SAGE Journal Articles
Click on the following links. Please note these will open in a new window.
This article offers a review of the relationship of methodological positivism and post-World War II U.S. sociology, especially its transformations in the last three decades of the twentieth century. With this as context, sociological methodology is rethought in terms of what cultural critics refer to as infraempiricism that allows for a rethinking of bodies, matter and life through new encounters with visceral perception and pre-conscious affect. Thinking infra-empiricism as a new empiricism at this time means rethinking methodology in relationship to the changing configuration of economy, governance disciplinarity and control in the early twenty-first century.
Recent debates between modernists and postmodernists have shaken the foundations of modern social science. The epistemological assumptions of long-established procedures for constructing and validating knowledge claims have been called into question. This article discusses how two major contributors to the “new feminist epistemologies”—Dorothy Smith and Patricia Hill Collins—selectively integrate premises of modernist and postmodernist thought into their standpoint approaches. However, the particular premises they select result in significant ontological and epistemological differences between their works. These differences reflect major controversies over materialism versus idealism, as well as essentialism versus diversity. As such, these different standpoints have important implications for feminist scholarship and political practice.
Teacher communication is sometimes referred to as the interface between knowing and teaching. Two major instructional goals include the acquisition of knowledge and the ability to transfer the knowledge learned in one context to new situations. The behavior of teachers can result in positive classroom outcomes because teachers can serve as catalysts who motivate students to achieve the cognitive and self-esteem goals associated with an academic environment (Brophy, 1979). Two factors influence a teacher’s ability to affect the self-concepts of students: (a) credibility and (b) self-esteem. Teacher credibility is formed in &dquo;the minds of students,&dquo; and teacher self-esteem is personal and internal (Bassett & Smythe, 1979, p. 179). The credibility construct, when applied to teachers, has been defined by McCroskey, Holdridge, and Toomb (1974) as consisting of five dimensions: character, sociability, composure, extroversion, and competence.
Measuring quality in qualitative research is a contentious issue with diverse opinions and various frameworks available within the evidence base. One important and somewhat neglected argument within this field relates to the increasingly ubiquitous discourse of data saturation. While originally developed within grounded theory, theoretical saturation, and later termed data/thematic saturation for other qualitative methods, the meaning has evolved and become transformed. Problematically this temporal drift has been treated as unproblematic and saturation as a marker for sampling adequacy is becoming increasingly accepted and expected. In this article we challenge the unquestioned acceptance of the concept of saturation and consider its plausibility and transferability across all qualitative approaches. By considering issues of transparency and epistemology we argue that adopting saturation as a generic quality marker is inappropriate. The aim of this article is to highlight the pertinent issues and encourage the research community to engage with and contribute to this important area.