Qualitative methods have become common in statistics education research, but<br><br>questions linger about their role in scholarship. Currently, influential policy<br><br>documents lend credence to the notion that qualitative methods are inherently inferior<br><br>to quantitative ones. In this paper, several of the questions about qualitative research<br><br>raised in recent policy documents in the U.S. are examined. Each question is<br><br>addressed by drawing upon examples from existing statistics education research. The<br><br>examples illustrate that qualitative methods can be used profitably to study statistical<br><br>teaching and learning, and that in some cases qualitative methods are preferable to<br><br>quantitative ones. By using the examples presented, qualitative researchers in<br><br>statistics education can begin to more strongly situate their work within scholarly<br><br>discourse about empirical research
The CAUSE Research Group is supported in part by a member initiative grant from the American Statistical Association’s Section on Statistics and Data Science Education