qualitative argues that meaning is situated in a particular perspective or context. different people...
TRANSCRIPT
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.
Historical Research Methods
• 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.
Historical Research Methods
• Historians use external criticism to access the authenticity of their data and use internal criticism to assess the truthfulness of their data.
Historical Research Methods
• Examples• Factors leading to the development and
growth of cooperative learning.• Trends in elementary school reading
instruction, 1940-1995.
Qualitative Research Methods
• 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.
Qualitative Research Methods
• 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)
Qualitative Research Methods
• 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 Research Methods
• Qualitative researcher writes from the perspective of the participants, not from the researcher’s own perspective.
Qualitative Research Methods
• 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.
Guidelines for Classification
• Knowing the type of research applied helps one identify the important aspects to examine in evaluating the study.
Guidelines for Classification
• The more information available, the easier it is to classify.
Guidelines for Classification
• Method for classifying
– determine whether qualitative or quantitative.– If quantitative, identify purpose to determine
whether it is description, correlational, causal comparative, or experimental.
Guidelines for Classification
• 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.