ABSTRACT
Pluralistic qualitative research draws on the repertoire of qualitative methods to address complex research questions with multi-layered insight. It acknowledges the often-fragmentary and non-linear nature of human experience by explicitly considering varying contexts and perspectives to understand meaning-making on different dimensions. This makes it a useful approach with which to challenge the dominant epistemology built into higher education that promotes the acquisition of knowledge as a quest for answers and solutions to manageable problems. This epistemology inhibits rather than enables inquiry into messy and confusing problems of human experience that concern individuals, and recognition of this has led to calls for “new scholarship”. This chapter asks, “How can the teaching and learning of pluralistic qualitative research be used to respond to this call?” It draws on examples from our teaching of pluralistic qualitative research to psychology students at University College Cork in Ireland to illustrate how key tenets of pluralistic qualitative research can equip teachers and learners to engage critically and reflexively with their assumptions about the world and how this can enhance and refine their ability to respond to challenges of individual and societal significance.
