Ibrahim Ahmad Bajunid
Professor of Management, Leadership and Policy
Studies and
Dean, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
University Tun Abdul Razak (UNITAR).
Abstract
The paper examines how qualitative research can foster a shift from unbalanced, mechanistic, and compartmentalized world views of education to balanced, holistic and ecological conceptions of reality. It reasserts that both qualitative and quantitative research uphold scientific rigours, and provide significant, relevant and powerful knowledge. However, the paper argues that qualitative research efforts can provide a coherent conceptual framework by making sense of interconnections and interdependencies between the numerous interdisciplinary concepts of education. Methods and contents of qualitative research are considered and reviewed, drawing from the global traditions of academic inquiry, and making special reference to, and eliciting from examples in the Malaysian context. Qualitative tools of inquiry employed by researchers which provide thick description and deep structure insights are critically assessed. The tools and strategies encompass those from psycho history to historiography, from leadership case studies to explorations of teacher thinking, from the I-Witnessing genre and introspective literary style of science to the retrospective interpretations of portraiture in the social sciences; from observation of the daily rituals of life to profound philosophical analyses and artistic understanding of the ordinary and the extraordinary, from common sense reflective experiences of education to futures scenario building and strategic planning; from learning from the past to learning from the future. The new challenges in the world of knowledge creation, knowledge evolution and knowledge management which test the limits of knowledge of educators, the limits of their basic concepts, their whole way of thinking, and the adequacy of their language used to attempt to comprehend, describe, explain and predict phenomena, is discussed. The paper evaluates the status of the existing corpus of educational knowledge and the capacity of educators to utilize the corpus to generate solutions to educational problems. It is noted that educators have been unable to proactively contribute to effectively inform policy decisions and influence professional practice regarding the whole range of educational problems in their various dimensions. The paper argues that through qualitative research, researchers can discover facts and insights, develop metaphors, both indigenous and universal, create and found, hitherto unexplored educational phenomena. Educational research can benefit from the growth of fields of specializations by qualitative methodology with their own body of theory and research experience. Educational research itself in its turn contributes to advance the frontiers of human understanding regarding teaching and learning, potentialities, attitudes and motivations, human development, culture and society and other significant phenomena. Research using qualitative methods continues to contribute to the convergence of knowledge disciplines and invites researchers to explore the anatomy of inquiry itself, and rethink their values, tools, and contents constructively. Beyond mechanical and piecemeal popular genre of criticism of educational phenomena, contributions from qualitative research can enhance and enable educators to relish the intellectual adventure of educational connoisseurship.