For one class I was asked to discuss and interview with a researcher who focuses on qualitative research and qualitative research design. Dr. Jeong-Hee Kim is Professor and Chair of the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at Texas Tech.
The first thing that really hit me was that Dr. Jeong-Hee Kim began her discussion by saying she fell in love with the subject because she loves stories and story telling.
This is very intriguing to me. One of my past times is writing novels, so weaving stories together to create a book. It's very tough, not to come up with the idea, but to go through the process of story telling. How to say this verse that, how to and when to expose this fact or character. I find its hard to make things up completely out of whole cloth, rather than to start with a kernel of truth. I wonder having listened to Dr. Jeong-Hee Kim if finding those narratives and discovering those kernels of truth are what she enjoys about qualitative research. I look forward to hearing more about how qualitative research, and story telling can help me with my own qualitative studies.
I also really enjoyed her discussion on software and specifically the moment she spoke about "finding those things that software didn't catch." It's interesting to me in that I work with many financially driven departments and colleagues. These people use software and numbers to drive so many of their decisions. Dr. Jeong-Hee Kim provided a wonderfully cautionary statement first when she said you must know all of the ins and outs of the software that you might use, but also you should know what the software won't capture so that you can find those things the software might not catch. It's a nice reminder to those people who rely too much on software for decision making moments.
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