Critical Qualitative Research Design pages 70–76 Related to understanding your goals as a researcher is the development of the rationale of the study. A rationale is the reason or argument for why a study matters and why the approach is appropriate to the study. Rationales can range from improving your practice and the practice of colleagues (as in practitioner research), contributing to formal theory (e.g., where there may be a gap in or lack of research in an area), understanding existing research in a new context or with a new population, and/or contributing to the methodological literature and approach to an existing corpus of research in a specific area or field. Thinking about and answering the questions in Table 3.1 can aid in this process. Considering these kinds of questions is central to developing empirical studies, and it is important to understand that these rationales and goals will also lead you to conduct different types of research, guiding your many choices—from the theories used to frame the study to the selection of various methods to the actual research questions as well as designs chosen and implemented. There are many strategies for engaging in a structured inquiry process and through it an exploration of research goals and the overall rationale of a study. These strategies can include the writing of various kinds of memos, structured dialogic engagement processes, and reflective journaling. Across these strategies, creating the conditions and structures for regular dialogic engagement with a range of interlocutors is an absolutely vital and necessary part of refining your understanding of the goals and rationales for the research. We describe each of these strategies in the subsequent sections. Memos on Study Goals and Rationale Memos are important tools in qualitative research and tend to be written about a variety of different topics throughout the phases of a qualitative study. Memos are a way to capture and process, over time, your ongoing ideas and discoveries, challenges associated with fieldwork and design, and analytic sense-making. Depending on your research questions, memos can also become data sources for a study. There is no “wrong” way of writing memos, as their goal is to foster meaning making and serve as a chronicle of emerging learning and thinking. Memos tend to be informal and can be written in a variety of styles, including prose, bullet points, and/or outline form; they can include poetry, drawings, or other supporting imagery. The goals of memos are to help generate and clarify your thinking as well as to capture the development of your thinking, as a kind of phenomenological note taking that captures the meaning making of the researcher in real time and then provides data to refer back and consider the refinement of your thinking over time (Maxwell, 2013; Nakkula & Ravitch, 1998). While we find writing memos to be a useful and generative exercise, both when we write and share them in our indep.

1. Critical Qualitative Research Design
pages 70–76
Related to understanding your goals as a researcher is the
development of the rationale of the study. A rationale is the
reason or argument for why a study matters and why the
approach is appropriate to the study. Rationales can range from
improving your practice and the practice of colleagues (as in
practitioner research), contributing to formal theory (e.g., where
there may be a gap in or lack of research in an area),
understanding existing research in a new context or with a new
population, and/or contributing to the methodological literature
and approach to an existing corpus of research in a specific area
or field. Thinking about and answering the questions in Table
3.1 can aid in this process. Considering these kinds of questions
is central to developing empirical studies, and it is important to
understand that these rationales and goals will also lead you to
conduct different types of research, guiding your many
choices—from the theories used to frame the study to the
selection of various methods to the actual research questions as
well as designs chosen and implemented.
There are many strategies for engaging in a structured inquiry
process and through it an exploration of research goals and the
overall rationale of a study. These strategies can include the
writing of various kinds of memos, structured dialogic
engagement processes, and reflective journaling. Across these
strategies, creating the conditions and structures for regular
dialogic engagement with a range of interlocutors is an
absolutely vital and necessary part of refining your
understanding of the goals and rationales for the research. We
describe each of these strategies in the subsequent sections.
Memos on Study Goals and Rationale

2. Memos are important tools in qualitative research and tend to be
written about a variety of different topics throughout the phases
of a qualitative study. Memos are a way to capture and process,
over time, your ongoing ideas and discoveries, challenges
associated with fieldwork and design, and analytic sense-
making. Depending on your research questions, memos can also
become data sources for a study. There is no “wrong” way of
writing memos, as their goal is to foster meaning making and
serve as a chronicle of emerging learning and thinking. Memos
tend to be informal and can be written in a variety of styles,
including prose, bullet points, and/or outline form; they can
include poetry, drawings, or other supporting imagery. The
goals of memos are to help generate and clarify your thinking as
well as to capture the development of your thinking, as a kind
of phenomenological note taking that captures the meaning
making of the researcher in real time and then provides data to
refer back and consider the refinement of your thinking over
time (Maxwell, 2013; Nakkula & Ravitch, 1998). While we find
writing memos to be a useful and generative exercise, both
when we write and share them in our independent research and
when we share them within our research teams, they may not
serve the same role or fulfill the same purposes for every
researcher. We suggest other activities and a variety of memo
topics throughout the chapter (and the book) to encourage and
foster engagement through writing or what we term structured
reflexivity.
We hope that Examples 3.1 and 3.2 (as well as the two excellent
examples included in the appendix that we urge you to read)
help you to see and appreciate the incredible range and
variation of approaches to and foci within these kinds of memos
as well as the multiple writing styles used by the authors. We
want to also remind you, after reading these, that while they are
personal sense-making documents, engaging in discussion of
them with colleagues and advisers is an important part of
making sense of and thinking through these various influences

3. on your thinking and being as researchers. These dialogic
processes are described in the next section.
Terms and Concepts Often Used in Qualitative Research
Fieldwork: In qualitative research, fieldwork entails the process
of collecting data in a natural setting. This means in a setting in
which the phenomenon would naturally occur (e.g., a
neighborhood, organization, institution, or workplace). The
term fieldwork, which comes from the ethnographic tradition of
participant observation, is often used in qualitative research to
refer to the located process of data collection.
Recommended Practice 3.1: Researcher Identity/Positionality
Memo
The purpose of a researcher identity/positionality memo
(Maxwell, 2013)4 is to provide a structure, at an early stage in
the research development process, to facilitate a focused written
reflection on your researcher identity, including social location,
positionality, and how external and internal aspects of your
experiences and identity affect and shape your meaning-making
processes and influence your research.
We recommend that researchers with all levels of experience
write this kind of memo and that you engage with this memo
and add to or revise it over the course of a given study. In
addition, we encourage researchers to write a new memo with
each new research project since one goal of the memo is to
connect aspects of your identity to the research topic and phases
of the research process itself. For example, this memo is a
required assignment in the doctoral-level methods courses we
teach, and it is assigned before the students walk too far down
the path of their independent research so that there is
opportunity to challenge foundational assumptions and the
relationship of who they are to the proposed study. Then the
students are asked to reflect back on that memo once engaging
in fieldwork so that they can further reflect on the influence of
their positionality in the context of their interactions with study
participants. We also recommend this memo to high school

4. students with whom we conduct youth participatory action
research (YPAR) as a way to help them understand the
nonneutrality of research and to locate themselves within their
justice-oriented research projects. Students of all ages and
levels of research acumen find the memo to be both valuable
and generative (and routinely describe the process of writing it
as “more challenging” than expected).
Our students and colleagues share that they find writing this
memo not only vital to their own critical understandings of
themselves and their identities but also invaluable to clarifying
their understandings of the topic and design process. Students
also report that they revisit this memo throughout the research
process to help illuminate their thinking and monitor any biases
they described in the memo. Some choose to write subsequent
identity memos as aspects of their identities emerge as relevant
to their inquiries. (Example 3.1 is a second researcher
identity/positionality memo.) We encourage our students (and
you) to share these memos with a range of thought partners in
ways that help you to hear constructively critical feedback on
your biases as they relate to your positionality and research.
· Topics to consider exploring in a researcher
identity/positionality memo include the following: Positionality
(relationship of self and roles to study topic, setting, and/or
goals)
· Social identity/location (e.g., social class, race, culture,
ethnicity, sexual orientation/identity, and other aspects of your
external or internal identity)
· Interest in the research topic and setting
· Reasons and goals motivating the research
· Assumptions that shape the research topic and research
questions
· Assumptions about the setting and participants and what
shapes these
· Biases and implicit theories and the potential
implications/influences of these for your research
· Guiding ideologies, beliefs, and political commitments that

5. shape your research
· Intended audiences and reasons for wanting to address/engage
them
· Intended audiences and reasons for wanting to address/engage
them
· Other aspects of your identity and/or positionality in
relationship to the research
· If engaging in team research, looking at the demographics and
other features of the team in relation to your own identity and
the research topic, context, and process
The above list is primarily meant to generate ideas. We are
hesitant to include a list at all because we do not want to limit
the possibilities; however, we provide one to help guide
possible directions for this process. Still, we want to underscore
that there is no wrong way of composing this memo, and,
furthermore, that you can write and share multiple memos
throughout the research process that relate to these topics since
this kind of reflexive writing is not meant to only happen at the
outset of your research.
We suggest that you consider sharing these memos with trusted
colleagues and friends who can help you consider these issues
productively through engaging in focused dialogue about the
connections between self and the research at hand. We have also
found that the sharing of these memos on research teams can be
a vital source of thoughtful sharing that can generate powerful
learning and exchange and help to situate the research team as a
community of practice or inquiry group.5
In Examples 3.1 and 3.2, we include two different examples of
researcher identity/positionality memos from past and present
doctoral students at different stages in the research process. In
Appendixes D and E, we provide two additional examples so
that you see the range of ways that students approach these
memos.
Example 3.1: Researcher Identity/Positionality Memo
Susan Feibelman
Researcher Identity Memo 2

6. October 14, 2012
Why am I interested in the gendered nature of school
leadership?
TAKE ONE (excerpted from my dissertation proposal): My
interest in this topic is rooted in my personal experience as a
school leader. Grounded in my first-hand experience with
mentor-protégé relationships in both public and independent
school settings, as well as the beneficial peer-to-peer mentoring
relationships I have with other women leaders. In recent years,
these conversations have acquired a frankness that reveals a
growing impatience with the androcentric nature of independent
school leadership and the fomenting of a “new boys club” that
ensures the patriarchy’s longevity (Baumgartner & Schneider,
2010). Repeatedly women’s (White and of color) personal
narratives describe the systematic regularity with which they
are passed over for influential leadership roles. Our mutual
interrogation of the context in which this practice unfolds has
spawned a “mental itch” (Booth, Colomb, & Williams, 2003, p.
40) that is reinforced by a compelling body of research, which
describes a similar trajectory for women leaders in public
school. Fletcher (1999) refers to this phenomenon as “the story
behind the story.”
All research—the particular question it finds important to ask,
the point of view from which the question is posed, the source
of the data used to find answers, and, of course, the
interpretation and conclusions drawn from the analysis—are
surely, albeit invisibly, influenced by the standpoint of the
researcher. (Fletcher, 1999, p. 7)
Fletcher’s use of relational theory to frame her own thinking
about leadership development in corporate settings has
immediate application to various forms of leadership within a
school community. The principle of relational theory argues,
“growth and development require a context of connections . . .
interactions are characterized by mutual empathy and mutual
empowerment where both parties recognize vulnerability as part
of the human condition, approach the interaction expecting to

7. grow from it and feel a responsibility to contribute to the
growth of the other. (Fletcher, 1999, p. 31)”
Relational theory could as easily be applied to discussions about
the practice of teacher inquiry and its self-reflective, mutually
engaging, and action-oriented ethos.
TAKE TWO: My interest in this topic began with a question I
started to raise with fellow teachers and school leaders
following a student council election. Once again a female
student running for the position of president had delivered a
thoughtful, well-developed speech only to lose the election to a
male classmate, whose speech was loosely organized and
disarmingly comedic. The student voters responded to the
candidate’s irreverent charm y electing him president. While
names and faces would change, this gendered dynamic would be
played out election, after election.
Knowing the students and their track records for working on
behalf of the student body, I began to question what role gender
played in the election results. I also started to look more
carefully at the ways in which adults in the school community
modeled gender preferences through their unspoken support of
certain leadership styles over others. What then was the
relationship between our students’ choices and the way we as
their teachers might be prone to associate leadership with
certain gender traits? Is this a topic for teacher inquiry?
Annotation: In this memo, Susan reflects on her personal and
professional experiences with the gendered nature of leadership
at two different points in her research trajectory. Note that this
is the second researcher identity/positionality memo that she
wrote in relation to her study. Susan decided to structure this
memo in response to a guiding question, which can be a
generative way to approach a research identity/positionality
memo.
Annotation: In the first section, Susan relates her personal
experiences to relevant, preexisting literature. In the second
section of this memo, Susan discusses her interests to another
professional experience. It is important to note that this memo

8. was written when Susan had already developed research
questions and had located her topic within relevant literature.
This is an excellent example of a researcher
identity/positionality memo; however, many memos will not
look like this, especially earlier on in the research process.
Example 3.2: Researcher Identity/Positionality Memo
Personal and Professional Goals for Dissertation Study
Mustafa Abdul-Jabbar
December 12, 2012
I see my confidence growing . . . I still think it has a way to go,
but I see my confidence building . . . and I feel like I have more
tools at my disposal, whether it’s research or people, to be able
to connect with if I’m not sure. Whereas before distributed
leadership, I felt limited in that.
—Rosalie (personal interview, July 27, 2011) [school principal]
As an educational leadership doctoral student at the University
of Pennsylvania, one of the chief-most issues I have sought to
understand has been how school leaders cultivate trust within
the educational organization. As a practitioner and school
administrator in southeast Texas, an issue of practice that arose
for me in my work was how to operate effectively in school
organizations with low levels of trust, including how to
systematically develop greater trust rapport and subsequent
organizational capacity amongst instructional staff in low-level
trust organizations. In pursuing research that addresses this
problem of practice, I have sought to better understand how
individuals within the school organization learn to trust one
another and how they come to understand one another as
trustworthy.
I have chosen to study relational trust within the context of the
Penn Center for Educational Leadership’s distributed leadership
professional development program because the leadership
paradigm inherent in the program is one that moves away from a
focus on school principals, as the sole drivers of teaching and
learning, toward a distributed perspective as a framework for
understanding leadership. Thus, acknowledging that “school

9. leadership has a greater influence on schools and students when
it is widely distributed . . . (i.e., school teams, parents, and
students)” (DeFlaminis, 2011, p. 1). I feel that this leadership
paradigm is more attuned to the socioemotional and social-
psychological elements that are conceptual staples in research
and literature on trust, more recent literature on successful
leadership (see Yukl, 2009), and more consonant with my
professional experience.
Distributed leadership, in that it identifies leadership as not
predicated on rank/position, at least at the conceptual level,
equalizes persons in the organization. For example, a teacher
may be foregrounded during a particular activity while a
principal is backgrounded, if the teacher’s activity is more
closely aligned with the core work of the organization. Results
from the 2011 pilot study into how leadership team members
were conceptualizing leadership found that Archdiocese team
members at the piloted school site successfully internalized this
idea—that the phenomenon of leadership entails more than mere
formal position or hierarchy but rather leadership practice is
mutually constituted by the interaction of organizational
members across various situations. It was also found that team
members at the pilot school site were typically unacquainted
with this definition of distributed leadership practice before
their professional development sessions; thus, what they
recognized as leadership practice was often broadened through
their participation in the distributed leadership (DL) program.
I have chosen this program context for study because I am most
interested in how teachers and administrators, operating vis-à-
vis one another on more equal terms, learn to trust one another.
I believe that insight into this research arena will contribute to
educational leadership scholarship and, through honing my
understanding of the interplay between leadership and trust in
schools, help me to improve my own professional practice as a
school leader.
Annotation: In this memo, Mustafa explores and describes
where his interest in the topic of relational trust in leadership

10. emerges from, namely, his past professional experiences.
Annotation: In this next part of the memo, Mustafa explores the
reasons for wanting to study the topic of relational trust within
this specific context.
Youth and Society in the Developing World
3500words
Select one question from the list below.
1. How useful is the transitional notion of youth? Discuss in the
context of the World Development Report (WDR) 2007.
2. To what extent is a youthful demography an opportunity for
socio-economic transformation? Discuss with reference to one
developing country.
3. Is there validity to the claim that the youth bulge – i.e. a
predominance of young people in society – increases the
likelihood of violent conflict? Discuss with reference to one
developing country.
4. “Civil war is a not a stupid thing”. Discuss why youth
participate in armed conflicts with reference to one developing
country.
5. Youth mirror, as are mirrored, by society in developing
countries. Discuss using one developing country as a case study.
6. Conceptions of leadership as “person” and as “position”
devalue the role of youth in society. Discuss with reference to
one developing context.