Doubt and Excitement: An Experiential Learning Approach to Teaching the Practice of Qualitative Research

This article diagnoses that qualitative research (QR) methods courses and literature often remain silent on how to actually do QR and explores how practice theory can improve learning and teaching the practice of QR. It develops an experiential learning approach of turning experiences and emotions of doubt and excitement into a dialogical process of asking creative questions, imagining new ideas, and animating a practical relationship to the world. Based on data and observations of a summer school course in QR methods to PhD students, we present three pedagogical practices for recognizing and tolerating affective resistances to experiential learning and finding creative solutions to emergent research problems.