ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how to develop the theoretical/analytical tools that complement the more traditional data-gathering methods. It is not our intention to discuss traditional qualitative methods such as interviews or observations as it is highly likely the student researcher has already gleaned this information. The term discourse analysis has a number of meanings that cross paradigms and research traditions. The aims of Michel Foucault's discursive method were to uncover the knowledge's that dominated particular fields, to understand how they have become dominant and where they have come from. Once the appropriate data sample has been selected, the next analytic steps in a Foucauldian discourse analysis could be described as a series of discursive abstractions. The search for the most common series of words, phrases, sentences, and theories are abstracted from the texts. Coaching statements produce coaching environments, just as coaching environments determine coaching statements.
