What did we/do we do?: Engaging historical thinking in teaching qualitative research methods

• In Event: We Did Not “Fall Out of a Coconut Tree”: Fostering Historical Thinking Within Higher Education Graduate Programs

Abstract

Purpose

A challenge for research methods courses is to simultaneously prepare EdD students for the successful completion of a doctoral dissertation and to teach them to apply research methodologies in their professional practice (Bengston et al., 2016). EdD students often arrive at these courses with limited understanding of research methodologies within education and anxiety about completing their dissertations (Murakami-Ramalho, Militello & Piert, 2013). The challenge for faculty is to both respond to students' fears, and to deeply and thoroughly teach the research methods so that they can become a transferable skill, applicable in both research and their practice as educators (Firestone et al. 2021). This paper presents one way of responding to these challenges by presenting a pedagogical model of engaging students’ historical thinking within teaching qualitative research methods.

Theoretical Framework

The epistemological approach of historical thinking calls us to view the past through an empathetic lens that views people and their actions as occurring within contradictory social currents (Mink et al., 2020; Lowenthal, 2015). As Wineburg (1999) states, it “teaches us to go beyond our brief life, and to go beyond the fleeting moment in human history into which we’ve been born” (p.298). Such a viewpoint–making decisions within a particular context– is central to the work of qualitative researchers, who are tasked with making complex ethical and methodical decisions (Luttrell, 2010).

Pedagogical Model

To teach students about the complexity of ethical and methodological decision-making, I incorporate historical thinking into my course on qualitative research methods in two ways. One, in teaching the history research methods, students examine primary documents from Margaret Mead, Ernest Burgess, W.E.B. Du Bois and Abraham Flexner. These include field notes, interview guides, letters and study notes. In examining these documents, students are guided by a “looking” form that prompts analysis of how researchers made decisions and engaged participants. We then have a class discussion about the evolution of research ethics that transitions to an exploration of ethical decision-making in qualitative research today. And two, to teach content analysis, we visit the University archive where students analyze the evolution of curricula in the college of education. The archive includes course syllabi, exams, student papers and faculty research from 1920 to the present. Students utilize the frame of historical analysis, to examine how the people represented in these documents (professors, local teachers, students of education) viewed teaching.

Methods

To understand how the course emphasis on historical thinking fosters students' understanding of decision making, this fall, I will collect data in two ways: One, a graduate research assistant will conduct focus group interviews in January, after the course is complete. And two, aided by my graduate student, I will analyze the evolution of students’ views of themselves across their course reflection journals. Students write entries in these journals every two weeks. All data collection will be complete by January 2025.

Significance

This paper presents a novel approach to teaching qualitative research methods, aiming to address endemic issues in the preparation of doctoral students.

Author

• Liza Ann Bolitzer, Kean University