Book Selections
This was a doctoral piece by an individual from the University of North Florida. This work sought to explore literature selection not only by economically disadvantaged students, specifically, economically disadvantaged Black elementary students. This author would have appreciated a pair of smaller studies for compare and contrast, under the circumstances, for example of Blacks and Hispanics / Asians / Arabs, etc.
The author, Ms. Williams, expressed authentic sensitivity and depth of knowledge on the subject matter she was exploring. Moreover, it was clear through her writing that she cared to make a significant contributory difference. I could hear her voice in her writing.
Detracting from Ms. Williams, for this author, were a few other things. One was that she also was exhaustive (many hundreds of documents) with her paperwork. Another issue was that her data collection tools were exclusive to audio recordings of children. The final issue this writer mentions had served her well, (her voice); however, this author wonders how much she may have influenced the outcomes.
The Holiday Meal (Heimtun, 2010)
Sourced from a Norwegian University, this researcher was initially unfamiliar with the gender of the writer's name. The gentleman (as it turns out) chose 32 single Norwegian women in the 35 to 55 age range to work with, and his topic centered around the emotional experience of eating out alone while on vacation. This author found this work obtuse, both in its premise and execution (and wonders, here as well, as to whether or not Mr. Heimtun was able to remove the influence of himself from his work effectively enough). This work, ironically, was not a holiday to read.
This author appreciated that the work sourced from what he views as a workable number (32 people). This author further delighted in the clever device of using as a data collection instrument solicited journals (thereby not only including the participants, but reducing some of the workload as well).
Mystery in the Kitchen (Horng & Hu, 2008)
Horng & Hu are both associated with institutions of higher learning in the island nation of Taiwan. I found their sample population of 17 to be questionably low, while heartening as do-able. What made this sample population even more questionable was how they divided them up: eight Western, six Chinese and three pastry specialists (this is akin to mixing apples and oranges, were the pastry specialists from South America, where the Chinese all entrée while the Western all side dishes?). Coding seems questionable, and the larger structure more simplistic than implied by Creswell (Creswell, 2006).
Nonetheless, with all four other works standing side-by-side, all from Western writers (mostly English-speaking writers at that), this author found Horng & Hu’s work most readable; muscular in its execution with details coming alive throughout. For what is ostensibly supposed to be left-brain stuff (business and all that), attempting to map creativity itself certainly seems an abstract, if not tall order. This writer was very impressed.
School Counselors (Scarborough & Luke, 2008)
The school counselor piece is the work of the pair of professors from different American universities. One of the distinguishing characteristics of this particular work is that the humans that Scarborough and Luke are looking to cull information from are also academics. Indeed, the creation of their pool occurred through a pre-whittled down mailer process to various institutions (calling forth an especially amenable population). Scarborough & Luke held so closely to the existing literature and the mechanics of the process that I could hardly hear what they had to say. Their study seemed more a deconstruction of the current state of CDSCPs then bringing forth out of such a thorough exploration any overt learning, anything new.
That is not to say that strategies were not identified, but it did not seem as if anything was added (anything that was new was simply being reported).
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