Adding Qualitative Research to the Classic Research Design Course

This week I had so much fun at my institution, UMass Lowell!  I got to teach the qualitative research component of our classic research design course in the Graduate School of education.  I had 10 so-called research newbies in front of me, and it was my job to give them their first real taste of my passion--qualitative research. 


Why is this such a big deal, you ask?  Well, let me explain.  At my institution and at many others around the world, there is an introduction to research course that anchors all the other social science research training, which is supposed to give students a taste of all the possible flavors of research coming up in their doctoral program.  Most of these classes, however, are taught by people with deep roots in positivist perspectives, using textbooks that emphasize positive perspectives.  I am sorry if this sounds like over simplification to some, but that's what my experience has been.  Their interaction with qualitative research has been limited--and they tend to see it as affirming or instrumental, but not as a creative component in and of it own right, nor do they usually have a very complex view of the paradigmatic issues that burden methodological approaches. 


However, having launched the Research Methods and Program Evaluation in Education Ph.D. program, our little faculty has been meeting and discussing these issues with real openness...and the result was that my colleague who teaches our Introductory Research Course invited me in to teach the two weeks devoted specifically to qualitative research.  Last week was the first week of the two-week experiment.  


Selfishly I used it to introduce materials I am developing about the historical beginnings of qualitative research, the chronologies we use to describe its beginnings, and the plethora of research kinds that we now face about a century and a half since those first anthropologists and sociologists were beginning to take lay out the foundations of the field.  An interesting exercise I shared was this table of kinds of research taken from the indexes of four qualitative research textbooks on my shelf. 

Research Kinds In Qualitative Research:  J. Davidson    Derived from the Indexes of these texts. 

Patton, M. (2015).  Qualitative research and evaluation methods: Integrating theory and practice (4th ed.).  Sage Publications.	Savin-Baden, M. & Major, C. (2013).  Qualitative research: The essential guide to theory and practice.  Routledge:  New York.	Hays, D. & Singh, A. (2012).  Qualitative inquiry in clinical and educational settings.  The Guildford Press:  New York.	Punch, K. & Oancea, A. (2014) Introduction to Research methods in Education.  (2nd ed.) Sage Publications.
Action Research Anthropology Autoethnography Embodied Ethnography Case Studies Collaborative/Participatory Research Ethnography Education action research Empowerment Evaluation Ethnographic futures research Applied Ethnography (anthropology) Narrative Ethnography Organizational Ethnography Public Ethnography Virtual Ethnography Ethnomethodology Grounded Theory Hermeneutics Indigeneous Research Interactive Inquiry Mixed Methods Narrative Inquiry Phenomenology Pragmatic qualitative inquiry Qualitative inquiry Symbolic Interactionism	Action research Critical/emancipatory action research Pragmatic action research Participatory action research Anthropology Arts-based case studies Arts-informed inquiry Autoethnography Case study Discourse analysis Feminist theory Democratic evaluation Duoethnography Ethnodrama Ethnography Autoethnography Grounded theory Hermeneutics Interpretivism Life course research Narrative research Naturalistic inquiry Participatory Action Research Phenomenology Pragmatic qualitative research Symbolic interactionism	Action Research Participatory Action Research Anthropology Applied Research Autobiographical case study Autoethnography Biographical case study Case study                        Life Histories Collective case study Critical theory Ethnomethodology Dialectical hermeneutics Discourse analysis Ethnography Femininst research Grounded theory Hermeneutics Mixed methods Narrative analysis Narratology Symbolic Interaction	Action research Critical action research Participatory action research Anthropology Case studies Critical discourse analysis Discourse analysis Ethnography Grounded theory Constructivist grounded theory Mixed methids research Narrative analysis Naturalistic research Phenomenological Analysis Qualitative research Symbolic interactionism

Looks pretty daunting, right?  And this is not the sum total of kinds of research one could list--there are many more out there. 


My cry to the field is--isn't it about time that we started talking about the principles of qualitative research and started looking at these kinds of research as talking points in an ongoing conversation about those principles? 


Onward and upward--I can't wait for next week's class:  data collection and analysis and QDAS!