Gaining qualitative perspective: A career interview with Roy Ruckdeshel

Qualitative Social Work has a tradition of publishing career interviews of distinguished social worker scholars who have been influential in conservations on qualitative inquiry. This career interview with Roy Ruckdeschel, an American social worker who held a faculty position at St. Louis University for 38 years, blends his personal, professional, and intellectual biography. It is based on an extended career interview with Professor Ruckdeschel and on his scholarly writing. Starting with his working class background and conservative Lutheran education, the article traces his advanced education decisions which were shaped by coming of age during a particularly turbulent era of American history. This included escalating American involvement in the Viet Nam War and widespread racial and civil unrest in major U.S. cities. Ruckdeschel studied both social work and sociology, choices largely driven by a quest for “rigor.” Although he started his career as a classic survey researcher, he was quickly disillusioned by its lack of attention to interpersonal interaction and context. As Ruckdeschel’s scholarship matured, he argued for a “qualitative perspective” as a way of melding theories of social action with strategies of qualitative inquiry. It was a synthesis that became a life philosophy influencing his understanding of research, practice, and university politics. In 2002, Ruckdeschel accepted Ian Shaw’s invitation to launch a new journal, Qualitative Social Work, in order to create an institutional home for scholars who choose a qualitative path but were largely shut out of mainstream social work institutions. Ruckdeschel offers advice for those who follow a qualitative life path.

Why do Lutherans Sing? Lutherans, Music, and the Gospel in the First Century of the Reformation

Martin Luther regarded music as a crucial instrument to communicate the Gospel and the Reformation message. From the outset of his Reformation, a distinctive Lutheran musical tradition was fostered in electoral Saxony, its dependent territories and neighboring principalities. A review of contemporary records from the second decade of the sixteenth century to the turn of the seventeenth century enables the assessment of the role music played as an educational and theological tool in the life of Lutheran communities: the School Ordinances of electoral Saxony and neighboring principalities show the incorporation of music as a key curricular requirement in Lutheran education, while the Statutes of Lutheran choirs [Kantoreien] illustrate how theologians, educators and musicians closely worked together to shape Lutheran communities centred on music-making, in order to reform worship, further the Reformation message and to create community cohesion.

The Governor-General's Apology: Reflections on Anzac Day

In September 1999, the then governor-general of Australia, Sir William Deane, gave a speech to the Australian Conference on Lutheran Education where he offered an apology to members of the German Australian community for the 'tragic, and often shameful, discrimination against Australians of German origin fostered during the world wars'. This article reflects on a number of issues raised by the Governor-General's statement, most importantly on our understanding of the Anzac historiography and its various narratives.