Beyond Abstraction: Philosophy as a Practical Qualitative Research Method

Authors

Eric Sheffield, Southwest Missouri State UniversityFollow

Abstract

In this paper, I take up a discussion of what philosophic method is, and why it should be viewed as an important qualitative research method. After clarifying the nature of philosophic method within the larger framework of social practices, I argue that philosophy is important to both practice and research, and I suggest that philosophers work in concert with other qualitative researchers. I argue that recently (relatively speaking) philosophy has been viewed with some understandable disdain among both practitioners and researchers as an enjoyable but abstract (and therefore useless) social practice. That perception can be fixed but only if philosophical research becomes once again explicitly relevant to practice (particularly educational practice). Finally, I provide a brief example of how philosophy can indeed be relevant to practice from a recent symposium that I participated in on reflection in service-learning education.

Keywords

Philosophy, Qualitative Research, Research Method, John Dewey, Social Practice, Service-Learning, Educational Research, and History of Philosophy

Publication Date

12-1-2004

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International License.

DOI

10.46743/2160-3715/2004.1912

Recommended APA Citation

Sheffield, E. (2004). Beyond Abstraction: Philosophy as a Practical Qualitative Research Method. The Qualitative Report, 9(4), 760-769. https://doi.org/10.46743/2160-3715/2004.1912