Lichtman, Marilyn. (2006). Qualitative Research in
Education: A User's Guide. Thousand Oaks, CA:
SAGE Publications.
248 pp.
$40 (papercover) ISBN 9781412937344
$78 (hardcover) ISBN 9780761929352
Reviewed by Donald K. Sharpes
Arizona State University
December 12, 2006
Qualitative research originating in anthropology
in the 1980s is a regrettable term in one sense because it
assumes that researchers not using it are engaging in
non-qualitative studies. In fact, qualitative research was used
to distinguish the method of gathering data from quantitative
research where numbers and statistics dominate. The questions for
all researchers at the time and since were: Were qualitative
researchers using procedures like interviews, narratives and
ethnographic studies really scientists? Was qualitative research
scientific? How should its findings be accepted? Were their
conclusions unbiased and objective? A simple way to consider
educational research is to think of it as one or more methods for
collecting information about an inquiry, or learning about a
schooling process.
In the long history of human investigation and
observation, myth was the first method in the history of research
techniques for learning. Stories like the Sumerian Epic
of Gilgamesh enlightening people about the human
condition, and biblical stories that expanded on similar myths,
became the most popular form of education and entertainment for a
literate audience. Then 2,500 years ago historians Herodotus and
Thucydides illuminated our understanding of peoples by writing
history to explain human actions. By the time of Zeno and
Parmenides, philosophy literally was a search for wisdom, for
meaning in life. Subsequently, writers used allegory in
literature, writing about symbolic fictional characters to reveal
the truths of human existence. Symbols became the new method for
understanding reality. By the time of the Aristotle logic became
the standard methodological tool for arriving at new truths,
prevailing for over a thousand years right through the
Renaissance, and is still the preferred method in rhetoric and
law.
The scientific explosion in the Enlightenment
witnessed the erosion of logic and philosophy as the primary ways
of explaining reality. A new era of observation began with
Galileo using with the new technology of the telescope. This
testing of observations with experiments inaugurated the
scientific method, and it is still the preferred choice for new
knowledge of the universe. Its formula is simple: formulate a
question, test it with a proven instrument, analyze and publish
the results.
As formal schooling expanded to universally
accepted status among growing populations in the western world,
investigators only reluctantly employed methods of science and
invariably fell back on philosophical principles to test whether
or not students were learning. Only with the advent of
psychology, after it gradually divorced itself from philosophy,
and Wilhelm Wundt’s experiments with introspective
techniques and studies of memory, and William James
popularization of psychological principles for use by teachers,
did the beginnings of a scientific method in education begin to
gain respect.
Marilyn Lichtman’s new and engaging book,
Qualitative Research in Education, A User’s Guide,
is the latest text to expand on the merits of qualitative
research. She was
herself once a dedicated scholar in her early career of
quantitative methods, but has become a qualitative convert. She
has an easy, conversational and engaging writing style that
captivates and pulls the reader into her description or argument.
Her abundant use of focused and relevant research examples and
practical applications are a huge bonus.
Lichtman includes multiple examples of
observational, interview and case study approaches, all very
useful and based on her extensive teaching experiences. Her use
of anecdotes from her teaching career are always apposite,
especially her personal experiences of taking family therapy
courses and being transformed by that work that resulted in her
looking at research in a broader context than statistics.
Lichtman’s book is the most sensibly intelligent book on
research since Jacques Barzun’s The Modern
Researcher, first published in 1957 and now in its
6th edition.
I was particularly impressed with her discussions
of appropriate philosophical positions, especially phenomenology,
that have ideological fits with qualitative research objectives
and methods. Although she writes extensively and accurately on
this highly relevant philosophy, I would have wished for more
clarity on its assumptions and implications for a research
mentality. Husserl, phenomenology’s founder, reacted
against the idealism of Kant who asserted that we never really
know reality. Instead we have to rely on the phenomena, our
perceptions of reality. But Husserl in his ponderous writings,
particularly the two volumes of Logical Investigations,
never really resolved how this method would improve our
understanding of external reality. Existentialists returned to
the problem of human existence. Incidentally, one of
Husserl’s most gifted students and his chosen graduate
assistant was Edith Stein. Her doctoral dissertation, The
Problem of Empathy from 1916, based on phenomenological
principles and her volunteer work as a nurse in WWI, offers
insights into how this philosophy relates to concern for others,
or empathy, and to qualitative research.
If we concede that the origins of western
philosophy can be traced to the time of Zeno and the
6th century BCE, than Pythagoras’s belief that
all reality could be reduced to the language of mathematics and
numbers has ever since had a stranglehold on scientific
consciousness that qualitative research is seeking to untangle.
The universe as the embodiment of mathematical laws catapulted
Newton’s discoveries.
But even in the early 20th century
philosophers were still using the ancient categories of
existences and essences, substances and accidents Aristotle had
suggested, and medieval scholastic philosophers elaborated on, as
the routes to acquire epistemological knowledge. Descartes’
bifurcation of mind and matter, thought and reality, confused two
centuries of philosophers, including Kant, who followed his
lead. Using perception as a subject of investigation, as Husserl
suggested, presumed that there was a perceiving mind. The
philosophy contrary to phenomenology, espoused by Marx,
Nietzsche, Watson, Skinner and Darwin among others, is that there
is no mind, only material reality of which humans and their
organic brains are an integral part.
Moreover, I have always been curious as to why
researchers did not take kindly to Kurt Lewin’s (1935)
intriguing proposal of the life force, with its positive and
negative vectors of cognitive processes that drew inspiration for
methodology from geometry, and the specialty known as topology,
and physics with its valences and lines of force. His theory,
complete with actual experiments with children, seemed to bridge
the gap between numbers and text, quantitative and qualitative,
by providing graphic illustrative examples of behavior that
possessed some predictability. I would hope researchers and
psychologists would revive interest in Lewin’s compelling
theories.
It’s hard to tell if the popularity of
qualitative research is a predictable reaction to the presumed
dullness of quantitative methods like statistics, or a paradigm
shift towards more historically accepted methods of seeing
reality. We want any literate student at any age to be
knowledgeable about, and demonstrate skill in, reading, writing
and mathematics. Unquestionably, qualitative research is a
rejection of the use of the scientific method because it does not
test a hypothesis, though this does not make it less authentic as
a method. Qualitative research is a definite reaction against the
sterility of quantitative rigor by introducing a more humane and
subjective narrative into the observation of human activities. It
is, in my opinion, a return to more ancient methods of gaining
knowledge when even writing itself was in its infancy. Pythagoras
would not be amused.
About the Reviewer
Donald K. Sharpes is Adjunct Professor of Education at
Arizona State University specializing in international education,
educational psychology, foundations and policy.
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