When I teach qualitative research courses, I incorporate primary and secondary text readings. I refer to the secondary text as the “interactive book presentation” text. Students negotiate the selection and reading of one additional text from a list provided. They read the text, interact with their small group about their text via Blackboard, and make an engaging presentation to the class at the end of the semester. Student provide a one page handout to all class members as well.

Some of the titles are new, while others offer a foundational context so that students can come away grounded in the conversations from ground breaking scholar’s work.

A popular and valuable text used Michael Agar’s (1980) The professional stranger: an informal introduction to ethnography. (Academic Press). Agar draws on his previous work in a small village in South India, his involvement in “NARCO” a drug rehab hospital in Kentucky, work conducted in a small Austrian village, and with the New York Narcotics Addict Control Commission.