Tell Me About That Time When... : When Stories and Observations Become Data

Narrative research methods allow researchers to consider the characters, settings, events, and themes prevalent across participants\u27 learning experiences, allowing them to show, not tell the data. However, it is only in the context of participants\u27 present action in the world that these stories offer the most insights into how they make meaning around their stories. In this study, I describe the role of stories in a case study of an adult, expert video gamer. I used narrative think scenes to extract data from interviews and reconstruct fictionalized stories of what key moments in his gaming history might have been like. I further linked these think scenes with my observations of his game play, further locating tacit understandings and practices in his learning and mastery of video games. The narratives offered powerful platforms for data analysis, member checking, and relationship building

Composing a Gamer: A Case Study of One Gamer\u27s Experience of Symbiotic Flow

Built upon symbiotic flow, that is a merging of flow theory (Csikzentmihalyi, 1975) and situated cognition (Gee, 2007) this dissertation presents the findings from a 6-month qualitative study of an elite gamer and his practices and experiences with video games. The study used mediated discourse analysis and case study methods to answer the following question: What does it mean to be an elite gamer, to one life-long player of video games? In addition, the following sub-questions were considered: a) What aspects of elite gaming are important and meaningful to one particular gamer? b) What moments of play does this gamer identify as significant? c) What does sustained play look like for one him? Data sources included interviews, observations of significant gaming (that is gaming in heightened states of enjoyment and success), observation de-briefs, co-analysis interview, and a research journal. The researcher coded observational data for elements of symbiotic flow and in response to interview data. Data are presented in narrative, expository, and graphic forms across the study. This inquiry has resulted in the creation of the Model of Nested Transaction in order to articulate and understand the nature of significant gaming experiences. Additional significant findings include: a) Time is the primary resource and commodity in this particular player\u27s elite gaming world, because it represents a level of dedication and insider status; b) this gamer values particular affordances in his gaming, namely experiences that develop knowledge and skills that can then be applied instantaneously in gaming contexts and be harnessed for longitudinal participation; c) video games provide the participant, and gamers like him, with possibilities for greatness, an aspect of his identity that is both critically important to him and often strikingly absent outside of games. The study argues for productive consideration of video games as a mediational tool of both meaningful learning and powerful identity exploration

A TJ Approach to Mental Disability Rights Research: On Sexual Autonomy and Sexual Offending

We believe it is impossible to understand the development and the power of therapeutic jurisprudence (TJ) without acknowledging that its roots in mental disability law have continued to expand and flourish over the decades, and that there is no other substantive area of the law in which every aspect – substantive and procedural, civil and criminal, statutory and constitutional. domestic and international – has been weighed and evaluated using a TJ lens. In this chapter, we consider how those roots have shaped the last three decades of research and the implications of what has developed. We look carefully at two sub-sets of mental disability law developments: the law of sexual autonomy and the law of sexually violent predators.We conclude that, while TJ has spread far and wide (substantially through David Wexler’s dual focus on the therapeutic design of the law (TDL) and the therapeutic application of the law (TAL)), it is still the area of mental disability law that is its heart and soul. We believe that all TJ practitioners ought to take seriously the scholarship that has developed in this specific area so as to shed light on TJ’s potential application to all other aspects of the law – substantive, procedural and structural