Course Description
Foundations of qualitative design: history, philosophy, nature, types, examples, and assessment. Reading and evaluating reports of qualitative research in education and identifying methodological issues.
Athena Title
QUAL RSCH TRADITION
Equivalent Courses
Not open to students with credit in ERSH 7400 or ERSH 8400
Prerequisite
ERSH 4200/6200
Semester Course Offered
Offered fall, spring and summer
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
As a learner in this course you will investigate methodological possibilities and various ways of dealing with procedural, philosophical, analytical and ethical issues related to undertaking qualitative research projects. Specifically, you will 1. Identify and explain the range of problems addressed by qualitative research. What is qualitative research? What are the different ways it is conceptualized? How does it define problems? What are its origins? 2. Reflect on your own presuppositions and subjectivities in regard to the educational research processes. 3. Specify the units of analysis examined in qualitative research and the nature of the explanations generated. What kinds of human phenomena does qualitative research examine? What goals does it attempt to achieve? 4. Identify the tasks and processes required to formulate appropriate research problems within educational settings, to design relevant qualitative research strategies for examining such problems, to select pertinent data sources, data collection methods, and data analysis methods, and to assess the results of such efforts. 5. Examine ethical dilemmas and issues related to the research process. 6. Recognize exemplars of qualitative research derived from varying approaches and traditions, identify the goals and presuppositions of these different exemplars, and critically assess the designs for their accomplishment of specified research goals. 7. Develop an understanding of the relationship of educational theorizing to the research process through an examination of a variety of theoretical orientations. 8. Formulate ways to compare and contrast different approaches to human inquiry: positivist, post-positivist, critical, feminist, postmodern, and others. You will be able to identify the origins and developments of these varying approaches, underlying values and assumptions, and their strengths and limitations. 9. Analyze the basic assumptions and implications of the identified research traditions and specify the interrelationships among them. What assumptions about reality, knowledge, and value does each tradition entail?
Topical Outline
1. Qualitative Research: An Introduction 2. Considering Qualitative Research 3. Research Topics and Design 4. Considering Ethics 5. Epistemologies and Theoretical Frameworks 6. Symbolic Interactionism and Grounded Theory 7. Phenomenology and Interviews 8. Ethnography 9. Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis 10. Critical Inquiry, Critical Ethnography and Critical Race Theory 11. Postmodernism, Poststructuralism and Feminist Research 12. Participatory Action Research/Action Research 13. How do I analyze all this data? A Working Session 14. Historical and Narrative Approaches 15. Final Class
Syllabus
Public CV