Episode 24: Episode 23: QR SIG Conference Overview

Qualitative Conversations

In this episode, Jessica Van Cleave (SIG Chair)
discusses with Cassie Quigley (Program co-chair) and Alexandra Panos (Program co-chair) what the Qualitative Research SIG has planned for the 2021 AERA conference. Below is the transcript of the conversations.
VanCleave, Jessica: Hello everyone, welcome to qualitative conversations a podcast series hosted by the qualitative research special interest group of the American educational research association. I'm Jessic vancleave the current chair of the qualitative research special interest group. And i'm happy today to be joined by our program co chairs cassie quickly and Alex panelists and will be providing an overview of the 2021 annual meeting, which will be virtual for the first time this year and will take place from April 8 to April 12. Doctor cassie quickly as an associate professor of science, education and associate chair and the Department of teaching learning and leading at the school of education at the University of Pittsburgh.She received her doctorate and curriculum and instruction at indiana University in 2010. Dr quigley's expertise and qualitative research is focused on methodologies that Center the participants, such as Community based methodologies and using data collection methods like photo methods. In the past 11 years she has published over 50 articles and book chapters focused on those methods, including in journals, such as the International Journal of qualitative studies and education. Qualitative inquiry and the journal of mixed methods for search she also co authored a book on steam education entitled and educators guide to steam education, which is published by teachers college press. She has presented her qualitative work at numerous conferences, both nationally and internationally, she teaches qualitative research methodology courses on topics such as participatory action research, validity and reliability for qualitative work and ethics around educational research.
VanCleave, Jessica: Alexandra panels as an assistant professor of literacy studies and affiliate faculty and measurement and research in the college of education at the University of South Florida. She earned her doctorate in literacy language and culture, education, with a minor in inquiry methodology at indiana university bloomington in 2018. Dr panels takes an interdisciplinary stance in her work as a critical qualitative methodology. And grounds her theoretical methodological and empirical work in her substantive field of literacy studies. She has published numerous articles and book chapters that focus on the critical environmental and spatial dimensions of qualitative methodologies and literacy studies. Most recently, she has served as senior guest editor on a special issue, focusing on the spatial dimensions of taken for granted qualitative research practices related to masking. And anonymous ation to be published in the international Journal of qualitative studies and education, this year.And, as a co author for a book project under contract with teachers college press titled confronting denial literacy social studies and climate change, thank you both for joining me today to talk about this year's Program.
Alexandra Panos: happy to be here.
Quigley, Cassie (she/her/hers): Thank you JESSICA.
VanCleave, Jessica: So, to get started on can you just offer an overview of the program how many sessions are included, and what is the range of topics we're going to see.
Quigley, Cassie (she/her/hers): sure. So this year we are really excited to have 14 different sessions 15 if you include the mentoring session and 16 with the business. Meeting, as well as the sessions include a variety of sessions around well being and care as well, we have a session around advocacy and justice. there's a wide variety of critical work that ranges from critical race practices post-human position ality feminist approaches and critical participatory inquiry. We are especially looking forward to learning from scholars in one session called disruption interruption change it's not enough what we need is sabotage critical participatory inquiry as sabotage in and out of the Academy this work draws from black and Asian feminist and D colonial stances.
VanCleave, Jessica: Wonderful that sounds really exciting and thought provoking so, can you tell us a little bit about how many submissions the singer seen this year and how many slots were allotted to the same by eight yeah.
Quigley, Cassie (she/her/hers): yeah absolutely so this year we had 46 submitted proposals and symposia 37 of those for paper or poster Roundtable sessions we had, A really a ton of symposium submitted, which were we had 10 symposium submitted this included a mentor session which we'll talk about a little bit later. And so, our process for reviewing and accepting these submissions really takes a lot to ever viewers like you all, and so we were really fortunate that. All of our reviewers accepted that the numbers of submissions that they proposed. That they could handle and really turned those sessions those reviews around in it in a short amount of time, so we just wanted to extend that thanks to our reviewers for that. Each of the proposals reviewed by three different people and including at least one graduate student reviewer. At that time, then it's turned over to Alex and me, and we spent almost about a month going over the process of looking across the reviews we do utilize the scores as you'll remember if you're a viewer you're often you're asked to score on a numerical basis, but that is not used to accept or reject our sessions instead we look holistically across the reviews, which really just helps to ensure that there's a bias towards one type of research over another, and so that kind of gives you a description of the process for the AERA sessions for the qualitative Research SIG.
VanCleave, Jessica: It is a lot of work to put this program together both by you and Alex and all of the Members who service reviewers and we are so so grateful for all of that service. It really is a big job and seeing what we can expect at this year's annual meeting I'm very, very appreciative of the range of opportunities and the thoughtfulness that was put into that process.
VanCleave, Jessica: So uhm one of the sessions that Members will have the opportunity to attend is the business meeting, can you tell us about the business meeting and what Members can expect if they attend that session.
Quigley, Cassie (she/her/hers): Yes, absolutely we're really hoping that everyone is able to attend the business meeting.Because it really is our one time to gather together as a group, and of course we are wishing that we could be you know in community with one another, together face to face. But we still would love to see everybody join us online for this session, the session is about an hour long and we were able to pack quite a bit into this session, including a program report awards, and we will have a speaker which i'll talk to you about in just a minute, so our program report moves us through the various committees that are on that qualitative research day, including the Program mentor session for the mentor Committee, among others, the award session, which is quite a heavy lift for that committee includes outstanding book award outstanding dissertation award, which will be presented by the committee chairs, then we will have the Egon Guba speaker this year and we are so fortunate to have Mirka Koro accept that award and she is going to be speaking on speculative experimentation and methodological … . Our discussant will be Aaron Kuntz. And then we will be JESSICA will be introducing that session will end the business meeting with some closing remarks and some an opportunity to give input from our sig membership, so please join us for that one hour session if you're a.
VanCleave, Jessica: Are we so grateful, when many of our Members attend that business meeting it's a nice opportunity to have a little bit of Community and connect with one another, even if we're doing so virtually this year, so, in addition to our business meeting one of the things that the sig supports each year or mentoring opportunities so, can you talk a bit about the mentoring session that's going to be offered and the other mentoring opportunities that are on the Program.
Alexandra Panos: Sure, I can take that one JESSICA. Um the mentoring session we're really excited about i'm Kelly and the committee have worked really hard to create a space where. Members of the SIG can get guidance and feedback and discuss their work as either graduate students early career scholars. And I know we opened it this year to associate level faculty for mentorship into the next stage of their career as well, but that's sessions, going to be Sunday at 230 and it's a closed session so if you haven't signed up this year, that means it's not open but. This summer, and next fall calls will be going back out for applications to join the mentoring session as a mentee and then. I know that Kelly, and her committee work to invite and solicit members of the sig to lead in their mentorship capacity and this year, as well as past years, I know they focused on the concept of sickness, so if you're feeling stuck if there's something that's. Challenging in your work right now, this is the session for you to consider for next year.
VanCleave, Jessica: um well, as you mentioned Kelly on the committee have lots of opportunities they not only support on our Members at a era, but they also provide opportunities for mentorship in the proposal process so keep an eye out for announcements on the list about those opportunities. There's also informal office hours with members of the same that are available during the annual meeting again that process as Alex mentioned is already concluded for this year but, but if you are interested in connecting with more senior members in the segue for mentoring opportunities at any stage of your career be on the lookout for opportunities as they come through the listserv.
VanCleave, Jessica: On, so this is a lot this program has a lot to offer and a wide range of things across every day that the annual meeting is active, so what suggestions, do you have for Members, maybe, especially first time attendees to navigate the eight year a program and take advantage of the exciting QR saying sessions.
Alexandra Panos: yeah thanks JESSICA, I agree, it can be a lot it's one of the reasons that orienting to the conference via the QR sig can be so helpful because it directs you to the kinds of sessions that as a qualitative researcher. And you would be especially interested in, so if you're already a member of the sig JESSICA has sent out A Google Doc that gives a really sort of straightforward overview calendar overview of each day. So you can see what's coming up and then at the bottom of that document there's a description of each of the sessions, with the abstract and the speakers and their titles of their papers and Roundtable session presentations and the symposia etc. But once the the system itself gets underway, and we have access to our virtual conference program if you're registered as an attendee or a presenter discussing or chair you'll be able to access that virtual conference platform through the AERA website and You can search for us via the sig so that you can find those sessions, you can search by presenter you can search by paper title. So it's it's pretty helpful, especially if you've already sort of done some of that homework of what is the QR sig doing and what are the, what are we up to in this space. I think it's also important to remember that if you're assigned to a session as a presenter co presenter a chair or discuss it or have some active role in a session. One of the cool things that they've shared with us about the virtual platform is that the system will just sort of plop you into this space that you need to be at that time, like there's no clicking or searching for you as a presenter or someone with a role in a session. If you'd like to attend a session within the platform, we believe, what i've come to understand, about the platform is that you'll be able to design your own schedule and joining session simply by clicking within the platform itself And we also strongly recommend that, given the nature of these new spaces, we know now, after a year For many of us of attending other virtual conferences that each virtual platform is unique and we should have access to it honor around April 2 and we want to recommend that you And, especially if you're presenting you and your co presenters spend some time getting used to the conference space use it to develop your own schedule and Just sort of stick in there and and get your get your hands on it era has made a number of videos available that describe the conflict conference platform and answer some questions about that, but we expect that getting in there ourselves will be the most instructive and we're waiting waiting with great with bated breath to get in there ourselves so we hope that's helpful and if you have any questions about the conference platform, the annual meeting website is a place where help will be found, and we are also always available to send you information that we might be able to share.
VanCleave, Jessica: there's some really great tips, thank you for helping us think about how we might orient ourselves and and navigate both the platform and the content of this year's annual meeting so.
VanCleave, Jessica: you're interested in the qualitative research say you've got you've been checking out our Program.
VanCleave, Jessica: On but you're not yet a member, so can you talk to us a little bit about how you become a member of the qualitative research special interest group and what some of the benefits of membership might be.
Alexandra Panos: Of course. Well, we think that you should be a member. Of the QR SIG definitely, especially if you're listening to this podcast which is produced by the QR SIG, so this is one of the Member benefits that extends beyond membership, but that you'd be supporting But when you become a member of AERA one of the things that you have the opportunity to to do is to select a division and sig. For free so most of the time you have to pay a small fee that helps support the sake, but you can when you register get one of those those free memberships and if you select the call say you're a member. Benefits include receiving emails specifically for the membership, which includes many opportunities for connecting with other members of the same with mentorship with workshops calls for special issues sort of a first pass at important content related to qualitative research and our personal favorite with membership to the sig includes opportunities to review for the Conference, which is so beneficial to our field to. The sig itself and to your fellow call researchers, so if you have any questions about membership, you can reach out to any of us and we're happy to answer them and we really hope that if you aren't yet you will join us.
VanCleave, Jessica: Absolutely, we are very lucky to participate in such a vibrant Community that is continuously growing, and we hope that as many folks as are interested well will join us and continue to diversify and broaden our Community. So thank you so much cassie and Alex for joining me today and providing an overview of what Members can expect from the qualitative research same program this year. I hope to see all of you who are listening at our business meeting and I hope you'll consider joining the sake and contributing to our Community thanks again for being with us today on qualitative conversations.
Alexandra Panos: Thanks JESSICA.
Quigley, Cassie (she/her/hers): Thank you.