Prof Paul Dowling | Five two-hour sessions | Summer: 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM (UK time) Tuesday 20, 27 May + 3, 10, 17 June (Room A5.04 in the IOE)

NB: This course accrues 3 training points.

Theory concerns the general, theories as such, but also concepts that may or may not be articulated as theories. Theory stands in contrast with the empirical, which comprises local instances, contexts, settings. In QUANTITATIVE research—which commonly describes experimental and most survey research—at least some theoretical work generally precedes the research design, data collection and analysis and sampling is generally designed to enable generalisation from a sample to a population. This course, however, is primarily concerned with QUALITATIVE social and educational research. In this mode, the aim is usually to generate theoretical categories—codes or themes—in transaction with the data, to 'let the data speak'. Starting out with theory already in place, forcing it on the data, will tend to silence it. A second important difference between qualitative and quantitative research is that the latter does not generally allow for generalisation from a sample to a population. Rather, qualitative research generalises either by the generation of theory or by the accumulation of cases.

Methodology might be described as the work that enables an argument to be made. The content of the previous paragraph is essentially methodological. The observation relating theory to qualitative research might be taken to entail that one can or should avoid reading theoretical work in advance of one's study, but this would not be correct. Reading theoretical work and, indeed, research generally contributes to what Barney Glaser (1978) refers to as one's 'theoretical sensitivity' and is indispensable for the researcher: one would hardly be surprised to find that a sociologist, a psychologist and a historian would approach their research activities, including the generation of theoretical categories from data (or sources for the historian) with different sensitivities to what that data or those sources might tell them.

For more information, including suggested reading, visit the course description page.