Doing Interpretive Research: Learning and Teaching Imagination in Social Research

Interpretivism has an intuitive appeal to many social researchers, but they often feel ill-equipped to do it. Other social researchers tend to believe that interpretivism is a specialized niche with little relevance to their research practice. What has been lost is the awareness that interpretation is an explanatory logic and form of inquiry that is at the root of all social science research, including quantitative research. In this volume, the authors guide social researchers and instructors in better understanding and improving the experience of doing interpretive research. They explore the centrality of experience in learning and teaching interpretive research, paying special attention to the role of emotions in the learning process, and the way that negative emotions, such as doubt and anxiety, can impart learning. The authors provide a novel approach to methods teaching by offering a set of heuristics, open-ended strategies of inquiry and discovery for improving the practice of social research. Uniquely, they demonstrate how emotions can be leveraged in the learning process to uncover surprising new insights about social reality and unlock researchers' imagination. They reveal how social researchers, engaged or interested in interpretivism in learning, can turn their research into an enjoyable, productive, and imaginative experience.