ABSTRACT
Designs/approaches serve as the overall plan for doing research. Many come from other disciplines such as anthropology or sociology. Some are closely associated with theory. This chapter provides an overview of each research design and a historical description. In the 1980s, when qualitative research began to emerge as an alternative to quantitative research, there were 5 main approaches: ethnography, grounded theory, phenomenological, case study, and narrative. One way to learn more about designs is to join a group discussing qualitative topics. The use of ethnography, a technique that comes from anthropology and sociology, was one of the first to be adopted in studies about schools. The purpose of ethnography is to describe the culture and social interactions of a particular group or subgroup. Variations or adaptations of ethnographic ideas are reflected in autoethnography, duoethnography, visual ethnography, and the like.
