Qualitative research in comparative and international education

This chapter focuses upon the nature, challenges, and potential of qualitative research methodology in comparative and international education. This provides a bridge between some of the broader conceptual and philosophical issues discussed in section one of the book, and the more specific sections on research approaches, methods and analysis that follow. Increased methodological diversity and complexity can be seen to have emerged within qualitative research and CIE over recent decades, along with many familiar and some new challenges to the legitimacy and potential of the qualitative paradigm. Priorities for future qualitative research are considered in the light of the contemporary decolonial debate, new initiatives in CIE, and the experience and potential of indigenous research traditions in Oceania. Consistent with other chapters in the volume, ways in which qualitative methodologies may be applied in the study of teaching quality in primary education are also explored. Conclusions point to the importance of combining insights and experience from past and present methodological scholarship, if ways forward for qualitative research in CIE are to lead to rigorous, contextually sensitive, and ethical forms of culturally responsive, global and epistemic justice.