{Author Name [first-name middle-name-initials last-name]}
{Institution Affiliation [name of Author’s institute]}
Purpose: The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate the experience of journaling for last three days and its potential in the long term qualitative research. The art of writing a journal within the framework targets to illuminate the understanding of this conceptual writing to the audience.
First day:
When I commenced writing an essay in a journal format, I started a detailed research beyond the concepts and approaches of journaling the research. It is a formal writing method where a person can explain his work more beautifully as a researcher or as an educator. First it is necessary to understand the necessity of this writing style, that why I needed to write a research in journal format. There are several advantageous factors of journaling. First of all, journaling offers an understandable of writing to others. It fulfills the conception that if something is not well written can never be used to educate. Journaling customizes the research process in such a way of refined writing and clarifies his or her thoughts about to qualitative research techniques (Janesick, 1999).
I studied thoroughly about journaling and attended training sessions on it. A systematic analysis of journals samples from the last decade facilitated my research skills and provided beneficial insights abut this approach. The most challenging part of the journal writing for me was how to initiate? Justify your research in the journal without losing its uniqueness is another big question.
1. It represents the position of the researcher in a very sophisticated way through writing and reflection like an art piece of any artist work.
2. It also emphasizes the position and responses of the research contributor.
3. Journal is an interactive tool of communication between the contributor and the researcher in the study through an interdisciplinary demonstration of data.
4. Journaling is like a connoisseurship, where individuals are the connoisseurs of the thinking and reflection style, and representatives of their perception as qualitative researchers (Janesick, 1999).
There are various formats available on this ancient technique, provided by various experts in literature. In journaling, I followed the concepts of Janesick (2011) in the narration of paper. According to him techniques with bibliography avert diversion while reading the existing narrative.
Second day
Next day I found out that how this writing makes sense and offers a live experience provided by researcher and participants or contributors. There is a delicacy of presenting everything from the name of a researcher to the entries of citations; that one selects to reference his work. From readings of Janesick (2011) on journal writing it felt like it’s a way to get feedback from ourselves. It potentiates us to live a full and open reflection of our thoughts (Janesick, 2011). The Journaling requires you to develop and express a research questions associated to the purpose of the study. In journaling, writing is implemented to the research process to yield a data set of the researcher’s reflections on the research act. The elements that contribute to the perspective and the variables that impact the perspective, define the exploratory spirit of a qualitative research. Participants are other elements that can filter the ideas and beliefs with their responses to the research progression (Janesick, 2011).
Third day
The most amazing strength of the qualitative researcher I learned is his capability to utilize all his senses in accomplishing the research act. Often data collection requires more than it seems, vision, careful listening, feeling of touch and smell or even taste. For an inquiry-based research, it needs to spend a lot of time with the participants and the mode of inquiry should be apparent in the social setting. It demands a complete dedication to reach the depth of the truthful data (Janesick, 2011). Janesick relates writing with art, and Dewey explains art as a link between the community and understanding of individuals (Dewey, 2005). Therefore, the qualitative researcher is like an artist who bridges the gap of individual experience with the community.
I also observed that journal also contributes to researcher’s work. These benefits are linked to the writing process as well as the writing product. It is a place where events are recorded, and ideas born and explored. (Borg, 2011)
Conclusion and future directions
While studying and speculating the future of journaling technique of writing, I explored several points that provide benefit of journaling as a qualitative research tool. Through journaling, a writer becomes more reflective. This type of writing presents an opportunity to write uninterrupted without distraction. It bridges the gap of community and understanding of perception of any individual. It is a well-appreciated tool implemented in the arts and humanities, where the researcher can put his thoughts without any fear and can go beyond the limit to express. In an active voice researcher describes a thorough analysis of his concept to the reader, which he had extracted from a deep knowledge dig (Janesick, 1999).
References
Borg, S. (2001). The research journal: A tool for promoting and understanding researcher
development. Language Teaching Research, 5(2), 156-177.
Dewey, J. (2005). Art as experience. Penguin.
Janesick, V. J. (1999). A journal about journal writing as a qualitative research technique:
History, issues, and reflections. Qualitative Inquiry, 5(4), 505-524.
Janesick, V. J. (2011). "Stretching" exercises for qualitative researchers (3rd ed.). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, Inc.
Ortlipp, M. (2008). Keeping and using reflective journals in the qualitative research process. The
Qualitative Report, 13(4), 695-705.
