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Qualitative Research in Practice: Examples for Discussion and Analysis Sharan B. Merriam and Associates San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2002, 439 pages.
Within higher education, qualitative inquiry has reached mainstream status as evidenced by the proliferation of books, journals, manuscripts, websites, conference presentations, and professional organizations available to researchers and consumers of educational research. A question persists at the outset of our reading of Qualitative Research in Practice: Examples for Discussion and Analysis-Does the research community need another book about qualitative inquiry? Sensitive to this question, Merriam crafted a niche book that complements the many theoretical, how-to, and case study inquiry books that flood the education trade book market each year.
The heart of Qualitative Research in Practice is a collection of sixteen essays exemplifying eight kinds of qualitative inquiry (i.e., basic interpretive qualitative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, case study, ethnography, narrative analysis, critical research, and postmodern research). Merriam purposefully includes two exemplars for each of the eight strands, drawing from an eclectic array of scholarly sources. At the conclusion of each of the sixteen exemplar chapters is a short reflective essay written by one or more of the authors that retrospectively makes sense of a qualitative inquiry issue introduced in the chapter. The intention of these exemplar and reflective chapters is to stimulate discussion and analysis about the conceptualizing and conducting of qualitative inquiry. Merriam's contributions to the book include two introductory qualitative inquiry chapters, eight introductory overviews of the approaches to inquiry showcased in the book, and a final cross-case analysis chapter that integrates and synthesizes ideas gleaned...