QUALITATIVES INVESTIGATIONS AND (AUTO) BIOGRAPHICAL CONTRIBUTION: DIALOGUES BETWEEN METHODS AND PARTICIPANTS OF RESEARCHES

In this dissertation, staging an encounter between the philosophy of unique selfhood proposed by the Italian sexual difference feminist, Adriana Cavarero, and currently predominant Anglo-American theories of subjectivity, I claim a model of selfhood in which self-writing makes what is general about socially- and discursively-constituted identity unique and material. I ground a critique of Cavarero’s development of Hannah Arendt’s distinction between the who and the what of the self through analysis of several self-writings or ‘autographies’, a term H. Porter Abbott advances in order to accommodate readers’ responses to the narrative action that is peculiar to the formal variety of autobiography. Through my discussion of Virginia Woolf’s Moments of Being, Fausta Cialente’s Le quattro ragazze Wieselberger, Gabriella Ghermandi’s Regina di fiori e di perle, Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name, Joan Didion’s Magical Thinking, Primo Levi’s Se questo e un uomo, Brett Shapiro’s L’intruso, and Timothy Conigrave’s Holding the Man – I claim the significance of reading the who-ness of what-ness, the ways in which selves invest themselves in socially determined categories of identity, uniquely. For Cavarero, ‘postmodernism’ recuperates the metaphysical universalism it criticises by privileging the general ways in which a decentred subject is constituted by her/his membership of shared identity determinants: by what s/he is. Cavarero argues that ‘postmodern’ preference for, and over-determination of, what-ness negates the uniqueness of the self, who s/he is, for who-ness designates what is unrepeatable about the self, what escapes the generality of what-ness. My being Australian, white, gay, middle-class, tertiary-educated, etc. is, for Cavarero, an inventory of things I share with other people, an enumeration of what is general about me. None of these identities is reducible to me, however; none of them, because they can describe many people generally, accounts for my uniqueness. Cavarero’s claim to a philosophy that avoids generality of this kind offers an ontology in which the self is necessarily, dependently, related to others by her/his ‘appearance’ before them, and, importantly, by an altruistic ethic that structures the shared narration of life-stories, the narration of the self by the other. Hers is an invaluable provocation, indebted to the history of il pensiero della differenza sessuale [sexual difference thought] to think the self beyond socially general categories of identity. It is a philosophy that privileges the particularity of the self’s difference, through narration. I argue over the course of my dissertation, however, that Cavarero ignores the unique ways in which selves make particular what she argues is only ever general, irreducible, about them. I claim that Cavarero’s deprioritisation of the what of the self in favour of the who of the self, as well as the autobiographical in favour of the biographical, fails to recognise the significance of ways in which minority identities are invested in their what-ness and its representation and reception; for not having to account for oneself, for one’s what-ness, is a privilege enjoyed only, perhaps, by selves related to what is ideologically of the ‘majority’. Through the questions posed by the texts I discuss, questions of sexual difference and motherhood, ethnicity and belonging, trauma and memory, illness, and sexuality, I formulate a model of selfhood that bridges the who-ness Cavarero so importantly demands philosophical recognition of, and the what-ness she accuses ‘postmodern’ theories of over-determining. I emphasise the common ground between a philosophy rooted in the philosophical practice of il pensiero della differenza sessuale and the fragmented identity of ‘postmodernism’ in order to deepen Cavarero’s provocation to think the uniqueness of the self.

Objetivo: Descrever o impacto das relações sociofamiliares na construção da personalidade das pessoas transexuais. Metodologia: Pesquisa descritiva, qualitativa, utilizou o método Narrativa de vida, realizada no período de 2016 a 2019, com 19 participantes transexuais e 14 familiares. Os dados foram coletados por entrevista narrativa, realizou-se a análise compreensiva de Daniel Bertaux e adotou o referencial teórico de Michel Foucault. Resultados: Evidenciou-se que a família e outras instituições sociais reproduzem e afirmam dogmas normatizadores e produzem ações de disciplina e controle sobre os corpos das pessoas transexuais durante o processo de amadurecimento, a fim de coagir a vivência das identidades de gênero. As relações intersubjetivas fortes aparecem como uma possibilidade de inversão dessa rejeição a aceitação da transexualidade. Conclusão: A aceitação sociofamiliar é um desafio para a aceitação e inclusão social das pessoas transexuais pela família e demais segmentos sociais.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the spirituality of a small sample of teachers in Catholic schools through the expressions of their own personal understanding of spirituality. The study was conducted in a biographical, narrative way which allowed the voices of the participating teachers to be heard. This research inquiry addressed the contemporary problem of the ambiguous relationship between religion and spirituality within a culture that is predominantly secular. The cultural religious overlay (in this case, Catholicism) which once served to identify and define spirituality and its practices for many Catholics, no longer provides a meaningful reference point for a significant number of those baptised in the Catholic faith. This problem presents a substantial challenge for church schools grounded in the Catholic tradition, which set out to educate young people religiously and to help induct them into the Catholic Church. Identifying and interpreting how the personal spirituality of teachers was expressed makes a helpful contribution to clarifying some of the issues within this problem. It could shed some light on the ways in which the spirituality of teachers related to the Catholic school’s intended role in educating young Catholics and promoting an integration of faith, life and culture. The study was located in the context of four aspects of spirituality identified in the literature. The first two considered spirituality in a broad way, regarding it as an intrinsic human capacity and then traced the ways this had been expressed over the centuries in the Christian tradition. The second two aspects centred on an exploration of more specific contemporary expressions of spirituality. The first of these was concerned with exploring the normative Catholic Church documents and the current religious education theory of Shared Christian Praxis. The fourth aspect was the literature which focussed specifically on the spirituality of teachers. As the study explored the perceptions of teachers regarding their personal spirituality, the research design was situated within the interpretivist model. The investigation occurred inside the interpretive tradition of phenomenology which provided access to many facets of the human experience. Constructionism through the lens of symbolic interactionism and intersubjectivity provided the epistemological framework. This allowed for meaning to be created personally and for participants to express different perceptions of similar experiences. The key data gathering strategy was three interviews with each of the 5 participants. While it was recognised that this was a relatively small sample, it allowed for prolonged time with each participant to explore spirituality across a range of experiences. Spirituality was therefore iii identified within a broad spectrum inclusive of the religious and secular. The NVivo qualitative research program was used to assist with the analysis of the interview data and ensured that the analytical categories remained close to the words used by the participants Conclusions from the study highlighted the interpersonal ways in which spirituality was understood and expressed in the themes of relationality, connectedness and belonging. The capacity for presence, combined with attitudes of listening and empathy were seen as important pathways to experience transcendence, described by the participants as “something other,” “something beyond” or “mystery.” The study acknowledged that although spirituality may be regarded as an innate human potential, it needed to be awakened and nurtured for this capacity to be realised. Therefore recommendations were proposed for informing programmes that intended to promote ongoing spiritual development for educators in Catholic schools.

ABSTRACT:There are many methods and techniques of data collection in qualitative research to apprehend the aspects of subjectivity of the participant subjects. We can mention the most well-known among them: participative observation, life story, oral story and interview. These techniques favor the agents’ intervention in their reality and it creates the conditions for transformation of the studied contexts. This study had as objective to reflect on the interview technique starting from a literature review considering it as an important instrument for data collection in the qualitative research. We elaborated two boards: the first one regarding the main authors studied and the other synthesized the most relevant aspects on the theme. In dealing with interview, almost all the authors recognize that it crosses the limits of one technique. In the qualitative research, where the researcher is more in charge of the depth of the study object, the interview is an indispensable instrument, because it can facilitate the detailed understanding of the beliefs, feelings, attitudes and values.

Introduction: Narrative abilities have been shown as good predictors of reading skills and academic achievements. Assessment of narrative skills includes two parts of macro- and micro-structures. The current review systematically investigates narrative studies in terms of describing and comparing different narrative assessment methods to report adequacy of the methods in various contexts. Materials and Method: The search strategy included key words like “narrative skills”, “narrative in children”, “language skills assessment” and “narrative assessment tool”. Data bases included ASHA publication, PubMed, Science direct, Google Scholar, Cochrane, Wiley, IranMedex, IranDoc, and SID between 1946 and 2014. The abstract and title of papers were evaluated based on inclusion/exclusion criteria. Results: Sixty one out of 105 published documents were eligible to be reviewed. The reviews showed that children’s oral narratives are assessed through language samples. Various methods have been developed to measure children’s narrative skills including story generation, story retelling, and personal narratives. Moreover, different narrative assessment tools are developed to assess either narrative production or narrative comprehension in both levels of micro- and macro- structures. Except for Narrative Assessment Protocol (NAP), scoring procedures in other tools is transcription. Discussion: Familiar pictures and story retelling provide more complex and longer narratives. Narrative generation task is more difficult than narrative retelling task and is more capable to differentiate language disabilities. Narrative assessments recently available in Iran include NAP, SRT, and ENNI. Among them, it has been claimed that NAP is more user-friendly due to the convenient of online scoring procedure which needs further research. Key words: narrative, narrative assessment, language skills, children, systematic review

This paper is based on the author’s experiences of interviewing seven men and seven women who graduated from a Danish high school in 1980, at a moment when the upper secondary system underwent a process of democratisation. She questioned the informants as to the role education has played in their lives, and as to the sense their choice of education makes to them. In addition to providing extensive narrative data about the experience of going through the educational system in the 1970s and 1980s, her interview process also raised two fundamental methodological issues. The first regards the relationship between the narrative and its historical context. The second relates to how narrated truths can be understood more as split and divided between the interviewee and the interviewer than as negotiated, as is frequently argued. In the paper it is suggested that these narratives act more as a testing ground for the development of interpretations and reflections about the early years of the so‐called “educational explosion” that has taken place in Denmark from the 1960s until today than as ultimate truths. 1 This article is an expanded version of a paper presented at the European Social Science History Conference in Amsterdam, March 2006. I would like to thank the participants in the session “Narratives of education” for very helpful comments. I would also like to thank my colleague Ida Juul for urging me to confront the methodological challenges related to my share in our research project “Schooling for Life: Educational System and Educational Narratives. Denmark 1945–2005”.

The purpose of this project was to examine the effect of Narrative Pedagogy in nursing education on students' ability to move toward cognitive and ethical maturity and thereby increase their autonomy in nursing practice. Students taking a class using Narrative Pedagogy demonstrated "entry" and "exit" mean scores that showed marginal and statistically significant (p < 0.05) improvement on the Measure of Intellectual Development and the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory. Using nonparametric and parametric analyses of variance, there was minor improvement on both scales in cognitive and ethical maturity and the disposition to think critically in the intervention group. For all variables, there were no significant differences between the control group and the intervention group, with or without adjustment for age, the only significant covariate. The cognitive and ethical growth documented by either instrument is probably not large enough to be considered practically significant in terms of movement toward autonomous practice.

Parental Alienation is widely discussed and researched topic in USA, Canada and many European countries. However this topic is just starting to be discussed and researched in Lithuania. In this article we made an attempt to analyse subjective experiences of Parental Alienation among alienated parents. Two fathers and one mother participated in the research. The narrative interview was used to collect the data. The qualitative analysis procedures (content analysis) were employed in order to analyse the data. KEY WORDS: Parental Alienation, narrative interview, qualitative analysis.

The aim of this research is to (1) describe the ability of students class X SMA N 1 Negeri Lubuk Basung in reading literature. (2) Explain the ability of students class X SMA N 1 Negeri Lubuk Basung in writing narrative text. (3) analize the relation between the ability of reading literature and the ability of writing narrative text of students class X SMA N 1 Negeri Lubuk Basung. The method that used in this research is correlation study method. Based on the research result, it can be concluded: first, reading literature ability of students class X SMA N 1 Negeri Lubuk Basung qualified in enough position (61, 48). Second, writing narrative text ability of students class X SMA N 1 Negeri Lubuk Basung qualified in almost enough position (49, 5). Third, there is a significant relation between the reading literature ability and writing narrative text ability of students class X SMA N 1 Negeri Lubuk Basung.

The recognition of the role of discourse in the production of self-understandings and subjectivity has undergone considerable theoretical development over the past decades. Yet, attention to possible ramifications for the status of conversation-based research has been limited and parochial. This article examines the research interview, as a methodological technique and as a social and cultural event, in relation to representations of drug use, agency and responsibility, arguing that research conversations about drugs cannot be understood in separation from the cultural repertoire of speaking positions evoked by the particular topic of inquiry. In the context of drug research, such positions are embedded in circulating narratives of drug use and drug users, as well as in generalized images of responsibility, self-sufficiency, and the personal management of information and risk. Drawing on material from an ethnographic study of recreational substance use among young adults in Norway, it is suggested that such conversations are unique occasions for the deployment of and reflection on subject positions, giving rise to functions of the research interview beyond the generation of sociological data. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs140323

The paper starts from a qualitative research, carried out through 50 in-depth interviews, on memory and its evolutions in connection with digital tools and networked environments. The aim was to investigate how new generations build their individual memory and more specifically which things, mementos and interfaces of memory they use; which are their practices to create and to socialize memory, how and in which measure they transform it in cultural capital. The role of interactive media for memory production, storage and communication will be outlined; furthermore, the web and social media will be analysed as cultural interfaces through which people approach their past. The analysis will explore how digital environments for writing, publishing, showing personal experience are changing the subjective criteria to distinguish past and present, private and public dimensions of memory. The productive dimension of 2.0 web environments is indeed giving result to a new diffused subjectivity in which, on the one hand people are stimulated to enlarge the virtual audience of their subjective memories, whilst on the other hand, they transform and mediate their subjectivity in order to fit it in a global language and circuit.

Objective To explore life experience in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients with the habit of exercise for more than 5 years, to enhance the confidence of participating in the rehabilitation in other patients, to help the medical staff pay more attention to guide the patients with COPD to take up the rehabilitation exercise. Methods The narrative research method in qualitative research was used to analyze the collected data. Results The study found that the coping approach of the contradiction between exercise and dyspnea, the ability to live together with the disease peacefully and the enthusiasm of persuing life were deserved to be learned. Conclusions Full of perseverance and persisted rehabilitation exercise may alleviate the symptoms, reduce the number of acute exacerbation of COPD and improve the quality of life for COPD patients. Medical staff should encourage COPD patients to participate in the rehabilitation in the right time with appropriate methods. Key words: Pulmonary disease, chronic obstructive; Rehabilitation; Qualitative research

This research aims to investigate the influence of (1) reading habit on the students’ capability of writing narrative texts, (2) knowledge of grammar on the students’ capability of writing narrative texts, and (3) reading habit and knowledge of grammar on the students’ capability of writing narrative texts. This research is an expost facto study, involving two independent variables and one dependent variable. The population comprised the third semester students of English Study Program in the Language and Arts Faculty of Flores Universities in the academic year of 2013/2014, consisting of 55 students. The data were collected through a reading habit questionnaire, test of grammar knowledge and writing narrative test. A prerequisite analysis was conducted before the analysis of multiple linear regressions. Based on regresion analysis, it can be concluded that reading habit influences the students’ capability of writing narrative texts (β = 0.745, p < 0.05), knowledge of grammar influences the students’ capability of writing narrative texts (β = 1.304, p =< 0.05) and reading habit and knowledge of grammar influence the students’ capability of writing narrative texts (R²=0574, F-count=35.073, p ˂ 0.05).

My doctoral thesis contributes to the understanding of gait, mobility, and falls in older people. All presented projects investigated the most prominent and sensitive markers for fall-related gait changes, that is gait velocity and gait variability. Based on the measurement of these spatio-temporal gait parameters, particularly when using a change-sensitive dual task paradigm, it is possible to make conclusions regarding walking, balance, activities of daily living, and falls in older people. The research summarized in my doctoral thesis will help in the detection of early fall risk and modulation of therapeutic interventions to improve gait and consequently reduce fall risk in older people. To identify modifiable fall risk factors, such as gait disorders, the GAITRite electronic walkway system was used for objective spatio-temporal gait analysis. The simplicity and feasibility of the administration of single and dual task gait analysis make it a desirable clinical and research measurement tool. Gait analysis with walking as a single task condition alone is often insufficient to reveal underlying gait disorders present during everyday activities. However, measuring gait with a dual task paradigm can detect subtle gait deficits. Dual-tasking, walking while simultaneously performing an additional task, was used to assess the effects of divided attention on motor performance and gait control. The presented publications in this doctoral thesis investigated the association between gait parameters and several hypothesized fall-related modalities: (a) Our first review article highlighted the association between gait disorders and falls, and how related motor and cognitive impairments can be detected by measuring gait while dual-tasking. (b) A second review looked at how the dual task paradigm can be used for gait assessment in older people and how spatio-temporal gait parameters are associated with increased fall risk. (c) Our systematic literature review provided evidence about effective fall prevention interventions (exercise, home modifications, footwear, and walking aids) to reduce the risk of falls in vulnerable older people. (d) To evaluate which exercise modalities are effective in modifying risk factors for falls, we conducted an eight-week salsa intervention trial and measured the effect of dancing on static and dynamic balance, and leg muscle power in older people. (e) Besides exercise, inadequate nutritional intake is another modifiable risk factor for falls in older people, and therefore our most recent cross-sectional study examined how serum 25-hydroxvitamin D levels are associated with functional mobility in older people assessed in a memory clinic. (c) Walking aids are commonly prescribed for older people with a high risk of falls which is why we examined the influence of walking aids on spatio-temporal gait parameters in older people who used a cane, a crutch or a walker. (g) Finally, besides predominantly investigating fall risk factors for motor abilities, our prolonged and ongoing randomized, double-blind, and placebo-controlled intervention trial explores the potential influence of ginkgo biloba on the cognitive domain relevant for dual-tasking in older people with mild cognitive impairment.

Efficiency in Reading Comprehension: A Comparison of Students' Competency in Reading Printed and Digital Texts.