Download Foundations of Qualitative Research

Foundations of Qualitative
Research
prepared by Jane M. Gangi, Ph.D.
February 3,2011
What is Qualitative Research?
Denzin and Lincoln (2008):
“Qualitative research is a situated activity that locates
the observer in the world. It consists of a set of
interpretive, material practices that make the world
visible. These practices transform the world. They turn
the world into a series of representations, including field
notes, interviews, conversations, photographs,
recordings, and memos to the self….qualitative
researchers study things in their natural settings,
attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in
terms of the meanings people bring to them” (emphases
added, p. 4).
Textile Art: A canvas
Creswell (2007):
“I think metaphorically of qualitative research as
an intricate fabric composed of minute threads,
many colors, different textures, and various
blends of material. This fabric is not explained
easily or simply. Like the loom on which fabric is
woven, general worldviews and perspectives
hold qualitative research together” (p. 35).
Multiple Approaches
Action Research
Constructionist Research
Critical Ethnography
Discourse Analysis
Feminist Research
Grounded Theory
Internet Research
Oral and Life Histories
Phenomenological Approaches
Portraiture, and more……………
Case Study
Content Analysis
Critical Race Theory
Ethnography
Formative & Design
Experiment
Indigenist Research
Narrative Inquiry
Performance Ethnography
Who Are Children, and How Do We
Learn About Them?
Historically, philosophy and religion informed the way teachers taught:
• John Locke (16th century): Child is blank slate—tabula rasa
• Comenius (17th century): Used metaphor of a printing press—the
child a blank piece of paper, the voice of the teacher the ink, and
the discipline of the school the printing press.
• Puritans: Children are innately evil and must be snatched from the
jaws of the devil through hard work and discipline, as evidenced by
such publications as John Cotton’s Spiritual Milk for Boston Babies
in Either England Drawn from the Breast of Both Testaments for
their Soul’s Nourishment (1656); Day of Doom, which described the
terrible things that awaited sinful children in hell; and, A Token for
Children, “which told thirteen stories in which all the child
protagonists die” (Gangi, 2004, p. 36).
Romanticism
• Rousseau (18th century): In his 1762
publication, Emile, the child is depicted as
innately good; it’s institutions that corrupt.
• Rousseau influenced other Romantics:
Pestalozzi (19th century) and, Pestalozzi’s
student, Froebel
Positivism
Enter Auguste Comte (1798-1857), the
father of positivism, which Parpart,
Connelly, and Barriteau, define as, “A
philosophical doctrine contending that
sense perception is the only admissible
basis of human knowledge and precise
thought. This doctrine became the basis
of a hierarchy of knowledge emphasizing
the sciences over theological or
metaphysical inquiry” (p. 207)
It is a philosophy that assumes: Reality is
stable and tangible; it can be
fragmented into independent variables,
which can be studied separately. The
researcher can control and make
predictions.
Could there be a science of education?
Edward Thorndike was
positivism’s most
enthusiastic follower.
Positivism guided most of
educational research until
the 1960s.
Thorndike Won (until the last few
decades)
Lagemann (2000):
“…what was best described as Thorndike’s triumph
and John Dewey’s defeat was an important event in
the early molding of educational scholarship.
Limiting educational scholarship in ways that
became more apparent over the years, Thorndike’s
triumph and Dewey’s defeat were essential to the
early educationists’ quest to define a science that
could help them rationalize the public schools” (p.
22)
Approaching research with only one
methodology (positivism) is like the story of
the drunk who’d lost his keys and was looking
for them under the lamplight. A bystander
asked, “Is this where you lost your keys?”
“No, but it’s where the light is.”
Similary, G.K. Chesterton wrote of “the clean,
well-lit prison of one idea.”
The experience of life is vast; research requires
multiple methods to capture multiple
perspectives.
Qualitative Research
Roots in philosophy, anthropology, sociology,
and other fields before education, although
Dewey had conducted lab schools at the
University of Chicago at the end of the
nineteenth century.
"When you cannot
measure it, when you
cannot express it in
numbers, your
knowledge is of a
meagre and
unsatisfactory kind.”
--Lord Kelvin
“When you can
measure it, when you
can express it in
numbers, your
knowledge is still of a
meagre and
unsatisfying kind.”
--Jacob Viner
Anthropology
Anthropologist Gregory Bateson's explanation of "double description":
On the whole, it is a good thing to have two or more
descriptions rather than one. That may sound truistical, but it
has . . . deep roots and implications for any application of
logical type theory to perception or action. . . . In binocular
vision the combined report of the two eyes contains a species
of information which you can only get from a single eye by
using special sorts of collateral knowledge. With one eye you
may detect overlapping and so be able to say that something is
closer than something else, but if you want depth perception
you will need two eyes. . . . Depth perception stems from a
combination of two versions of the outside universe
very slightly different from each other. (as cited in Wolf 1992,
p. 107)
A Few Theories That Inform
Qualitative Research
• Symbolic Interactionism
• Postmodernism, postcolonialism,
postructuralism
• Ethnomethodology
• Phenomenology
Symbolic Interaction
Karp (2001):
“The most essential idea of this theoretical
perspective is that nothing in the world—no object,
event, or situation—has any intrinsic meaning.
Rather, meaning is bestowed on everything by
human beings. The social world is a product of
people’s definitions and interpretations of it.
Human beings, through communication with each
other, define the meaning of everything. In this
regard, all human experiences is an ongoing
exercise in sense-making” (p. 271)
Symbolic Interaction, cont.
Karp (2001), summarizing Blumer:
“ 1. Human beings act toward things or situations
on the basis of the meanings that the things or
situations have for them.
2. These meanings are derived from or arise out of
the social interaction individuals have with others.
3. These meanings are handled or modified through
the interpretive process used by individuals in
dealing with the things or situations they
encounter” (p. 271)
Postmodernism
Lyotard (1987, p. 74): “I define postmodern as
credulity toward metanarratives” (as cited in Howe,
2001, p. 202). Howe (2001) comments, “Briefly, a
metanarrative is a grand legitimating story, one
important feature of which is its abstraction from
time, place, and culture. Metanarratives include
grand epistemological stories, such as the inevitable
progress of science, and grand political stories, such
as Marxism and liberalism” (p. 202). (And, Gangi
comments, fixed developmental stages, such as
Piaget’s or Erickson’s or Gesell’s or…)
Postmodernism, continued
• Postmodernity “is marked by a view of the
human world as irreducibly and irrevocably
pluralistic, split into a multitude of sovereign
units and sites of authority, with no horizontal
or vertical order, either in actuality or in
potency” (Bauman, as cited in Cole, 2001, p.
112).
Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism examines colonialism’s legacy,
and the ways colonizing still occurs—mentally
and physically throughout the world. To write
Children’s and Young Adult Literature of
Genocides Since 1945, I’ll rely on Said (1978),
Bhabba (2005), and Spivak (1988).
Poststructuralism
Glesne (2011): “Viewing speech and human behavior as
textual productions (not only written words),
poststructuralists tend to focus on deconstructing texts,
showing how they systematically include and exclude
people and ideas” (p. 13).
St. Pierre: “’poststructuralism does not allow us to place
the blame elsewhere, outside our own daily activities, but
demands that we examine our own complicity in the
maintenance of social justice’” (as cited in Glesne, 2011,
p. 13).
Ethnomethodology
Karp (2001):
“…the study of the practical methodologies employed by
everyday people. In a challenge to conventional sociological
analysis, Garfinkel wrote that ‘Although sociologists take
socially structured scenes of everyday life as a point of
departure they rarely see, as a task of sociologoical inquiry in
its own right, the general question of how any such common
sense world is possible’ (p. 36)….all human beings are
theorists, although they don’t think of their perceptions of the
world this way. That being the case, sociology should be
centrally concerned with discovering the implicit theories of
human actors that make possible a sense of social life
ordered, as something we can take for granted” (p. 279)
Phenomenology
Later in the semester we will spend a session on
phenomenology. For now, Smith, Flowers, & Larkin
(2009) provide a concise definition: “IPA is
committed to the detailed examination of the
particular case. It wants to know in detail what the
experience for this person is like, what sense this
particular person is making of what is happening to
them. This is what we mean when we say IPA is
idiographic. IPA studies usually have a small number
of participants and the aim is to reveal something
of the experience of each of those individuals” (p.
3).
Alfred Schutz’s Phenomenology
Bernard (1994) on Schutz’s phenomenology:
“When you study molecules…you don’t have to worry about what the world
“means” to the molecules….But when you try to understand the reality of a
human being, it’s a different matter entirely. The only way to understand
social reality…was through the meanings that people give to that reality. In a
phenomenological study, the researcher tries to see reality though an
informant’s eyes.
Phenomenologists try to produce convincing descriptions of what they
experience rather than provide explanations and causes. Good
ethnography—a narrative that describes a culture or a part of a culture—is
usually good phenomenology, and there is still no substitute for a good story,
well told—especially if you’re trying to make people understand how the
people you’ve studied think and feel about their lives” (p. 15).
Whether or not you
can observe a thing
depends on the
theory you use. It is
the theory that
decides what can be
observed. –Albert
Einstein
The Role of Theory
Karp (2001):
“All human beings are theorists. We may not think of ourselves that we
since we normally take our implicit theories largely for granted….We
can only make collective and personal decisions about most things by
theorizing.
As a social scientist, I’m obligated to treat my theorizing in a
more self-conscious way than most people. It’s my responsibility to
piece together carefully collected data in order to generate a
persuasive and compelling theory about one or another aspect of
social life. Even while exercising every possible safeguard in collecting
systematic data, social scientists must nevertheless live with the
recognition that because of the sheer complexity of social life their
theories are always tentative. They are for-the-time-being theories,
theories to depend on until more persuasive ones come along” (pp.
151-152).
Karp on the Role of Theory, cont.
“Despite the appearance otherwise in some social
science discourse, we can never prove our theories.
All we can do is gather data that allows us to
embrace a theory as more or less plausible. In the
face of uncertainty, confusion, and complexity all
persons do the same thing as we social scientists.
All of us proceed in life with multiple theories that
direct our perceptions and actions. We simply
cannot operate without these theories to guide us,
however incomplete and tentative they may be” (p.
152).
References
Bernard, H. R. (1994). Research methods in anthropology. Thousand Oaks, CA; AlatMira Press.
Cole, M., & Hall, C. (2001). Breaking the line: New literacies, postmodernism, and the teaching of
printed texts. Reading, 35(3), 111-114.
Creswell, J. W. (2007). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches (2nd
ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Denzin, N. K., & Lincoln, Y. S. (2008). Introduction: The discipline and practice of qualitative research. In
N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The landscape of qualitative research (3rd ed., pp. 1-43). Thousand
Oaks, CA: Sage.
Gangi, J. M. (2004). Encountering children’s literature: An arts approach. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Glesne, C. (2011). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.
Karp, D. A. (2001). The burden of sympathy: How families cope with mental illness. New York, NY: Oxford
University Press.
References, continued
Parpart, J. L., Connelly, M. P., & Barriteau, V. E. (2000). Theoretical perspectives on
gender and development. Ottawa, Canada: International Development Research
Centre.
Rousseau, J. J. (1979). Emile (A. Bloom, Trans.). New York, NY: Basic Books. (Original
work published in 1762.)
Said, E. (1978). Orientalism. New York, NY: Vintage.
Spivak, G. C. (1988). Can the subaltern speak? In C. Nelson & L. Grossberg (Eds.),
Marxism and the interpretation of culture. New York, NY: Macmillan.
Stake, R. (2010). Qualitative research: Studying how things work. New York, NY:
Guilford.
Wolf, S. A. (1992) Learning to act/acting to learn.Unpublisheddissertation.
StanfordUniversity.