The third morning began with a discussion of values, and how they relate to research. Jenny shared that she came to her way of doing research, a post-structuralist approach, because of her values. When doing research, she heard many contradictions in her taped interviews. None of the traditional theorists could explain them. She began to read about discourse and realized that the "contradictions" were in fact differences in discourse. Jenny then invited the group to consider their own values. Through rich discussion, we came to see how important it is to be aware of oneself and one's values within the research process.

On the final morning, the theme was: finding power and joy in doing research. Jenny spoke to two threads in the discussion: post-structuralism and evidence-based research.

The term "evidence-based" is used in ways that try to claim that only one thing is evidence and therefore only one decision or outcome is reasonable and a rational decision.

What counts as evidence? Where does evidence take you? One alternative to this view is to explore and make meaning together, to expand how we think about our research problems or questions and our data collection.

Post-structuralism is the idea that one meaning is as true as another. There is nowhere to say "this is the truth." But if there is no truth, is anything ever wrong? Where can we stand to disagree? James Gee suggests we use the following two ethical principles of human discourse:

• That something would harm someone else is always a good reason not to do it.
• One always has the ethical obligation to illuminate social practices that advantage one group over another.

The experience of this course was summed up by one participant who said, "I'm taking away a stuffed suitcase and only I will be able to unpack it."