The Role of Qualitative Research in Science Education

Abstract

In the paper the qualitative research in which the researcher has been directly involved, and has himself been examining the research phenomenon in the studied environment, is presented. The aim of this qualitative study is to gather data in the form of rich contentbased descriptions of people, events, and situations by using different, especially nonstructural, techniques to discover the stakeholders' views and similar, to orally analyze the gathered data, and finally to interpret the findings in the form of a concept or contextually dependent grounded theory. The main purpose of the paper is to identify research approaches used by authors who have published in respected international science education journals in the last three years. It can be concluded from the results that authors have been using qualitative and mixed research approaches in more than half of the published papers in the last three years in order to address the research questions in their studies.

Analysis of errors in derivatives of trigonometric functions

“…Qualitative research is an exploratory approach, which emphasises the use of open-ended questions and probes, giving participants an opportunity to respond in their own words (Devetak et al, 2010).…”

Representaciones culturales en la enseñanza de las ciencias. una respuesta con base en las opiniones de estudiantes de licenciatura en biología

“…Cualitativo, porque lo que interesa, fundamentalmente, es lo que la gente dice, piensa, siente o hace; también, sus patrones culturales y el proceso y el significado de sus relaciones interpersonales y con el medio (Crotty, 1998;Devetak, Glazar y Vogrinc, 2010). Todo ello, mediante el enfoque de investigación-acción y estudio de un caso, permite un análisis de la situación inmediata de los estudiantes (Anderson y Herr, 2007).…”

“…El estudio, que tuvo un abordaje cualitativo (Devetak et al, 2010), se desarrolló en 2014 (semestre correspondiente a 2014.2 de la UEFS). De acuerdo con Creswell (2010), el abordaje cualitativo se define como "un medio para explorar y para entender el significado que los individuos o los grupos atribuyen a un problema social o humano" (p. 43).…”

Questioning the use value of qualitative research findings

“…This distinction, variously phrased, is widely accepted (e.g. see, Seale, 1999; Freshwater & Bishop, 2004; Freeman, 2006; Newell & Burnard, 2006; Gilmartin, 2007; Bowling, 2009), albeit that the diverse nature of specific quantitative and qualitative research forms must be acknowledged if glib oversimplification is to be avoided (Devetak et al ., 2010).…”

“…These factors inhibit or undercut established (nomothetic) constructions of internal and external validity (Hammersley, 1993; suggests that the assessment of internal and external validity cannot be meaningfully disaggregated) and this constellation of features, taken together, produces widespread agreement amongst theorist/researchers on the non‐generalizability of qualitative work (e.g. see, Keenan & Teijlingen, 2004; Newell & Burnard, 2006; Parahoo, 2006; Gilmartin, 2007; Devetak et al ., 2010; David & Sutton, 2011; Moule & Hek, 2011) (although the term ‘generalization’ continues to attach to qualitative work – see, e.g. Polit & Beck, 2010; Thomas, 2011; or, less recently, Miles & Huberman, 1994.…”