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A New Use for New Journalism: Humanizing the Case Report

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A New Use for New Journalism: Humanizing the Case Report DOCUMENT RESUME Er 334 257 TM 016 854 AUTHOR Zeller, Nancy TITLE A New Use for New Journalism: Humanizing the Case Report. PUB DATE Apr 91 NOTE 42p.; Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association (Chicago, IL, April 3-7, 1991). PUB TYPE Speeches/Conference Papers (150) EDRS PRICE MF01 Plus Postage. PC Not Available from EDRS. DESCRIPTORS *Case Studies; *Data Analysis; Evaluation Methods; *Literary Devices; *New Journalism; *Social Science Research; Technical Writing; "Writing (Composition) IDENTIFIERS *Naturalistic Research ABSTRACT It is argued that expressive writing strategies, particularly those used by New Journalists, may eventuallyserve as models for case reporting in social science research. New Journalism refers to a movement begun in the 1960's that strives to revealthe story hidden beneath surface facts. It involves the use of fictive techniques applied to the description of real events and realpeople. Many people have seen a strong connection between social scienceand New Journalism. The oovious similarities in theways naturalistic inquirers and New Journalists gather and process information include challenging the positivist assumptions about the subjectivenature of truth. Four sample case reports are included to illustrate possible applications of tYese techniques of New Joarnalism: (1) scene-by-scene construction; (2) character point of view;(3) third person point of view; and (4) full detailing of the status of participants. Among the limitations of the approachare 11-oblems of integrity, confidentiality, collection and analysis of data,and the temptations of straying into imaginat1ve writing. The rhetoricof New Journalism is not yet an appropriate approach for case reports,but research may eventually support its fr.tasoility. A 72-itemlist cf references is included. (SLD) *********************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best thatcan De made from the original document. **********************************************p************************ US. DIPASITIUM OF wOUCAT1ON "PERMISSION TO REPRODUCETHIS O. EdnoCodi RIIMINIMA and ingdminnnent MATERIAL IN MICROFICHEOleLY EDUCATFONAL RESOURCES iNFORMATION CENTER MOP HS BEEN GRANTED SY VAN* document has Wen reproduced se recereed host the WW1 Or orgerragebon &WY ortiellenfril El Minot changes neve Wiwi matte to impose rePredoMon Went POndStd vain oc 0000nestddedui the ClaC TO THE EDUOMIONAL RESOURCES !nerd do not neceSSerds represent .tincial Ce RI position of PoScy INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC).- A New Use for New Journalism: Humanizing the Case Report Nancy Zeller Academic Affairs Indiana Commission for Higher Education 101 Vest Ohio Street, Suite 550 Indianapolis, Indiana 46204 Paper Presentation at the 1991 Annual Meetirg ty.: the American Educational Research Assoclation(kLRA) Chicago, April 6, 1991 BEST COPY AVAILABLE Background According to philosopher Thomas Kuhn, periods of normal science occur vhen scientists agree about vhat science iv and how one does it. In periods of revolutionary science, vhen agreement doesn't prevail, scientific communication breaks down. At that point, the various scientific disciplines are, as rhet.rician Charles Baseman observes, "rife with misunderstanding and unresolvable conflict"--unresolvable because there is no common language that will "alloy for determination of mutually acceptable criteria of adjudication."At this point "scientists start to argue likephilosophers."1 In recent years, those who conduct research in education and the human sciences have increasingly disagreed about what their science is and how it is done. This revolution in research methodology has created two camps of inquirers deeply divided by the ways in which they apprehend the world. On the one hand are those researchers some call positivists, vho support the application of the scientific method to research in the social sciences; on the other, the naturalists (more recently referred to asconstructivists2), who conduct more qualitatively-oriented research.Many think of naturalistic inquiry as a type of research condurted in a "natural" setting rather than in a laboratory. While this distinction is true (naturalists do look at a phenomenon in its social, physical, biological, etc., con- text), it is inadequate as a definition for naturalistic inquiry because naturalistic inquiry is not a resePrch method; it is, rather, research methodology that stands in opposition tv positivisr. Faced wi7h the posItivi.:ts' assumption of one, true reality knowable by studying its parts, the naturalist counters that there are multiple, intangible realities that can be studied only holistically (and, as in a 1 hologram, from each part tAe whole can be discovered orreconstructed). Such a study, according to Yvonne S. Lincoln and EgonG. Cuba, "raises more questions than itanswers°and is thus unlikely to result in prediction and control--the aim of the scientific method. In addition, instead of attempting objectivity, thenaturalist accepts an inevitable interactive relationshipwith the respondent: "knower and known are inseparable." Moreover, "the aim of inquiry is tc develop an idiographic body of knowledge" which is time and contextdependent--"in the form of working hypotheses that describe theindividual case."The positivists' assumption of linear causality is seen by naturalists as artificial; "all entities are in a state of mutual simultaneous shaping so that it is impossible to distinguish causes from effects:"indeed, causes and etfects have no separate existence. Finally, naturalists claim that inquiry is value-bound in several ways. It is influenced by the values of the inquirer wadrespondents, by the paradigm guiding tha investigation, by the choice of substantivetheory guiding the investigation, and by values inherent in thecontext--the location, the culture. All these values must resonate vith each other. Several implications emerge from these underlying assumptionsabout conducting naturalistic inquiry, the most important of which is that, instead of the traditional social science experimental researchformat, the preferred type of research for the naturalistic inquirer is the case study. Understanding (rather than prediction and control) is a matter of importal ce to naturalists. It is the drive to understand, argues Robert E Stake, that makes naturalistic case studies epistemologically in harmony 4 with human experience. To aid understanding, Lincoln and Guba recommend case study 4.actics with humandimensions: 4 2 o a natural setting (versus a laboratory setting); o the human inquirer as the instrument used to assess phenomena; o qualitative (versus quantitative) methodsinterviews, observations, and examination of documentary evidence; o purposive data collection (versus random sampling); o inductive (versus deductive) data analysis, a process of analyzing field data by coding and categorizing it to discover "embedded information"; o theory grounded in the data collected (versus an a priori theory); o an unfolding or emergent research design; o meanings and interpretations negotiated vith the human sources from which the data have chiefly been drawn; o idiographic (versus generalizable) interpretation of data--confined to these people, this time, this setting; o special trustworthiness criteria in place of the conventional criteria of internal and external validity, reliability, and objectivity; and, o the case report as a reporting mode (instead of the scientific article as prescribed by the American Psychological Association (APA) Publicatra-raiiial). The codification of traditional research rhetoric, ancording to Bazerman--most obvious in its chronological organizational strategy, a "freezed form" of title, abstract, introduction, method, results, and discussion--is found in the APA Publication Manual, which has become the style manual of choice for most, if not all, of the social sciences, including eiucation. Bazerman argues that the official APA style . embeds behaviorist assumptions about authors, readers, the subjects investigated, and knowledge itself . lit] defines a rhetoric which grants all the participants exactly5 the role they should have in a behaviorist universe. 3 be tempted simply Social scientists who haveadopted the APA style may and subheadings and thus to follow the lead setby pre-established headings satisfying or relieve themselves of the burdenof developing a rhetorically of evi- logically sound argument, the supportof which justifies the use dence, or in APA terminology--"data"and "results." For these scientists frequently the there seem to be only results: the "disccaion" section is of a weakest part GI their article; the"conclusions," merely restatements the APA priori hypotheses presentedearlier. Bazerman comments that in . but much for world "there is not much roomfor thinking or venturing . behaving and adhering toprescriptions."6David N. Dobrin examines othet consequences of theAPA rhetoric: articles, because they are somlich can be alike, are easy to evaluate;in addition, "material in one report J. used in another"--what Dobrinrefers to as "linguisticfungibility."7 of tech- Ziman argues, also, that theimpersonal point of view end the use nical language in the typical APAarticle suggests a pretenzionthat the piece has already been acceptedinto the researchliterature.8 positiv- One of the most strikingdifferences between natu alistic and ist research, then, is intheir respective reportingmodes, with naturalists choosing the case reportin
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