2.3 The qualitative dissertation: still hazy after all these years  (Page 2/14)

Considering Context

The influence of social and political context on trends in research and scholarship has contributed to the haziness surrounding qualitative dissertation studies. Recent national trends in defining what“counts”as scientific investigation, favor large-scale studies that are viewed as more generalizable, and, therefore, more immediately applicable to other educational settings. Other studies, single subject, self study or personal narrative, naturalistic inquiry and even some case studies, seem less favored in the current climate. The report of the National Research Council (2002), the American Educational Research Association (AERA) (2004) response to the report as well as the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (2004), characterize the debate and its potential impact on scholarly activities, including the proclivity for certain kinds of research methods to be favored over others.

In 2002, the National Research Council, a nationally representative group of scholars from several different fields of study, created a Committee on Scientific Principles for Education Research that prepared a report listing six scientific principles for maintaining quality in research. These principles call for increased rigor in research using language that exposes the committee’s predisposition to traditional methods and language of quantitative, large-scale studies: (1) Pose significant questions that can be investigated empirically; (2) Link research to relevant theory; (3) Use methods that permit direct investigation of the question; (4) Provide a coherent and explicit chain of reasoning; (5) Replicate and generalize across studies, and (6) Disclose research to encourage professional scrutiny and critique (National Research Council, 2002, pp. 3-5). The language of the report does acknowledge the choice of research method appropriate to the question as well as the need for rigor, but does not acknowledge the situated, constructivist nature of the report itself. Similarly, the NCLB Act uses language that calls for measurable results, defined in quantitative terms, and also encourages large-scale studies (USDOE, 2004) as the likely recipients of federal funding for research.

Many scholars claim that the language in these documents favors“traditional, experimental scientific inquiry in educational research, policy, and practice, radically narrowing the scope of what counts as quality and rigor”(Mullen&Fauske, 2006, p. 1). Specifically responding to this report, several authors argue that the new trends in defining scientific investigation are decidedly anti-postmodernism and ignore innovative, alternative forms of research:

Some social scientists argue that the“scientific nature”of research has been debased, resulting largely from the overpowering of social and critical inquiry by conventions of scientific investigation (e.g., Eisner, 1997; Feuer, Towne,&Shavelson, 2002). The ensuing tension has been exacerbated by the definitions of research appearing in highly influential governmental works. Reactions have ranged from skepticism (Berliner, 2002), to critique (English, 2004), to fear (St. Pierre, 2002). Controversy will likely become even more vehement with the new federal pronouncements of what“counts”as legitimate inquiry in education. Calls for conceptual diversity in educational scholarship (Eisner, 1999; English, 2004) embody the growing unease with empiricism, modernism, and structuralism as paradigms restricting educational scholarship (Mullen&Fauske, 2006, p. 2).