Qualitative data analysis software as a tool for teaching analytic practice: Towards a theoretical framework for integrating QDAS into methods pedagogy

Abstract

Methods educators who include qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) in their teaching see the software as an opportunity to bring authentic experiences of analytic practice into classrooms. However, we currently lack a shared language for outlining and understanding what this analytic practice could or should entail. By expanding Silver and Woolf’s 5-Level QDAS^® pedagogy, I introduce a theoretical framework of analytic practice with QDAS designed for methods educators to reflect on their curricula, and for academic leaders and administrators to reflect on their institutions’ overall educational ecologies regarding qualitative methods. Further, I illustrate how barriers to integrating QDAS reflect broader issues in qualitative methods education, specifically regarding analysis training and apprenticeship. Given these barriers, I suggest that discussions of the positive or negative impacts of QDAS should focus less on the users and the software itself, and instead more on the way we teach, or fail to teach the practice of qualitative analysis.