Qualitative Argues that meaning is situated in a particular perspective or context. Different people...

Qualitative

• Argues that meaning is situated in a particular perspective or context.

• Different people have different perspectives and contexts.

• There are many meanings in the world, none of which is necessarily more valid or true than another.

Qualitative

• Tends not to state hypotheses or research procedures before data is collected.

• Research problems and methods evolve as understanding of the research context deepens.

Qualitative

• Context is not controlled.• Number of participants tends to be small

because of time intensive methods like interviews.

• Researchers often act with participants during a study

Qualitative and Quantitative

• Should not be considered oppositional.• Together - represent the full range of

educational research methods.• Both may be administered in some studies.

– E.g. administration of a questionaire (quantitative) may be followed up by a small number of detailed interviews (qualitative).

Qualitative Research Methods

• Historical Research Methods

Historical Research Methods

• Involves interpreting past events.

• Most focus on individuals, important social issues, links between old and new, and reinterpretations of prior historical work.


• Historians work with data already available in a variety of forms.

• *Primary sources - provided by first person eyewitnesses or authors.

• Secondary Sources - non first person accounts

– *preferred by historians.


• Historians use external criticism to access the authenticity of their data and use internal criticism to assess the truthfulness of their data.


• Examples• Factors leading to the development and

growth of cooperative learning.• Trends in elementary school reading

instruction, 1940-1995.


• Focus is on deep description of aspects of people’s everyday perspectives and context.

• Provide filed-focused, interpretive, detailed descriptions and interpretations of participants and their settings.


• Usually involves long term immersion in setting.

• Common methods of data collection include:– observation, interviewing, tape and video

recording, examining artifacts, and participant observation (researcher becomes part of the group being studied)


• Data analysis – based on categorizing and interpreting the

observations, conversations with participants, documents, tape recordings, and interviews collected to provide a description and explanation


• Qualitative researcher writes from the perspective of the participants, not from the researcher’s own perspective.


• Examples:• The problems, successes, and

understandings of Jack, during his first year of teaching.

• Study of the Hispanic culture in an urban community college.

Guidelines for Classification

• Type of method needed depends on the problem being studied.

• Same general problem can be investigated using many types of research.


• Knowing the type of research applied helps one identify the important aspects to examine in evaluating the study.


• The more information available, the easier it is to classify.


• Method for classifying

– determine whether qualitative or quantitative.– If quantitative, identify purpose to determine

whether it is description, correlational, causal comparative, or experimental.


• If qualitative, determine whether it is historical or qualitative– look for key words in the title of the study:

survey, description, relationship, historical, culture, and the like.

Qualitative Argues that meaning is situated in a particular perspective or context. Different people...

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