Faculty of Education
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
EDM 6402
Qualitative Methods in
Educational Research
TSANG Wing-kwong
CHEN Shuangye
Rm. 416; Ext 6922
Rm. 306; Ext. 6978
wktsang@cuhk.edu.hk
shuangye@cuhk.edu.hk
http://www.fed.cuhk.edu.hk/~wktsang
1
Is teaching a science or an art?
• “Is teaching a science or an art? The question, in
one form or another, has long intrigued educators.
In essence, the debate is about whether teaching is
an activity where some general laws or principles
can be identified, and which can be understood in
scientific terms, facilitating planning and prediction;
or whether it is largely an individualistic, intuitive,
spontaneous process, involving so many factors
that it is impossible to specify general lines of
direction, and producing work of creative
imagination.” (Woods, 1996, p. 14)
2
Is teaching a science or an art?
• “Is teaching a science or an art?
• Are teachers born or made?
• Can teachers’ efforts be quantitatively measured or
even “value-addedly” calculated?
3
Estimates All Years
4
Is teaching a science?
• “Psychology as the behaviorist views it is a purely objective
experimental branch of natural science. Its theoretical goal is
the prediction and control of behavior." (p.158)
• The psychology which I should attempt to build up would take
as a starting point, first, the observable fact that organism, man
and animal alike, do adjust themselves to their environment by
means of hereditary and habits equipments. …; secondly, that
certain stimuli lead the organism to make the responses. In a
system of psychology completely worked out, given the
response the stimuli can predicted; given the stimuli the
response can be predict." (p. 167)
Watson, John (1913) Psychology as the behaviorist views it.
Psychological Review, 20: 158-177.
5
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Wilhelm Dilthey’s Introduction to the Human
Sciences (1923)
(1833-1911)
6
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Wilhelm Dilthey’s Introduction to the Human
Sciences (1923)
– “The sum of intellectual facts which fall under the notion
of science is usually divided into two groups, one marked
by the name ‘natural science’; for the other, oddly enough,
there is no generally accepted designation. I subscribe to
the thinkers who call this other half of the intellectual
world the ‘human sciences’ (Geisteswissenschaften or
translated as ‘the sciences of the mind’)” (Dilthey,
1988/1923, p. 78)
– “We owe to Dilthey …that the natural sciences and the
human sciences are characterized by two scientificity, two
methodologies, two epistemologies.” (Ricoeur, 1991/1973,
p. 275)
7
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Willhelm Dilthey’s Introduction to the Human
Sciences (1923)
– “The motivation behind the habit of seeing these sciences
(i.e. human sciences) as a unity in contrast with those of
nature derives from the depth and fullness of human selfconsciousness. … (A) man finds in this selfconsciousness a sovereignty of will, a responsibility for
actions, a capacity for subordinating everything to thought
and for resisting any foreign element in the citadel of
freedom in his person: by these things he distinguishes
himself from all of nature. He finds himself with respect to
nature an imperium in imperio.” (Dilthey, 1991/1932, p.79)
8
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Clifford Geertz's conception of culture and its
interpretation (1973)
(1926-2006)
9
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Clifford Geertz's conception of culture and its
interpretation (1973)
– “The concept of culture I espouse … is essentially a
semiotic one. Believing, with Max Weber, that man is an
animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has
spun. I take culture to be those webs, and the analysis of it
to be therefore not an experimental science in search of
law but an interpretative one in research of meaning.”
(Geertz, 1994/1973, P. 214)
10
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Clifford Geertz's conception of culture and its
interpretation (1973)
– “Culture is most effectively treated …purely as a symbolic
system …by isolating its elements, specifying the internal
relationship among those elements, and then
characterizing the whole system in some general way 
according to the core symbols around which it is
organized, the underlying structures of which it is a
surface expression, or the ideological principles upon
which it is based.” (Geertz, 1994/1973, p. 222)
11
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Jerome Bruner's conceptions of the cultural mind
and folk psychology
(191512
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Jerome Bruner's conceptions of the cultural mind
and folk psychology
– Jerome Bruner’s Acts of Meaning (1990)
• “It was to the credit of Wilhelm Dilthey and his
Geisteswissenchaft. His culturally based human
science, that he recognized the power of culture to
nurture and guide a new and everchanging species. I
want to ally myself with his aspirations. What I want to
argue in this book is that it is culture and the search for
meaning that is the shaping hand, biology that is the
constraint, and that, as we have seen, culture even has
it in its power to loosen that constraint.” (p. 23)
13
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Jerome Bruner's conceptions of the cultural mind
and folk psychology
– Jerome Bruner’s Acts of Meaning (1990)
• Hence, Bruner registers his “conviction that the central
concept of a human psychology is meaning and the
process and transactions involved in the construction
of meanings. This conviction is based upon two
arguments. The first is that to understand man you
must understand how his experiences and his acts are
shaped by his intentional states, and the second is that
the form of these intentional states is realized only
through participation in the symbolic systems of the
culture.” (p. 33)
14
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Jerome Bruner's conceptions of the cultural mind
and folk psychology
– Jerome Bruner’s The Culture of Education (1996)
• Bruner underlines "two strikingly divergent
conceptions about how mind works" in cognitive study
in psychology:
• Computationalism: It inheres to "the hypothesis that mind
could be conceived as a computational device. …(It) is
concerned with informational processing: how finite, coded,
unambiguous information about the world is inscribed,
sorted, collected, retrieved, and generally managed by a
computational device." (Bruner, 1996, p. 1)
15
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Jerome Bruner's conceptions of the cultural mind
and folk psychology
– Jerome Bruner’s The Culture of Education (1996)
• Culturalism: It advocates that "culture…shapes the mind of
individuals. …Its individual expression inheres in meaning
making, assigning meanings to things in different settings on
particular occasions. Meaning making involves situating
encounters with the world in their appropriate cultural
contexts in order to know 'what they are about'. …For
however much the individual may seem to operate on his or
her own in carrying out the quest for meanings, nobody can
do it unaided by the culture's symbolic systems. It is culture
that provides the tools for organizing and understanding our
worlds in communicable way. The distinctive feature of
human evolution is that mind evolved in a fashion that
enables human being to utilize the tools of culture." (P. 3) 16
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Jerome Bruner's conceptions of the cultural mind
and folk psychology
– Jerome Bruner’s The Culture of Education (1996)
• Culturalism: It advocates that "culture…shapes the mind of
individuals. …Its individual expression inheres in meaning
making, assigning meanings to things in different settings on
particular occasions. Meaning making involves situating
encounters with the world in their appropriate cultural
contexts in order to know 'what they are about'. …For
however much the individual may seem to operate on his or
her own in carrying out the quest for meanings, nobody can
do it unaided by the culture's symbolic systems. It is culture
that provides the tools for organizing and understanding our
worlds in communicable way. The distinctive feature of
human evolution is that mind evolved in a fashion that
enables human being to utilize the tools of culture." (P. 3) 17
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Max Weber's conception of interpretative sociology
– “Sociology…is a science concerning itself with
interpretive understanding of social action and thereby
with a causal explanation of its course and consequence.
We shall speak of ‘action’ insofar as the acting individual
attaches a subjective meaning to his behavior——be it
overt or covert, omission or acquiescence. Action is social
in so far as its subjective meaning takes account of the
behavior of others and is thereby oriented in its course.”
(Weber, 1978, p. 4)
18
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Max Weber's conception of interpretative sociology
(1864-1920)
19
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Max Weber's conception of interpretative sociology
– According to Weber’s formulation, subjective meanings
implicated in social actions can be understood in two
contexts
• Ideal-typical context of rationality: Assuming that actors
orientate their actions to others in means-end rationalistic
manners, subjective meaning of social actions can then be
understood by measuring against ideal types of social
actions constructed according to the rationalistic
calculations of given situations or institutions, such as
economic transaction in markets, formal bureaucratic
compliance to legal-rational regulations, role performances in
institutionalized situations, such as church and classroom.
20
Education in the Perspectives of Human
and Cultural Sciences
• Max Weber's conception of interpretative sociology
– According to Weber’s formulation, subjective meanings
implicated in social actions can be understood in two
contexts
• Empathic or appreciative context of understanding
(verstehen): Weber asserts that for ‘irrational’ conduct and
emotional reactions such “as anxiety, anger, ambition, envy,
jealousy, love, enthusiasm, pride, vengefulness, loyalty,
devotion, and appetite of all sorts”; we, as fellow humans,
can be susceptible to similar undertakings that we
experienced before and therefore “can …empathize with
them.” That is, we “can have a significant degree of
emotional understanding of their meaning and can interpret
intellectually their influence on the course of action and the
selection of means.” (p. 6)
21
What are Research and Methodology?
• What is research?
– “A studious inquiry or examination; esp.: critical and
exhaustive investigation or experimentation having for its
aim the discovery of new facts and their correct
interpretation, the revision of accepted conclusions,
theories, or laws in the light of newly discovered facts, or
applications of such new or revised conclusions, theories,
or laws.” (Webster Dictionary)
– Research is act of “the acquisition of reliable knowledge
concerning many aspects of the world …and self
conscious use of …method.” (Negal, 1961, p.1)
22
What are Research and Methodology?
• What is research?
Knower
Self conscious use of method
(The Self)
Known
(The world)
Reliable Knowledge
23
What are Research and Methodology?
• What is methodology?
– “Methodology was an analytical approach which
examined concrete studies to make explicit the
procedures that were used, the underlying
assumptions that were made, and the modes of
explanation that we offered. It thus involved a
codification of ongoing research procedures.
Actual research was the material from which
methodology is built, without being identical with
it.” (Lazrsfield, 1972, p. xi)
24
What is Qualitative Research?
• “Qualitative research is a situated activity that
locates the observer in the world. It consists of
interpretive, material practices that make the world
visible. These practices transform the world. They
turn the world into series of representations,
including field notes, interviews, conversation,
photographs, recordings, and memos to the self. At
this level, qualitative research involves an
interpretive, naturalistic approach to the world. This
means that qualitative researchers study things in
their natural settings, attempting to make sense of,
or to interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings
people bring to them.” (Denzin, 2000, p. 3)
25
What is Qualitative Research?
naturalistic approach
interpret, make sense of
representations: field note,
interviews, photos ..
observer
knowledge
phenomenon
people
bring meaning to
the world
26
Meaning Representations in Education
and Approaches to Qualitative Research
• Identity of teachers and students and narrative
inquiry
• Cultural situations in classrooms and schools and
ethnographic study
• Curriculum and policy texts and discourse analyses
• Technology of power in educational settings and
genealogical study
• Education institutions and historical-comparative
study
• Ideology in education and critical hermeneutics
27
Typology of Research Methods in
Education Study
Methodological
Collectivism
Historical-Comparative Study
Positivist-logical
Explanation of
Empirical
regularities
Multi-level
Analysis
Ethnographic
Study
Discourse &
Genealogical
Studies
Interpretive
Understanding
of Meanings
Narrative study
Experimental Study
& Survey
Methodological
Individualism
28
EDM 6402
Qualitative Method in Educational Research
END
29