Papers by Jessica Van Cleave
Expanding Approaches to Thematic Analysis: Creative Engagements with Qualitative Data, 2024
Thematic analysis often seeks to draw boundaries that are describable and intelligible around mes... more Thematic analysis often seeks to draw boundaries that are describable and intelligible around messy data in order to capture and (re) present it. However, such analysis always already exceeds the boundaries of conventional, existing, or already-thought methodologies. This chapter reimagines writing as a situated, relational, interpretive approach to come to ‘themes’ in an effort to respond to the tangled complexities of data as meaning is made and exceeded. Writing as thematic analysis becomes a way to be with the excesses of data, producing analysis rather than reducing data to the analyzable. The goal of writing as thematic analysis is not to describe what is there but to see what can be produced. Drawing on an example from previous research, the author describes how her speculative analytic writing practice (re)conceptualizes theme as theoretical resonance—moments in which data pulsates with the connection to theory, as if they are one and the same.
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The Routledge International Handbook of Transdisciplinary Feminist Research and Methodological Praxis, 2024
In this chapter, the author attempts to contend with the overwhelm that resulted from the conflue... more In this chapter, the author attempts to contend with the overwhelm that resulted from the confluence of COVID-19, the neoliberal academy, and her own desire to pursue success. Drawing on Berlant’s notion of cruel optimism, the author engages with what she calls fragments of affect, which work across the ways in which thought is disciplined and experience is segregated in the neoliberal academy, disrupting divisions between the professional and the personal, the scholarly and the mundane, the authoritative and the entertaining. These moments of overwhelm are presented as short vignettes that sometimes occurred only once, sometimes happened over a period of days or weeks, and sometimes were refrains of affective experience that seemed to occur continuously or come in waves as she explored failing (or succeeding) to be a proper neoliberal subject. By exploring the overwhelm as a part of the affective terrain of transdisciplinary feminist work, the author seeks to revision overwhelm as a condition of
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Handbook of Research on Formative Assessment in Pre-K through Elementary Classrooms, 2020
In this chapter, the authors provide a formative assessment model geared toward supporting what C... more In this chapter, the authors provide a formative assessment model geared toward supporting what Carol Dweck called a growth-mindset. The authors describe the model in detail, then describe an action research study in which they collaborated with public school teachers to put the model to work with high-achieving, second grade students in the context of reading groups. Finally, the authors provide key results from the implementation and make recommendations for practitioners interested in using formative assessment to promote growth-mindset.
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English Education, 2019
In this piece, I draw on Erica McWilliam's model of Meddler in the Middle to disrupt familiar not... more In this piece, I draw on Erica McWilliam's model of Meddler in the Middle to disrupt familiar notions of teaching. The Meddler in the Middle provides an alternative to existing teaching models-the Sage on the Stage and the Guide on the Side-and foregrounds twenty-first-century skills such as problem solving, collaboration, and critical thinking. I explore possibilities for meddling in the context of high school English classrooms and teacher education courses through my teaching experiences; then I contemplate how the Meddler might function in our current standards-based environment.
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In this article, I explore the tension between the current political context in which science nee... more In this article, I explore the tension between the current political context in which science needs defending against anti-intellectualism and outright assaults on evidence as a means of decision-making on the one hand and the overzealous scientism that can result from backlash against a perceived lack of rigor in various forms of inquiry. To do so, I return to the emergence of the discourse of scientifically based research (SBR) in education and the debates surrounding it (2002-2013), which have implications for how and why educational researchers would advocate for science and what that advocacy might do. Specifically, I argue that we must have a science that does not allow alternative facts and politically expedient truth claims while still allowing science to be flexible, responsive, and theoretically informed. I conclude by advocating for theoretically informed activism and non-innocent science.
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During doctoral programs, many scholars have experiences with texts that disrupt, that interrupt,... more During doctoral programs, many scholars have experiences with texts that disrupt, that interrupt, that somehow open up unforeseen ways of being, thinking, feeling, and knowing. In this article, we provide short contributions from a wide swath of scholars who explore the many ways reading can change everything, electrifying us with possibilities of what might be thinkable now, and terrifying us because ideas and knowledge that we’d held dear all of a sudden feel tenuous and fragile. In short, reading rocks our worlds and, as a result, shapes the kind of inquiry we do.
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This article is the introduction to the special issue, “Work/Think/Play in Doctoral Education.” S... more This article is the introduction to the special issue, “Work/Think/Play in Doctoral Education.” Similar to its companion issue titled, “Work/Think/Play in Qualitative and Postqualitative Inquiry,” the goal of this issue is not to define, categorize, stabilize, or normalize the processes and practices of inquiry that remain behind-the-scenes of research reports and dissertations. Nor is it to make visible what researchers do when we say we are doing (and learning to do) qualitative and postqualitative research. Instead, we hope the articles in this volume open up conversations about scholars’ work/think/play that goes beyond the scope of the dissertation study and contribute to the continuous re-creation of teaching, learning, and doing postqualitative and qualitative research.
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In this article, we introduce the special issue on work/think/play in qualitative and postqualita... more In this article, we introduce the special issue on work/think/play in qualitative and postqualitative inquiry. Our aim for the issue is to open up conversations about what does happen, what can happen, and/or what should happen in the name of qualitative and postqualitative inquiry. We hope that the issue raises methodological questions in qualitative and
postqualitative inquiry about ways of being in the world as researchers—and most specifically, the need to keep raising questions rather than finding answers as we make and remake the field.
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In this chapter, we attempt to slow down our thinking about data's role in qualitative and post q... more In this chapter, we attempt to slow down our thinking about data's role in qualitative and post qualitative inquiry by focusing on what data does to us and becomes in our collaborative encounters with philosophical concepts. Specifically, we take up Deleuze and Guattari's concept ritornello because it seemed both necessary for our thinking about data and unfamiliar to us, two criteria that Deleuze said should constrain the philosophical work of creating new concepts. Rather than using the concept to think about and theorize data, we use the space of the page to map the becoming of ritornello in order to illustrate our encounters with the data produced as the concept becomes something that can slow down our thinking. In other words, we ask what happens to data, to ritornello, to Deleuze and Guattari, and to us when we layer, connect, extend, dissect, and so on our understandings and beings with ritornello. The goal is to continue our work of exploring how conventional writing structures (e.g., citation) reduce those becomings to the procedural and limit the possibilities for responsible methodological work that does not anticipate an end goal and remains open to the unknown. Our hope is that the work to revision data will enable us to interact or intra-act with the conventions of writing in as-yet unimaginable ways.
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In this article, I explore how to make space in the neoliberal academy for inquiry that welcomes ... more In this article, I explore how to make space in the neoliberal academy for inquiry that welcomes what is yet to be thought, imagined, anticipated while also remaining responsible to institutional demands that privilege a certain type of academic subject. I draw upon Manning and Massumi’s notion of uselessness to position philosophy as a generative tool.
Specifically, I explain how useless reading of philosophy positions becoming an academic subject as a continuous process of experimentation and learning instead of a reproduction of available descriptions enabled by neoliberalism. Philosophical reading exceeds the boundaries of what is already recognizable, and I dwell in that excess, shifting the focus away from complicity or resistance as the only possible responses to neoliberal mandates (either/or) and move instead toward
rethinking ways of being, knowing, living, and responding to others in the world (both/and).
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Journal of Early Childhood Literacy, 2017
This paper was written in the midst of enquiry – provoked by the question of what happens when we... more This paper was written in the midst of enquiry – provoked by the question of what happens when we write posthumanism, qualitative enquiry and early literacy together. Rather than offer a stable methodology that is the product of our experimentation, the paper functions as a map, a situated cartography that has multiple access points and is generative and always becoming. Likewise, it does not present findings from which to draw easy (or even difficult) conclusions. Instead, it produces possibilities, as it remains open to further intra-actions that fall into and out of view as different readers, immersed in their various entanglements, take it up and see what it-they-we might do/be/become as they move through the process of territorialization, deterritorialization and reterritorialization, entangled life happening.
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In the neoliberal academy, scholars must regularly create multiple texts (e.g., statements about ... more In the neoliberal academy, scholars must regularly create multiple texts (e.g., statements about research agendas, CVs, tenure-related research narratives) about themselves and their work to produce themselves as subjects whose research can be described, quantified, and slotted into commonly accepted categories (e.g., fundable, high impact, quality, data
driven). In this article, we question what is lost when it becomes natural and desirable to be recognizable as a singular and coherent brand within neoliberalism. Specifically, we make coherence visible as a mechanism of neoliberal audit culture rather than a stable scholarly goal. To do that, we engage with various textual strategies and media that enable us to think
of and enact coherence differently again and again. We hope working both within and against coherence as a mechanism of neoliberalism opens a perpetual sensitivity about authorship, ownership, and coherent scholarship and welcomes the unknown and unforeseen in our academic careers.
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Despite the assurance of professional autonomy provided in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS)... more Despite the assurance of professional autonomy provided in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) document, teachers often do not feel free to teach in ways they believe best serve students. In this article, we demonstrate how we read the CCSS in ways that might help literacy teachers see all sorts of available options for acting/thinking/teaching in relation to the standards. Specifically, we used Foucauldian theories and the metaphor of the hashtag both to understand how the standards limit the circulation of diverse ideas about literacy teaching and to insert complexity into the standards when we felt limited. Such an analysis renders the CCSS flexible enough to be rewritten in multiple contexts-an absolute necessity to prepare students for 21st-century literacies yet to come.
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A historical indicator of the quality, validity, and rigor of qualitative research has been the d... more A historical indicator of the quality, validity, and rigor of qualitative research has been the documentation and disclosure of the behind-the-scenes work of the researcher. In this paper, we use what we call methodological data as a tool to complicate the possibility and desirability of such transparency. Specifically, we
draw on our disparate attempts to address calls for transparency about methodological processes in our respective dissertation studies in order to examine how novice researchers can explore transparency as a situated, ongoing, and philosophically
informed series of decisions about how, when, and if to be transparent about our work. This work contributes to conversations about how qualitative researchers in education can understand, discuss, and teach qualitative inquiry while continuing to push the boundaries of the field.
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Similar to qualitative researchers who have troubled and been troubled by the impossibility of re... more Similar to qualitative researchers who have troubled and been troubled by the impossibility of representing subjects, in this article, we focus on how our attempts to write subjects to excess—to remain open to unforeseeable data that proliferated as we wrote—“radically de-naturalize[ed] what [we’d] taken for granted” as qualitative researchers. Specifically, the unraveling of the humanist subject initiated the rupture of what we thought of as a practice of responsible representation—citation. This rupture made visible how conventional citation could not hold the reconfigured, poststructural subject who remained in play during the research and even after. Rather than erase this complication, we saw it as an incitement to enact responsibility differently in relation to representation, and we draw upon our collaborative work with Sarah’s dissertation study to theorize citation as a necessary, useful, and impossible construct.
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These authors highlight the push for reading the CCSS as a living document like any other, open t... more These authors highlight the push for reading the CCSS as a living document like any other, open to interpretation and creative implementation.
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Journal of Language and Literacy Education, 2007
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Book Reviews by Jessica Van Cleave
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Papers by Jessica Van Cleave
postqualitative inquiry about ways of being in the world as researchers—and most specifically, the need to keep raising questions rather than finding answers as we make and remake the field.
Specifically, I explain how useless reading of philosophy positions becoming an academic subject as a continuous process of experimentation and learning instead of a reproduction of available descriptions enabled by neoliberalism. Philosophical reading exceeds the boundaries of what is already recognizable, and I dwell in that excess, shifting the focus away from complicity or resistance as the only possible responses to neoliberal mandates (either/or) and move instead toward
rethinking ways of being, knowing, living, and responding to others in the world (both/and).
driven). In this article, we question what is lost when it becomes natural and desirable to be recognizable as a singular and coherent brand within neoliberalism. Specifically, we make coherence visible as a mechanism of neoliberal audit culture rather than a stable scholarly goal. To do that, we engage with various textual strategies and media that enable us to think
of and enact coherence differently again and again. We hope working both within and against coherence as a mechanism of neoliberalism opens a perpetual sensitivity about authorship, ownership, and coherent scholarship and welcomes the unknown and unforeseen in our academic careers.
draw on our disparate attempts to address calls for transparency about methodological processes in our respective dissertation studies in order to examine how novice researchers can explore transparency as a situated, ongoing, and philosophically
informed series of decisions about how, when, and if to be transparent about our work. This work contributes to conversations about how qualitative researchers in education can understand, discuss, and teach qualitative inquiry while continuing to push the boundaries of the field.
Book Reviews by Jessica Van Cleave
postqualitative inquiry about ways of being in the world as researchers—and most specifically, the need to keep raising questions rather than finding answers as we make and remake the field.
Specifically, I explain how useless reading of philosophy positions becoming an academic subject as a continuous process of experimentation and learning instead of a reproduction of available descriptions enabled by neoliberalism. Philosophical reading exceeds the boundaries of what is already recognizable, and I dwell in that excess, shifting the focus away from complicity or resistance as the only possible responses to neoliberal mandates (either/or) and move instead toward
rethinking ways of being, knowing, living, and responding to others in the world (both/and).
driven). In this article, we question what is lost when it becomes natural and desirable to be recognizable as a singular and coherent brand within neoliberalism. Specifically, we make coherence visible as a mechanism of neoliberal audit culture rather than a stable scholarly goal. To do that, we engage with various textual strategies and media that enable us to think
of and enact coherence differently again and again. We hope working both within and against coherence as a mechanism of neoliberalism opens a perpetual sensitivity about authorship, ownership, and coherent scholarship and welcomes the unknown and unforeseen in our academic careers.
draw on our disparate attempts to address calls for transparency about methodological processes in our respective dissertation studies in order to examine how novice researchers can explore transparency as a situated, ongoing, and philosophically
informed series of decisions about how, when, and if to be transparent about our work. This work contributes to conversations about how qualitative researchers in education can understand, discuss, and teach qualitative inquiry while continuing to push the boundaries of the field.