Empowering Students as Self-Directed Learners of Qualitative Research Methods: Transformational Practices for Instructors and Students

Qualitative research instructors seek information to help students actively engage in qualitative inquiry. They desire to learn about innovative, constructivist approaches that connect and empower students as a community of learners. Empowering Students as Self-Directed Learners of Qualitative Research Methods meets these needs with practices and approaches instructors may use to position students as active, empowered, self-directed learners who learn to do qualitative research by doing qualitative research.

Students will find this book useful because it includes authentic student work, student reflections, factual classroom scenarios depicting professors guiding students as they devise research questions and determine the qualitative genre to best answer those questions as well as a chapter that includes a checklist to help students plan, revise, and edit the academic writing critical for communicating qualitative research.

The book blends the thoughts of international scholars with the voices of students of qualitative research methods who participated in the transformative practices described in the book. The collective ideas meet the instructional, cultural, and psychological needs of diverse learners, including students from various disciplines, exceptionally able students, those with creative and artistic aptitudes, those from marginalized populations, English language learners, and those who struggle to master qualitative research methods.

Contributors are: Christy Bebeau, Alisha Braun, Franz Breuer, Suzanne Franco, Anna Gonzalez-Pliss, Steven Haberlin, Alfredo Jornet, Yew Jin Lee, Erin Lunday, Janet Richards, Wolff-Michael Roth, Kia Sarnoff, Margrit Schreier, and William Thomas.