Navigating AI in Qualitative Research: Faculty Perspectives in the Postdigital Era

• In Event: Technology and Tools Useful for Teaching Research Methods and Statistics

Abstract

Although qualitative research faculty may choose whether to address AI-assisted inquiry, they must still negotiate how to inhabit a pedagogical world where its presence is increasingly inescapable. In this roundtable, we share findings from interviews with ten participants that explored how faculty navigate, negotiate, and contest the role of AI in qualitative pedagogy, revealing the affordances and constraints participants perceived AI has in shaping the next generation of qualitative researchers. Drawing on constant comparative analysis and a postdigital affordance theory perspective, we identified four tensions—Mimic/Mirror, Innovation/Creep, Productivity/Pressure, and Pedagogical Judgment/Gatekeeping—illustrative of participants’ efforts to sustain methodological integrity. We conclude by considering how qualitative educators might reimagine methodological integrity amid blurring boundaries between human and machine.

Authors

• Lorien S. Jordan, University of South Florida

• Tanja S Bruxmeier, University of South Florida

• Daria Smirnova, University of South Florida

• Paul G. Sauberer, University of South Florida

• Ethan Harris, University of Arkansas at Fayetteville

• Mary Margaret Hui Cunningham, Arkansas State University