What is Research? Methodological Practices and New Approaches by Jeanette Rhedding-Jones.
What is Research? Articulating a clear-cut answer to this question that everyone will agree on is just not possible.
As Jeanette Rhedding-Jones shows in her splendidly plain-spoken book by addressing this question one becomes aware that there is so much more to learn, understand, and consider when planning, doing, publishing and evaluating research.
Rhedding-Jones has a special skill of writing as if in conversation with the reader. She has not set out to impress as an academic but to help beginner researchers and researchers wanting to change the way they research and write. It is an immensely practicable book well suited to the graduate student researcher or to the teaching professional wanting to research an aspect of practice. Key terms are defined and academic jargon is made understandable. For example:
This chapter introduces the crux of the matter of research. Crux means what is crucial, or what lies at the core or the heart of the difficult matter. What is crucial for research are theories, inquiry approaches and methodologies … So what is a theory? I would say it is a set of ideas explaining something. Usually seen as an opposite of practice, I think the two may combine. What counts in academic writing though, is your level of sophistication in describing, explaining, producing and constructing your own theory from those of other people, because of your research practice. (p.42)
There are many little gems of insight throughout the book for research supervisors and teachers of university research method courses to pluck out and base lectures and class discussions on. Some examples are:
- Research is always gendered, because researchers are men and women, and we all have gender (p.100).
- The [case] study is what lies all around the case. Rather like a larger piece of baggage with a smaller one (the case) inside it. If you imagine the study as being larger than the case but containing it, then you have an idea of what a case study is (p. 68).
- Quite often, those who know the people who are successful get the publications (p.137).
Informed helpful advice is passed to the reader. For people wanting to get ahead as researchers such advice as given by Rhedding-Jones is unlikely to be found quickly elsewhere. As an example, she explains how the journal manuscript submission and rejection process works in this way:
f you have to do a re-write, remember that the top journals apparently have a 90 percent rejection rate. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try. You might be surprised at how well the international market regards your work. For any rewrite, take very seriously what you are told to do. Lose your liking for what you wrote before and take up the new ideas and structural rearrangements your referees describe… Many authors simply don’t do what they are asked, and just get rejected. Others lose heart, or their lives fall apart, and they give up. My advice is to hang in there. If you need a lot of time, just contact the editor and say you will send it when you can. (p. 144-5)
Language and meaning in research is a theme that flows through the text. As an Australian living inNorway, Rhedding-Jones explains that she reads Norwegian fluently and follows quite a lot of Swedish and Danish. It has given her an understanding of some of the difficulties of the English language and its complicated meanings for Scandinavians (and other non-English speaking cultures). This is another reason why the book is of immense practical appeal – it is an international book that does not take-for-granted a universal agreement on the meaning of key concepts and their application.
The book contains 12 chapters covering topics of the person as the researcher, practitioner uses of research, locating your research in the disciplines, theory, inquiry, methodology, ethics, gender, ethnic diversity, postmodernity, writing, and publishing.
Published 2005. Available from Amazon
