Confusions and Conventions: Qualitative Research in Engineering Education

Moving into a new area of research, especially an interdisciplinary area and from technical to social research data, can be daunting. There are many new terms to encounter and whole new ways of doing things. Furthermore, the new variety of qualitative research emerging from engineering education research groups can fall in betwixt and between – with reviewers from neither social science nor engineering domains recognizing what they see as quality and hence rejecting the work. As members of the Editorial Board, we have seen an increasing number of qualitative research papers submitted to the Journal of Engineering Education over the last couple of years, but we are disturbed by the number of these that get rejected. How can we assess quality in unknown and innovative areas of work? This guest editorial aims to throw some light on the confusions arising at this juxtaposition of engineering/physical science and social science cultures in order to lay the foundations for better research papers and better reviews of qualitative studies in this Journal and elsewhere. In particular, we seek to highlight how research design encompasses epistemology, theory, methodology, and methods – all of them integrated in a coherent way.