Introduction
Introduction
According to the current trends and, most importantly, needs in education, teaching and learning practices are expected to be evidence-based. Moved by the voices from my university Graduate students, the seasoned teachers-practitioners, I strongly perceive and understand their urge for a more consistent, perpetual, and substantial connection between the research in the field of education and teachers’ practical teaching at schools on all grade levels. While closely examining the literature in the related fields, my Graduate students persistently raise the topic of the existing disconnect between the published research findings and their own practices as classroom teachers on the grade levels from Pre-Kindergarten (Pre-K) through grade 12 and in higher education.
With the above claims in mind, I am starting this new book entitled Qualitative Inquiry in Educational Research, while aiming to help close the strongly perceived by the teachers-practitioners gap and establish a tighter, higher functioning connection between the educational researchers and practical classroom educators. So, this call for chapters aims to invite the authors of specifically those research reports, which offer the above readers the qualitative study implications in the form of practical, and useful, evidence-based advice, mentoring, and guidance for their classroom teaching.
Choice of Paradigm and Method
As a dedicated follower of such great philosophers as Mikhail Bakhtin, Yuri Bronfenbrenner, and Lev Vygotsky, I strongly believe in the powerful role of a human word, genuine dialogue, and a humanistic socio-cultural approach in education, educational research, and qualitative inquiry. And as a dedicated qualitative researcher, I devotedly adhere to the postulates by such great methodologists as John Creswell, Norman Denzin, Margot Ely, Corrine Glesne, Alan Peshkin, Johnny Saldaña, and James Spradley. In accordance with their teachings and my own experiences as of an educator and educational researcher, I conclude that an individual human’s feelings, perceptions, and ideas are not to be calculated but rather need to be listed to, thoughtfully attended to, critically evaluated, and respectfully considered to help shape one’s understanding of the phenomena in the focus of the inquiry.