NATURALISTIC INQUIRY

Naturalistic Inquiry

Naturalistic Inquiry

Article 1

Qualitative research means many things too many people. This complex and evolving field of inquiry embraces a wide array of approaches, methods, and techniques, and is accompanied by ongoing debate over what constitutes quality and rigor. It is complex, because it embraces multiple perspectives from the human disciplines, and as Denzin and Lincoln (2000) concluded, "An embarrassment of choices now characterizes the field of qualitative research.

Theorist's particular approach to evaluation

There have never been so many paradigms, strategies of inquiry, or methods of analysis for researchers to draw upon and utilize". It is an evolving field of inquiry due to its relatively short history in comparison to conventional scientific research. Paradoxically, the field of qualitative research will remain to evolve by the very nature of its underpinning philosophy from which its definition is derived. Denzin and Lincoln categorized the current phase of the historical evolution of qualitative research as "a moment of discovery and rediscovery, as new ways of looking, interpreting, arguing, and writing are debated and discussed". Although some researchers have explicitly attempted to define and categorize various approaches of qualitative research (one example being Creswell, 1998), the literature is replete with confounding use of jargon. (This, in turn, contributes to its complexity, especially for the neophyte researcher.) For example, the term qualitative research is used predominantly as an umbrella term to depict research conducted in a natural setting to investigate a social or human issue in contrast to the opponent positivist approach (Creswell, 1998, 2003; Denzin & Lincoln, 2000).

However, it has also been used synonymously with case study (ethnography grounded theory phenomenology and naturalistic inquiry yet, these particular qualitative approaches are also open to interpretation. For example, consider the case study method of inquiry. (Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln, 2000) indicated that although the case study has become a common way to do qualitative inquiry, it might not be "essentially qualitative".

Theory application

Given such nuances in definition, researchers require guidance on how to implement qualitative research in a rigorous manner. (Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. 2000) contended that although a wide range of methodological literature exists, there is a paucity of works that demonstrate how qualitative research methodology can be practically applied by researchers. In this article, I aim to address this gap by demonstrating how a particular qualitative research approach that is, the naturalistic inquiry paradigm (Lincoln & Guba, 1985), was implemented in an e-learning research study. First, I present a description of the study, followed by a discussion about how I made meaning of the qualitative research literature to apply it.

Theorist distinguish his or her theory or concepts

Article 2

At the time of the study (late 1990s to 2000), this targeted a gap in the educational technology research literature; that is, although the introduction of the World Wide Web was being embraced as a revolution aryl technology for education, the rhetoric about its potential for educational use surpassed the analytic research being conducted that explored the pedagogical ...