Using feminist relational materialism as a theoretical map, this paper seeks to reimage traditional case study methodology through the use of diffractive methodology. Reading and writing data diffractively is to refuse to privilege teacher and student talk and to instead study how material-discursive practices intra-act as phenomenon. To do this, we developed question-sets based upon Barad's (2007) work to interrupt our habits of thinking in regard to a teacher-student writing conference. These

more »

... question sets provoke our thinking with data from fourth grade teacher-student writing conferences. We play with diffractive methodology highlighting one teacher-student writing conference as intra-activity. Experiencing the teacher-student writing conference again (and again) the question-sets diffract a response and a response diffracts the question-sets, calling us to a continuous becoming, an ethical consideration of how our research and teaching practices matter. We are left wondering if there is a methodology to search for or if methodology is an invitation to an ongoing performance, to join a dance of-the-world, in a constant making and re-making and wondering of what might be? Key words: feminist relational materialism; teacher-student writing; diffractive methodology. "Ethnographic designs," Creswell (2012) writes, "are qualitative research procedures for describing, analyzing and interpreting a culture-sharing group's shared patterns of behavior, beliefs, and language that develop over time. Central to this definition is culture" (p. 462). And culture is "everything having to do with human behavior and belief" (LeCompte, Preissle, & Tesch, as cited in Creswell, 2012, p. 462). Everything having to do with human-and that is precisely the dilemma we faced. Surely our study was "everything having to do with human." As literacy teacher educators we partnered with a fifth grade teacher in a rural, low-income school with a goal of improving writing through focusing on the teacher-student writing conference. With research (Calkins, Hartman & White, 2006; Calkins, 2010) and professional experience, we felt confident that through the inquiry of the critical moments of human interaction found in the writing conference, we might develop case studies useful to teachers, teacher candidates, and student-writers.