Questions and assignments for class discussion

Week 1: Course orientation

·What is involved in becoming an educational researcher?

·What is educational research?

·Why do we care about the details of educational research?

·Why do we care about the quality of educational research?

·Why do we learn qualitative research methods?

Week 2&3:Foundations of Qualitative Research for Education

·What are the strengths of quantitative research?

·What are the limitations?

·What are the strengths of qualitative research?

·What are the limitations?

·What are the strengths of a mixed methods approach?

·Is it possible to develop expertise in both quantitative and qualitative research?

·Why doesn’t everyone do this?

Week 4&5: Research Design

·What does a qualitative research study look like?

·What are the standard components of a qualitative research study?

·What are the different types of qualitative research approaches?

·What issues should be considered and what questions resolved before beginning a qualitative research study?

·What is your research interest?

·Could you develop a research question and framework for a qualitative research study?

Week 6&7: Fieldwork

·Conduct an interview in the field.

·Conduct an observation in the field.

·Collect documents.

Week 8&9: Qualitative Data

·Share interview transcript for discussion.

·Share observation fieldnotes for discussion.

·Share your experience of documents collecting for discussion.

·Share your experience of data collection in the field.

·What are the difficulties you come across in the data collection process?

·What are the ethical issues?

·Do you have more tips based on personal experience?

Week 10&11: Data Analysis and Interpretation

·What are the difference between data analysis and interpretation?

·What are the modes of doing data analysis?

·What do we do in the field and after leaving the field?

·How do we deal with literature review with data analysis?

·How do we develop coding categories?

·What are the guidelines for data interpretation?

·What is a good interpretation?

Week 12&13: Writing It Up

·What decisions need I make before I can framewriting?

·What are the criteria for a good qualitative writing?

·Develop a preliminary proposal for feedback and discussion.

Week 14&15: Applied Qualitative Research for Education

·What is evaluation and policy research and what can it do?

·What is action research and what can it do?

·How can I choose and apply a qualitative research approach to address certain educational issues?

Week 16: Doing Qualitative Research —A Series of Presentations

·What did I learn from others’ project cases?

·What are my critiques on their cases?

·Compare my own project work with theirs.

·What needs to be done to improve my own project?

·Am I able to do a good qualitative research study independently in the future?

2011-双语-质性研究-习题集.doc