Graduate Students’ Construction of Researcher Identities Explored Through Discourse Analysis

Abstract

While many research methods courses challenge students to make sense of their own researcher identities as they relate to research paradigms and perspectives, there is a lack of research that examines how students actually go about constructing theses identities, particularly at the level of discourse. In this study, we attended to graduate students’ talk in an introductory research methods course, taking note of how students used particular discursive resources to construct a research identity in online classroom discussions. We analyzed 93 discussion posts students were asked to make in response to a discussion board prompt after completing assigned readings related to research paradigms and researcher identity. We identified two discursive patterns through our analysis: 1) minimizing knowledge, and 2) justifying paradigmatic orientations. Our findings highlight how being asked to talk about one’s research identity is a potentially fragile task, as evidenced by disclaimers of ‘knowing’, and one that evokes justifications and connections to students’ everyday lives. We highlight implications for the teaching of research methodology, particularly qualitative methods courses.

Methodological Socialization and Identity: A Bricolage Study of Pathways Toward Qualitative Research in Doctoral Education

“…Some scholars teaching methodological and paradigmatic plurality reported pedagogical challenges such as representing multiple paradigms within time constraints and getting students to grapple with this plurality (Gunzenhauser & Gerstl-Pepin, 2006; Kuby & Christ, 2018; Roulston & Bhattacharya, 2018; Waite, 2014; Wolgemuth, 2016). A few empirical studies reflected students’ perspectives on qualitative methods training; however those relied on brief onetime reflections on a qualitative component of general research methods courses offered to master’s-level practitioner students (Cassell, 2018; Davis & Lester, 2016) or on doctoral students’ intellectual reasoning strategies when describing paradigms early on in a qualitative methods course (Schnelker, 2006). Cassell’s (2018) study of MBA students’ experiences with conducting a qualitative interview as part of a six-hour research and consultancy skill module in a research methods course showed how the course helped students learn managerial skills.…”

“…Cassell’s (2018) study of MBA students’ experiences with conducting a qualitative interview as part of a six-hour research and consultancy skill module in a research methods course showed how the course helped students learn managerial skills. Findings from the other studies (Davis & Lester, 2016; Schnelker, 2006) concentrated on three key themes: students felt unsettled by new and unfamiliar information, their arguments were rife with misconceptions, and their reasoning relied heavily on personal experiences rather than on theory.…”

Collaborative teaching and learning of interactive multimodal spoken academic genres for doctoral students

“…Discourse analysis can serve as a basis for the teaching and learning of genres such as discussion sessions following conference presentations (Davies & Lester, 2016), where it is common to find an ensemble of "linguistic, visual, audio, gestural and spatial modes of meaning" (Cope & Kalantzis, 2009: 166). Although verbal expression is often considered the most significant mode of communication, multimodality shows that all modes have the potential to contribute to meaning in the same way (Jewitt, 2013).…”