Meta-ethnography and Seven Phases in Graduate Inquiry Supervision

Proceedings of The 3rd World Conference on Teaching and Education

Year: 2021

DOI:

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Meta-ethnography and Seven Phases in Graduate Inquiry Supervision

Ai-Girl Tan

ABSTRACT: 

Meta-ethnography and seven phases were invented to synthesize qualitative studies (Noblit & Hare, 1988). The study and methodology of meta-ethnography has been well received by health care scientists and researchers. Recently, researchers in the field of education (Noblit, 2019) have been engaged in research synthesis. Our paper shares how meta-ethnography and seven phases can benefit graduate students when teaching phases of meta-ethnography are innovated with a spiral approach to enhancing graduate capacities in inquiry and academic writing (Tan, 2021). Advancing from Tan (2021), further innovations are suggested to enhance teaching or supervising graduate research or inquiry studies. The current paper reports on an initial meta-ethnography on the topic of interest – graduate inquiry or research supervision. Using the seven phases, three studies of research supervision were synthesized to generate a conceptual framework of research supervision comprising among others processes such as modeling, conversation/dialogue, collegiality, and criticizing. Teaching and supervising experiences of four graduate students were referred to elaborate processes of supervising meta-ethnographic studies in education. They comprised one undergraduate student who was supervised by the author for 12 months in an educational research course, and three graduate students of the Master degree program who attended a human development course and an integrative project course. While meta-ethnography is a study or a methodology for synthesis performed or led by experienced researchers, with an innovative teaching spiral approach and supervising processes, the phases guide graduate inquiry supervision, which in turn help build capacity of research inquiry and academic writing of graduate students.

Keywords: meta-ethnography, seven phases, graduate supervision, inquiry, and innovation.