This study focuses on what aspects of attributes of spirituality as defined by Martsolf and Mickley (1998) are most salient for female and male survivors of sexual violence. Content analysis of secondary narrative data, provided by 50 participants in a study of women's and men's responses to sexual violence, was coded to the five attributes of…

Despite a large increase in the number of students enrolled in online courses, published research on student experiences in these environments is minimal. This article reports the narrative analysis of a series of interviews conducted with a female student at a brick-and-mortar school enrolled in a single virtual school course. Her narratives…

This essay explores issues of marginality and representation in research, which emerged during life history interviews with Tammi, an "ordinary" woman living in Appalachia. I examine how my research practices, namely my thirst for drama and marginality, nearly silenced the preferred stories of the woman who shared her life with me. I…

A basic premise in narrative therapy and inquiry is that life story telling is a mechanism by which experiences are rendered meaningful within some form of structure. However, narrative inquiry has to take cognisance of difficulties ensuing from discursive practices for different populations when eliciting their life stories. In this article I…

This study explores the question "Does arts education have a relationship to eighth-grade rural middle school students' motivation and self-efficacy?" Student questionnaires, focus-group interviews, and follow-up interviews were data collection methods used with 92 eighth-grade middle school students. Strong emphasis was placed on gathering…

This paper describes an ethnographically-oriented participant-observation study conducted during the annual Crow Fair, held in south central Montana. Data collected included audio-recorded interviews with participants, participant observations, photographic and video recordings. Narrative interviews were transcribed and analyzed using the constant…

The primary goal of this investigation was to document, using the participatory paradigm, a female university student's experience with a feel-based intervention intended to enhance the quality of her academic experiences including her self-confidence and self-talk. In this unique qualitative case study, the student participated in a 15-week…

This cogenerative ethnography explored the lived experiences of two graduate students balancing Ph.D. studies and motherhood through McClusky's (1963) Theory of Margin. Specifically, we asked ourselves: What impact does pregnancy have on personal and academic selves and how are multiple roles and responsibilities managed? Through an analysis of…

There are social, educational and behavioral problems for African American students in Hawaii public schools. Utilizing Critical Race Theory as a lens for analysis, the perceptions and experiences of these students regarding race, ethnic identity, military lineage, and self-definition are addressed. A composite counterstory of the researcher's and…

This paper reports on the use of video to enhance qualitative research. Advances in technology have improved our ability to capture lived experiences through visual means. I reflect on my previous work with individuals living with HIV/AIDS, the results of which are described in another paper, to evaluate the effectiveness of video as a medium that…

Using narrative inquiry, I tell the story of an Asian Indian student attending a large mid-Atlantic university who approached me in the summer of 2002 for my master's thesis interview. She was an Indian by birth who was adopted by White parents when she was an infant. She had not been to India since. Her story provided me with rich insights into…

In a narrative inquiry, five educators who taught college in prison share stories about working in this non-traditional learning environment that is often dangerous and frustrating. From the tension between the prison's emphasis on social control and the educators' concern for democratic classrooms, three broad themes emerged: working in…

Stories about the Idaho State Library, chronicles and narratives, are reported in my doctoral dissertation (Wilson, 2005). The chronicles, reconstructed from documents and records, provided a presentation of the people, events, and activities to frame the stories. The narratives, excerpted from interviews, provided the rich description and unique…

I am writing this to assist researchers in training and experienced researchers in understanding ways to view oral history as a social justice project. This paper will illuminate the importance of oral history in terms of enriching the knowledge base of qualitative research methods as well. Oral history provides us with an avenue of thick…

Learning how to conduct qualitative research may seem daunting for those new to the task, especially given the paradigm's emphasis on complexity and emergent design. Although there are guidelines in the literature, each project is unique and ultimately the individual researcher must determine how best to proceed. Reflexivity is thus considered…