With recent calls for expanding the scope and rigor of engineering education research, use of qualitative methods to answer research questions that can not be answered through quantitative methods is taking on increasing significance. Well-designed qualitative studies often build on epistemological consistency across theoretical perspectives, research questions, and research methods. We examine...

This article will closely examine the phenomenological method as applied to qualitative inquiry in psychology and psychiatry. In a critical comparison between Amedeo Giorgi's and Larry Davidson's qualitatively methods, conclusions were drawn with regard to how different kinds of qualitative inquiry are possible while remaining faithful to Husserlian philosophical foundations. Utilizing Lester E...

Finding your way in qualitative research is not simply another qualitative research instruction manual offering tools, techniques and tricks for coding, or quick fixes for methodological mayhem. The text is aimed at social science students and researchers, and while it offers some how-to basics, it mainly claims to attend to “positioning” an investigation within epistemological, theoretical and...

One of the ultimate aims of teacher education programs is to equip prospective teachers with the necessary professional skills and dispositions so that they can build and maintain a philosophy of teaching and learning that is constantly reviewed based on an understanding of research and practices. Developing student teachers’ inquiry skills by engaging them in research is one of the indispensab...

Qualitative research has become more accepted as a legitimate mode of inquiry in the social and behavioral sciences for many years but not without controversy and confusion even now in the 21st century. The procedures for conducting a qualitative research study evolve from a philosophical, paradigmatic, and interpretive frameworks. These are the aspects of a naturalistic inquiry where inconsist...

Varying philosophical and theoretical orientations to qualitative inquiry remind us that issues of quality and credibility intersect with audience and intended research purposes. This overview examines ways of enhancing the quality and credibility of qualitative analysis by dealing with three distinct but related inquiry concerns: rigorous techniques and methods for gathering and analyzing qual...