What Do We Really Mean By A “Qualitative” Study? An Analysis Of Qualitative Research In Adult And Continuing Education

Current approaches to qualitative research in adult and continuing education reflect widely differing assumptions about what is meant by qualitative. To foster conversation in our field around this question, we conducted an exploratory study of qualitative studies published over a ten-year period in Adult Education Quarterly. Our findings suggest differing understandings of what it means to design, conduct, and report “qualitative research. ” These understandings reflect the influence of differing paradigms on what qualitative research means and suggest implications for the field and for the training of future researchers. From the early, pathbreaking studies in sociology and anthropology, qualitative research has spread to other social science disciplines, such as social work, communication, and education (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998a). Characterized by several historical moments, the evolution of qualitative research in the social sciences reflects differing epistemological perspectives that stress fundamentally different views of what counts as knowledge and how we come to know. Today, in adult and continuing education qualitative research represents a widely popular approach to scholarly inquiry, particularly among doctoral students. A typical perusal through adult education conference proceedings or mainstream journals in the field will clearly demonstrate its pervasiveness within the scholarship of our field. Within this body of research we encounter many forms of questions, methods of data collection, analytic strategies, and interpretive lenses. With such variation, it is increasingly difficult to fully understand what constitutes the “qualitative” aspect of the research being reported. To help foster reflection on and conversation around this question, we undertook this exploratory study to examine the paradigmatic assumptions reflected in published empirical studies that claim to be qualitative in nature. Background and Rationale for the Study Virtually all forms of inquiry and research aim at some form of interpreting an aspect of the world. We seek to explain, understand, or some way make sense of an aspect of that world that has, in one way or another, become problematic. Our motivations for engaging in this process of interpretation vary widely, and the process itself is shaped by a host of presuppositions and assumptions that we bring to the inquiry, including our worldviews, paradigms, perspectives, theories, and beliefs. Collectively, formal and systematic approaches to inquiry and interpretation, such as those reflected in adult education research, reveal a process marked by substantive tensions, and contradictions, arising from sharp differences in these presuppositions and assumptions and in our disciplinary networks. Interpreting the world, it turns out, represents a highly contested act. Nowhere is this problem more evident than in qualitative research. Despite historical moments in which differing epistemological assumptions of qualitative research have been framed, Denzin and Lincoln (1998a) argue that, through this complex historical maze, a “generic” definition emerges that involves an interpretive, naturalist approach to its subject matter. This means that qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them” (p. 3). They suggest that this approach is multi-method in focus, making use of several kinds of empirical materials, such as case studies, personal experiences, life stories, interviews, observations, and a variety of different texts. Despite the various methodological streams that characterize qualitative research, Denzin and Lincoln suggest that these various methods are all interconnected through a common focus on “problematic moments and meanings in individuals’ lives” (p.3). This evolution of qualitative research and its emergence as a dominant approach within many areas of social science have led to the development of a new sensibility leading to what Bernstein (1976) refers to as “the restructuring of social and political theory” (p. xiii). Actually, since publication of Bernstein’s provocative text, this notion of an emerging sensibility has led others to argue that our current moment, which many characterize as postmodern, represents a way of thinking about inquiry in which there “is doubt that any discourse has a privileged place, any method or theory a universal and general claim to authoritative knowledge” (Richardson, 1991, p. 173). Bernstein (1976) identifies four distinct paradigms of research that seem to characterize western approaches to scholarly inquiry. He suggests that this new sensibility rests with a growing importance of the interpretive and critical perspectives in research. Thus, qualitative research has evolved from early sociological and anthropological studies that emphasized traditional, positivist epistemologies to our current landscape in which any perspective or approach is particularly privileged or able to lay claim to authoritative knowledge. Given this trajectory, the kinds and perspectives of qualitative research that are available to scholars in adult and continuing education seem to be increasing exponentially (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998b). This development has lead to an intellectual environment in which such ideas as mixed method designs (Creswell, 2002) seem to blur the careful and persuasive paradigmatic distinctions made by Bernstein (1976) and others. (Despite Richardson’s (1991) suggestion that no particular approach seems privileged in this postmodern environment, socalled “qualitative” research designs, data collection procedures, and methods of analysis reflect lingering but powerful epistemological assumptions indicative of positivist epistemology (Miles & Huberman, (1994). ) In this study, we step back from the plethora of studies in adult education that go under the banner of “qualitative” and seek to identify the differing paradigms, perspectives, and assumptions that are reflected in this research.