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, postpositivist, 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?

1.	Qualitative Research: An Introduction 
2.	Considering Ethics 
3.	Considering Qualitative Research 
4.	Research Topics and Design 
5.	Constructionism, Interpretivism, Symbolic 
Interactionism, Grounded Theory
6.	Phenomenology and Interviews 
7.	Book Discussion 
8.	Ethnography 
9.	Ethnomethodology and conversation analysis 
10.	Critical Inquiry and Critical Ethnography 
11.	The Posts (Postmodernism, Poststructuralism and 
Postcolonialism) 
12.	Participatory action research/Action research 
13.	How do I analyze all this data? A Working Session 
14.	Feminist Research/Narrative Approaches 
15.	Final Class