Teaching by operationalising learning that attends to diverse learning styles : The Recurring Hourglass instructional design

by Christina Silver, author of Using Software in Qualitative Research: A Step-by-Step Guide. This post is part 2; see part 1 here.

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At the practical level teachers of qualitative methods and tools design a curriculum, workshop or apprenticeship. The Recurring Hourglass instructional design evolved  throughout the first 10 years of my CAQDAS teaching trajectory in response to my own teaching experiences, discussions and collaborations with colleagues, pedagogic research and existing theories (in particular the elaboration theory of instruction, Reigeluth, 19791). It was designed to build knowledge cumulatively and to reflect the diversity in how students learn by alternating foci of instruction (narrow and broad) and level of learning (whole group, small group, individual); hence the term ‘recurring hourglass’. Figure 3. Illustrates part of a Recurring Hourglass Instructional Design, using a two-day workshop model with Five-Level QDA embedded as an example.

Figure 3. Part of a Recurring Hourglass Instructional Design – example of a two-day workshop model with Fivel-Level QDA embedded (Silver & Woolf 2015).

 Each learning chunk is explicit concerning its objectives and the instructional strategies employed as well as the foci and level of learning. Examples of objectives include contextual discussions, guided-instruction, analytic planning and illustrative discussions and instructional strategies include demonstrations, discussions, exercises, student presentations, illustrations and individual support and feedback.

The Recurring Hourglass instructional design is flexible and adaptable, for teaching qualitative methods and tools in an integrated way and used in teaching and learning encounters of varying lengths and formats.  The way learning activities are alternated in terms of their frequency and sequence as well as content differs according to the teaching format, learner needs, and the momentum and progress of each learning encounter. Whatever the specifics of an integrated instructional design, basing it on the recurring hourglass model enables methodologically relevant facilitation of learning, which involves illustrating uses of software tools in a variety of analytic contexts.

In CAQDAS workshops this includes an overview of the software as a whole, illustration of its longer-term potential in later phases of a data analysis, and the appropriate use of software features in different phases of a data analysis. The complexity of CAQDAS packages and the diversity of learners’ prior experience and current needs requires careful management in order to balance the acquisition of abstract knowledge and practical hands-on experience. The recurring hourglass instructional design aims to reflect and facilitate this.

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