Proceedings of the 8th World Conference on Qualitative Research

This paper employs “The Five Contexts” framework developed by Cooper and White—a conceptual framework for conducting, understanding, and interpreting qualitative research in the postmodern era—in the service of a hermeneutical analysis of the field of qualitative research. The aim of this piece is to interpret the meaning of qualitative research through autobiographical, historical, philosophical, postmodern, and political lenses.

In the autobiographical context, we position ourselves and situate our own perspectives on qualitative research. In the historical context, we provide a brief history of the field by analyzing the histories of Denzin and Lincoln, Erickson, and Wertz. In the philosophical context, we illustrate how the traditions of positivism, interpretivism, critical theory, hermeneutics and constructivism have shaped the field. In the postmodern context, we outline the implications of the crisis of representation on qualitative research, and how researchers have responded to the crisis. In the political context, we document the paradigm wars in education and put forward ontological, critical, and pragmatic critiques of the scientifically based research (SBR) movement. We end with a discussion of the current scene of qualitative research. We show that qualitative research consists of a variety of methodological approaches—each with their own aims, purposes, and philosophical foundations. We argue that qualitative researchers should resist the pressures of the SBR movement, that no approach to research lays claim to or guarantees access to truth, and that our approach as researchers should be determined by the questions we ask and the problems we wish to address rather than letting method dictate what we can and ought to study.