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7 - Qualitative Methods for Computing Education

from Part II - Foundations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2019

By
Josh Tenenberg
Edited by
Sally A. Fincher  and
Anthony V. Robins
Sally A. Fincher
Affiliation:
University of Kent, Canterbury
Anthony V. Robins
Affiliation:
University of Otago, New Zealand
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Summary

Qualitative research methods have developed over several decades within disciplines in which human thinking, being, consciousness and sociality are the objects of study. Qualitative methods include in-depth interviews, focus groups, observation, content analysis, and life histories among dozens of others. This chapter provides a broad overview of qualitative methods, drawing on examples from across the human sciences for describing the different parts common to qualitative research studies: title, problem formulation and research questions, context and sampling, data collection, data analysis, and reporting the results. This broad discussion is interleaved with a detailed examination of a single qualitative research study drawn from the CEd literature so as to make visible how the particulars of a qualitative study are situated within the larger space of methodological possibility available to a qualitative researcher and given coherence. Methods are elaborated not simply as technique, but as having an inherent logic, where the epistemological assumptions of the methods are discussed to provide an understanding of the kinds of inferences and claims that result from them.
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Computing Education Research , pp. 173 - 207
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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