Historical Perspectives Toward Qualitative Research: How the Field Arrived and Where It is Going
Joseph Watras, Ph.D.
Professor of Historical & Social Foundations of Education
University of Dayton
Watras' address will follow the stages through which researchers passed from the nineteenth century to the present. Most commentators contend that researchers created and expanded the use of qualitative methods in a series of related steps. The address will trace those steps to show how researchers moved in concert or in opposition to each other.
The address will begin with the efforts of scholars in the nineteenth century who made comprehensive surveys of then contemporary social problems. As the twentieth century opened, scholars turned from trying to collect comprehensive information that might aid in solving social problems; they visited different peoples hoping to identify the values, attitudes, and goals those people shared and how they came to hold them. In the 1920s, sociologists at the University of Chicago turned to the study of specific cases, such as a community, searching for the ways the interactions of individuals shaped the ways they perceived the world. When the depression of the 1930s restricted the financial support for research, scholars applied the techniques of qualitative research to efforts to capture the cultural configurations of American life. This type of research continued through the 1950s when scholars applied qualitative approaches of anthropology to such fields as education to produce popular critiques of conformity in American life.
By the 1960s, anthropologists applied qualitative methods to explore the ways people lived in conditions of poverty. While some of these works influenced various public policies, such as the War on Poverty, other scholars criticized tendencies they called blaming the victim. With the advent of the post modern era, qualitative research took many different directions as did other intellectual and aesthetic activities such as art and literature. Nonetheless, post modern contributions shared a concern with the nature of the interpretation and thereby criticized the conventions of so-called scientific studies.
At best, qualitative researchers followed these steps in general ways because scholars in fields such as education, sociology, and criminal justice employed qualitative methods differently at various times. The speech will explore an exemplar from each general stage to illustrate how qualitative research moved from a promising technique to become a discipline or a field in its own right and what that transition promises for the future.
About the Speaker
Dr. Joseph Watras is professor of historical & social foundations of education at the University of Dayton. Previous appointments for Dr. Watras have included West Liberty State College, Delaware State College, and the University of Delaware. He has authored (including co-authoring) five books, including A History of American Education, published by Allyn & Bacon, a nominated work by the American Educational Studies Association for a Critic's Choice Award in 2008. Dr. Watras also serves as editor of the Philosophic Studies in Education journal and from 1993-2000, edited the Journal of Midwest History of Education Society. Dr. Watras brings a wealth and rich professional background to the keynote presentation, including being a former Peace Corp volunteer in Niger, West Africa.