Us-ing: Producing Qualitative Inquiry Pedagogies With/in Lively Packets of Relations

Abstract

We share about an introductory qualitative inquiry (QI) class when we asked students to bring their “thinking with theory” assignment paper and then invited them to think with theory-tissue paper-scissors-discarded library books-writing from literature reviews-transcripts of interviews-fieldnotes as a way to produce newness. This assignment was conceived as the result of our own theoretically informed approach(es) to pedagogy; it was not enough for us to read about post-theories or even to put them to work in our own inquiries, but we also had to find ways to live them out in our pedagogies. In this way, this assignment became one way for our students not only to read about QI, but also be/do qualitative inquiry(ers)—differently—as they came to know/be(come)/do. We focus this article on one student, Gigi, as she created and shared during that night in class and participated later in a follow-up focus group session. We end the article with several questions for other instructors of QI to consider in relation to their pedagogies and what they produce.