The aim of this article is to call for qualitative researchers in education and other human sciences to grapple with recent developments in trauma studies and engage in reconceptualizing their research practices so that they pay attention to the catastrophic effects of colonialism on individuals and communities. Joining other critics who have…

Purpose: This paper aims to explore how an academic researcher and a practitioner experience scepticism for their qualitative research. Design/methodology/approach: The study applies Olt and Teman's new conceptual phenomenological polyethnography (2019) methodology, a hybrid of phenomenology and duoethnography. Findings: For the…

Purpose: The lack of a definite standard for determining the sample size in qualitative research leaves the research process to the initiative of the researcher, and this situation overshadows the scientificity of the research. The primary purpose of this research is to propose a model by questioning the problem of determining the sample size,…

Numerous articles and textbooks advise qualitative researchers on accessing "hard-to-reach" or "hidden" populations. In this article, I compare two studies that I conducted with justice-involved women in the United States: a yearlong ethnography inside a state women's prison and an interview study with formerly incarcerated…

Purpose: Critical realism is an increasingly popular "lens" through which complex events, entities and phenomena can be studied. Yet detailed operationalisations of critical realism are at present relatively scarce. This study's objective here is built on existing debates by developing an open systems model of reality, a basis for…

In Goffman's terms, qualitative interviews are social encounters with their own realities. Hence, the 'situational critique' holds that interviews cannot produce knowledge about the world beyond these encounters, and that other methods, ethnography in particular, render lived life more accurately. The situational critique cannot be dismissed; yet…

This article explores the methodological and ethical challenges of doing qualitative fieldwork in an authoritarian state. Drawing on a long-term project conducted in China, I discuss how my interaction with the participants was mediated by the pervasive state power. This phenomenon adds a new layer to the question "can the subaltern…

Qualitative research sample size determination has always been a contentious and confusing issue. Studies are often vague when explaining the processes and justifications that have been used to determine sample size and strategy. Some provide no mention of sampling at all, whilst others rely too heavily on the concept of saturation for determining…

Thematic analysis is a methodology with wide use in content analysis and field work through interviews, observations, and focus groups. Despite popularity with researchers, there are several questions and problems with the methodology. There was an absence in exploration and explanation of the methods and hidden steps in thematic analysis. Using a…

This article examines an important and thorny problem in interview research: How to assess whether what people say motivated their actions actually did so? We ask three questions: What specific challenges are at play? How have researchers addressed them? And how should those strategies be evaluated? We argue that such research faces at least five…

Outside of education, many academic disciplines developed and promulgated checklists to evaluate the quality of qualitative studies. This article used an embedded mixed methods approach in three stages: development of a conceptual framework reviewing 62 guidelines; a content analysis of key areas of the guidelines; and review of dissertations to…

Over the last 30 years, there has been substantial debate about the practical, ethical and epistemological issues uniquely associated with qualitative data sharing. In this paper, we contribute to these debates by examining established data sharing practices in Conversation Analysis (CA). CA is an approach to the analysis of social interaction…

This paper draws on my experiences as a doctoral student undertaking a project to examine the professional adaptation of Asian immigrant teachers in Australia. Using a reflexive narrative approach, I examine how my position influenced my access to participants, the understanding of their contexts, and the nature of my relationship and interaction…

Scholars who conduct process tracing often face the problem of missing data. The inability to document key steps in their causal chains makes it difficult to validate theoretical models. In this article, we conceptualize "missingness" as it relates to process tracing, describe different scenarios in which it is pervasive, and present…

Studies of instructional design (ID) practices do not always highlight the inner workings of the research method and can leave readers without a clear understanding of how the study was actually carried out, particularly if it encompassed some complexity in process. As a team of researchers with different levels of scholarly expertise and…