I've posted this before, but as I've moved my blog I thought I'd also put it up on the new site. I gave this lecture, titled “The Qualitative Dissertation: A User’s Guide,” on Friday, November 12th, 2010 in Jesse Wrench Auditorium, Memorial Student Union, at the University of Missouri. The event was hosted by the Educational Leadership Graduate Student Association (ELGSA), a student group in the Department of Educational Leadership and was open to students and faculty across the campus. I've given this presentation for years and update it from time-to-time. It's part guide, part pep-talk and part tips. This will be old hat for many qualitative researchers and there are undoubtedly certain issues on which folks will disagree with what I've done here...but it's meant as a tool for raising basic issues researchers need to consider, not as a definitive statement about qualitative dissertations.
“Our schools are a vignette of how man, in the development of civilization and its core institutions, has managed to ignore or disregard some of the most compelling aspects of his own nature. But how long can we go on this way?” Edward T. Hall
