Taking time for new ideas: learning qualitative research methods in higher sports education

ABSTRACT

Even though qualitative research methods are considered important and have become more commonplace in research related to the sport sciences, there is little insight into the efforts made by sport science students to learn qualitative research methods. In this article, the authors use a course on qualitative methods inspired by a phenomenological approach to higher education in sport as a case study to examine students’ learning efforts. The data is based on qualitative interviews conducted with six students. Analysis of the interviews reveals the challenges in learning to think from a phenomenological perspective in an institutional context that emphasises quantitative methods. The study shows that it is challenging for students to shift from a linear, cause-and-effect approach to a more social, inter-body and subjective approach to learning and knowledge production. This becomes apparent both in the students’ views on the framework of the course and in their responses to teacher feedback. Our research indicates that the students’ previously established learning methods involved receiving unambiguous instructions and definitions from their teachers, but that they had not been taught to include themselves in the meaning-making process. Since phenomenological language has not yet become an embodied part of the students’ academic language, their experiences of the course are marked by preconceived ideas about teaching and research. The students’ experiences provide feedback on the quality of teaching and indicate that teachers are not sufficiently aware of how unfamiliar students are with the ideas and perspectives they are teaching, and that students need (more) time to fully understand these.

KEYWORDS:

• Qualitative methods
• higher sport education
• phenomenology
• learning
• time‌

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The first and second authors are and have been engaged in teaching qualitative research at one of most reputable universities in the Shanghai ranking of sport sciences worldwide.

2 Our personal knowledge of this field of research is based on 20 years of experience teaching qualitative research methods in higher education, in the fields of sport sciences, health sciences, psychology and pedagogy.

3 Most students in sport medicine and physiology choose the quantitative statistics course. These choices indicate certain differences in preference for research paradigms. However, every year, one or several students from the departments of sport medicine and physiology chooses the qualitative course.

4 The course plan was given in the study program following the constructive alignment standard for aims, content and assessment.

5 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiFuQD-ZWy4

6 The news-journalist Ingerid Stenvold's interview with Tom Tvedt, the president of the Norwegian national sports organization (NIFF) on the program “Dagsrevyen.” (Daily News).

7 The project is part of what higher education institutions are trained to perform.

8 At the time, the project was titled, “Teaching – Power Point Free Zone”.

9 We also believe that this was the case for most of the students that participated in the course.