Grounded Theory Research

Grounded theory research is the observation of a naturalistic setting and the development of images and ideas—concepts, hypotheses, and theories from these observations and data. This form of research serves to guide or provide a theoretical foundation for much qualitative research in the [Page 420]field of curriculum studies. The observations may include talking to individuals, including interviews, and collecting documents. Several methodological differences from traditional, positivistic, and quantitative approaches to inquiry are important. Usually the researcher is more interested in the front end of research—creating ideas rather than testing or verifying ideas. The data typically are qualitative in contrast to more quantitative data gathered in laboratory experiments or with questionnaires. Within social science, this approach was initially accented and labeled by sociologists Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss in 1967, The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. In contrast to this simplicity, the more complex version of grounded theory is Antony Bryant and Kathy Charmaz's 2007 Handbook of Grounded Theory containing 600 pages with three dozen authors. The authors, many from United Kingdom and other countries besides the United States, often were trained by, or associated with, Glaser or Strauss. They are mostly sociologists and social psychologists in various universities and professional settings, but rarely in professional education or curriculum.

Considerable research involving grounded theory in curriculum studies, the field of education, and closely related fields appeared before the label was invented or before it was widely known or recognized. For example, the grounded theory tradition was formed by natural historian Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species whose 1859 work during his voyage on Her Majesty's ship Beagle underlies the structure of most general biology texts as well as the organization of the educational exhibits of the Museum of Natural History. Social workers Fritz Redl and David Wineman's 1953 publication, The Aggressive Child, represented grounded theory work with children at Pioneer House and developed concepts and theories for residential treatment centers is fundamental to social work curriculum. Other examples of ground theory work include Carl Rogers's Counseling and Psychotherapy, a book based on counseling interviews that developed the theory of nondirective counseling and altered counseling programs across the country, and Donald Schon's The Reflective Practitioner, a publication that changed the paradigm strategies of curriculum and instruction of practitioners in many fields. The grounded theory research of Louis Smith and William Geoffrey in The Complexity of an Urban Classroom developed narratives and models of classroom activities and teacher-pupil interactions and contributed to the teaching of educational psychology and principles of teaching. Finally, geometry teacher Harold Fawcett's The Nature of Proof, although an educational experiment that occurred within the auspices of the Progressive Education Association's Eight Year Study, involved secondary school pupils developing a grounded theory of geometry.

In the 1930s, Fawcett taught a high school geometry class in which the pupils discovered the importance of the concepts of definitions and assumptions. During the year, they worked from problems and exercises where they arrived at terms and concepts defined by pupils. A major point of Fawcett's geometry class was his intention to have students think about nonmathematical arguments, the classical issues of transfer of training. High school students were developing grounded concepts, hypotheses, and theories of geometry and the usefulness of these ideas in other complex human situations and thought.

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