Qualitative Epistemologies: Understanding the Threads in your Tapestry of Methods

online course

This is an introductory course that covers fundamental questions about qualitative approaches and competing ontologies and epistemologies. The course begins with an examination of coding drawing a distinction between descriptive and theoretical coding.

Jo Ferrie is a methodologist and works with all forms of data. Based in the Sociology subject area within the School of Social & Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow, she is also Deputy Director for Training for the Scottish Graduate School of Social Sciences and founding Director of Glasgow Q-Step: a pan-UK programme designed to upskill social science undergraduates in how they use and work with numeric data. Jo’s scholarship work focuses on human rights implementation and the nature of the learning experience within knowledge exchange initiatives and the learning experience and methods. Jo is Principal Fellow of the Recognising Excellence in Teaching programme.

This course is structured in 6 parts to produce a flipped classroom. This is where you have time with the learning materials, and the actual ‘live’ part of the training is building a bridge from this learning to your own research. There will be a release of links to zoom-captured lectures during the week before summer school on:

Qualitative epistemologies & coding
Grounded theory
Phenomenology
Discourse analysis
Participatory action research.
Flipped classroom event – live discussion.

The lectures will be accompanied by some excerpts from research transcripts, from published data and from a media article for you to practice skills introduced. The activities are carefully constructed to demonstrate the differences in knowledge produced, depending on the qualitative epistemology chosen. So, you are welcome to watch just the training session that you’re interested in but if you watch a few or all, you should grow in confidence in how you use, understand and make choices around qualitative approaches.

The sixth session is a ‘live’ session where I will be available to answer questions and hear about your research interests and challenges. I’m really excited to hear what you’re working on and the focus will be not on my teaching but on our practices.

The live discussion could go in a number of different directions: we can take time to think about defending your research choices or we could work at a more personal level to think through why qualitative methods can be so challenging and emotional. I’m keen that control of the narrative lies with you. Prerequisite: The training is available to anyone interested in how qualitative research works. It will work at an introductory level and as a refresher course for those more advanced.

Prerequisite: The training is available to anyone interested in how qualitative research works. It will work at an introductory level and as a refresher course for those more advanced.


Duration: 5x2h materials release 22 August 2022;

2h Live session: 26 August 2022 (10:00-12:00)

Delivery: flipped classroom – videos, live-discussion and Q&A session

Course leader

Dr Jo Ferrie

Target group

The training is available to anyone interested in how qualitative research works. It will work at an introductory level and as a refresher course for those more advanced.

Course aim

To provide a critical, theory-driven introduction to qualitative research.

Fee info

GBP 70: (For registration and payment, please contact: socsci-qstep@glasgow.ac.uk)