[Xmca-l] Re: The Science of Qualitative Research 2ed

[Martin John Packer]

Interesting, Ed. It was while teaching that course that I realized what a hot potato teaching research methods can be. After all, in a graduate program one is teaching the current and future research assistants and associates of one’s faculty colleagues.

As I recall we taught the course once and then my co-instructor (I won’t name names) received funding that relieved her from teaching for a year or two. That first year we alternated ‘blocks’ of empirical-analytic and interpretive approaches, seven blocks in all, each a few weeks in length. We tried to involve the students in a dialog between the approaches, emphasizing their similarities as well as their differences. It sounds as though subsequently the two approaches became divided into separate semesters.

Martin


On Dec 20, 2017, at 7:59 PM, Edward Wall <ewall@umich.edu<mailto:ewall@umich.edu>> wrote:

      I, for various and sundry reasons, became interested in the very thought of teaching mathematics and came to UM a few years after Martin had left. Talking with some of those who probably were among Martin’s students and some of his teaching colleagues, I was left with the impression that ‘research methods’ happened in a very different atmosphere than what I then felt around me. I took this two semester course Martin speaks about. I almost left UM after the first quantitative semester (I have a very, very strong theoretical background in probability and statistics) as I couldn’t figure out why somebody would engage in such things and, although the second qualitative semester made a little more sense (and there actually was one interesting use of mathematics), I began seriously wondering why I was there. It took a former colleague of Martin’s to first introduce me to Vygotsky and later to Gadamer (who sort of introduced me to Heidegger) before I thought there might be something interesting to think about as regards the teaching of mathematics. However, they and I were definitely in a small minority.

     So, Martin thank you for that course. Although I never was exposed to it, I was exposed to several who were influenced by it and was exposed to teaching colleagues of yours who shared some of your thinking at that time.

Ed