Qualitative Research

The second edition of Qualitative Research focuses on cultivating and bridging theoretical, methodological, and conceptual aspects to provide insight into their interactions in qualitative research. This comprehensive text helps students understand the central concepts, topics, and skills necessary to engage in rigorous, valid, and respectful qualitative research. Authors Sharon M. Ravitch and Nicole Mittenfelner Carl have written this text with student researchers in mind, balancing communicating the foundations and processes of qualitative research with clarity and simplicity while also capturing its complexity and layers. Whether students are new to qualitative research or not, this book will help students develop and deepen their understanding of an approach to research that seeks, designs for, and engages criticality in research.

The new edition of this book includes a more prominently-placed and expanded discussion of research ethics as crucial to students' inquiry, more information on reflexivity in data collection and individual methods for qualitative data collection, a more in-depth chapter on coding and other types of qualitative data analysis, and more thorough resource sections including connections to the extensive appendices so students can further their qualitative research journey.

About the Authors

Sharon M. Ravitch is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. She engages in numerous applied research projects in India, serving as a visiting scholar at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai and working as a co-researcher and key resource expert in policy advocacy, professional development, and community-based participatory research related to corporate social responsibility through TISS’s corporate social responsibility hub. She is involved in the design and implementation of assessment and evaluation of statewide performance through mixed-methods research in the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s major policy initiative, Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), a countrywide reform initiative aimed to resurrect India’s state public university system.

Nicole Mittenfelner Carl is a postdoctoral fellow in the Teaching, Learning, and Leadership Division at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. She received her doctorate in educational leadership from the University of Pennsylvania in 2017. Carl teaches courses related to qualitative research methods, practitioner research for educational leaders, and mentoring strategies for veteran teachers coaching first-year teachers.