PATCHWORK: METHODOLOGICAL AND THEORETICAL BRICOLAGE IN STEM GRADUATE EDUCATION RESEARCH

Black American quilters have historically crafted masterpieces from remnants of cloth-telling stories, sharing knowledge, and preserving history in their quilts. As a quilter stitches pieces of fabric together to tell stories and create new images, so too does the qualitative bricoleur with theory and method. Researchers, as bricoleurs, utilize multiple theories and/or methods to "uncover new insights, expand and modify old principles, and reexamine accepted interpretations in unanticipated contexts." Bricolage-the product of the bricoleur's labor-has the potential to inspire theoretical and methodological innovation in STEM higher education research. In this article, I describe applications of theoretical and methodological bricolage to my investigation of whether and how the spiritual epistemologies (i.e., ways of knowing) and ontologies (i.e., ways of seeing and being) of 16 Black Christian women in engineering served as cultural resources for them as they navigated their doctoral programs. The ways that I began to piece together different theories and methods to effectively answer my research questions reflected the sensibilities of a bricoleur, grounded in the cultural tradition of Black Ameri-can quilting. Through this process, I yielded new theoretical and methodological insights that not only helped me answer my research questions, but also indelibly shaped my approach to qualitative research. I also offer implications for STEM education researchers seeking to engage in bricolage in their own work.