher and student responses. Develop a theory of the range of responses possible and think about potential methods for moving students and teachers deeper into reflective practice and beyond a variety of stases.

Qualitative research: (emancipatory)
If we were looking to see in what ways oppression plays a role in the development of stasis points in the classroom, we would almost certainly have to have an outsider conduct the interviews. An unbiased interviewer, like, perhaps, my research assistant Nurjahan, would have to conduct individual interviews with students, using open-ended questions. But I think this approach would be almost impossible, unless we really didn't look at the data until after our students were pretty far away from our course and not planning on ever taking a course from us again. I just don't see this method working for our pedagogical study. It would be better if we weren't study teachers and students.

Mixed Methods:
I suspect a sequential method might be best for us. Once we get through the qualitative stage and have some categories, we might be able to set up an experiment testing the methods we've developed for developing student-teacher reflection. This makes sense to me, too, in the sense that grounded theory doesn't seem like a good fit for a concurrent qualitative study, in which, presumably, you'd have to really know what you were looking for.

Transformative procedures might have been a possibility if we were planning on applying a particular theory from the beginning; for instance, if we had decided to do a positionality study, we might have been able to take a single theory and do both a qualitative and quantitative approach.

I could also see doing two qualitative approaches to answer our question: What common stasis points (stopping points or points of critical tension) do students identify when they reflect on their learning process in the weekly CIQ (a formative assessment tool)? Upon recognizing and naming these patterns, how can instructors use them to clarify and improve “critically reflective” learning?

We could use grounded theory first and then surveys to see if students self-identify which kinds of stases they feel most often and which they feel are most difficult to overcome, for instance.