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 frame writing?

· 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?

李玲-2017-留学生品牌课-质性研究理论与方法课程介绍-习题集.doc