EDS 102 – WEEK 2

April 8, 2025

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Agenda

Brief videos of authors explaining their qualitative studies

Sophia Rodriguez, ”Immigration knocks on the door…”

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Laura Perna, The Role of Context in Understanding the Contributions of Financial Aid to College Opportunity

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What do you notice? Wonder about?

https://tinyurl.com/EDS102figjam

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Would these studies more likely be qualitative or quantitative? Or both?

• A study of whether performance on the SAT predicts success in college
• A study of the factors affecting teacher attrition since COVID
• A study of how college students who participated in a summer bridge program are experiencing their first year of college

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Suggest other study ideas!

Origins of qualitative research

Roots in anthropology and sociology but now used across fields

Key sources from 1960s-70s

• Glaser & Strauss, Grounded Theory
• Made a case for inductively building theory from data gathered in real-world settings.
• Guba, Naturalistic Inquiry

Proposed methods for studies that take place in a natural, real-world settings

Important concepts

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** Examining these concepts across different approaches to research can be helpful for understanding the differences between them

Four Philosophical Perspectives�

• Positivism/Postpositivism: Reality exists “out there” and it is observable, stable, and measurable. (Postpositivism: knowledge is relative, but we can use empirical evidence to distinguish between more and less plausible claims.)
• Interpretive/Constructivist: Reality is socially constructed, and there are multiple interpretations of a single event. Researchers do not “find” knowledge, they construct it.
• Critical Research: Focused on power—who has it, how it is negotiated, and what structures in society reinforce its current distribution
• Post-structuralism/Postmodernism: There is no single “truth”; rather, there are multiple “truths.”

Philosophical Perspectives in Practice�

• Positivist/postpositivist: Start with a hypothesis, design an intervention, set up an experiment controlling for as many variables as possible, and then measure the results.
• Interpretive/constructivist: Understand the experience from the perspective of the research participants; use interviews, observation, and review artifacts and documents.
• Critical: Investigation and analysis of the underlying socioeconomic, political, and cultural causes of a problem, with the goal of taking collective action to address it
• Postmodern/poststructural: Question and “disrupt” the dichotomies inherent in the research problem; present findings from multiple perspectives and in a variety of forms.

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A study of college writing programs from different perspectives

• Positivist: Design an experiment in which students are placed into different types of college writing classes and assess their writing before and after the classes.
• Interpretive: Observe classes in the different writing programs and interview students to understand their experience of how writing is taught across the classes.
• Critical: Examine the writing curriculum to see how it represents the experiences of historically marginalized groups in society, with an aim to making it more inclusive
• Postmodern/poststructural: Consider whether writing courses should be in the college curriculum and gather perspectives on alternatives

Key Characteristics of Qualitative Research

• Focus on process, meaning and understanding: The overall purpose is to understand how people make sense of experiences in their lives
• Researcher as primary instrument: Allows flexible, emergent, responsive approach to data collection
• Inductive process: Researchers gather data to build theories, working from the particular to the general
• Rich description: Data in the form of quotes from interviews, observations, and/or documents are used to convey what the researcher has learned about a phenomenon and support the findings of the study

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Other Characteristics of Qualitative Research

• Study design is emergent and flexible, responsive to changing conditions of the study in progress.
• Sample selection is usually (but not always) nonrandom, purposeful, and small, as opposed to larger, more random sampling in quantitative research.
• The investigator often spends a substantial amount of time in the natural setting (the “field”) of the study, often in intense contact with participants.

Activity: �Competencies of the Qualitative Researcher

• A questioning stance – why are things the way they are?
• High tolerance for ambiguity
• Being a careful observer
• Asking good questions
• Thinking inductively – moving from observations to abstract concepts
• Comfort with writing

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Which do you already possess? Which would you need to cultivate? Do you and your partner have some strengths and challenges in common? Complete the activity on Canvas.

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Next steps

• For class on Thursday, April 10
• Read article by Yoon (on Canvas)

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• For class on Tuesday, April 15
• Read Chapter 2 (Reading Questions provided on 4/10)
• Note there will for reading check (quiz) on Chapters 1 and 2 in class
• Format will be multiple choice and true/false
• Worth 10 points
• You may bring a 3” x 5” notecard with your notes if you wish

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