FROM ANECDOTE TO QUALITATIVE DATA: CRUCIAL ROLE OF REPORTING METHODOLOGICAL CHOICES AND RATIONALE (Invited Presentation)

Like in other discipline-based education research (DBER) communities, recommendations from geoscience education research (GER) are slow to be adopted by practitioners. Researchers who use qualitative approaches in their GER face the challenge of their work being perceived as ‘anecdotal’ or ‘cherry picked’ (subject to the participant or researcher’s biases). The negative perception of researcher bias is particularly acute as most qualitative research involves open-ended data sources (e.g., observations, free response survey and interview questions), which require the researcher to serve as the instrument, collecting and analyzing the data. This presentation uses geologic analogies and examples of qualitative GER to make the argument that detailed transparency around a qualitative researcher’s methodological process (specific choices and rationales) is critical in order to safeguard the work caliber of the GER community and to facilitate the adoption of qualitative research recommendations by practitioners.

Fundamentally, communicating method details beyond naming a broad theoretical framework for methods (e.g., grounded theory) to include aspects such as how data was systematically coded and validated supports quality peer review. Being explicit about the rationale behind method choices also ensures that potential bias has been addressed/reasonably reduced, study limitations are clear, and findings can be situated appropriately.

Establishing a GER community of practice norm of documenting and sharing such detailed methodological processes also provides the community with an open access toolbox of step-by-step, peer reviewed methods, creating an opportunity for other researchers to adapt or apply similar methods in their work. Additionally, as the volume of GER literature expands, sharing this level of methodological detail is necessary to create the opportunity for data to be compared appropriately in larger meta-analysis studies across qualitative studies. Despite the advantages of such an approach to documenting qualitative processes, such level of detail poses a challenge due to the limited presentation space of GER venues and would require the community to consider revising existing dissemination models or identify new alternatives.