early interpretations. Such activities are central to a study’s development. Some mixed methods researchers have presented pragmatic frameworks that are particularly useful in new and evolving environments—that is, encouraging fellow researchers to choose philosophical stances, methods, and designs that speak most directly to their research questions (e.g., Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004).
This kind of eclectic “alternative paradigm” (Greene, 2007, p. 82) design is both practical and somewhat controversial, in that some researchers (e.g., Lincoln & Guba, 2000, 2002) believe that initial paradigmatic assumptions are central to the way inquiry unfolds. In other words, if a researcher believes that social aspects of meaning making are central to learning, these ideas deeply influence the resulting settings chosen for study, data collected, and analyses undertaken. Despite this intertwined nature of philosophy and method, advocates for a pragmatic stance, including Burke Johnson and Anthony J. Onwuegbuzie (2004), claim that basing research in practical choices makes sense for many studies, and “taking a non-purist, or compatibilist or mixed position, allows researchers to mix and match design components that offer the best chance of answering their specific research questions” (p. 15).
Nevertheless, it is important to remember that foundational mixed methods work typically assumes that researchers will define a single research site and approaches to its study from the beginning of the inquiry and will include the collection of both quantitative and qualitative data sources (Creswell, 2015). Today, many online learning spaces are spread across several resources, websites, and social media. In the remainder of this book, we will theorize such environments as networked field sites to describe this multiplicity. In such environments, it may be difficult accurately to map a line of online inquiry at the inception of study, much less to devise hypotheses or clear directions for data collection. Online researchers often discover new artifacts, ideas, or ways of sharing meaning in the course of their inhabitation—information perhaps unconsidered in the initial study design or analysis plan. In such situations, practicalities may be even more central in completing a successful inquiry. Multiple methods and methodologies may become useful to a researcher’s theorized understanding of a space, and a pragmatic frame allows for this kind of evolution to occur.
Jennifer C. Greene (2007) has noted that these ideas and decisions are complex ones. On one hand, researchers may make nominally pragmatic choices in response to a particular happening. On the other, researchers’ actions are guided by their mental models of and assumptions about their inquiry, regardless of whether they explicitly state or interrogate these beliefs. Extending the ideas of Phillips (1996) and Smith (1997), Greene explained that mental models are borne from many aspects of a researcher’s education, experience, and context, and they can profoundly affect how inquiry is carried out. Reflecting actively on these choices and evolving ideas strengthens the study overall, making it “more generative and defensible” (p. 59). Mental models, in other words, are tools for developing and staying true to a study’s logic of inquiry. Periodically considering and interrogating expectations for how various data sources and analyses will contribute to meaning making in an ongoing way, researchers can consider such models as statements of philosophical and field-based commitments (Morgan, 2007). As Bloome (2012) has reminded the field, “The meaningfulness of any set of research methods and techniques must, after all, be derived from the principles in which they are embedded” (p. 8). While Bloome’s discussion focused on classroom ethnography, the statement holds true across methodological traditions.
Choosing Among Qualitative Traditions
Qualitative research is an established form of inquiry that explores people’s experiences in their natural settings (Creswell, 1998). These traditions can be used in concert, as a researcher sees the need emerge, as a means to appropriately attend to the research question and the examined online space. This is not suggesting that existing traditions be abandoned or misappropriated. Rather, harkening back to Christine Hine’s (2013) discussion of researching online spaces, studying online meaning making can be challenging, and looking first to established traditions can help researchers appropriate the right methods for their studies. This book examines the core features of qualitative inquiry found in case study, ethnography, grounded theory, and phenomenology. However, this list of approaches is not exhaustive.
As Sharan B. Merriam (2009) aptly noted, other methodology scholars, such as Michael Quinn Patton (2002), John W. Creswell (2007), Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln (2005), and Renata Tesch (1990), have called attention to a variety of approaches. Their classifications, which include a range of five to forty-five approaches, thereby underscore that there is “no consensus” in categorizing qualitative inquiry (Merriam, 2009, p. 21). We do not intend to offer or recategorize traditions. Instead, this book provides options—namely, options for researchers to take an agentive stance and extend existing approaches beyond the boundaries of their existing constructs. Following the discussion of the four aforementioned qualitative traditions, this book addresses research paradigms that inform research approaches.
Qualitative Approaches
Qualitative research predates the advent of the Internet, and established traditions have been used to study online spaces. Scholars have found four key approaches—case study, ethnography, grounded theory, and phenomenology—to be helpful in examining and understanding the processes, products, and interactions inherent in learning in online spaces.
Case Study
Researchers select a case study approach when they are interested in examining a phenomenon that is bounded. That is, data collection would be limited to examining a defined aspect, be it a particular person (e.g., a student), a group of people (e.g., a classroom, a school), or a program (e.g., a coding workshop). It can extend to include sites of study, activities, or processes (Johnson & Christensen, 2014). Robert K. Yin (2014) explained:
The distinctive need for case study research arises out of the desire to understand complex social phenomena. In brief, case study allows investigators to focus on a “case” and retain a holistic and real world perspective—such as in studying individual life cycles, small group behavior, organizational and managerial processes, neighborhood change, school performance, international relations, and the maturation of industries. (p. 5)
Regardless of the focus of study, the case must fall within the bounded system that the researcher has defined.
According to Robert E. Stake (1995), there are three types of case studies. In intrinsic case studies the researcher attempts to understand a single case that is being studied, such as studying a particular student to better understand the strategies and methods that the particular student uses in learning processes. In instrumental case studies, researchers study cases to gain insight into issues that inform other situations and sites. For example, a researcher might study a student to better understand the impact of an innovative curriculum that has recently been implemented. The instrumental aspect is the area of interest, which is the impact of the curriculum, and the case of the student allows the researcher to dig into this question of importance. The collective case study, or multicase design (Yin, 2014), allows researchers to compare similarities and differences among cases in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding about a theory or issue. For example, the researcher may still have interest in understanding the impact of an innovative curriculum, but may choose to study several students and teachers simultaneously to address the question of the curriculum’s impact.
Researchers have conducted case study research to understand learning in online spaces (e.g., Glazer & Hergenrader, 2014). Rish’s (2014) instrumental case study of collaborative writing, digital cartography, and videogame design in a high school English classroom included classroom observations and student interviews. He analyzed the transmedia artifacts students created using programs such as AutoRealm, Terragan, and RPG Maker. Rish’s use of case study allowed him to explore
