Qualitative Research Resources

These are my favorites on Qualitative Research.

Handbook

Lincoln, Y. S., Lynham, S. A., & Guba, E. G. (2011). Paradigmatic controversies, contradictions, and emerging confluences, revisited. The Sage handbook of qualitative research, 4, 97-128.

Qualitative Research

Coe, R. J. (2012). Conducting your research. Research methods and methodologies in education, 41-52.

Creswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2017). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five approaches. Sage publications.

Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (2014). Designing qualitative research. Sage publications.

Sunstein, B. S., & Chiseri-Strater, E. (2011). Fieldworking: Reading and writing research. Macmillan.

Yin, R. K. (2015). Qualitative research from start to finish. Guilford Publications.

Action Research

Cochran-Smith, M., & Lytle, S. L. (2009). Practitioner Inquiry in Trying Times. Inquiry as stance: Practitioner research for the next generation. Teachers College Press.

  • Summary: This chapter frames the book and articulates how the are not just including teachers as researchers but all kinds of teaching and adminstrative positions as practitioners. While this was written in 2009 and explicitly talks to the No Child Left Behind Act, it serves as a grounding article about how to stay focused as a teacher-researcher in suboptimal environments. By developing themes like agency, engagement and equity as well as conceptual frameworks, other themes build on these core ideas: community inquiry; policy reform; and research practices at universities.
  • Evaluation: This text helps me to not give up hope. It offers a holistic approach to tackling systemic issues but positioning the teacher-practitioner as a person empowered, not as someone who is doing a job uncritically. The frameworks and underlying philosophies are helpful reminders that I am part of a group of teachers that have fought similar and harder fights before me and that systems must be engaged as well as my responsibility to engage my students.
  • Reflection: I went back to this book to refresh myself on participatory action research. While I did read some other chapters, the first chapter is still a strong influence on my teaching pedagogy and helps me frame my unique teaching context in a healthful, liberating manner.
  • Keywords: action research, teacher practitioner, participatory action research

McTaggart, R., Nixon, R., & Kemmis, S. (2017). Critical participatory action research. In The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research (pp. 21-35). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.

Rowell, L. L., Bruce, C. D., Shosh, J. M., & Riel, M. M. (Eds.). (2017). The Palgrave International Handbook of Action Research. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

McNiff, J. (2017). Action Research: All You Need to Know. SAGE. (Google Book link)

A book for the basics. All of the chapters are divided into questions.
  • What do I need to know?
  • Why do I need to know?
  • How do I find out?
  • How do I generate evidence to test the validity of my knowledge keun?
  • How do I test and critique my knowledge?
  • How do I present and communicate my knowledge?
  • How do I show the significance of my knowledge?

Autoethnography

Examples from my practice and the sources that inspired them.

Writing Prompts from Kuby's Critical Literacy in the Early Childhood Classroom: Unpacking Histories, Unlearning Privelege's Appendix: Reflective Exercises for Educators

Ethnography

Emerson, R. M., Fretz, R. I., & Shaw, L. L. (2011). Writing ethnographic fieldnotes. University of Chicago Press.

McCarty, T. L. (Ed.). (2014). Ethnography and language policy. Routledge.

Discourse Analysis

Jones, R. H. (2012). Discourse in action. The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics.

Rashidi, N., & Ghaedsharafi, S. (2015). An Investigation into the culture and social actors representation in summit series ELT textbooks within van Leeuwen’s 1996 framework. SAGE Open, 5(1), 2158244015576054.

  • Sitting inside my dissertation path is the interest to do a discourse analysis on my learners' work. This article is helpful in teaching me the jargon, methodology and how I can position my research as valuable to the general community of practice. 

Grounded Theory

Bryant, A., & Charmaz, K. (Eds.). (2007). The Sage handbook of grounded theory. Sage.

Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing grounded theory: A practical guide through qualitative analysis. Sage.

Narrative Inquiry

Kim, J. H. (2015). Understanding narrative inquiry: The crafting and analysis of stories as research. Sage publications.

Coding 

Saldaña, J. (2015). The coding manual for qualitative researchers. Sage.

  • Summary: This is a frequently cited opus on qualitative research and how to code for it. The book is divided into three parts: An Introduction to Codes and Coding; Writing Analytic Memos; and First Cycle Coding Methods. It is loaded with examples and differentiates practices so the newbie can interpret and explicate on their own. 
  • Evaluation: I have also read Yin (Yin, R. K. (2015). Qualitative research from start to finish. Guilford Publications.), Marshall (Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. B. (2014). Designing qualitative research. Sage publications.) and Creswell (Creswell, J. W. (2002). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative. New Jersey: Upper Saddle River.) Saldana is most helpful in getting new researchers up and running and stepping them through the process and product of coding.
  • Reflection: While Creswell really gives a theoretical comparison of concepts and practices, Yin gives a overview of all the things to cover in many kinds of qualitative research, and Marshall gives a really good drill down of setting up your research study, I find that Saldana has given me the most help (and confidence) in moving my action research practices into more systematic coding for future publication. 
  • Keywords: coding; qualitative research; reflexive practice

Digital Tools

Paulus, T., Lester, J., & Dempster, P. (2013). Digital tools for qualitative research. Sage.

Participatory Frameworks

Heron, J., & Reason, P. (1997). A participatory inquiry paradigm. Qualitative inquiry, 3(3), 274-294.

Educational Research

Creswell, J. W. (2002). Educational research: Planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative (pp. 146-166). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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