On the courageous/outrageous

boundary: an approach to

representing qualitative data

Prof Tansy JessopSouthampton Solent University

Guest Lecture to Medical Educators, UoW31 March 2017

Choose a Picture

• Don’t think about it too much• Choose a picture that you are

drawn too

Jottings• Why did I choose this picture?• How does this speak to me as a

medical professional?• How does it speak to me as

someone embarking on a research project?

Is there a place in research for bringing the creative and the

critical together?

Apartheid’s imprint

….on teachers, nurses, police and vicars

Rural teacher narratives

• Apartheid’s impact on teachers• Choices: Teachers, nurses, police• Contested space• ‘Collaborators’• Soweto 1976 • “Education before liberation”• Civil conflict in KZN from1987-1994

Bantu Education

meets Soweto

uprising 1976

1995-7The Context of

my PhD

Post-apartheid KwaZulu-Natal

• Low-intensity civil war, 10,000 to 30,000 dead

• Rural primary teachers • ‘Inside out’ study• Teacher development• Interviews (68), ethnographic data,

documentary sources

55%

pupils

without

toilets

43:1 pupil teacher ratios?

54% G3 teachers no books in classrooms

42% schools electrified

34% schools have no water

Raw data

• Read Segment 1 and 2 of the raw data:Jot down some thoughts:What strikes you?What might you do with interview data like this?How could you represent it?

• Chat in pairs about it.

Why poetry?

• Compelling stories of trauma, hope, broken dreams

• Flesh-and-blood social realities• Illuminating the critical rational analysis• Voice, power, emotion• Positioned – research from ‘somewhere’• Research as writing• Epistemological paradigm

“Poetry is the shortest emotional distance between two points” (Robert Frost).

Two interpretive communities (Denzin, 1994)

Tender-minded

IntuitiveEmotionalOpen-ended textsInterpretation as artPersonal biasesExperimental texts

Tough-minded

Hard nosed empiricistsRational analyticalClosed textsInterpretation as

methodNeutralityTraditional texts

“Emotion has only recently gotten a foothold inside the

academy, and we still don’t know

whether to give it a seminar room, a

lecture hall, or just a closet we can air out

now and then” (Behar, 1996).

I’ve seen nothing

Dilemmas• Authorial voice: who is speaking?• Stark, emotional, evocative – no subtle

grey shades• What about the academy?• Critical detachment, abstraction,

distance• In-between space: “At best only

almost poetry”• Influence on policymakers

Agency

Structure

Relational Instrumental

Survivor

Pragmatist

Realist

Idealist

So why be outrageous/courageous?

• Thick description• Interview speech closer to poetry than prose• Animates and invigorates• “A vital text is not boring – it grips the

reader” (Richardson, 1994)• Bridge between art and social science

(Diversi, 1993)• Useful in getting a different angle on data• Develops empathy

References

Behar, R. (1996) The Vulnerable Observer: Anthropology that breaks your heart. Boston. Beacon Press.Denzin, N. (1994) ‘The Art and Politics of Interpretation’ in Handbook of Qual. Research. Calfornia. Sage. 500-515.Diversi, M. (1998) Glimpses of Street Life: Represented Experience through Short Stories. Qualitative Inquiry 4(2) 131-147Jessop and Penny (1999) A story behind a story: developing strategies for making sense of teacher narratives. Int. Journal of Social Research Methodology. 2(3) 213-230.Richardson, L. (1994) ‘Writing: A Method of Inquiry’ in Handbook of Qual. Research. California. Sage. 516-529.