This course is not currently offered, please contact the school or faculty of your program.

Course description

Qualitative research in education aims to capture, and to richly communicate, the qualities of educational situations and experiences. In his recent text, The qualitative manifesto: A call to arms (2010), Norman Denzin suggests that a major goal of the qualitative researcher is to make the invisible more visible to others. As qualitative researchers we aim to "capture the stories of everyday persons as they tell about the pains, the agonies, the emotional experiences, the small and the large victories, the traumas, the fears, the anxieties, the dreams, the fantasies, and the hopes in their lives. We want to make those stories available to others" (Denzin, 2010, p. 32). In this course we will survey the broad field of qualitative inquiry in education and the ways in which qualitative researchers tell the kinds of stories that Denzin speaks of, about education through reading about research and through reading research. We will explore the underlying beliefs and values that support qualitative inquiry in education, and look practically at how to design, conduct, represent and evaluate qualitative research projects. This course may not be offered if the enrolment is less than 10 students.