Course Overview

This course has two main purposes. First, it introduces advanced doctoral students to different qualitative methods in educational research. Second, it provides students with an intensive experience in carrying out their own qualitative studies. Through a combination of readings, mini-lectures, discussions, and class exercises, students will be introduced to significant issues regarding qualitative research and will examine how these issues are resolved from the vantage points of different qualitative traditions. In their practicum experience, students will apply what they have learned to the design and conduct of their own qualitative research studies.

This course is meant to complement the already existing sequence of courses in quantitative methods offered in the College. In this course, we will not offer a brief for qualitative research as opposed to quantitative approaches, nor for any particular form of qualitative inquiry. Instead, we will provide an overview of the modes of inquiry that can be used in the study of education in which qualitative methods play a prominent role. We will emphasize the ways in which quantitative and qualitative methods can be employed jointly in many studies, and explore several qualitative traditions among which scholars may choose. Most important, we will stress how the purposes a scholar intends to achieve - e.g., theory development, theory refinement, policy study or evaluation, or case description - strongly determine the appropriate form of inquiry.

By the end of this two-quarter sequence, students will be able to:

1. Distinguish among distinct traditions of qualitative inquiry (e.g., ethnographic, cognitive/sociocultural research on teaching and learning, organizational/policy case study) in terms of each tradition's guiding assumptions, research strategies, and methods.
2. Design a qualitative study in relation to established traditions of inquiry.
3. Conduct all phases of a qualitative study, including entry into the site or setting, data collection (by interviews, tasks, observation, etc.), recording of data, data reduction, data analysis, and the reporting of research results.
4. Assemble and present conclusions from research in a rigorous and cogent form, both orally and in writing.
5. Offer constructive feedback on colleagues' work and incorporate feedback into one's own work.

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