Qualitative Paradigm
and Methods
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Haramaya University
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
I. AIMS
This course aims at:
• Introducing you to various research paradigms
• Introducing you to various research designs
• Introducing you to various research methodologies
• Introducing you to various research methods of
data collection
• Introducing you to various strategies of data
analysis and interpretation
• Introducing you to various techniques of reporting
stories/writing up research works
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
II. OBJECTIVES
The specific objectives of this course involve:
• Enabling you to figure out contemporary research
theories/approaches in ELT
• Enabling you to have awareness of key research
concepts
• Enabling you to acquire and develop key research
skills
• Enabling you to problematize, name and frame,
inquire, analyze, study and present experientially
encountered problems--challenges, puzzles,
confusions, etc
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
III. OUTCOMES
Throughout and at the end of this course, you are expected to
have:
• Grasped various concepts of contemporary and old
educational research paradigms and their philosophical and
theoretical origins, similarities and differences;
• Synthesized and formulated your own paradigmatic,
theoretical and methodological analytical-framework, for
your professional journey;
• Began to practically employ your analytical-framework in
identifying problems, defining and shaping them, and
conducting it in actual data collection process;
• Began to analyze, interpret and explain data.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
IV. EVALUATION
1. Conceptual understanding: Testing, etc
2. Practical employment of the concepts: Reflective
portfolios, term paper, formulation of proposal
(s), presentations, etc.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
V. CONTENTS
1. Research paradigms: paradigm [ontology;
epistemology; methodology; causality];
positivism; modernism; post-modernism;
structuralism; constructivism; realism; critical
realism
2. Research designs: qualitative; quantitative,
mixed-design, etc
3. Research methodologies:
• Hypothesis v. conceptual framework;
• Sampling: Randomness v. Purposefulness;
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
• Concepts of credibility of relations between
hypothesis/conceptual framework and data/findings:
descriptive; experimentation; Interpretative; explanatory;
transformative: action research, practitioner inquiry, etc
• Methodological fallacies: Research fits established
epistemology/researcher hypothesis/respondent
assumption or ontology/reality/mechanisms?:
Epistemological & anthropomorphic fallacies; Social
regularities or facts about individuals?: Methodological
individualism v. holism/collectivism
4. Research strategies: induction, deduction, abduction,
retroduction, retrodiction; dialectic method, reflexivity, etc
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
… CONTENTS
5. Research qualities: Traditional (bias, generalizability;
repeatability; validity; correspondence; reliability); PostModernist (Authenticity, trustworthiness,
credibility/dependability, catalytic validity; reflectivity;
dependability; 3c (correspondence + coherence+
consensus); etc
6. Research ethics: natural v. social science/educational
research; dialogism v. monologism
7. Research methods & Instruments: Observation; participant
observation; reflective accounts (journals, diaries, etc);
interview; questionnaire; document/artefact collection,
etc
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
… CONTENTS
8. Data Analysis: Approaches and techniques:
description, interpretation, explanation; coding;
grounded theory;
9. Techniques of writing up/presentation of research
report/story: realist tale, confessional tale,
impressionist (postmodernist) tales, etc
10. A Guide to Research Processes & Practices
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
VI. Key References
• Denzin, N. & Lincoln, Y. (eds). 1994. A Handbook of
Qualitative Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage
• Altrichter, H, P . Posch & B. Somekh. (1993/2008).
Teachers Investigate Their Work. London: Rutledge.
• Elliott, J. (1991). Action Research for Educational
Change. Philadelphia: Open University Press
• Flick, U. 2002. An Introduction to Qualitative
Research, 2nd ed.. London: Sage.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
… Key References
• Griffith, M. (1998). Educational Research for Social Justice.
Buckingham: Open University Press.
• Holliday, A. 2002. Doing and Writing Qualitative Research.
London: Sage.
• Taylor, C. & J. Wallace (Eds). (2007). Contemporary
Qualitative Research. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer.
• Marczyk, G., D. DeMatteo, D. Festinger. (2005). Essentials
of Research Design and Methodology. US: John Wiley &
Sons.
• Woods, P. (1999). Successful Writing for Qualitative
Researchers. London: Routledge.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
“Scientific method” ?
Scientific Method is a term denoting the principles
that guide scientific research and experimentation,
and also the philosophic bases of those principles.
Whereas philosophy in general is concerned with the
why as well as the how of things, science occupies
itself with the latter question only, but in a
scrupulously rigorous manner.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Scientific research
Scientific research  a
systematic,
controlled,
empirical, and
critical, investigation of hypothetical propositions
about the presumed relations among the observed
phenomena/variables.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
1.2. What is the purpose of research?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
To solve a social problem
Improve the lives of individuals, citizens
To make an organization, company more
profitable
To earn a degree
To enhance one’s own academic status
To advance human knowledge
To improve national policies
To genuinely understand what ‘X’ is or why and
how ‘X’ occurs.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
What is a research problem (or a
topic for research)?
A problem might be (material/physical and/or
conceptual):
• Absence, lacks
• Mistakes, errors
• Constraints
• (More generally) social ills
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
I. Research Paradigm
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
1. The nature of paradigm
Paradigm a set of basic beliefs or worldview that
defines, for the holder:
• The nature of the ‘world’ [e.g. the what/object
studied]
• The individual’s place in it, and
• The range of possible relationships to it and its
parts.
Basic beliefs=> accepted simply on faith but well
argued and no way to establish their truthfulness
Knowledge=>empirically tested, debated, validated,
true belief
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Your responses to the three fundamental questions
that follow reveal what paradigm, among many,
that you follow:
1) The ontological question:
What is the form and nature of reality and,
therefore, what is there that can be known
(researched) about it?
Ex. If ‘real’ world is assumed (critical realist
paradigm), then what can be known about it is
“how things really are or work”
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
2) The epistemological question:
What is the relationship between me the knower (or wouldbe knower) and what can be known ?
• The answer given to this is already constrained by the
answer give to the ontological question
Ex. If critical realist paradigm is assumed, then the
epistemological posture of the researcher is that in
conceptual relativism to the reality and available data,
attempting to explain the mechanism by which the reality
emerged and exists.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
3) The methodological question:
How can I the researcher (would-be knower) go about
finding out whatever I believe can be known?
The answer given to this question is already constrained by
the response given to the two questions above. So NOT any
methodology.
Ex. If your take is ontological realism and epistemological
relativism (above), judgmental rationalism which involves
qualitative design/approach—action, reflection,
observation, dialogue, debate on meaning, action etc—is
selected
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
We may add:
4) The causality question:
What causes a new quality/phenomenon/reality?
[e.g. A problem/phenomenon researched)
Your response that you select is already constrained
by the response you gave to ontological,
epistemological and methodological questions
above.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Ex. If your paradigmatic assumption is critical realism
(above), what caused the actual (here and now)
reality is:
• Bottom-up/local and global/top-down interaction
of pre-structures and
• It is only an emergent property of some deeper
generative (past and wider) mechanisms
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Some other causality perspectives:
• Epiphenomenalism (one-way or linear causality)
• Interactionism (two-way causality
• Occasionalism (mediated by God on occasions when God
needs to mediate)
• Complex causality (an event/phenomena in a context is
caused by spatio-temporally wide-and-long social
events/phenomena)
• Determinism (externally determined by socio-historical
structure, etc
• Reductionism (Macro factors determine the micro events)
• Voluntarism (intentional action)
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Therefore:
Your PARADIGM = YOU
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Paradigm defines for you:
Ontological
assumption
Epistemological
assumption 
Your Problematization: What
falls within and outside the limits
of legitimate research? Does the
problem really exist?
Your Theoretical/conceptual
framework (Hypothesis)?
Methodological
assumption 
Your Design/Methodology?
Causality
assumption 
Your Analysis Strategies ?
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Paradigm analysis
Four distinct (but may be related) research
paradigms can be identified:
1. Positivism (Logical positivism)
2. Post-positivism (Modernism)
3. Constructivism (Post-modernism)
4. Critical realism (Critical theory)
Let’s analyze each based on the three fundamental
questions
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
(1) Positivism
Definition:
•
Literally, positivism originated as a scholarly
movement against the negative, ‘retrograde
school’ of authors who wanted to shatter the
Enlightenment—conservative apologists for the
Dark Age/Middle Age, where science was
dominated/contained by religion/dogma.
•
‘Progress’ and ‘order’ are possible
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
1. Ontology: Dualist; Naïve realism—objective
reality, which is apprehendable in senseimpression
2. Epistemology: objective, empirical, value-free
truth
3. Methodology: Experimental/manipulative;
verification of hypotheses; chiefly quantitative
3. Causality: Linear causality
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
(2) Post-positivism/modernism
1. Ontology: Dualist; Objective reality, but only
imperfectly and probabilistically apprehend able
2. Epistemology: Objectivist; findings probably true
if reliable and valid
3. Methodology: Modified experimental;
multiplism; falsification of hypotheses
(=refutation); may include quantitative methods
4. Causality: Linear, reductionist/determinist, e.g.
intentional
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
(3) Constructivism
1. Ontology: Ontological relativism—local and
specific realities constructed and shaped by
socio-historical, socio-political, socio-economic
contexts and values crystallized as a result
2. Epistemology: Subjectivist—truth is contextbounded, value-laden and socially constructed
3. Methodology: Dialogic, hermeneutical,
phenomenological
4. Causality: Complex causality; circular causality
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
(4) Critical realism
1.
2.
3.
4.
Ontology: Ontological realism; Independent but open
and stratified reality (a reality here-and-now is generated
and manifestation of a deeper reality)
Epistemology: Epistemological relativism; Knowledge is
abstraction of reality and fallible but can explain or
correspond to the mechanism/reality through critique,
reflection (truth is possible)
Methodology: Explanatory or causal analysis; Dialogic,
participative inquiry; Critical practitioner inquiry; Critical
or participatory action research
Causality: Emergentism—top-down/outside-in and
bottom-up/inside-out interaction ; entity relationism—
iter- and intra-action;
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
2. RESEARCH DESIGNS
Research design The conceptual frame, a plan or a
blueprint of how one intends conducting the
research:
• What data/reality is and how it is analysed:
Qualitative? Quantitative? Mixed?
• What the role of the researcher is: Objectivist?
Subjectivist? Both?
• What the purpose of research is vis-à-vis of the
problem: Description? Interpretation? Prediction?
Explanation? Transformation?
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Qualitative v. Quantitative design
• Subjective
• Objective
• Designed to deal with the
complexities of meaning in
social context,
• Are naturalistic,
• observational (not),
• more focused on problems
of validity than
• Data will be “real, rich,
deep” rather
• Meaning as individualistic
• Controlled
• Experimental
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
• on those of reliability and
generalizability.
• Data is “hard and
replicable”
• Phenomenologism and
verstehen: concerned
with understanding
human behavior from
the actor's own frame
of reference
• Close to the data; the
“insider” perspective
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
• Logical-positivism:
“seeks the facts or
causes of social
phenomena with little
regard for the
subjective states of
individuals”
• Removed from the
data; the “outsider”
perspective
• Grounded, discoveryoriented, exploratory
• Expansionist,
descriptive, and
inductive
• Process-oriented
• Ungeneralizable; single
case studies
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
• Ungrounded,
verification-oriented,
confirmatory,
reductionist
• Inferential, and
hypothetico-deductive
• Outcome-oriented
• Generalizable; multiple
case studies
• Holistic
• Assumes a dynamic
reality
• Data=> linguistic
(written or spoken
account or described
event ) segment/text
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
• Particularistic
• Assumes a stable reality
• Data=>quantified figure
Is Mixed (qualitative + Quantitative)
design possible?
• Support: Yes, e.g. triangulation for reliability
• Objection: Paradigm incommensurability; It is just
eclecticism for the sake of being eclectic; It is like
adding two wrongs to get one right
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Methodology:
• Is closely related to the theory of knowledge or
epistemology;
• Explores the methods by which research arrives at
its posited truths concerning the object of
study/problem;
• Critically explores alleged rationales for these
methods.
• Explores how findings are accepted;
• The confirmation relation between evidence and
conceptual framework/hypothesis.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Hypothesis v. conceptual framework;
I. Hypothesis:
• An educated—and testable—guess about the
answer to your research question
• An attempt by the researcher to explain the
phenomenon of interest/to-be-studied
Types:
• Null hypothesis always predicts that there will be
no differences between the groups being studied.
• Alternate hypothesis predicts that there will be a
difference between the groups
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Drawbacks:
• Seeks to make the situation conform to the
hypothesis
• Either/or (e.g. excludes and/or, neither)
• Determinate/pre-fixed or closed-system
• Monocausal
• Top-down (Theory-driven)
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
II. Conceptual Framework:
• Generic explanatory framework or researcher’s
provisional answer to observed problem
• Researcher’s guiding framework or heuristic device
(basic belief or paradigmatic assumption; see
above)
• Includes such activities as providing models,
offering exemplary studies of particular cases,
developing established mechanisms (inter-/intraconnections) or categories
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
• Might seek to make the situation conform to the
framework/hypothesis but violating the canons of
controlled experiment by remaining open to the
possibility that it will not
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Sampling:
Why sampling and a sample?
How much of population is a sample?
Sampling of :
Subjects/objects
Paradigm
Design
Methodology
Methods
Tools, etc
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
i. Random sampling
Why randomness and random sampling?
What techniques of random sampling ?
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
ii. Purposeful Sampling
Why purposefulness and purposeful sampling ?
When and how purposeful sampling ?
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
E.g.
1.
My free act has a cause - namely, me. Why should we
complain when the individual concept of 'me'
intrinsically determines what I do? Is this not what is
meant by freedom? That I am the source of my action,
and not anyone or anything else?
2. For not only is evolution a process that makes philosophers
and philosophy possible, but it provides a clear model for
how processual novelty and innovation comes into
operation in nature’s self-engendering and selfperpetuating scheme of things.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Purposeful sampling:
• Choosing particular subjects to include because they are
believed to facilitate the expansion of the developing
theory” (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998: 65).
• Seeking to be representative in a statistical sense, but to
select units of study (individuals, groups or settings) that are
theoretically meaningful and relate back to the original
research question.
• Patton (1990) the logic and power of purposeful
sampling lies in selecting information-rich cases to study in
depth.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Goals of qualitative research
• Descriptive: Describing regularities– e.g.,
correlation
• Experimentational: Hypothesis-testing by
confirming or refuting hypothesis/conceptual
framework
• Interpretative: Understanding understandings
(beliefs and behaviors/actions) of
subjects/participants in their context
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
• Explanatory: Inquiring into delineating and
explaining mechanisms by which causals-effectsconsequences sustains itself
• Transformative: Inquiry into and changing or
absenting of social evils (e.g. lack or diminishment
of certain important skill/knowledge, ability)
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Methodological fallacies to take
care of in qualitative research:
Research fits established theory/researcher
hypothesis/respondent assumption or reality/mechanisms?
Related to this question are:
• Epistemological fallacy: Treating concepts as if they
were the very things that they refer to, or confusing
the nature of reality with our knowledge of reality.
• Genealogical fallacy: Consists reducing (explaining
away) a current state by referring to a former one.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
• Naturalistic fallacy: the non-observance of the
distinction between “facts” (the is) and “values”
(the ought), or to attempts to reduce our similarly
diverse and pervasive concept of goodness to a
single, simple feature;
• Epistemic fallacy: delimiting the ontology of the
social to the limits of any epistemological activity of
human agents OR the ‘idea that being [ontology]
can always be analyzed in terms of our knowledge
[epistemology] of being’.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
• Anthropomorphic fallacies: We usually think of the
world (event, phenomenon or a person) and we
tend to think in terms of a person. Ex. taking the
folk’s (lawpersons, informant) assumption as truth
or fact of a situation/phenomenon
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
… methodological fallacies
Research establishes social regularities or facts about
individuals?:
Related to this question are:
I.
Methodological individualism: Explaining higher-level
structures can by reference to the properties of the
lower-level entities that make them up.
E.g. Using the characteristics and properties of individuals to
explain a social phenomena.
•
This is unsatisfactory because (1) it suggests that social
phenomena can be both decomposed into and
explained by properties of individual phenomenon (2)
usually individuals (e.g. respondents or informants)
cannot explain, critically analyze, relate the here-andnow to the complex and deeper (social) realities.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
II. Methodological holism/collectivism: Deducing higher level
structure from properties of the simpler or simplest
situation (s).
E.g. Considering group attributes to explain individual’s
This is unsatisfactory approach, because it 1) confers
independent causal powers on collective entities, 2) elides
more “micro” explanatory mechanisms that are located at
the level of local, concrete, individual contexts, and 3) and
neglects the complex processes of interaction between
categories
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
III. Dialectic methodology/dialecticism:
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
4. RESEARCH STRATEGY
Research strategy or ‘strategy of inquiry’:
• Comprises the skills, assumptions, and practices used by
the researcher when moving from paradigm to
research deign to collection of empirical data (Denzin &
Lincoln 1994).
• Frames research by putting constraints on acceptable
theories and guiding the generation of valid and relevant
data.
• Involves optimization: specifying the kinds of possibilities
that can be researched under the paradigmatic and
pragmatic/contextual conditions.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Various strategies:
I. Induction: Generating methods as well as
concepts/model from context as well as
interpretation/analysis of data
II. Deduction: Using established
hypothesis/theory/convention to collect and
analyze data (hypothetico-deductive method)
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
III. Abduction:
• To tentatively accept an explanatory hypothesis
which, if true, would make the phenomenon under
investigation intelligible
• To interpret and recontextualize individual
phenomena within a conceptual framework or a set
of ideas.
• To be able to understand something in a new way
by observing and interpreting this something in a
new conceptual framework
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
IV. Retroduction:
• The movement from concrete phenomena to underlying structures and
causal processes. But at the same time, we must move back to the
concrete and look at how various different causal processes come
together in a specific conjuncture.
• From a description and analysis of concrete phenomena to reconstruct
the basic conditions for these phenomena to be what they are. By way
of thought operations and counterfactual thinking to argue towards
transfactual conditions.
• Investigation move from :ActionReason/MotivationDiscourse such as
official policy, curricula, syllabi, rules, regulations, etc]
and again repeating
Re-analysis from: DiscourseReason/MotivationAction
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
V. Retrodiction:
• Explanation by established mechanism—in which
events are explained by postulating (and
identifying) mechanisms which are capable of
producing them.
• Conceptually reorganizing well-established and
easily comprehended material rather than simply
uncovering what had been previously hidden (E.g.
Kepler did it)
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
VI. Reflexivity/Reflective-/Dialogical strategy:
Research reality is open, complex, dynamic and
difficult to predict ahead:
Being open to the research context and contingent
to emergent methodological realities and events
Taking analytic memo—methodological,
theoretical, interpretational etc notes or memoing.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Involving participants/informants/respondents in
shaping the research process, and generating,
interpreting, triangulating and validating data
Triangulating methodological frameworks, research
methods, action-versus-words, an event versus
events, a participant’s/respondent’s versus others’
words/action, etc.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Research qualities:
Structuralist (bias, generalizability; repeatability;
validity; correspondence; reliability);
Hermeneutics-phenomenology; Post-Modernist
(authenticity, trustworthiness,
credibility/dependability, catalytic validity;
reflectivity; dependability; Realist (attuning to the
3c--correspondence + coherence+ consensus); etc
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
i. Structuralism argumentations
Structuralism: ‘an attempt to treat human activity
scientifically by finding basic elements (concepts, actions,
classes of works) and rules or laws by which they are
combined’ (Dreyfus & Rabinow 1982)
Structuralist quality premises:
Avoiding bias--objectivity; generalizability;
reliability/repeatability; validity/objectivity
Structuralism drawbacks: Closed ontology—deletes any form
of subjectivity (for objectivity), for there is ontologically
nothing beyond the structure being studied. This leads to
fallacies discussed earlier.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
ii. Hermeneutics/phenomenology
argumentations
• Hermeneutics: attempts to keep experience,
meaning and subjectivity in educational/social
research
• Hermeneutics’ quality premises:
Authenticity:
Trustworthiness:
Credibility/dependability:
Reflectivity:
(See Flick 2002; Holliday 2002)
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
• Drawbacks:
Presupposes the existence of autonomous
meaning, pre-existent to any human being
Risk of anthropomorphic fallacy
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
iii. Realist argumentations
• Realism/Critical realism:
an attempt to explain mechanisms operating
independently of us researcher;
Truth lies in the mechanisms
Our observation of mechanisms depend upon our
conceptual framework and, hence, of social origin
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Realist quality premises:
• Triangulation/openess of
Conceptual frameworks
Methods
Actions v. words
A (an) subject/individual/event v. others
OR:
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
• Attuning to 3C:
Coherence among research paradigm v. design v.
methodology v. strategy v. methods v. analysis
Consensus: subjecting the whole research process
and product to rational judgement, debates,
reflection, refining
Correspondence: Whether the finding/data
corresponds /explains the real mechanism out
there, ho it operates
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
• Challenge:
Is correspondence view of truth possible???
[This is rather a limit to epistemology and
methodology rather than critical realist philosophy]
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
5.RESEARCH METHODS
Research Methods:
1) In quantitative design  refers to instruments of
data collection and analysis
2) In qualitative design  refers to methods or
techniques or tools of data gathering (and)
analysis
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
In qualitative (or educational and social) research, method:
• Data collection and analysis overlap
• Researching and teaching (training) seamlessly flow
• Theorizing and practising feed and charge each other
• Method of collection can simultaneously be method of
training/teaching
• Naturalistic (un-/non-structured, ‘informal’)
• Dialogical to the researched—context, subjects, self
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
Key methods in social and educational research:
1. Participant observationa naturalistic field strategy that
simultaneously combines:
 document collection (of national, official, individual
participants’ [e.g. diaries])
interviewing (of respondents and informants),
direct participation (of the researcher and respondents and
informants) and
Observation (by the researcher, colleagues & an informant
(i.e. a key participant)
introspection (reflective/analytic memoes/accounts (written
& spoken) by both the researcher and respondents and
informants, e.g. reflective journaling)
(Denzin 1989 in Flick 2002: 139)
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
NB: Read for yourself on the following methods:
• Interview (of many types)
• Observation (of many types)
• Diaries
• Reflective journals
• Checklists
• Recordings (video, tape, photographs)
• Questionnaire (of many types), etc, etc.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
6. DATA ANALYSIS & WRITING UP/REPORTING
OF YOUR RESEARCH
I. ‘Tale’ types (van Mannen 1978):
1. Positivist or ‘realist tales’—the traditional
approach with the emphasis on realism and
objectivism, with the writer adopting a detached,
omniscient stance, and employing ‘scientific’
criteria to validate the research;
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
2. ‘Confessional tales’--where writers actually see
themselves as part of the research act and make
‘confessions’ about the problems and limitations of
their research methods and their own actions as
researchers.
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
3. ‘Impressionist (postmodernist) tales’-- which are
much more concerned about giving voice to others
in the research, those who might be regarded as
‘subjects’ of the research in realist tales.
E.g., use a range of literary devices to evoke
situations and experiences, arouse feelings as well
as stimulate thought, and to celebrate differences,
numerous and changing realities, incompleteness
and partiality
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
II. Research Structure (Woods 1999; Cresswell 2007):
i. Research structure
1. Positivist structure (objectivist introduction-literatureresults--conclusion reporting)
2. Narrative structure (interpretive story teller)
3. Phenomenological structure (descriptive/interpretive)
4. Grounded theory (critical realist explanation of themes
and categories)
5. Ethnographic (social constructivist story teller)
6. Case study (transformative action research/practitioner
inquiry teller headed by reflective questions)
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)
ii. Rhetorical structures treatment of relation of
voices (researcher’s, participants’), theories
(quotes), audience, etc
1. Embedded structure (emphasis on and guided by
data segments/texts/tools)
2. Constant comparative structure (emphasis on
and guided by themes as they emerge)
Dereje Tadesse Birbirso (PhD)