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     In a past blog post, I have addressed just how challenging it can be to work with data that you did not collect yourself. By not having the ability to control the questions asked or be present for the interviews, it can be hard to truly wrap your head around what message they were trying to convey to the interviewer, or more importantly, what they communicated by not explicitly sharing some information. Yet, this is the hand you are dealt with this research project. Knowing that I have no control over the data I have has made it quite challenging to synthesize it for the narrative findings and pull out the relevant quotes, as I was never too sure if I was interpreting the content of their speech correctly. In the process of writing up one of the narrative findings for our paper, I have been navigating the challenges of finding the correct way to interpret what students and teachers are trying to say through the content of their interviews and determining how to navigate contradictions in the data that go against our general findings. 

     The narrative finding that I am writing about has to do with the fact that students at the Croft School know that service work is important, but they do not do it outside of the school context and that they know it has little impact, demonstrating their lack of personal connection to this work. In order to represent this view, I am pulling quotes about what service work students do, how they feel about the impact that it is having, and why they feel that this work matters to them. The main challenge with this process is making sure that when I am pulling quotes, I am not putting words into these students mouths or assuming what they want to say so that I can make their quote fit into my data. In order to do this, my method of choice was to lay out all of my relevant quotes and read through my narrative findings with just the quotes first to ensure that after reading, I had conveyed the message that I was hoping for. Once I felt that I had successfully done that, I went in and added my own text to connect and introduce each of the ideas in my narrative findings and each of the quotes individually. Although I could not have been there when collecting the data to know exactly what they meant, I felt that this process was allowing me to be most true to the data. Through this process, I felt that I had allowed the quotes to speak for themselves, meaning that the best process for analysis was actually offering minimal formal analysis, ensuring that the message conveyed was that of the students and teachers experience, and not the message that I had decided I wanted them to share.

     
     While it took me some time to determine the best way to go about this part of the writing process, it was not the most difficult thing I had to do. While so many of my quotes represented exactly what we were trying to argue in our paper, that students have a lack of connection to service work, there were some outliers. Some quotes talked about how students are all aware of how important service work is, and some mentioned that some students graduate from the Croft School to do service work as a profession or in college. With these examples, it was hard to say that students did not care about their service work in a cut-and-dry way. There were obviously some contradictions that needed to be navigated here. I struggled long and hard with what to do with my contradictions. I knew it wasn’t right to ignore them, as they had some meaning to them in the grand scheme of this research. I chose to add them towards the end of my section, using them to point out that this work does have a positive impact on some students who do it. Yet, as it says in “Analyzing Qualitative Interview Data: The Discourse Analytic Method” by Sanna Talja, the process of analyzing and interpreting qualitative data has to do with putting together what is called the “jigsaw puzzle” and acknowledging significant and strong patterns that are found in the data (Talja, 1999, p.467). While some of the Croft students acknowledged that some students allowed this service work to have a positive impact on their life post-Croft School, the overwhelming majority of students and teachers seemed to note that this work is not being done in a genuine way. This idea, one of our main ideas, had not been disproven. It had its contradictions but that did not make it invalid.

     By noting that this pattern had some contradictions, I feel that I will have more to work with when moving on to my analysis section of the paper. In being able to state that some students do go on to do this work, we can show through Bourdieu’s work on capital that they are taking the forms of cultural capital that the Croft School gave them and bringing them into their future, allowing their capital the potential to shift, change, or increase (Bourdieu, 1996). What this shows is that this service work is benefitting them in many ways that will extend beyond their time at the Croft School. They can take this cultural capital and use it to demonstrate their morality and humility to job prospects and universities. In looking at this data in this way, we can finally show how this idea supports our main idea: these students do not have a deep connection to the service work that they are doing. Whether they do this work while only at the Croft School or beyond, they are using their time and experiences with service to provide them with more cultural capital that will benefit them in the future, not in respect to their character and care for others but in the professional realmto advance their advantages. Therefore, while this example did explicitly contradict our main point, in examining it as part of the pattern and puzzle that is our data, we can see that it not only fits in with the data, but further proves our point as well.

      
As I mentioned, the fact that I had no part in collecting this data was an added challenge. When I went to use the data, I had to interpret, analyze, and sometimes it felt like I had to assume. So much lies in the words of the participants, but I worried that I was missing other important aspects, such as their body language, intonation, or perhaps some diverted eye contact. This process of figuring out how to interpret the data and navigating its contradictions has been one of finding the best way to take the data at its word and doing everything that I can to allow it to speak for itself while also finding its patterns and ensuring that these commonalities were made visible by noting interesting trends within the data.  

References:

Bourdieu, Pierre. (1996). The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. (Clough, L.C., Trans). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1989)

Talja, S. (1999). “Analyzing qualitative interview data: The discourse analytic method.” Library & Information Science Research, 21(4), 459-477. 

     It was a long and arduous process, but the data is coded, and the themes have been found. My groups members and I have chosen to write about community service at the Croft School and how it is considered important but the work they do is not actually impactful or meaningfulto the communities they are working in. Now that we have this idea solidified, the next step is to find sources for our literature review that we can use to analyze and theorize the data we have coded. I began looking through a number of databases to find sources on how community service serves the function of reproducing elites and allowing them to maintain their eliteness. I wanted to find sources that showed, more specifically, how this practice of doing service positivelyimpacted those that are doing it more than those that they are trying to help. I wanted to see what theories other authors had used and how they connected these ideas of community service and social reproduction.

       In my search, Bourdieu was a very relevant source. Many scholars have written on this topic, and as I plan to, many have used Bourdieu’s ideas to theorize their findings. His work on how elites doing service work allows them to maintain their eliteness is very relevant to our project. The students at the Croft School do service work so that the school can emphasize how deserving their school and students are of praise. They have so much, but they give back as well so it is all justified. Bourdieu’s concept of invisibility is very important as well because it shows that the only reason why this process is allowed to continue is because it is so secretive. If people were aware that elites were doing this work to maintain their position in society, they would be appalled. So, the elites do their service work and gain more and more cultural capital while the communities that they work on suffer at the hand of their reproductive practices (Bourdieu, 1996). This source has an obvious link to our project, as Bourdieu even explicitly speaks of the reproductive power of elites doing service work.

     However, Bourdieu was the obvious choice. Even Yoda agrees that Bourdieu is always relevant when talking and writing about the reproduction of different forms of capital! To deepen my understanding and analysis, I wanted to find another source as well. I browsed countless databases, looking for articles on how service work reproduced eliteness and the negative effects of service work, but was finding it so much easier to find sources on the benefits of service work. So many of the articles were examples of how service work can be good for those that do it and the schools that require it.

     At first, I was feeling at a loss. How could these types of articles help me in my analysis of the Croft School? I was looking for articles on how service work reproduces elites, and these articles were all showing service work to be a great thing that schools offered their students. However, I finally came across an article and I could instantly see how I could use it to further my analysis. This article was titled, “Doing Well by Doing Good: A Study of the Effects of a Service-Learning Experience on Students Success” and it is about how having service-learning experiences in a school’s curriculum results in students performing better academically in other subjects (Berson et. al., 1998). I could use this article to articulate one specific way in which service work wasbenefitingthe students who do it over others. Because service work was allowing them to perform better academically, it was providing them with yet another advantage over those that they were working on. This work was allowing elites to not only distance themselves from those in underprivileged communities, but it was also allowing them to get ahead of the members of those communities academically, giving them even more resources in their lives. This article would factor nicely into our paper, showing just how much the students of the Croft School were benefiting from the service work they were doing, with no notion that they were doing much good for the communities that they were going into.

     Finding articles and papers that are relevant to what you wish to write about can be a challenging task. There are so many works out there, but it can often feel like there is not one that says exactly what you want it to say. What I have learned through our exploration of theories with Adam is that the theory does not always fit perfectly. Oftentimes, the work of applying theories and using the works of others to further your analysis is about finding connections between your work and that of the other person so that you can use what they found to make sense of what you have found. Additionally, sometimes, it can be useful to employ multiple theories. In my case, I will use Berson et. al.’s article to show how the Croft School is using the practice of service-based learning to further the knowledge and prestige of its students. By making its students more elite, it makes the school itself more elite as well. In Bourdieu’s eyes, through the practice of service-based learning, Croft students can gain even more academic capital which they can turn into other forms of capital and in turn, increase their elite status. The practice of service-based learning is a means for them to reach their eventual goal of being as elite as possible. Therefore, by combining the ideas of Berson et. al. and Bourdieu, I can most effectively analyze the practices at work at the Croft School.

     While it is not always easy to apply theory to further analysis, it is the theories that allow the reader, and the author themselves, to make sense of what is happening in the analysis. By finding theories that apply to our paper, I have found it easier to make sense of what I want to say in the paper and how I will show that what our paper is about matters. It is not a work that stands on its own, but rather part of a long and complicated dialogue between works. It is another voice among others, trying to make sense of this cycle of reproduction of elites, moving closer to an answer of what this process truly entails.

References:

Berson, Judith S. and Younkin, William F. (1998). “Doing Well by Doing Good: A Study of the Effects of a Service-Learning Experience on Student Success.” Higher Education. Paper 184. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.unomaha.edu/slcehighered/184/. 

Bourdieu, Pierre. (1996). The State Nobility: Elite Schools in the Field of Power. (Clough, L.C., Trans). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1989)

             With each stage of the research project on the Croft School, new challenges arise, my most recent one being my first attempt at qualitative data coding. After the first read through of the data, my group and I constructed a list of the codes that we would be using for our data and what part each of us would be coding. In theory, this did not seem all that hard. My task was to read the data of two of the students and code it based on the list of codes that we constructed as a group.

            I sat down with my list of codes and my data ready to go, but quickly realized that I did not really know what I was doing. Should I find quotes from the data? Should I highlight sections related to my codes? I knew that the main purpose of my task was to pull sections of the data that were relevant to our topic, community service, but I was not exactly sure what this process would look like. I decided to consult the trusty internet and do some reading on the process of qualitative data coding, and I came across a very helpful article titled, “Tips and Tools #18: Coding Qualitative Data” which was just what I needed. It outlined the process and helped me better understand what I was doing and what I should be getting out of this process with my data.

           After reading, I decided that my coding method of choice would be to highlight the sections of the data that related to our codes and the topic of the project in general, and to further number them based on the relative code number. As I coded and highlighted, I began to notice some patterns with my codes that were consistent with what I had read in this article on coding. Firstly, I was using some codes far, far more often than others. This showed me that some of the codes we made were more relevant to our research than others, while it also demonstrated that some of the ideas and codes that we had written were more common topics of conversation in the data. According to the article, this was to be expected, as the coding process involves “redefining your codes” as you get further in the coding process and determining which were more or less important (“Tips and Tools #18: Coding Qualitative Data,” 2018). This also made me realize, and relieved, to see that these more frequent codes had the potential to be some of the major themes in our research. It was only once I started the coding process and started to see these themes that I realized how the process would continue from this point.

              Secondly, as I coded, I often found that sometimes I had a section of data that I did not feel connected to any of the current codes on the list. With this in mind, I found myself adding more and more codes to our data as I went along, in order to ensure that when I was done, all the important information was highlighted and there was a relevant code for each important topic. I ended my coding with a longer list of codes, but also with a sense that these extra codes had truly allowed me to find all the important details and information in my data. According to the article I read, one can have two types of codes in qualitative data, being pre-set codes and emergent codes (“Tips and Tools #18: Coding Qualitative Data,” 2018). Having this information from the article made me realize that what I was finding and experiencing with my data, this being having some codes but needing to add new ones and supplement what we had started with, was a normal part of the qualitative data coding process. So, I was never coding the wrong way! I just had to see that what I was finding was the right way all along.

                  Having this article with me as I coded helped me navigate some of the ins and outs of coding that I was not fully aware of and made it much easier to do what I needed to do with my data. Being a student researcher on a well-established project, I have been finding it important to reach out to outside sources to see how other people tackle the tasks involved in the qualitative data process and use what they have to say to ensure that I am on the right track.

References:

Impact: Center for Evaluation and Research. (21 October 2018). “Tips and Tools #18: Coding Qualitative Data.” Retrieved from http://programeval.ucdavis.edu/documents/Tips_Tools_18_2012.pdf.

When we sat in class on the day the research project was presented to us in Adam’s Elite Schooling in the Global Contextclass, I had no idea what doing this project would entail. I did not even fully understand what the process of reading the data, a process that Adam insisted was very important, truly meant. With all of this in mind, I was quite intimidated. The gravity of what reading the data would be like did not hit me until I picked up the data binder from Adam’s office. I decided to use the binder because I prefer not to read on computers and knew that I would get more out the reading experience this way. However, my nervousness was only increased by the sight of this large, dense binder full of pages and pages of transcriptions of interviews with students, teachers, and alumni of the Croft School.

The binder sat on my desk for a few days. It and its contents felt so foreign to me. Part of me was excited to see what all of the pages said but a larger part of me wanted to never open it. I felt like it did not belong to me and that what was inside was not for my eyes. It took me about three days to work up the courage to open the binder and begin reading its contents. When I began reading, I was so interested in what was on the page. Some of the stories were so similar to my past experiences with elite secondary schooling and some were not, seeing as these students were in a cultural context entirely different from my own, and it was so exciting to be reading these first-hand accounts of their super elite school. Yet, while I was finding the stories interesting, I noticed that it was hard for me to identify who had said what and where the individual students had differed in their responses. The words on the pages were so interesting but still felt very far outside of myself, as I gathered large-scale ideas about this place without connecting to the individual stories of the Croft School members. Even after doing all of this reading and note taking, I never listened to the student’s voices telling these stories and I never felt super connected to the data I had read.

At this point, I had this mass of data in my head and it was all pretty jumbled. I knew the common threads that were presented in the data, but the individual voices were absent from their stories. I knew that if I wanted to give this project the care and respect it deserved, I would have to do something to improve my relationship with this data. I had done some transcribing of data in the past and knew that listening to the data often helped me form more of a connection with what I was hearing. So, I went back and listened to or watched at least a few minutes of each interview and reviewed my notes so that I could connect a face and voice to these stories. After this process, I felt a bit better about my connection with this data, but I was hoping that this process of listening to the data would have done more for me and my connection with it. At this point, I still did not feel like my connection with it was as good as, say someone who did the interview, I felt that it had improved a bit and more or less reached a level where I could work with it. For me, part of this process has been coming to terms with the fact that the data will always feel a little bit out of reach for me, as I do not know it as well as someone who was there to collect it and see the life at this school in action.

As stated by Labaree in the “Characteristics of Qualitative Research” section of the Research Guide for USC, one of the benefits of qualitative research is the ability for the researcher to have direct contact with the subjects of their research and to have the opportunity to really get to know the setting, culture, and lives of those the researcher is looking at. Working with data that was collected by someone else is a challenge because you do not have the opportunity to have the same level of connection with it. Although my connection with the research will never be as deep as that of a researcher, I do feel that this listening to the data was a step in the right direction. By hearing the voices and seeing the faces of the members of the Croft School community, it helped me connect better with what I was reading in personal life and experience instead of just the abstract of words on a page.

I feel as though my ongoing process with this data will allow me to continue to form a relationship with it and I am looking forward to what that connection will look like. I am also curious to continue to examine and explore why this desire to connect to the data is so important to me. Is it that I feel disconnected from this data because of my cultural distance or simply because I was not present to collect it? Will this distance allow me to be a better researcher because it will help me navigate and avoid biases or will it limit me, as I struggle to connect with it because it is not truly mine? These are all questions that I will continue to explore as I spend more time with this data.

References
Labaree, R. V. (28 September 2018). Organizing your Social Sciences Research Paper: Purpose of Guide. Retrieved from https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/purpose.