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The Role of Qualitative Research in Science Education Eurasia Journal of Mathematics, Science & Technology Education, 2010, 6(1), 77-84 The Role of Qualitative Research in Science Education Iztok Devetak, Saša A. Glažar and Janez Vogrinc University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, SLOVENIA Received 22 October 2008; accepted 21 January 2009 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 content– based descriptions of people, events, and situations by using different, especially non– structural, 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. Keywords: Qualitative research, Science education, Document analysis, Journal analysis. INTRODUCTION should also give some clear answers or - in other words - should have a clear »take home« message (Bunce, Authors who publish papers in respected science 2008). education research journals always try to make some Research problems and research questions provide efforts to bridge the gap between science education an important guideline for the researcher in selecting the research results and conclusions and their applications appropriate research methodology or methods designs: in the educational process at all levels of education. This quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods designs. paper presents some methodological aspects that are For the purposes of this paper only the qualitative important for the field of science education research. approach to science education research will be described The selection of the appropriate methodological in more detail, and the methodology approaches used by approach is always an important step in the science the authors who publish in respected science education education planning process. The science education journals will be analysed. At the end, some insight for researcher should, before choosing the method, future science education research will be placed into the precisely address or identify the research problem. perspective of where science education research is According to the identified research problem the heading. researcher should ask research questions about it. The research questions asked should be researchable, CHARACTERISTICS OF QUALITATIVE take into account the subjects who are participating in RESEARCH the study, ought to address the research problem, and measure the variables that you wish to measure, and Qualitative research, regarding its ontological, epistemological and methodological aspect, is not a Correspondence to: Iztok Devetak, consistent phenomenon; namely, it combines different Ph.D in Chemistry Education, University of Ljubljana kinds of research, e.g. a case study, life history, action Faculty of Education, Kardeljeva pl. 161000 Ljubljana research and the like. Bogdan and Biklen (2003) use the SLOVENIA term »qualitative research« as the superordinate concept, E-mail: [email protected] joining different research approaches with certain common characteristics as well. With the expression Copyright © 2010 by EURASIA ISSN: 1305-8223 I. Devetak et al. this activity, group, situation, or material. »Qualitative« State of the literature research is an exploratory approach emphasizing words There are not many papers about methodological rather than quantification in gathering and analyzing the approaches in science education research data. It is a matter of the inductive, constructivist and published in respected journals. interpretative exploratory approach with the following Some aspects of qualitative paradigm of main stresses: to view the world with the eyes of the pedagogical research seem to be an important examinees, to describe and take into account the approach recently, but there have not been done a context, to emphasize the process and not only the final systematic analysis of the methods used in the results, to be flexible and develop the concepts and published papers. theories as outcomes of the research process (Bryman, 2004). Three research questions were addressed in this To summarize, for qualitative research it is paper, were about methodological approaches that characteristic that data are gathered more in a verbal and prevail in papers published in the last three years visual than in a numeric form. When analyzing the in the field of science education research, about gathered data, statistical procedures are also not used, data gathering methods in the qualitative and but instead predominantly qualitative analysis, the mixed research papers and was a triangulation of essence of which is searching for codes in the analyzed methods used in there papers? materials (Bryman, 2004). The main part of the qualitative analysis of the material is formed by the Contribution of this paper to the literature coding process, i.e. interpreting the analyzed text and The largest part of the analyzed papers was about attributing the meaning (of key words, notions, codes) science in general, rather than biology, chemistry to its individual parts (Charmaz, 2006; Bryman, 2004; or physics. Flick, 1998), respectively. Qualitative analysis of the The qualitative research approach was used most material starts with defining the coding units, followed frequently, following by quantitative and mixed by the appropriate phenomena records according to our approach. The authors most frequently use judgment and analyzing the characteristics of these interviews for gathering data following by phenomena, and ends with the development of the observations and document analysis. The authors grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The used triangulation of qualitative data gathering grounded theory is read out as a narrative about the methods in only 39.2% of the published qualitative phenomenon which was the subject of the study. It is or mixed research papers. characteristic for the theory to be constructed from the It can be concluded from the analysis of the collected data and to develop in the course of the entire papers published in three respected science research process. The grounded theory is contextually education journals that, similarly as in the field of bound, i.e. it is not a general theory (the findings cannot general sociological and pedagogical research, the be generalized without additional definitions), but a qualitative research approach for gathering data theory of narrower scope, valid only in certain prevails. environments and in certain conditions. Qualitative empirical research is oriented towards »qualitative research«, the research is denoted as examining individual cases (idiographic approach). The consisting of the basic empirical material, collected in study is mostly conducted as a study of one case only or the research process, which is verbally described or a smaller number of cases, therefore the techniques of narrated. Furthermore, the collected material is worked data collection are adjusted to a small scale analysis, on and analyzed in words without numerical operations enabling the researcher to get to know the social (Mesec, 1998). In other authors, (e.g. Denzin & Lincoln, environment. In data collection one is not limited to 2000; Creswell 1998) similar definitions of qualitative one source or one technique only. Apart from the data research are found. According to Creswell, qualitative acquired by interviews and observation, usually also research is the research process designed according to a different documentary sources are used, such as clear methodological tradition of research, whereby personal documents (a birth certificate, an employment researchers build up a complex, holistic framework by record, a passport, letters, photos etc), different records analyzing narratives and observations, conducting the produced in the process of data collecting, research work in the habitat (Creswell, 1998). Fraenkel transcriptions of tape recordings, video shots, etc. Only and Wallen (2006) draw attention to the fact that the triangulation – the pluralism of data collection qualitative researchers mainly focus on the examination techniques and their mutual combination - can provide of characteristic traits or properties of a certain activity, for linking the findings of individual phenomena or group, situation, or materials, respectively, but they are aspects into a meaningful integrity. According to the not much interested in the frequency of appearance of conventionally accepted definition, triangulation is the 78 © 2010 EURASIA, Eurasia J. Math. Sci. & Tech. Ed., 6(1), 77-84 Research in Science Education use of multiple methods in the study of the same object comprehend the examined phenomena. In this context, (Denzin, 1978; Richardson, 2003; Bryman, 2004). the researcher should be aware of the fact that with their Triangulation was first used as a technique for checking participation - and with the researched situation itself – the validity of the research findings (Flick
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