3

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AS
CULTURE AND PRACTICE
Gregory J. Kelly

What is qualitative research? Why does understanding qualitative research matter for science edu-
cation? My approach to this chapter is grounded in a consideration of issues of importance for
the various genres that count as “qualitative research” in science education.1 This includes asking
questions about the nature and value of such research and how such work contributes to ongoing
conversations about sociocultural practices that come to defne learning, teaching, curricula, and
students in various educational contexts. There are already entire handbooks dedicated to qualita-
tive research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2011; Delamont, 2012; Leavy, 2014). This chapter cannot delve
into all the range, types, and nuances of the many forms of qualitative research. Furthermore, there
are many books dedicated to procedures and detailed approaches for how to conduct various kinds
of qualitative research (e.g., Emerson et al., 2011; Glesne, 2016; Heath & Street, 2008; Kelly et al.,
2008; Weis & Fine, 2000). This chapter will neither ofer a “how to” guide to qualitative research
nor review the many ways that qualitative research enters into the feld of science education. Instead,
I will explore ways of thinking about approaches to research that take seriously the cognitive, socio-
cultural, political, and ideological manifestations of science and education in science education.
To do so, I begin by posing a series of epistemological questions about what constitutes qualitative
research, the nature of claims in the qualitative research, and the standards for excellence for work
that constitute the genres of qualitative research. To address these questions, I provide a short review
of some key studies in a few of the many genres of qualitative research in science education. These
studies provide illustrative examples that make visible salient topics for consideration. The chapter
does not provide a comprehensive review of qualitative research in science education. Rather, my
review of research is selective, focused on recent studies that examine a range of topics in science
education across settings. Through a consideration of some key studies in a few genres, I examine
questions about the purposes and meaning of qualitative research. Thus, the purpose of the chapter is
to identify some key areas for consideration and open up discussions about ways to advance thinking
about qualitative research in science education. In this way, I argue for a view of qualitative research
as culture and practice, constructed by epistemic cultures for the purposes of generating wisdom,
solidarity, and hope.

Framing Qualitative Research: Questions About Questions

One question that arises in writing such a chapter concerns the very naming of a genre (or set of
genres) of research as “qualitative”. What is qualitative research? And why is it named so? Qualitative

60 DOI: 10.4324/9780367855758-4
 Qualitative Research as Culture and Practice

research as a term emerged in contrast to statistical studies that used quantitative measures of socio-
cultural phenomena. In some ways, the term “qualitative” is poorly chosen – careful study of culture,
social practices, and ways of being in the world may include quantities. Furthermore, coding and
counting are not prohibited by most qualitative research. Yet, the emergence of qualitative stud-
ies in education, and science education in particular, centered on understandings of salient topics
that were not easily captured by studies using statistical inference. For example, nuanced studies of
students’ understanding of science phenomena (e.g., light, electricity, relativity) required extended
clinical interviews without the beneft of knowing how students would respond. Similarly, studies of
classroom discourse focused on the ways that the semantics of teacher talk defned, framed, and por-
trayed science as a discipline (Kelly, 2014). These studies required entering the social setting without
a prescribed set of categories or understandings prior to the initial data collection. The emergent
nature of qualitative studies is further evidenced by an expanded sets of genres of research, including
case studies, ethnographies, and design-based research.
So why, then, is qualitative research needed? Could at least some of the salient sociocultural phenom-
ena be captured (perhaps after initial qualitative studies) by a more defned approach with specifc
statistical measures? Perhaps in some instances, but qualitative research is grounded in a set of assump-
tions about epistemological foundations of sociocultural phenomena that requires approaches open
to learning about the relevant phenomena as it is studied. An example is illustrative of the complex-
ity of such phenomena: By participating and afliating with a social group (e.g., sixth grade science
classroom, afterschool club, environmental activist group), participants come to develop an identity
associated with the group practices. Through concerted activity the participants come to understand
themselves, and get positioned and understood by others, diferently. In such instances, the emergent
identity construction is a progressive process grounded in the specifc discourse processes, social
practices, and cultural assumptions of the group. From the analysts’ perspective, understanding the
identity work requires investigating these phenomena in detail, over time, and without an initial set
of categories. Indeed, the changing nature of the social and cultural phenomena under study, and
the reactive efects of the research process, evince the need for research approaches that are adap-
tive and contextualized in the settings. In such instances, an open approach to the local culture that
attends to the emergent nature of the sociocultural phenomena is needed to understand issues salient
to the education of the participants. Although this is not the only reason to use qualitative research,
the example points to the nuanced, refexive approach needed to understand human experience. The
in-depth qualitative approach to research entails studying activity in naturalistic settings, recognizing
context(s), and attending to marginalized voices.
What is the science of qualitative research in science education? Teachers of science, teacher educators,
and science education researchers are advocates of science to some degree, even if this includes seri-
ous critiques of traditional views of science. Although the intended purposes of science education
may vary among practitioners, there remains a goal among educators of developing knowledge
among learners. In science education, the aims, purposes, procedures, and outcomes in each instance
rely on defnitions, explicit or assumed, of science. But what counts as science, for whom, and under
what conditions? Who decides what counts as science? These questions are further complicated by
stance of researchers of science education: Are the research processes investigating the science teach-
ing, learning, and policy themselves scientifc? Are the qualitative research methods scientifc, and
should they even aspire to be so? These questions rest on various defnitions of science and how sci-
ence operates within the discourses of academia, government, and society (e.g., National Research
Council, 2002; Eisenhart & Towne, 2003). While there are many ways to conceptualize science, I
will use a quotidian defnition of science as “the systematic studies of the natural and social world”
(Durbin, 1988, p, 270). Importantly, whether qualitative research counts as a systematic study of
the social world in any instance is always situationally defned among practitioners of research. In
this way, the legitimization of an approach to research is subject to the intersubjective scrutiny of an

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 Gregory J. Kelly

epistemic community. This occurs through the many institutional forms of demarcating, shaping,
and recognizing claims of knowledge about educational phenomena. Debates about defnitions are
part of this ongoing conversation, not a way to end the conversation through an imposed consensus.
Qualitative research, therefore, is the result of sociocultural practices, the coordinated and con-
certed activities of people (Smith, 1996), much like felds well recognized as science, such as
physics (Traweek, 1988) or biology (Longino, 2002). These sociocultural practices shape and are
shaped by the participants in the epistemic cultures of educational research. Qualitative research is
a culture with ways of doing, being, and speaking tied to a history of ideas. This culture emerged
from studies of human interaction and eventually constructed various anthropological and socio-
logical theories (Harris, 2001). As culture and practice, members of communities that engage in
qualitative research have norms and expectations for the stance toward the research subject, data
collection and analysis, standards of evidence, and genres of communication. In this way, qualita-
tive research is always emergent, situationally defned, and transforming according to the exigent
circumstances of the era.
Qualitative research in its many forms is the product of the various researchers working within
various epistemic cultures. By learning to be a member of a research community (or theory group,
see Murray, 1998), members of the epistemic culture construct repertoires of practices that become
the ways of doing, writing, and evaluating qualitative research. In this way, learning to be a mem-
ber of a group includes developing a set of values, beliefs, attitudes, and ways of being in the world
that shape, and are shaped by, the specialized discourse of a specifc epistemic community (Green &
Harker, 1988; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Kelly & Cunningham, 2019). The apprenticeship into such a
community means learning to make sense of the publicly recognized meanings of key terms, theo-
ries, and ways of conducting research. Furthermore, these ways of being are not fxed but evolve
and change as members build knowledge, redefne constructs, and refne methods of data collection
and analysis (Kelly & Green, 2019a). In this way, qualitative research is itself culture and practice. To
examine the nature of this culture and epistemic practices of qualitative research in science education,
I consider a limited range of the domains of research (ethnography, design-based research, and case
studies) to illustrate how qualitative research manifests in science education as culture and practice.
By considering some illustrative cases, I distill some methodological themes and consider standards
of success in qualitative research.

Applications of Qualitative Research: Illustrative Examples

From Science Education
To address some of the questions posed in the earlier sections of this chapter, I chose to review
selective studies in three genres of qualitative research: educational ethnography, case studies, and
design-based research. There are other qualitative research methods that merit discussion and con-
sideration (e.g., research interviewing, narrative inquiry, phenomenology); I chose these due to their
prominence in science education and the value the studies have for unearthing key ideas related to
the intersection of the cognitive, sociocultural, political, and ideological manifestations of science
and education in science education. I decided to answer the questions posed in the introductory
section of this chapter and to provide the bases for discussion of salient topics for qualitative research
in science education. These three approaches thus form contrastive cases that can be used to explore
issues in qualitative research.2
Qualitative research often involves extended feldwork, participant observation, artifact analysis,
and interviews with members of the community. Such participant observation typically entails situat-
ing and understanding the reactive role of the researcher embedded in a local culture. For the three
chosen qualitative research approaches considered in detail in this chapter, i.e., educational ethnog-
raphy, case studies, and design-based research, there is a commitment to extensive data sets, close

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examination of interactions, and a refexive stance toward participants. In this way, the qualitative
approaches share common commitments developed in anthropology.
Across the qualitative traditions, the researchers themselves become part of the everyday prac-
tices of the local culture as participants. Thus, understanding and positioning oneself as researcher
entails refecting on how learning occurs within the group and for oneself. The theoretical prem-
ises of research form an orienting theory for understanding the construction of everyday life from
an emic point of view (Green & Bridges, 2018; Kelly & Green, 2019b). Orienting theories frame
the research approach to the educational phenomena. Examples of orienting theories would be
interactional ethnography (Green et al., 2012), critical discourse analysis (Rogers, 2004), position-
ality (Parsons, 2008), critical race theory (CRT) (Mensah, 2019), or cultural-historical activity
theory (CHAT) (Salloum & BouJaoude, 2020), among many others. An orienting theory guides
the nature of the research process by focusing interpretative activity in certain ways. In science
education and other felds, qualitative researchers study a variety of substantive issues, producing
knowledge that contributes to explanatory theories that make sense of sociocultural phenomena.
In this way, the substantive fndings of the qualitative inquiry inform the explanatory theories
defning the locus of attention. Thus, the orienting theory informing the research approach may
be applied to understand and make sense of local cultures, and in doing so, examine education
issues leading to fndings about educational phenomena (e.g., peer social groups, resistance to
school authority, epistemic practices). Accordingly, the analytic focus may vary, informing difer-
ent explanatory theories.
To make sense of the three contrastive cases highlighted in this chapter, I consider the primary
orienting and explanatory theories informing the work, the research design and methods, and the
topics and issues under consideration for each. Mapping the articles in this way allows the reader to
pose a series of related questions about the contributions: What does this research, as a qualitative
study, contribute to understandings of the psychological, social, cultural, or educational phenomena
relevant to science education? How does this advance thinking in science education as a qualitative
research approach? What does the study allow us to understand? In each case, the reader can also ask
the methodological question: What lessons are learned from the study for advancing methodology in
qualitative research in science education? Delving into to these questions allows for considerations of
how qualitative research contributes to the overall feld of science education.

Ethnographies of and in Science Education

To identify some salient issues for discussion and refection in science education, I drew from a
sample of recent ethnographic studies of science education local cultures. My choices were made to
examine and understand the methodological inferences and consequences for theoretical positions
regarding research, rather than a comprehensive or even representative sample. The ethnographies
described here are a purposeful sample of studies with salience to the goals of this chapter.
Ethnography is the study of culture. Ethnographers study what people make, do, and say. Such
studies attempt to take an emic point of view  – that is, the perspective of the participants. This
orientation is acquired by the ethnographers through extended participation in the local setting,
negotiating access among the participants in the cultural group under study, and engaging in exten-
sive data collection and analysis. Developing understandings of a local culture is not straightforward.
Rather, the ethnographers position themselves refexively, recognizing that their role and emerging
understandings are only partial, situated, and limited. Although the ethnographers are not able to
understand everything about the local culture, they are able to understand something (Geertz, 1973).
The following examples from science education are illustrative of this approach to research. Table 3.1
provides a summary of the core theories, research design, methods of analyses, and topic of investiga-
tion for the selected, illustrative ethnographic studies.

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 Gregory J. Kelly

Table 3.1 Illustrative Examples of Ethnographies of and in Science Education

Study Theories Research Design Methods for Analysis Topics and Issues

Carlone et al. Orienting theory: Ethnographies of Theoretically Epistemic,

(2011) Cultural anthropology two fourth grade informed review communicative, and
Explanatory theory: classrooms of feld notes of investigative practices
Sociocultural theories observations, video infuence on local
of identity recordings, student- defnitions of science
written assessments and smartness
and interviews
Rahmawati and Orienting theory: Critical auto/ Narrative telling, Complex nature of
Taylor (2018) Cultural self-knowing ethnography of refexive inquiry teacher identity
and critical refection teacher educator
Explanatory theory:
Postcolonial theory
Cultural hybridity
Calabrese Barton Orienting theory: Critical and Constant comparative Exposing, critiquing,
and Tan (2019) Community participatory of feld notes, video and addressing
ethnography, critical design with middle recordings, and unjust experiences in
justice school science artifacts interviews middle school science
Explanatory theory: students engaged in classrooms through
Rightful presence, engineering projects engineering design
consequential learning
Page-Reeves Orienting theory: Ethnographic Team-based Understanding the
et al. (2019) Participant-observation interviews with collaborative analysis experiences of the
and community Native American of the interviews Native Americans in
ethnography science professionals professional STEM
Explanatory theory: careers
Cultural negotiations
Sherman et al. Orienting theory: Refexive, dialogical Interpretive synthesis Challenges and
(2019) Cultural anthropology meta-ethnography of multiple qualitative strengths of
Explanatory theory: explorations of ethnographic research
Bakhtinian dialogic culture across disciplines in
theory education

An important and infuential ethnography in science education was conducted by Carlone et al.
(2011). This study focused on what it meant to be scientifc in a reform-based science curricula in
two diverse fourth grade classrooms in the southeast United States. Using thick description and an
extensive data set, the ethnography examined situationally and locally defned meanings of “scien-
tifc” and “smart science person”. Consistent with an ethnographic stance, the study asked about the
local meanings of key terms among the participants. Thus, rather than using taken-for-understood
meanings, the ethnographic analysis looked to the local participants’ meaning of “struggling” and
“promising” students in two fourth grade classrooms. Adopting a cultural analysis orientation to the
classrooms informed the ways the authors analyzed an extensive data set of observations, artifacts,
video recordings, and interviews. Together these data created robust descriptions of the classrooms
and the ways that science and students’ perceptions of themselves and others were defned in the
local settings. These situationally defned meanings were examined across two school settings. The
comparative contexts allowed for how local cultures came to defne ways of participating, the situ-
ated interpretation of terms, and ways students’ identity potentials were made available. To properly
consider the normative meanings for “being scientifc,” the analysis focused on epistemic, communi-
cative, and investigative practices as enacted in the two classrooms.

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 Qualitative Research as Culture and Practice

As a qualitative study, the contribution to science education centers on ways that the local culture
of the classrooms come to defne and place valance of meaning of key terms. Instead of assuming
common, taken-for-granted defnitions for “science”, “smart”, and “promising”, the ethnographers
examine how the situated meanings had real consequences for students in the settings. With this
approach, student identity is not a given characteristic intrinsic to the mind of an individual student,
but rather the discursive work of the participants that creates potentials for identity development.
One lesson learned from the study for advancing methodology in qualitative research in science
education concerns the nature of the construction of identity and equity over time. The moment-
to-moment interactions aggregate to form patterns of activity, identifed in the ethnographic analysis,
that construct the culture across scales (Bloome et al., 2005; Castanheira et al., 2001; Wortham &
Reyes, 2015).
The critical auto/ethnography of Rahmawati and Taylor (2018) explores the changing cultural
identity of Yuli Rahmawati as she comes to redefne herself and her understanding of her role as an
educator. This study builds on postcolonial theory and examines the complexity of hybridity in the
making and remaking of cultural identity. Through refexive narratives of her experiences in science
and education, Rahmawati examines her own assumptions as she comes to learn about the ways
that classroom discourse and practice proceed in Australian secondary schools. The contrast of the
Australian school approach with that of her own experience in Indonesia provide the backdrop for
examining the complex nature of teacher identity and its ties to emergent cultural experiences and
understandings. For example, as Rahmawati refects on her expectations for student behavior, she
draws in the cultural assumptions from her parents’ cultures, noting diferences in her Javanese father
and her Bimanese mother’s perspectives. Layers of complexity include her understanding of Islam
and the legacy of the Dutch colonial rule in Indonesia.
As a qualitative study in science education, the critical auto/ethnography makes visible the ways
that personal life experiences, upbringing, and afliations, such as religion or nation, contribute to
the making of a science teacher. The teacher/author recognized herself as living a multicultural life,
and she learned to negotiate the many cultures that comprise her everyday experience. Furthermore,
the intersectionality of the life as a science teacher is evident through the refections of the ways she
comes to participate in diferent settings. This study ofers many lessons for qualitative researchers,
including about importance of contexts, author positionality, and refexivity. One prominent lesson
is the way that the theoretical orientation is informed by the substantive, explanatory theories. The
authors use postcolonial theory to make sense of the refexivity of the teacher/author. This highlights
how the choices of theory lead to decisions about how to conduct research in education.
Calabrese Barton and Tan (2019) conducted a community ethnography with ethnically diverse
middle school science students engaged in engineering projects in a Midwestern city in the United
States. The theoretical orientation and methodological approach coalesced in this study around the
commitment to a justice-oriented science education. The authors draw from the notion of rightful
presence as they seek to create inviting experiences for participating students and address the often
exclusionary practices of STEM education. The authors drew from feld notes, selected video epi-
sodes, and interviews focused on the students’ engineering devices to identify ways that a student-led
educational experience could be used to promote afliation with science and engineering. Their
ethnography of the students led to considerations of ethnography by the students. The community
ethnography orientation provided the students opportunities to investigate problems identifed by
members of the greater school environment as they sought to address sustainability issues in their
engineered technologies. The middle school students conducted surveys and interviews of members
of their school to learn about sustainability concerns, analyzed data, and represented results in data
displays, such as graphs. In this way, the students’ community ethnographies informed their engineer-
ing designs as the students sought to fgure out causes of social problems in their classroom, such as
bullying. As they began building their design and testing, they checked in with community members

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 Gregory J. Kelly

to gain insights into the design features. Thus, the ethnographic experience of the students help
identify (sometimes ignored) issues of concern, develop better technologies, and attend to solving
concerns within the community. In doing so, they shifted defnitions of “what counts” from exter-
nally defned criteria to youth-defned criteria – what students wanted to learn and what problems
they wanted to solve.
As a qualitative study of science education, the research contributes to documenting the value of
considering the students’ agency and local community. These are not variables to be measured, but
rather emergent from the patterned activities of the participants over time. A lesson learned about
qualitative research concerns how community ethnography speaks to the issue of theory/method
relationships. The authors sought to help create more equitable STEM education and identify ways
that this can be studied, documented, and legitimized. The focus on students’ rightful presence ori-
ented attention to the goals of consequential learning and brought attention to engagement in com-
munity and disciplinary knowledge. The community ethnography identifed ways of understanding
the classroom cultures and also modeled for the students ways of understanding community practices.
Participant-observation and community ethnography are important ways of understanding an
endogenous culture; in-depth ethnographic interviewing can similarly contribute to understanding
culture from the participant’s point of view. Page-Reeves et al. (2019) conducted 41 ethnographic
interviews with 21 Native American science professionals. The researchers used a collaboratively
organized process for the conduct and analysis of the interviews. Through this team approach that
drew from multiple theoretical traditions, the ethnographers provided perspective for the extensive
processes of interpreting the interview transcripts. The analysis identifed conceptual categories and
patterns from the interviews. These data became the basis for more refned analysis and synthesis
aimed at understanding the experiences of the Native Americans in professional STEM careers.
Emergent coding categories, such as “identity”, “wayfnding”, “perspective”, “giving back”, “resil-
ience”, and “Native organizations” were organized into conceptual themes. The themes of navigating
and wayfnding were illustrated through a set of critical cases. Using these methods the authors were
able to bring together theoretical perspectives derived from literature around cultural and Native
American experiences. The critical cases foregrounded the cultural experiences of the STEM profes-
sionals and provided contextualization to the intervening quotes from interviews. As ethnographers,
the authors demonstrated how the details of the extensive interviews can be interpreted, depicted,
and recontextualized into a cultural account of the Native American experience in STEM felds. In
doing so, the ethnographic interviews contribute to knowledge about the lived experiences of the
participants, but also adhere to the intended goals, satisfying the criteria of plausibility, credibility, and
relevance (following Hammersley, 2008).
As a qualitative study of science education, the in-depth ethnographic interviews provide insights
into the ways that cultural experiences contribute to and provide strategies for, participation in
STEM. The local cultural knowledge of the participants became the focus of the study, thus demon-
strating the ways that cultural knowledge can form a basis for understanding ways of being in science
(Aikenhead, 2006). There are many lessons to be learned from this study about qualitative research,
most notably how the detailed data from the interviews can be constructed to form themes informed
by the theoretical orientation of the researchers.
Insights into ways that ethnographic research informs science education can be enhanced through
contrastive analysis across studies. Sherman et al. (2019) examined issues of research methodology
through meta-ethnography across four studies showing contrast in topic and settings: standardized
tests, technology, and classroom instruction in middle school; English as a foreign language in post-
secondary college; gender and race in advanced placement biology; and early literacy in a commu-
nity learning space. The meta-ethnography was driven by dialogic analysis by the researchers who
designed and conducted the four ethnographies. The analysis centered on the methodological ten-
sions that arose in each of the specifc studies. The orientation was not focused on the fndings of the

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studies, but rather on methodological issues of conducting ethnographic research and what can be
learned through this contrastive, dialogical approach. Through a three-phase analysis the researchers
identifed methodological tensions. These fndings are instructive for this chapter.
Tensions arising from the contrastive meta-ethnography of Sherman et al. (2019) speak to issues
of doing ethnographic and ethnographically informed research in science education. One tension
for this sort of research is the positioning of the researcher with respect to the cultural setting and
participants. Studies in science education face this tension, as many researchers are familiar with the
schooling or other educational contexts, and associated cultural practices, through previous experi-
ences as students, scientists, and teachers. Thus, while anthropological studies of culture often seek
to understand cultures signifcantly diferent from that of the ethnographer, educational studies often
face a familiarity with the settings and cultural practices. This both allows for the insider knowledge
to inform the researchers’ perspectives and can also limit their ability to make the familiar strange.
This tension is complicated by the assumptions of the participants in the ethnography about the
knowledge of the researcher and what needs to be explained and what is taken for granted. A sec-
ond tension arose around the nature and scope of ethnography. The authors drew from Green and
Bloome’s (1997) distinctions between doing ethnography, taking an ethnographic perspective, and
using ethnographic tools. In the four cases, and for all ethnographies in education, there are ques-
tions about the scope and validity of the study. What counts as an ethnography? As ethnographic?
As using ethnographic tools? How does an ethnographer, or qualitative researcher, know when they
are sufciently informed to be able to speak to the cultural practices of the participants? Although
this tension was not resolved in the meta-ethnography, the authors provided their refections and
ways of resolving the tensions in the individual studies. Through questions about positionality and
ethnographic analysis, the authors trouble the notion of doing ethnography.
A critical stance toward the research approach and research methods questions the assumptions of
the systematicity of common ways of making inferences from raw data sources to claims about the
cultures in the studies. The authors acknowledge that researchers are informed by theory long before
making choices about the foci of the data collection and analysis. This leads to a discussion of how
sociocultural phenomena come to be recognized and command attention for the researcher – build-
ing on MacLure’s (2013) notion of glowing data. The meta-ethnography ofers a contrastive analysis
to provide insights into ways that methodological tensions can inform conversations about the nature
and processes of conducting ethnographic research. For this reason, and others, the methodological
lessons center on the ways that researchers can learn from each other through dialogue about theories
of culture, positionality, and accountability in reporting research.
The fve ethnographic studies reviewed in this section place importance on participant-
observation, the sociocultural contexts of the setting, and understanding of the cultural dimensions of
the educational phenomena under study. Through this work, ethnographers recognized the difculty
in assuming and identifying shared meanings in the generally heterogeneous settings of many edu-
cational studies. Case study research, described in the next section, often draws from ethnographic
methods, but tends to place emphasis on specifc foci of the education phenomena.

Making the Case for Case Studies in Science Education

A case study, as a method of qualitative research, investigates contemporary phenomena in depth,
in a real-world context. Understandings developed through such research are mediated by multiple
contextual factors pertinent to the case and dependent on the ways boundaries are established defn-
ing the case (Stake, 2005; Thomas, 2015). Case studies can involve multiple sources of information
for collecting data, including but not limited to observations, interviews, audiovisual material, docu-
ments, and reports (Creswell, 2013). In this way, case studies have similarities to ethnographic stud-
ies, but rather than bringing the perspective of cultural anthropology as found in ethnography, case

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 Gregory J. Kelly

study research has “its own logic of design, data collection techniques, and specifc approaches to data
analysis” (Yin, 2018, p. 16). The fve case studies presented here are illustrative of methodological
considerations. They were chosen to show the variety and value of case studies across topics, settings,
research techniques, and orientation. Table 3.2 provides a summary of the core theories, research
design, methods of analyses, and topic of investigation for the selected, illustrative case studies.
González-Howard and McNeill (2019) provide an example of how case study research can be
efectively applied to understanding nuances in classroom activity. This study was designed to exam-
ine ways that two seventh grade teachers in the United States sought to engage students in scientifc
practices leading to epistemic understandings, i.e., how to use evidence to construct, evaluate, and
revise knowledge (p. 822). The study is grounded in a view that argumentation practices are dialogic
as students learn to engage with evidence through reasoning. The authors used a multiple-case study
methodology “to explore the relationship between how teachers framed an argumentation task, and
their students’ engagement in this science practice” (p.  825). Two classrooms provided a basis for
comparisons across implementation and engagement. The analysis was organized as an exploratory
sequential design, frst with open coding to examine the framing of the argumentation practices
of the teachers, and second, with social network analysis (SNA) to examine student interactions.
The mixed-methods nature of the case study provided the basis for understanding the framing and

Table 3.2 Making the Case for Case Studies With Illustrative Examples From Science Education

Study Theories Research Design Methods Topics and Issues

González- Orienting theory: Multiple- Mixed methods, Framing and taking

Howard and Participation case study exploratory up of argumentation
McNeill (2019) frameworks methodology sequential design practices in science
Explanatory theory:
Scientifc practices,
argumentation
Haverly et al. Orienting theory: Qualitative Open coding Sensemaking
(2020) Classroom cultures (contrastive) case and constant moments of novice
Explanatory theory: study comparative science teachers
Teacher noticing and analysis facilitating classroom
learning discussions
McNew-Birren Orienting theory: Interpretive case Grounded Contrast of
et al. (2018) Critical sociocultural study theory, constant perspectives regarding
research comparative social justice across
Explanatory theory: approach two forms of teacher
Democratic equality, education
social mobility
Shea and Orienting theory: Ethnographic case Participant Design of after-school
Sandoval (2020) Ethnography study observation, science program for
Explanatory theory: coding, member equity by community
Equity-oriented checks educators
pedagogy
Avraamidou Orienting theory: Qualitative single Life history, Intersectionality
(2020) Cultural-historical case study semi-structured, and identity for
activity theory extended immigrant Muslim
Explanatory theory: interviews. Matrix woman studying
Intersectionality, gender and intersection
performativity, identity, analysis
and recognition

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 Qualitative Research as Culture and Practice

take up of the desired practices. For example, the open coding of the teacher discourse drew from
the theoretical perspective of participation frameworks, focused on actions and goals of the events.
This provided a basis for understanding the framing of the scientifc practices. The SNA provided a
quantitative interpretation of the interactional patterns. Taken together, these analyses identifed the
diferent ways the two teachers interpreted the value of classroom discourse; one teacher saw interac-
tions as a means for improving individual understanding, while the other saw interactions as a means
for cultivating a communal understanding. These expectations were refected in the organization of
the subsequent student interactions. The contrastive analysis across the two cases demonstrated how
teacher framing of practices led to diferences in how students communicated with one another dur-
ing classroom discussions.
As a qualitative study, this research contributes to understandings of how students’ discourse pro-
cesses and practices are tied to the ongoing history of discourses of the classroom. The analysis of stu-
dent discourse, argumentation, or other forms of productive discourse should always be understood
as a consequence of the norms, expectations, and positions set by the over-time discourse practices
of the classroom. By grounding the study in the classroom discourse, and examining the framing
and take up of argumentation tasks across analytic methods, the study demonstrates how qualitative
research can be informed by a multimethodological approach.
The role of teacher discourse was also examined in the next case study. Haverly et  al. (2020)
conducted a case study that examined the sensemaking moments of novice science teachers located
in the Midwestern United States facilitating elementary classroom discussions. Students’ engagement
with ideas and sensemaking of science play an important role in science learning. Such engagement
is potentially empowering to students when the sensemaking takes into consideration the “students’
ideas, experiences, and cultural resources while disrupting power structures” (p. 63). The cases in
this research provide contrasting examples of how participants made space for students’ sensemaking.
The cases are examined through a theoretical lens that considered how the sensemaking moments
were contextualized in time and social practice. The inputs (student and teacher resources, external
factors) and science storylines were considered relevant to the analysis of the sensemaking moments
(see the fgures presented in Haverly et al., 2020, pp. 65, 69, 71, 74). The cases are illustrated with
depictions of the ways that the teachers sought to organize the classroom discourse, in the form of a
model of teacher noticing and responding to sensemaking. The data sources included teacher portfo-
lios, video records, and research interviews. Through open coding and constant comparative analysis,
the research team interpreted the sensemaking events in the video records, how the teachers talked
about these events, the tensions with the intended science storylines, and the consequences of these
moments in the ongoing instructional conversations. The contrastive cases identifed how equitable
sensemaking in classroom discourse was fostered by distributing epistemic authority from the teacher
to the students in the instructional conversations.
Contributions of this case study to science education include understanding the nuanced ways
that equity needs to be considered in the everyday life of participants in science education. The
case study drew from multiple data sources but provided ways of understanding the contrastive cases
with data representation. These representations ofer a valuable lesson for qualitative research – the
nuanced, detailed, and highly contextual data is often difcult to summarize and communicate. In
this case study, the cases make visible important, albeit sometimes subtle, diferences in the teaching
approaches, leading to the recognition of the re-assignment of epistemic authority as a key variable
for achieving more equitable classroom dialogues.
Another contrastive study further advances the methodological value of case study research.
McNew-Birren et al. (2018) provide a case study contrasting views of social justice in a Teach for
America (TFA) teacher preparation program with the views promulgated in a traditional teacher
education program located in a US-based university. As explained by the authors, TFA uses an
accelerated program for high-achieving students interested in learning to teach through experience

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and concurrent teacher education. The program seeks to “eliminate the achievement gap” (p. 439)
through the development of efective teaching strategies and leadership skills, and thus has a social
mobility orientation to social justice. This view of social justice contrasts that of university teacher
education programs, which tend to emphasize democratic equality. The collaborative, interpretative
case study sought to understand the contrasting ideologies of a cohort of TFA teachers (“corps mem-
bers”) in a secondary science teaching methods course. Course artifacts, including weekly journal
entries submitted by corps members, comprised the data set. The analyses followed the grounded
theory approach of Strauss and Corbin (1998). The case study identifed a key tension in the corps of
TFA teachers, noting the contrasts of the conficting narratives of defcit thinking and seemingly high
expectations for students. The tension in the narratives emerged as the core values of the democratic
equity perspective from the sociocultural view of the science education scholars (leveraging students’
lived experiences to support learning and engaging students for democratic citizenship), contrasted
with the achievement orientation from the previous TFA training.
This case study contributes to science education by showing how ideological diferences among
teachers can sometimes be masked by the use of common language. The two local cultures (TFA
teachers and university teacher education), with their corresponding histories and commitments,
both had (ostensibly) a social justice orientation. The contrastive case made visible how social justice
can be diferentially understood and applied to the classroom. From a qualitative research perspec-
tive, the theoretical orientation of the researchers, recognizing diferences in democratic equality
and equity, allowed for interpreting the narratives in a particular manner to make visible the tensions
across the educational goals.
Science education occurs in multiple settings and across a lifetime. While the previous cases
reviewed considered formal education and schooling, Shea and Sandoval (2020) sought to under-
stand how community educators designed out-of-school-time (OST) programs for equity. This case
study acknowledges the need to link the microinteractions of everyday educational experience with
the macro-level inequities in society toward the goal of redesigning science education for equity
and justice. The ethnographic case study was situated in a drop-in after-school science program in a
working-class, Latinx community, in California, USA. The unit of analysis for the case study was the
activity system of the after-school science studio. Consistent with the ethnographic orientation, the
authors drew from multiple data sources, including participant observation, video records of interac-
tions, archival records, and ethnographic and focus group interviews. The lead ethnographer, Shea,
spent fve years working with the OST educators and supported the validity of her claims by sharing
her interpretations and initial claims with the educators. Through extensive coding, data sharing, and
theorizing, the research team developed a stable set of codes around the “cultural repertoires of prac-
tice”, “implicit explicit links to political and historical discourse and practices”, “science practices”,
and “social practices and interaction” (see Table 3.2, in Shea & Sandoval, 2020, p. 35). The study
found that the OST educators saw their work as a political act. The inquiry-oriented science and
engineering after-school program ofered the Latinx students an intellectual home, addressed issues
of poverty, and provided an alternative to test-heavy school science. To understand how the educa-
tors were able to accomplish these goals, the research team sought to understand the micro moments
of interaction within the broader sociopolitical contexts. They were able to document the moment-
to-moment afrming interactions of educators with students, recognize ways the educators brought
cultural practices to science, and show how material abundance of the local sites provided opportuni-
ties for learning science and engineering. Importantly, the OST activities also extended into the local
community and in this way demonstrated the value of science and engineering for solving problems.
This case study makes a valuable contribution to science education by applying an orienting
theory (ethnography) and an explanatory theory (centered on equity-oriented pedagogy) to the
out-of-school-time (OST) settings. The extensive data collection as well as the connection to, and
inclusion of, the local community members provide a valuable model for understanding how the

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research team sought to position themselves among the learners of the cultural context. In this study,
the students, community members, and educational researchers built on each other’s strengths to
create more equitable science and engineering education.
Avraamidou (2020) examined the trials of an immigrant Muslim woman working as a physics
instructor in a higher education institution in Western Europe. The author frames her approach to
understanding the salient issues of the intersectionality of ethnicity, gender, religion, and social class
as a life history, single case study. The case study provides insights into the underrepresentation of
women in STEM felds in Europe and beyond. It draws from theories of intersectionality and gender
performativity while making the case for the social construction of identity. This theoretical orienta-
tion is particularly important given the barriers to entry to the physics community that include an
assumed masculine nature of physics, assumptions about those holding a religious perspective, and
ways that social class and race limit recognition as a scientist. This case study is insightful from a meth-
odological point of view, as the orienting theory (in this instance CHAT) informed the case study
approach in unique ways. Framed within a life history research design, the case examines identity
from a CHAT point of view. This theoretical grounding provides an orientation to the phenomena
comprising the life history and identity and thus guides the nature of the data collection, analysis, and
interpretation. The qualitative single case study design focused on the experiences of one Muslim,
female, physics instructor, Amina. Extended interviews were used to build a thorough understanding
of Amina’s experiences in physics. These understandings were presented in a chronological narrative
of Amina’s life history. The trajectory through schooling and experiences in various educational set-
tings provides a fascinating story about the ways that gender, religion, and social class intersect with
her identity formation, and how these vary across contexts and time. The case shows how Amina’s
construction of self as a competent physicist intersected with, and often contrasted with, the ways
she was recognized by others, leading to diferential feelings of belonging. The methodological
approach, grounded in social theory, was able to make clear the ways that intersectionality played into
the politics of recognition for this physicist. As Avraamidou noted, the methodology illustrated that
“to become a physicist is a distinctly personal, emotional, and intimate involving in which multiple
identities are intersecting and at times contesting” (p. 337).
As a case study in science education, this research contributes to the understanding of the expe-
riences of immigrants participating in science. The analytic focus on intersectionality and drawing
from the life history of Amina makes visible the complex ways understandings of self and other, by
her and by the community, of her experience. It highlights that science learning, participation, and
belonging are more than knowing the disciplinary ideas and practices. An important lesson from a
methodological point of view is the care taken to understand the emic point of view and to build
empathy and understanding, which allowed the researcher to raise important sociocultural issues to
the foreground of the case study.
The case study examples presented in this section provide additional insights into the conduct
and value of qualitative research in science education. The examples document how attention to the
specifc features of the educational context led to understandings that inform broader educational
issues. Much like the ethnographic studies, these case studies make use of varied research methods
to build narratives informing understanding, empathy, and recognition of the ideologies pervasive in
science across settings.

Design-Based Research in Science Education

An emerging area of qualitative and mixed-methods research in science education is design-based
research. Design-based research is grounded in a number of commitments to theory, practice, and
research: The development of educational programs and research are co-developed through cycles of
design, the research and practice occur in authentic settings, and researchers and practitioners develop

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and share theories relevant to improving practice (Design-Based Research Collective, 2003). To
identify how design-based research (DBR) contributes to the culture and practice of qualitative
research in science education, I consider recent studies spanning a range of topics and variations in
DBR. Much like the section regarding ethnography and case studies, my choices resulted from a
purposeful sample to examine and understand the methodological inferences and consequences for
theoretical positions regarding qualitative research in science education. Table 3.3 provides a sum-
mary of the core theories, research design, methods of analyses, and topic of investigation for the
selected, illustrative design-based studies.
Land and Zimmerman (2015) applied the DBR approach to assess the affordances of mobile
devices for outdoor science learning. In this study the distributed cognitive learning theory

Table 3.3  Illustrative Examples of Design-Based Research (DBR) in Science Education

Study Theories Research Design Methods Topics and Issues

Land and Orienting theory: Three iterative Analysis of the Use mobile devices
Zimmerman Design-based research cycles of design discourse of the to support families’
(2015) forming collective around four learning experiences scientific talk
case theoretical and measures of
Explanatory theory: conjectures knowledge
Socio-technical
systems, distributed
cognitive learning
theory
Boda and Brown Orienting theory: Mixed-methods Two-way Explanation of
(2020) Design-based research approach, including MANCOVA; science learning
Explanatory theory: attitudinal surveys qualitative analysis opportunities through
Relationality theory and research of observations and the use of VR360
interviews interviews videos
DeLiema et al. Orienting theory: Interactional Discourse analysis of Examination of
(2019) Design-based research analysis informing a activity in a mixed- affordances of a
Explanatory theory: larger design-based reality (MR) learning play-based mixed-
Roles, rules, and keys research program environment reality (MR) learning
of participation in environment
play activity
Wiblom et al. Orienting theory: Participatory, Discourse analysis of Development of an
(2019) Design-based research collaborative design classroom interaction evaluation tool to
Explanatory theory: approach improve students’
Scientific literacy, interpretation
social justice and application
of internet-based
resources for making
decisions about health
Anderson et al. Orienting theory: Iterative design Mixed-method School reform at scale
(2018) Design-based cycle, examination analysis of tests, for classroom learning
implementation of classroom surveys, videos, and communities
research, research- communities interviews; qualitative
practice partnerships analysis of case study
Explanatory theory: data
School change,
environmental science
literacy

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supports our understandings of the ways that the mobile device built capacity for children and
families to engage in scientifc observation and explanation in out-of-school settings, which took
place in two arboreta and a nature center in the northeast United States. The DBR approach
informed the design, theory, and practice of the socio-technical system infuencing the interac-
tions in these settings. Consistent with DBR (Sandoval, 2014), the authors conducted three itera-
tive cycles of design around four theoretical conjectures. These conjectures centered around ways
to support student learning as they engaged with a guiding naturalist and the supportive technol-
ogy. To examine the conjectures, the primary data sources were observational in the form of video
recordings. Each of the three iterations was considered a case and informed the design, theory, and
practice moving forward into subsequent iterations of design. The frst iteration concerned ways of
supporting learners to observe and explain scientifcally relevant characteristics of trees and make
distinctions between evergreen and deciduous trees; the data analysis focused on the discourses of
learning events. In this iteration, the learners used primarily perceptual talk and were less focused
on goals directed at developing conceptual, connecting, and afective talk. Thus, iteration two was
designed to place a greater emphasis on the conceptual understanding of the scientifc phenomena.
For this cycle of analysis, the researchers continued with the discourse analysis of the interactions
of the learners, naturalists, and technologies, and added a pre- and post-test to assess knowledge
gains. The change in the approach led to a more balanced use of perceptual and conceptual talk.
Building on the results of the second iteration, the third cycle of design made tighter connections
between the observations and the photo capture tool provided for the learners and redesigned the
technology to help the learners distinguish between seedlings and saplings. These changes were
implemented at a summer camp at an environmental center. Through analysis of the discourse
of the learning experiences and measures of knowledge, the results identifed the mediating role
of the naturalist in developing productive perceptual and conceptual talk among learners. Taken
together the three iterative cycles of design and research identifed ways to use mobile devices to
support families’ scientifc talk.
The design-based nature of the research approach contributed to understanding about the sub-
stantive learning of science concepts and ways of knowing. The iterative cycles of design, imple-
mentation, and assessment allowed educational products to be refned. Methodologically, the study
advances qualitative research methodology in science education by showing how learning occurred
through cycles of design and how these were informed by multiple research methods.
Boda and Brown (2020) used a DBR approach to provide racially, ethnically, and socioeco-
nomically diverse groups of ffth grade elementary students unique science learning opportunities
using VR360 videos (interactive and immersive virtual reality). Students participated in a set of
activities, grounded in their locales and communities (northern California, USA) to engage with
three-dimensional learning advocated by the Next Generation Science Standards (National Research
Council, 2013). The VR videos allowed students to experience their local communities without
leaving the classroom. The study examined how technologically enhanced learning of science con-
tent may infuence students’ attitudes toward science. Interestingly, this study used a mixed-methods
approach, combining an attitudinal survey and post-intervention research interviews. Consistent
with the DBR approach, however, the study spanned three years and drew from three design cycles.
To diferentiate the value of the connection of VR to the local community, the study provided dif-
ferent interventions for a control and experimental group in the second year of the study. The con-
trol group ofered students a VR experience that did not look and sound like the students or their
communities. Under these conditions the students showed uneasiness toward science. In contrast,
the experimental group experienced contextualizing science content in students’ local communities
using VR360 videos. Under these conditions, there were measurable positive improvements in stu-
dents’ attitudes about the relevancy of science. Emerging from the lessons learned in the second cycle
of the study (with control and experimental groups), the third iteration of design ofered a diferent

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type of learning experience. In this way, the DBR approach provided ways for the researchers to
refne the uses of the VR videos to foster positive attitudes among the students.
Although this was a mixed-methods approach to DBR that included statistical analysis, it pro-
vides an example of how researchers can draw from diferent research traditions around a sub-
stantive topic with coherence. The research sought to understand complex social phenomena in
varied settings, and through the learning processes of design cycles developed position outcomes
for students. The study highlights the importance of pragmatic uses of research methods to address
the central research question, rather than adopting an a priori commitment to certain research
approaches.
Boda and Brown (2020) draw from mixed methods and set conditions for the interventions with
practitioners. Using a diferent approach to DBR, DeLiema et al. (2019) demonstrated how close
analysis of interactions in settings can be part of a larger DBR program. This study examined how
students and teachers from the west coast of the United States introduce and enact roles, rules, and
keys in two diferent play spaces in mixed-reality simulations. The science involved understanding
change of state (liquid to solid) as the children “shrank” to enact water molecules. The tasks were set
to contrast two approaches – a modeling activity characterized by a more fexible and open-ended
approach, and a game activity, with a more rigid structure governing the activities around winning
the game. Through careful analysis of the students and teachers in these two conditions, the research-
ers developed a framework for tracking the collaborative instances of roles, rules, and keys. The roles,
rules, and keys were accomplished interactively among the participants; their interpretation by the
analysts was informed by discourse analysis and social theory. In this way, the situationally defned
terms were identifed and examined as aspects of the environment supporting learning. The roles and
rules of the activities were found to be partially infuenced by how participants key (alter in distinct
ways) an activity (Gofman, 1974) – the ways that participants signal to each other the nature of the
activity, such as distinguishing play, which comes with re-interpretable expectations for interaction
from other types of activity.
This qualitative study is embedded in ongoing cycles of DBR. In this case, the authors “zoom
in” for close, interactional analysis of the ways that the designed environment fosters learning of
the science concepts. Although the study itself does not (and does not intend to) document the
cycles of design and redesign, it illustrates a valuable dimension of DBR – fexibility in approach to
access the key learning issues in a local setting. The interactional analysis of the moment-to-moment
events provide evidence for the overall efcacy of the learning theory and its application of the
mixed-reality environment (fusing of physical and virtual worlds). From a methodological point of
view, the study demonstrated the value of embedding interactional analysis in the cycles of DBR.
Thus, the  interactional analysis of an individual study contributes to an overall research program
aimed at the typical goals of DBR.
DBR provides a set of processes that foster collaboration among researchers and practitioners.
Wiblom et  al. (2019) sought to develop an evaluation tool to improve upper secondary students’
interpretation and application of internet-based resources for making decisions about health. The
tool was designed to build students’ capability to critically reason about online health information.
The processes of learning to reason extend beyond just health information, thus developing scien-
tifc literacy skills that could be applied more generally. The approach was based in a set of moral
commitments to democratic values and social justice and consistent with the capabilities expected
in Swedish secondary schools. This study makes clear the ways that DBR “resembles how teach-
ers work in everyday practice” (p. 1765). The study was conducted with two science teachers in a
secondary school in Sweden. The frst author of the study, employed as a teacher at the school, was
familiar with the school practices and culture. The authors describe how the DBR approach was
similar to the iterative cycles of refective teaching “including stages of design, implementation, and
analysis” (p. 1765). Much like the study by DeLiema et al. (2019), close analysis of the interactions

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in the setting informed the DBR framework. Video recordings of the classroom constituted the
primary data source. These video data were analyzed with a qualitative content analysis framework
developed by Graneheim and Lundman (2003). Through detailed discourse analysis and coding of
the transcripts, the authors identifed four themes, two prior to student use of the internet evaluation
tool and two related to the use of the tool to assess the health information. Throughout the processes
of fnding and evaluating health information, the students posed questions about the trustworthiness
of the vast information. The evaluation tool led the students to question all sources of information
(rather than looking for objective sources) and to discuss the scientifc origin and content of the
sources of information. Through these analyses, grounded in the practices of the discussions in the
classrooms, and consistent with the DBR approach, the study advances two principles for designing
learning activities using online searches regarding ways of supporting students’ evaluation and scru-
tiny of sources of information and strategies for encouraging students to examine the trustworthiness
of online resources.
As a qualitative study, this research makes visible the importance of two central commitments: to a
social justice orientation for democratic values, and to participatory and collaborative research. These
commitments contributed to the development of the evaluation tool for assessing health resources.
The joint problem formation was developed through the close collaboration among practitioners and
researchers, including the dual role of one researcher as teacher. The lesson for qualitative research
includes the importance of the ethical commitment to joint understanding of multiple educators and
to development of educational interventions.
Building on features of DBR, Anderson et al. (2018) advanced this paradigm by considering ways
to apply “design work and knowledge building about learning and teaching at scale” (p. 1027). Their
study incorporated key features of DBR, including an iterative design cycle, a focus on classroom
communities, and research-practice partnerships. This approach took the unit of analysis to be class-
rooms rather than individual teachers or students. The study is ambitious in scope, taking on three
challenges of implementation of educational reform: three-dimensional learning as articulated in the
Next Generation Science Standards, reform at scale, and adherence to the diversity of US schools.
The authors called this approach design-based implementation research (DBIR), as the goal was to
address issues of teaching and learning for enacting change by considering the schooling as a system.
Consistent with the design-based approach, the study examined ways to implement change through
an iterative design cycle. The scope of implementation entailed approximately 160 teachers over
two years, including 94 schools and over 900 diferent middle and high school classrooms. The data
collection was oriented to learn about the implementation of a curriculum to foster environmental
literacy (Carbon TIME). To address the teaching and learning dimensions of the implementation,
the research team collected extensive data of diferent types (tests, surveys, videos) and engaged in a
variety of analyses. The ways that three-dimensional learning was fostered through productive dis-
course was examined by using the classroom community as the key unit of analysis. The results from
the mixed approach point to a number of successes in the implementation in terms of teacher and
student gains in knowledge. Importantly, the outcomes for students included signifcant reduction in
achievement gaps between students with lower and higher pre-test scores. Nevertheless, despite the
active engagement with practitioners, the benefts of the Carbon TIME program were less efective
for classrooms from schools with higher percentages of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch
(a proxy for family socioeconomic status). The qualitative dimensions of the data analysis provided
insights into structures, norms, and organization of the professional learning communities.
This DBIR study included qualitative research procedures. This approach examined how to bring
about educational change at scale. This work assessed the value and contributions of partnerships.
As a qualitative study, the research identifed the range and types of data relevant to informing the
practitioner-researcher partnerships. For this reason, and the ambitious examination of research at
scale, the study makes a valuable contribution.

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The DBR studies presented in this section draw from a repertoire of research methods to actively
pursue change in education. Each of the studies ofered unique insight into how empirical research
can inform theory and practice. Much like the ethnographies and case studies, the DBR research
provides understanding of the nuanced, local knowledge of participants. In the next section, I pull
out common themes across the three types of studies examined in this chapter.

Cross-Cutting Themes for Comparative Cases in

Qualitative Methods in Science Education
Common themes are evident in the three approaches (ethnography, case study, DBR) in the
selected, contrastive cases of qualitative science education research chosen for review in this chap-
ter; however, the themes are prevalent in other forms of qualitative research as well. There are fve
themes I explore in this section. First, qualitative inquiry recognizes that sociocultural phenomena of
education are situated in time and place and within social, cultural, and political contexts. Second,
qualitative research entails the use of extensive, situated data sets. Third, qualitative research makes
use of evidence to produce claims about psychological, social, cultural, and educational phenomena.
Fourth, positionality and refexivity are integral to understanding the reactive nature of qualitative
inquiry. And ffth, qualitative studies seek to recognize and understand intersectionality to support a
commitment to social justice.
The frst theme concerns the nature of education in research: Sociocultural phenomena of educa-
tion are constructed in the moment-to-moment interactions of everyday life. These interactions can
be among people, with texts or technologies, or experiential in nature (Green et al., 2020). These
moments of everyday life are constructed with cultural assumptions, tools, practices, norms, and
technologies and span time and place (Carlone et al., 2011; Gee & Green, 1998). Of the focal papers
reviewed in this chapter, examples of this sort of detailed analysis are found in studies by González-
Howard and McNeill (2019) and Wiblom et  al. (2019). In these and other cases, even though
sociocultural phenomena of education are constructed through moment-to-moment interactions,
they are situated in time and place and within social, cultural, and political contexts (Kelly & Green,
2019a; Rogers, 2004). Importantly, studies of qualitative research seek to identify, understand, and
take into account these broader contexts that shape the nature of interactions.
A second theme emerging across studies of qualitative research concerns the nature and types of
data sets. The research approaches examined in this chapter (ethnography, case study, and DBR) used
extensive data sets. Data often included video records, interviews, and artifacts. The range and types
of these data, while tailored to the particular research interests of a given study, provide a basis for
the in-depth, contextually recognized analyses needed to understand the complexity of every life in
educational settings. The focal papers reviewed in this chapter each drew from varied data sets. In-
depth analysis can be drawn primarily from one type of data, such as the ethnographic interviews in
the study by Page-Reeves et al. (2019), or a variety of data sources, such as by the study of Haverly
et al. (2020). Through the processes of analyses, qualitative researchers interpret and produce mul-
tiple texts (spoken, written, symbolic, embodied). The texts generated by participants are situated
in ongoing sociocultural practices of the local cultural group, with associated histories, discourses,
intertextual references, social relationships, positions, and obligations of members (Kelly, 2014). Texts
make reference and make use of other texts, and such intertextuality provides resources for analysts
to understand the situated nature of discourse in sociocultural practices (Bazerman, 2004; Bloome
et al., 2005). Similarly, data-rich analyses have led qualitative researchers to examine how local social
contexts build on, and are infuenced by, other contexts. Examining such intercontextuality for and
by participants serves as a tool for making sense of these extended data sets (Bloome et al., 2009).
Third, qualitative research produces evidence. The three types of qualitative research highlighted
in this chapter make use of evidence to support assertions about the phenomena in question. In this

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way, evidence is formulated, produced, and communicated about the psychological, social, cultural,
and educational phenomena. The ethnographic studies place a premium on the use of participant
observation. Being present matters for ethnographers. The study of the enacted cultural practices of
a group requires active participation (minimally as an observer) in these practices, as evidenced in
the artifacts, discourse, and actions of the participants. Ethnography seeks understanding and makes
eforts to understand educational issues from the emic (or insiders’) point of view. The case studies
share many similarities, again drawing on extensive data sets, but also identify how to delimit a case
for analysis. The evidence for case studies makes clear the understandings derived from the analyses.
Cases studies may be varied in substance and stance, but aim to develop knowledge of the phenom-
ena defned by the limits of the case. DBR, while often drawing from methods used in ethnography
and case study research, has a goal of changing practices. Of the three approaches, DBR studies are
most likely to consider theory and practice together and aim toward a defned educational goal.
These studies seek researcher-practitioner collaborative arrangements so that the research into the
practice in question produces knowledge for the betterment of the practice in subsequent cycles of
research. The uses of evidence from qualitative analysis to inform practice occurred in each of the
focal studies informing this chapter, and well-articulated in the DBR studies by Boda and Brown
(2020) and Land and Zimmerman (2015).
Fourth, qualitative researchers recognize that research is done from a particular perspective. The
researcher has an intellectual, cultural, educational, and methodological history. The researcher has
a position. It is important to recognize that this position has an infuence on the ways that research
is conducted – the point of view of the inquirer sets up and infuences the orientation and direction
of the study, the nature of the research questions, the observations of the phenomena (recognized
as theoretically salient), the analyses, and the type and form of reporting from a particular posi-
tion. Because of this recognition, the positionality of the researcher is acknowledged and taken into
account through the construction of the research itself, but also in the interpretation of the research
accounts (van Langenhove & Harré, 1999). This issue is well illustrated by the critical auto/ethnog-
raphy of Rahmawati and Taylor (2018). Just as the analyst seeks to understand the perspective of the
participants in a study, the analyst too must consider ways positionality infuences the nature of the
researcher. Thus, qualitative research places value on refexivity – understanding that the research
itself is a sociocultural phenomenon, infuenced by many factors, and in need of introspection to
examine underlying assumptions.
Finally, qualitative inquiry ranges from highly descriptive to explanatory to activist. Across these
varied purposes, qualitative researchers seek to understand sociocultural phenomena with the hope
of bringing about change. This is especially true for educational research. Few educational research-
ers seek merely to document education as it is. Often they are motivated by a desire to improve the
systems of education through understanding and advocating for change. The commitment to social
justice takes on diferent forms; as a thorough understanding through ethnography and/or an explicit
goal-orientated change agenda through participatory-action research, each provide approaches to
change. The focal studies by Calabrese Barton and Tan (2019) and Shea and Sandoval (2020) make
visible diferent ways the participants themselves, along with the researcher, view the common work as
bringing about social change. By bringing to the fore the stories and circumstances of participants that
might not otherwise be heard, qualitative inquiry can contribute to social justice in education. Such
analyses need to take into account how oppression often occurs diferentially across race, class, gender,
sexuality, language use, immigration status, and nationality, among other forms of discrimination.

Criteria for Success: Epistemological Considerations for Methods

Across the three types of qualitative research depicted in this chapter, and for all types of qualitative
research, there are epistemological considerations. Qualitative research seeks to develop knowledge

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about psychological, social, cultural, and educational phenomena and share this knowledge through
accounts. The assumptions about the purposes of the research, the validity of the assertations pro-
duced in the accounts, and the nature of the narratives instantiate theories of knowing and knowl-
edge. Authors of qualitative inquiry construct relationships with the participants in their studies; the
data collected, analyzed, and produced; and the audiences of the narratives as they make the research
public. The types and range of these qualitative inquiries and their articulation vary widely and show
marked diferences from other types of research (c.f., Denzin & Lincoln, 2011; Camilli et al., 2006).
Qualitative research in education generally has an orientation to produce accounts that have validity
concerning the nature of the phenomena under study and a goal to improve practice. This orienta-
tion manifests in a variety of accounts of qualitative research.
Narrative accounts of qualitative inquiry vary in purpose and form. Some accounts are largely
descriptive in nature. These studies ofer close-up, detailed views into the lives of the participants.
Descriptive accounts tell the story of people and the social, cultural, linguistic, and political situa-
tions of their experience. Such accounts make visible the local knowledge and how interpretations
of experience are constructed by participants (Geertz, 1983). Another type of narrative in qualita-
tive inquiry are normative accounts. These inquiries lead the researcher to make moral arguments
and often recommendations for practice. Normative accounts are often derived from contextualized
studies of everyday action and identify ways that life circumstances can be improved from a moral
point of view. Descriptive and normative accounts are not often easily distinguishable. Descrip-
tive accounts tell the reader what is, but often imply what should be. Normative accounts build on
description and make the case for what should be. Furthermore, the very nature of the descriptive
accounts, the vocabulary, metaphors, and point of view of the account is steeped in moral decisions.
The decisions about the design and methods of inquiry are similarly not neutral, but derived from
a theoretical point of view, grounded in an orientation to the world. In this way, even accounts that
aim for careful description are normative. Finally, there are qualitative research studies that are activist
in nature. These studies aim to bring about social change, often stating this intent at the outset. Such
research makes visible the moral point of view of the authors of the work and seek to bring about
change through the research. Although such studies identify as aiming to bring about social change,
this is really a matter of emphasis. Descriptive and normative accounts of research similarly often
represent a goal of improving the human condition through construction of knowledge.
Research accounts from qualitative inquiry, like all research reports, are produced with an audi-
ence in mind. The production of research results, particularly in felds like education with conse-
quences for practice, are judged based on quality. There are a number of considerations for such
judgments. Qualitative research, like all research, is judged by norms and expectations of the feld,
often appearing in the form of peer review, readership, citations, and application. These judgments
are undoubtedly variously interpreted and applied with the epistemic cultures of research commu-
nities. To clarify the judgments of quality, the feld from time to time considers the standards for
research. The heterogeneity of the nature and practice of qualitative research suggests that develop-
ing a consensus about a set of quality considerations for standards for research that applies uniformly
across all qualitative genres is unlikely; furthermore, such imposition may limit the value of qualitative
research by narrowing a robust debate (Freeman et al., 2007). Nevertheless, considerations of quality
in research are important and the feld of educational research, like all research, needs to hold itself
accountable to others in society. Nevertheless, discussions of standards should be part of a robust
critical discourse about the nature, practice, and value of research. Discussions of standards can be
part of this ongoing conversation, particularly if the discussion opens up consideration of alternative
viewpoints, rather than limit debate with a putative consensus.
Howe and Eisenhart (1990) were among the frst to lay out some considerations for standards
for qualitative research. I use these as an example of a way to advance thinking about the cultural
and practice of qualitative inquiry. They noted that such standards are abstract, and therefore open

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to interpretation, before they ofered four suggestions. First, they advocated for a good match of
research questions to data collection and analysis. This suggests that the nature of the inquiry and
the purposes of the research should drive decisions about the choices of research methods to apply
to the study. Consideration should be given to the type of claims that can be made from the research
methods and the overall goal of the research project. Second, the procedures for data collection and
analysis need to be applied with efective use of the techniques of the research approach. Although
there can be stark diferences across approaches to social science research, each approach has a tradi-
tion of ways of going about the business of conducting a proper study. Adhering to these genre-
specifc norms provides potential insight into the phenomena in question and credibility among
the readers of the work. Third, Howe and Eisenhart place emphasis on the overall warrant for the
empirical claims. This is an important dimension to any empirical research. The warrant in qualita-
tive research is established through each of the steps of the research process, from negotiating access to
an educational setting, to defning (and modifying) the research questions, to refning procedures for
data collection, representation, and analysis to creating accounts of the research experience that are
persuasive. Evidence is thus created, but nonetheless grounded in the everyday life of participants of
the research. Fourth, educational research is value laden. Qualitative research is often conducted with
participants in settings with learners, and often vulnerable populations, and thus needs to recognize
the ethical implications of the work. Choices about the stance toward participants and the research
approach itself derive from the researcher(s)’s values.
The American Educational Research Association (2006) created “Standards for Reporting on
Empirical Social Science Research in AERA Publications”. Two overarching principles underlie the
standards: reports of empirical research should be warranted and transparent. As qualitative research
is empirical (that is, derived from investigations in the social world), these principles apply. Indeed,
qualitative research demonstrates particular attention to the nature of the evidence warranting empir-
ical claims and the means of developing transparency in the processes of knowledge construction and
communication through inquiry. Much like the standards proposed by Howe and Eisenhart (1990),
the AERA standards for empirical work, derived from the two overarching principles, contribute to
the feld by identifying points for discussion, critique, and emergent formulations of how to con-
duct the work of empirical social science, including qualitative inquiry. The standards are organized
into eights areas: problem formulation; design and logic of the study; sources of evidence; mea-
surement and classifcation; analysis and interpretation; generalization; ethics in reporting; and title,
abstract, and headings (p. 33). These standards provide a starting point for considerations of quality
in empirical social science and educational research. Discussion of the value and usefulness of stan-
dards is itself a critical discourse that can inform the feld of education. In the next section, I provide
a framework to propose three types of critical discourses for advancing educational research. The
goal of such work is to develop the collective wisdom of the feld regarding the practices constitut-
ing the work of qualitative research. Discussion of standards, to the extent that they open up critical
discourses about warrantability and transparency, is useful, particularly when tied to considerations
valued in the various epistemic cultures of qualitative research, such as learning from being there,
representation of everyday life, insights about participants, plausibility of results, actionable results,
and political implications for change.

Qualitative Research as Culture and Practice

Critical Dialogues for Education Research

My chapter in the Handbook for Complementary Methods in Education Research (Camilli et al., 2006)
proposed three sorts of epistemological conversations needed to inform debates about research meth-
odology (Kelly, 2006). The framing of debates about methods is relevant, particularly when the

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criteria for successful research themselves are in question. These conversations place emphasis on
diferent dimensions of approaches to educational research and recognize diferent audiences for
the ongoing conversations. Based on a framework for moral discourse proposed by Strike (1995),
I proposed three types of critical discourse about research methods to explain, compare, assess, and
improve research methodologies in educational research: critical discourse within group, critical discourse
regarding public reason, and hermeneutical conversations across groups (Kelly, 2006). Taken together, the
critical discourses ofer a collective method for refning thinking about methodologies for research
and developing efective ways of communicating across paradigms. I describe here how these criti-
cal dialogues can be applied to qualitative research within the context of research methods within
science education.
The frst type of critical dialogue specifes commitments within a research tradition. Critical dis-
course within group are conversations concerning developmental and defnitional work regarding the
creation, specifcation, and extension of a research group’s central theories, assumptions, and key
constructs (Kelly, 2006). Within-group critical discourse provides a forum for development of a
research area’s core theories and commitments. For example, case study research can debate the
nature and purposes of case study research, the kinds and types of cases, and the various ways that
cases are defned and delimited. In this manner, the scholars working within the research tradition
of case study research refne, extend, and re-invent their collective work. In these critical dialogues
within group, new ideas, metaphors, and redescriptions may be developed to advance the thinking
within the feld (Rorty, 1989). For example, the contrastive case study by McNew-Birren et  al.
(2018) (focal study, reviewed previously) identifed the ways that various interpretations of social
justice were construed among diferent stakeholders in the educational system. The purposes of con-
structive cases and descriptive language used in this and other case studies form the basis for refning
the methodological approaches in case study research. The developmental and defnitional work of
these critical dialogues defne the nature of the research tradition (e.g., case study) and contribute to
judgments of quality within the tradition. Similarly, the metaethnography of Sherman et al. (2019)
sought to examine tensions within ethnographic research and seeks new ways of doing research
through dialogue within the ethnographic tradition.
I refer to the second form of critical discourse as critical discourse regarding public reason. These dia-
logues focus on the development of epistemological commitments to assess the value of educational
research within and across diferent research traditions (Kelly, 2006). These conversations concern the
criteria used to judge research and provide the bases for evaluating diferent forms of research. Across
methodological approaches, candidates for quality criteria could be insightfulness, empirical warrant,
theoretical salience, consistency with other knowledge, transparency, and usefulness for practitioners.
These dialogues concern public reason as they strive for some overlapping consensus among scholars.
For example, the studies reviewed in this chapter based in the design-based tradition aim to improve
practice through iterations of design, research, refnement, and redesign (e.g., Anderson et al., 2018).
Their value may be compared to other sorts of research also aimed at improving practice, such as
random control trials. The diferent approaches may lead to diferent types of knowledge, which
may be complementary, or may provide conficting visions of applied educational research. Critical
discourses regarding public reason would seek to establish the basis for the quality criteria for making
decisions about the respective value and future investment in applied research. Such discourse would
examine the epistemological commitments of the feld of education regarding research methods.
What counts as valid and useful research for advancing knowledge and improving practice? To what
standards are researchers accountable?
The third form of critical discourse concerns hermeneutical conversations across groups. These critical
discourses are designed to foster learning from diferences across research traditions. Such conversa-
tions can occur within qualitative research in focused areas, for example, examining how studies
grounded in sociolinguistics can learn from conversational analysis. They may also learn and combine

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ideas from across broader qualitative traditions. For example, DeLiema et  al. (2019) (focal study,
reviewed previously) brought together interactional analysis within a larger set of studies grounded
in DBR. In this way, the study demonstrated what can be learned across research approaches. Such
critical dialogues can be extended further to consider ways that mixed-methods approaches to edu-
cational phenomena can be created to provide complementary insights into the relevant psycho-
logical, social, cultural, and educational dimensions under consideration. Bringing together diferent
traditions may also entail a consideration of the epistemological commitments of the various ways
of conducting research and a re-examination of the bases for research as found in the critical discourse
regarding public reason.
Viewing qualitative research as culture and practice suggests that progress for the feld entails
building a dialogic community of scholars open to discussion and debate. Fostering such an epistemic
culture depends on opening up the feld to new voices and shifting the epistemic subject from that of
the inquirer to that of the local, collective group of inquirers (Longino, 2002). The critical dialogues
about research methods will beneft from learning from alternative points of view and accounts of
social reality. Examination of the assumptions of everyday practices, whether they be those of science
instruction, or those constructing what counts as qualitative inquiry, will beneft from perspectives
derived from diferent theoretical and subject positions. Science education has begun to be informed
by an increasingly broader set of theoretical frameworks, such as feminist scholarships, critical race
theory, indigenous knowledge, decolonial theory, queer theory, among others (e.g., Emeagwali,
2020; Letts & Fifeld, 2019; Mensah, 2019; Scantlebury et al., 2019; Zidny et al., 2020). As these and
other frameworks challenge what counts as qualitative research in science education and education
more broadly, the feld will be strengthened through a construction of public reason from multiple
perspectives.

Ongoing Conversations: Collective Wisdom, Solidarity, and Hope

I have argued that the dialogic community of inquirers defnes and transforms qualitative inquiry as
culture and practice. As the scope of the chapter concerns science education, the question about sci-
ence and qualitative inquiry is an avenue for understanding the nature of claims in qualitative inquiry
and the purposes of qualitative research. The science question for qualitative research in science
education and beyond concerns whether causal relationships can be ascertained from the results of
qualitative inquiry (Lagemann, 2000; National Research Council, 2002). It would be convenient
for school leaders if educational research could deliver ready-made results, relatively context free,
that informed policy decisions, particularly as related to resource allocation. For example, general-
ized empirical statements such as “a w percent increase for x years in middle school science teacher
professional learning centered on y type of instructional strategies for biology will yield a z per-
cent increase in student learning as measured by standardized statewide tests.” It’s debatable about
whether any educational research produces causal claims as specifc in detail and wide-ranging in
implications this (invented) hypothetical statement. Qualitative research most certainly does not pro-
duce such causal statements, nor does it aspire to do so. Rather, claims emanating from qualitative
inquiry tend to be what Heap (1995) calls a priori, normative claims articulated in propositional form.
Contingent, empirical claims do not aggregate to generalization, but rather provide insights into the
cultural practices of educational phenomena. For example, consider the following statement from
the conclusion of Avraamidou (2020): “The fndings of this study have ofered insights into how
intrapersonal, interpersonal, sociocultural factors, relationships, and a myriad of experiences nurtured
Amina’s intersecting identities, and what this may mean for Muslim women’s participation in phys-
ics” (p. 337). The claim, while grounded in empirical work, does not form a generalization derived
from accumulation of facts. Rather, it makes a normative claim about the sociocultural condition of
the case study participant, and in doing so, provides insights into how this woman’s experiences in

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physics can be understood and appreciated. This is not to say that the empirical work did not inform
the normative claim; it was the careful analysis and insights derived from the case study that made
clear ways that the intrapersonal, interpersonal, sociocultural factors, relationships, and experiences
nurtured Amina’s intersecting identities. Rather than aim for generalizations about all women’s or
Muslim women’s experiences in physics, the claim brings understandings of the experiences that are
likely to resonate with others who have had similar experiences, or with those who seek to under-
stand the lived experiences of others in the physics culture. The value of the empirical work is to
provide understanding and empathy to the cultural dissonance in this instance, recognizing that such
insights might inform thinking about similar experiences for learners entering a new culture.
To recognize the value of these sorts of claims, we need to understand qualitative inquiry as con-
tributing to the collective wisdom, solidarity, and hope (to borrow liberally from Rorty, 1982), rather
than producing generalizable, empirical claims. This is not to argue that qualitative inquiry does not
produce assertions about psychological, social, cultural, and educational phenomena. Qualitative
inquiry does this – for example, DBR provides and enacts specifc recommendations. The empirical
bases of understanding are derived from explorations in the worlds as they appear to us. Avraamidou’s
study ofers insight into a culture and contributes to the collective wisdom (learned from experience,
other ethnographies, inference from similar cultures) that can inform how education is understood as
sociocultural phenomena. In addition to collective wisdom, qualitative inquiry builds understanding
and empathy for others, in diferent life circumstances. This type of understanding has the potential
to build solidarity among people and to recognize each other as part of greater whole. For example,
Shea and Sandoval’s (2020) study identifed the importance of afrming practices of not only the
Latinx students’ interest and ideas but also their stories from Mexico. Accumulating understanding
and building solidarity among and across cultures has the potential to foster hope for improving educa-
tion through collective understanding and work. In this way, qualitative inquiry helps us understand
each other, the structures that limit the realization of human potential, and the ways that oppression
limits educational opportunity. Through the development of wisdom, solidarity, and hope we can
strive to improve educational systems for the betterment of societies – freer from oppression, more
equitable, and kinder.

Conclusion
In this chapter, I have presented the case for considering qualitative research as culture and practice.
Rather than worrying about whether qualitative research is scientifc or rigorous, or even whether
instances of qualitative inquiry can be judged by a set of standards, I propose to shift the conversation
to recognize that qualitative research, like all research in education, is the product of specifc epistemic
cultures. These cultures defne membership through common ways of acting, speaking, and being;
construct norms and expectations for viewing and interpretating each other, our artifacts, and discourse;
socialize new members through ritualized ceremonies defning the folklore about how to be in the cul-
ture; and evolve through concerted activity and redefning of the vocabulary, metaphors, and ways of
taking action. In addition to being epistemological in the sense of generating, communicating, and cri-
tiquing empirical knowledge claims, I have argued that the goal for qualitative inquiry is also ethical in
the sense of producing collective wisdom, solidarity, and hope. Qualitative inquiry constructs collective
wisdom through understanding, empathy, and inquisitiveness. Such inquiry is empirical, learns from
investigations in the world, and as such seeks ways of understanding. By understanding and building a
web of beliefs, and breaking down the distinction of participant and researcher, this approach helps us
understand the other, whether they are a struggling student, overworked school leaders, or any person
sufering from oppression. Wisdom helps us come to recognize the others as part of us. This research
can help us understand the plight and challenges faced by others in the educational sector and beyond,
and in doing so has the potential to build solidarity (Rorty, 1991). Understanding and empathy have

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the potential to construct ways of being together that improve educational practices. Finally, the work
of qualitative research provides social hope (Rorty, 1999). The recognition of oppression in science
classrooms from ethnographic research, refnement of science lessons through DBR, or developing a
better understanding of a reform in education practices in a classroom through a case study, provide
ways of making education better. Such improvement is measured from within the knowledge system of
the researchers, practitioners, and students – this is all we have, the reasoned judgment of participating
members of a social group. Furthermore, these social groups are constituted by members, each with
a positionality. As scholars we must recognize the contingency of our own vocabulary, of our own
perspective, point of view, and lived experience. We each interpret the world from a stance. Our ways
of knowing are contingent on our experiences, backgrounds, intellectual histories, and importantly, the
ever-evolving epistemic cultures of our research communities. My own intellectual history, life experi-
ence, and scholarly orientation deeply infuenced this text, claiming qualitative research as culture and
practice. Regardless, we can build hope for change by recognizing the contingencies of how any one
of us views a situation, but knowing that others can and do interpret experience diferently provides
bases for deeper understanding. Qualitative inquiry builds such solidarity, through which we have hope
for making education better.

Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my critical friends Kathryn Bateman, Christine Cunningham, Ashwin Mohan,
and Amy Ricketts for comments on an earlier version of this chapter, and the chapter reviewers,
Lucy Avraamidou and Heidi Carlone, for their suggestions for improving the chapter.

Notes
1 Taylor (2014) provides an excellent review of the philosophical, sociocultural, historical, and political infu-
ence shaping qualitative research in science education. Taylor’s chapter sets qualitative research in a historical
context and identifes the epistemological commitments of the feld over time. Rather than rehearse those
perspectives, this chapter builds on the work already done by Taylor to extend the perspective in qualitative
research in science education. This chapter builds on the epistemological foundation from Taylor and treats
contemporary issues for qualitative research in science education in this context.
2 Creswell (2013) provides a thorough comparison of fve qualitative traditions of inquiry from a method-
ological point of view. The book provides an analysis and commentary on the theoretical framing, data
collection, analysis and representation, writing qualitative inquiry, and standards for quality.

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