Experienced qualitative researchers’ views on teaching students qualitative research design

ABSTRACT

The increasing prominence of qualitative inquiry in psychological research has been accompanied by reflection on teaching and learning practices within undergraduate and postgraduate psychology courses. To date, there is limited empirical understanding of how experienced qualitative researchers approach teaching students about qualitative research design. The present study draws on interviews with qualitative researchers (N = 12) from multiple disciplines, occupying various positions within academia. Using thematic analysis, seven themes were developed, under the superordinate theme present qualitative research as a legitimate approach to enquiry. The themes illuminate practical pedagogical implications for teaching qualitative research, including introducing qualitative research in bite-sized chunks and initiating students to qualitative inquiry through foundational methods. The findings contextualise the teaching of qualitative methods as a site of multiple tensions, for example, balancing pragmatism and idealism, and providing structure to students while enabling flexibility. Educators and supervisors of qualitative research navigate these tensions in their teaching practice to provide students with what they see as the best possible learning experiences. We call for further research to build a profile of evidence-based pedagogical practice for teaching qualitative research, while also acknowledging the fluidity needed to embrace changing epistemologies, methodologies, methods, and data sources.

KEYWORDS:

• Teaching qualitative research
• expert views
• pedagogy
• research design

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Curtin University of Technology [Curtin Learning and Teaching 2019 Grant # 22].

Notes on contributors

Emily Castell

Dr Emily Castell is an adjunct academic in the School of Population Health at Curtin University. She supervises research students and conducts research in the areas of critical disability studies, decoloniality, and qualitative research methods education.

Shannon Muir

Shannon Muir is an academic in the School of Population Health at Curtin University. She teaches and conducts quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods psychological research.

Lynne D. Roberts

Lynne Roberts is an Associate Professor in the School of Population Health at Curtin University. She teaches and conducts quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods psychological research.

Peter Allen

Peter J. Allen is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychological Science at the University of Bristol. He teaches qualitative, quantitative and mixed research methods to both undergraduate and postgraduate students. Peter’s research is primarily focused on matters related to learning and teaching in higher education, and has recently published work on supplemental instruction, the use of virtual patients to train fundamental communication skills and the development of statistic selection skills. Peter is the lead author of the popular StatHand mobile app and website (https://stathand.net)

Mortaza Rezae

Dr Mortaza Rezae is a software engineer and post-doctoral researcher at Curtin University. Mortaza completed his PhD in May 2020, where he investigated the challenges individuals on the autism spectrum face when using public transport. Mortaza is also experienced in developing data science and machine learning workflows and tools for making sense of large datasets.

Aneesh Krishna

Dr. Aneesh Krishna is currently an Associate Professor with the School of Electrical Engineering, Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Curtin University, Australia. His research interests include AI for software engineering, model-driven development/evolution, requirements engineering, agent systems, formal methods, data mining, computer vision, machine learning, bio-informative and renewable energy systems.