Qualitative Research

Qualitative research in curriculum studies, as the field of qualitative research, is highly contested with diverse traditions, complicated tensions, and irresolvable contradictions. Qualitative research, as Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln state, and curriculum studies, as William Pinar contends, are interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary, and sometimes counterdisciplinary. Many researchers in curriculum studies challenge traditional ways of engaging in and interpreting curriculum research, and they choose qualitative research as a form of radical democratic practice. This radical democratic orientation of qualitative research vitalizes heated debates and complicated conversations among curriculum inquirers.

William Pinar, William Schubert, and Michael Connelly perceive curriculum studies as a diverse and interdisciplinary field replete with paradigms, perspectives, and possibilities, as Schubert described in 1986, demanding multiple understanding, and with commonplaces (teachers, learners, subject matters, and milieu), ...