This course will equip students with critical insights into social and educational research by providing an overview of the philosophical, practical, and ethical issues involved in designing, conducting, and critiquing qualitative research.

The first part of the course will involve an initial exploration of issues of ontology and explanation in qualitative research, students will be introduced to a framework for reading and conceptualizing qualitative research at multiple levels, including epistemology, theory, approach, and strategy. This framework will be used to engage in critical reading and examination of examples of published research studies representing four paradigms, including objectivist, hermeneutic, critical-emancipatory, and critical-poststructuralist research.

The second part of the course will focus on critical inquiry after the ‘linguistic turn’, with a focus on how text and discourse analysis can generate critical insights for researchers at the level of both theory and method. Specifically, the course will also examine how discourse analysis can provide a way of theorizing the production of data through strategies such as observation, interview, and document analysis. Throughout the course, questions concerning the nature of knowledge, truth, and language, as well as issues of power, responsibility and ethics will be foregrounded.