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Introductions to Qualitative Research

Qualitative Research Design and Methods: An Introduction (Myers Education Press, 2024) 
Kathleen deMarrais, Kathryn Roulston, and Janie Copple

Written by scholars from three generations of qualitative methodologists, this book situates qualitative research within the history of the field and integrates this history within discussions of specific research designs. The book includes discussions of traditional and emerging approaches to qualitative research, and provides a theoretically grounded approach to designing and implementing studies. Each chapter integrates discussion of theory and highlights the role of ethics in the conduct or research.
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An Introductory Guide to Qualitative Research in Art Museums (Routledge, 2024)
Ann Rowson Love and Deborah Randolph

This practice-based guide introduces qualitative research to established and upcoming museum professionals. The book includes excerpted interviews with researchers who are studying museums around the world and introduces qualitative research through the work of contemporary artists. Rowson Love and Randolph provide guidance on how to envision a qualitative research project that facilitates meaningful interpretation of visitor experiences. They discuss qualitative research foundations and methodologies, as well as take the reader through a step by step examination of an actual study. Although the book targets the museum field, it has relevance in other research settings.
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Qualitative Data Analysis: Key Approaches (SAGE Publications, 2023)
Peter A.J. Stevens

With numerous approaches to choose from, knowing where to start when doing qualitative data analysis (QDA) can be a challenge. This book gives you direction with an accessible and thorough introduction to nine different approaches to QDA, written by a multi-disciplinary team with years of experience teaching and analysing data using these methods. With a clear focus on the ‘how to’ of QDA, each chapter includes: Step-by-step descriptions of how to apply each approach in your research Online and in-text activities to help you practice your skills; Annotated reading lists so you can dig deeper into key topics; Case studies from a range of disciplines so you can see how each approach works in practice.
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Qualitative Research: Analyzing Life (2nd edition) (SAGE Publications, 2022)
Johnny Saldaña and Matt Omasta

The coauthors take a unique approach to the organization of this textbook. Unlike the majority of methods works, we promote that it’s important to learn the craft of qualitative research before students learn the art of it. Thus, Part I of this book acquaints readers with ways of collecting qualitative data; Part II discusses the elements of research design; and Part III focuses on the analysis, synthesis, and presentation of research. We also emphasize analysis throughout the research endeavor. We begin with qualitative data analysis in Chapter 1, and that thematic thread is woven throughout each chapter that follows.
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Fundamentals of Qualitative Research (Oxford University Press, 2011)
Johnny Saldaña

This book presents a concise yet rigorous description of how to design and conduct fieldwork projects and how to examine data in multiple ways for interpretive insight. Saldaña acquaints readers with the major genres of qualitative research available and the elements of interviewing, participant observation, and other data collection methods to inform emergent research design decisions. An extended chapter on qualitative data analysis is one of the book's unique features. Eight distinctive styles of qualitative writing are presented. The book concludes with a list of recommended readings as well as additional resources on organizations and associations dedicated to qualitative research.
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Foundations of Qualitative Inquiry

Philosophical Mentoring in Qualitative Research: Collaborating and Inquiring Together (Routledge, 2022)
Edited by Kelly W. Guyotte and Jennifer R. Wolgemuth

With contributions from advanced, early career, and emerging qualitative scholars, Philosophical Mentoring in Qualitative Research illuminates how qualitative research mentoring practices, relationships, and possibilities of inquiry and teaching come to life under different mentoring philosophies.  Its thoughtful chapters and artful "mentoring moments" draw on critical, feminist, new materialist, post-structuralist, and other philosophies to make visible, interrupt, reflect, deepen, and expand mentoring practices within the qualitative community revealing what we can know, do, and become through them.
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Developing Theory Through Qualitative Inquiry (SAGE Publications, 2024)
Johnny Saldaña

This unique textbook shows researchers how to develop theories derived through qualitative inquiry. Johnny Saldaña illustrates that a theory is a research-based statement with an accompanying explicating narrative that contains six properties: concepts, propositional logic, parameters/variation, explanation/ causation, generalizability/transferability, and the improvement of social life. The book features hundreds of examples of theories and metatheories from a wide range of disciplines and includes end-of-chapter activities for exercising the skills necessary to develop original theories. Developing Theory Through Qualitative Inquiry presents an accessible introduction to the principles and methods of theorizing for social insight.
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Quests for Questioners: Inventive Approaches to Qualitative Interviews (Myers Education Press, 2023)
Edited by Kathryn Roulston

This edited book presents a range of quests for those who want to learn from others through asking questions in research interviews and conversations and attending to the more-than-human aspects of the world. Authors discuss a rich array of interview practices used by contemporary scholars—including, how to a. elicit verbal accounts from participants in culturally responsive ways;  b. think with theory in relation to the use of interview methods; and  c. integrate object, graphic, and photo elicitation methods and mobile and walking methods in research.
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Interviewing: A Guide to Theory and Practice (SAGE Publications, 2022)
Kathryn Roulston

This book provides guidance to researchers about how to develop interview skills that align with their theoretical assumptions. Connecting "theory" and "method" can be challenging for novice researchers. Interviewing: A Guide to Theory and Practice draws from, and extends, the author's earlier 2010 book, and focuses on three interrelated issues, how researchers: theorize research interviews; examine their subject positions in relation to projects and participants; and explore the details of interview interaction to inform practice.
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The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers (4th edition) (SAGE Publications, 2021)
Johnny Saldaña

This classic, internationally bestselling manual is the definitive guide to coding and analyzing qualitative data. It introduces a broad array of approaches to qualitative coding, demystifying and illuminating the process, and provides clear, insightful guidance for qualitative researchers at all levels.
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Speculative Pedagogies of Qualitative Inquiry (Routledge, 2020)
Candace R. Kuby and Rebecca C. Christ

This book seeks to teach students to become qualitative inquirers, not with a formulaic recipe but rather by showing them how to think from a place of uncertain, (w)rest(full), relational liveliness. The authors seek to create qualitative inquiry courses that create spaces that consider our abilities to respond to, come to know (epistemology), be (ontology), and do (axiology) qualitative inquiry. Thus, a main thread of this book is (re)thinking and (re)imagining inquiry that they come to conceptualize as (in)query. The authors use both data from graduate level research courses and theoretical concepts from poststructuralism, posthumanism, and feminist "new" materialism.
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How to Write Qualitative Research (Routledge, 2019)
Marcus B. Weaver-Hightower

While many qualitative textbooks explain how to conduct an interview or analyze fieldnotes, rarely do they give more than a few pages to the skill many find most difficult: writing.  How to Write Qualitative Research uses clear prose, helpful examples, images, and lists to break down and explain the most common writing tasks in qualitative research.  Topics include: writing about and with qualitative data; composing findings; organizing chapters and sections; using grammar for powerful writing; revising for clarity; writing conclusions, methods sections, and theory; creating and writing about visuals; and writing different types of qualitative research and different document types.
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Writing Qualitatively: The Selected Works of Johnny Saldaña (Routledge, 2018)
Johnny Saldaña

Writing Qualitatively: The Selected Works of Johnny Saldaña showcases the diverse range of writing styles available to qualitative researchers through the work one of the most internationally cited methodologists. The traditional academic journal article still holds its place as a convention of published scholarship, but Saldaña illustrates how a variety of approaches to research documentation can evocatively represent social life and one’s self in intriguing ways. Multiple methodologies and writing examples are included, ranging from case studies to action research; from poetry to ethnodramatic play scripts; from confessional tales to autoethnographies; and from textbook materials to classroom session designs.
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Qualitative Inquiry in Higher Education Organization and Policy Research (Routledge, 2017)
Edited by Penny A. Pasque and Vicente M. Lechuga

Qualitative Inquiry in Higher Education Organization and Policy Research provides readers with the theoretical foundations and innovative perspectives for undertaking qualitative research to influence policy and practice discussions. Well-known chapter authors discuss innovative strategies for investigating complex problems, helping readers understand how research can consider the culture of the institution, administrative hierarchy, students, faculty, and external constituencies. From both an organizational and policy perspective, chapter pairings explore a range of methodologies, including ethnography, case study, critical qualitative inquiry, and the notion of "grit."
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Thinking Qualitatively: Methods of Mind (SAGE Publications, 2015)
Johnny Saldaña

Written in Johnny Saldaña's elegant and accessible style, Thinking Qualitatively: Methods of Mind boldly pursues the challenge of teaching students not just how to collect and analyze data, but how to actively think about them. Each chapter presents one “method of mind” (thinking analytically, realistically, symbolically, ethically, multidisciplinarily, artistically, summarily, interpretively, and narratively), together with applications, a vignette or story related to the thinking modality, points to remember, and exercises. Designed to help researchers “rise above the data,” the book explores how qualitative research designs, data collection, data analyses, and write-ups can be enriched through over 60 different lenses, filters, and angles on social life. Venturing into more evocative and multidimensional ways to examine the complex patterns of daily living, the book reveals how the researcher's mind thinks heuristically to transcend the descriptive and develop "highdeep" insights about the human condition.
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Disrupting Qualitative Inquiry Possibilities and Tensions in Educational Research (Peter Lang, 2014)
Edited by Ruth Nicole Brown, Rozana Carducci, and Candace R Kuby

Disrupting Qualitative Inquiry is an edited volume that examines the possibilities and tensions encountered by scholars who adopt disruptive qualitative approaches to the study of educational contexts, issues, and phenomena. The book defines «disruptive» qualitative methodologies and methods in educational research as processes of inquiry which seek to: 1) Disrupt traditional notions of research roles and relationships 2) Disrupt dominant approaches to the collection and analysis of data 3) Disrupt traditional notions of representing and disseminating research findings 4) Disrupt rigid epistemological and methodological boundaries 5) Disrupt disciplinarily boundaries and assumptive frameworks of how to do educational research.

Ethnography

Discovering Black Existentialism (Brill, 2024)
E. Anthony Muhammad

In Discovering Black Existentialism, E. Anthony Muhammad documents his personal and academic journey to Black Existentialism. In doing so, the book illuminates the power of curriculum as a shaping agent in the life of an educator and researcher. As a combination of autobiography, theory, philosophy, and pedagogy, this work gives the reader an intimate view into the developmental arc of a Black Existentialist scholar.
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Advancing Sexual Consent and Agential Practices in Higher Education: Toward a New Community of Practice (Routledge, 2024)
Jason Laker and Erica Boas

This book provides in-depth exploration of sexual consent communication and negotiation practices among college students and efforts to prevent and respond to sexual coercion and violence within North American higher education institutions. The text examines the intricate interplay between individual agency and societal expectations in intimate situations and complexities of communication around sexual consent.  Influences of identity, early learning experiences, societal norms, and coercive elements on interactions among young adult postsecondary students are examined, highlighting approaches to fostering agency in intimate settings. The methodology employed in this decade-long research is innovative and interview-based, providing a rich narrative from student perspectives.
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Interactional Ethnography: Designing and Conducting Discourse-based Ethnographic Research (Routledge, 2023)
Edited by Audra Skukauskaitė and Judith L. Green

Focusing specifically on Interactional Ethnography (IE) as a distinct, discourse-based form of ethnography, this book offers researchers, scholars, and teacher educators a definitive, novel contribution to current methodological literature on IE broadly, and will be of particular use to ethnographers starting out in their career. Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the volume in illustrating the use of IE in a range of educational sub-disciplines, the book’s relevance extends to the fields of medical education, teacher education, arts and literacy research, as well as providing situated examples of IE in settings with relevance to the social sciences, anthropology, and cultural studies.
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Care-Based Methodologies: Reimagining Qualitative Research with Youth in US Schools (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022)
Edited by Veena Vasudevan, Nora Gross, Pavithra Nagarajan, and Katherine Clonan-Roy

Care-Based Methodologies reimagines relationships between researchers and youth participants in school-based research. This book illustrates the possibilities for conducting rigorous and responsible research that simultaneously improves our understanding of youth's lives, cares for their wellbeing, and works toward dismantling the systems that oppress them. The editors of the volume offer an opening chapter that articulates how researchers can practice care-based methodologies with youth by centering transparency, reflexivity, reciprocity, curiosity, consent, and self-care. The chapters that follow draw from a range of qualitative and ethnographic studies to highlight how care mediates and informs the research process and offer concrete guidance for employing care-based methodologies in school-based studies with youth.
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Engaged Research and Practice: Higher Education and the Pursuit of the Public Good (Stylus, 2017)
Edited by Betty Overton, Penny A. Pasque, and John Burkhardt

What practices can researchers use to gain a more nuanced understanding of educational issues in the community and be part of the solution to those issues? Engaged Research and Practice is about two prevailing and complementary ideas that have surfaced in the higher education arena: engaged research and higher education for the public good. Engaged research is scholarship that not only attempts to open up new knowledge, but it does so with a sense that the new knowledge, insight and directions have a direct relationship to needs and problems within our communities, institutions, and policy arenas.
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Arts-Based Research

Ethnotheatre: Research from Page to Stage (Routledge/Left Coast Press, 2011)
Johnny Saldaña

Ethnotheatre transforms research about human experiences into a dramatic presentation for an audience. Saldaña, one of the best-known practitioners of this research tradition, outlines the key principles and practices of ethnotheatre in this clear, concise volume. He covers the preparation of a dramatic presentation from the research and writing stages to the elements of stage production. Saldaña nurtures playwrights through adaptation and stage exercises, and delves into the complex ethical questions of turning the personal into theatre. The volume includes multiple scenes from contemporary ethnodramas plus two complete play scripts as exemplars of the genre.
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Critical and Transformative Qualitative Inquiry

Advancing Culturally Responsive Research and Researchers: Qualitative,  Quantitative, and Mixed Methods (Routledge, 2023)
Edited by Penny A. Pasque and e alexander

This book is focused on research designs that take up culturally responsive research. It is a collection of chapters, primarily qualitative, from presenters from the Advanced Methods Institute (Ohio State).
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Critical Geographies of Education: Space, Place, and Curriculum Inquiry (Routledge, 2021)
Robert J. Helfenbein

Critical Geographies of Education: Space, Place, and Curriculum Inquiry is an attempt to take space seriously in thinking about school, schooling, and the place of education in larger society. Presented as an intellectual geography that traces how spatial analysis can be useful in curriculum theorizing, social foundations of education, and educational research, the book surveys a range of issues including social justice and racial equity in schools, educational reform, internationalization of the curriculum, and how schools are placed within the larger social fabric.
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Critical Qualitative Inquiry: Foundations and Futures (Routledge, 2015)
Edited by Gaile Cannella, Michelle Salazar Pérez, and Penny A. Pasque

Critical approaches to qualitative research have made a significant impact on research practice over the past decade. This comprehensive volume of contemporary, original articles places this trend in its historical context, describes the current landscape of critical work, and considers the future of this turn.
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Qualitative Inquiry for Equity in Higher Education:  Methodological Innovations, Implications, and Interventions (Wiley, 2012)
Penny A. Pasque, Rozana Carducci, Aaron K. Kuntz, and E. Ryan Gildersleeve

Beginning with the premise that equity is of paramount concern in the study of higher education, this text explores the promise and pitfalls of qualitative inquiry with respect to addressing issues of in/equity and fostering social change at micro, meso, and macro levels. Building upon contemporary qualitative higher education scholarship, the authors advance a critique of the reductive and generic conceptions of qualitative research that dominate the field and call upon scholars to examine the transformative potential embedded within critical qualitative inquiry.
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Archival Research

Exploring the Archives: A Beginner’s Guide for Qualitative Researchers (Myers Education Press, 2021)
Kathryn Roulston and Kathleen deMarrais

This book offers qualitative researchers an entrée into the world of working with archival repositories and special collections. Suited to novice researchers seeking a general introduction into how special collections are created and how they can be used, the book offers useful, clear guidance on using different types of archives, developing topics for research within the archives, assessing materials available, how to work with archivists and curators, documenting the research process, and writing up an archival study.
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