SWK 6007: Advanced Qualitative Research Methods in Social Work—Critical Discourse & Narrative Approaches for Interpretive Policy Analysis

This methodology course will focus on critical discourse and narrative approaches to interpretive policy analysis. We will examine contemporary debates in discursive and interpretive research in relation feminist, decolonial, queer, critical race, and post-humanist methodologies. Towards fostering “epistemic de-linking” from global coloniality (Mignolo, 2011) students will be encouraged to consider the implications of various “turns” away from positivist / neoliberal paradigms in social and health sciences (e.g. linguistic, cultural, critical, decolonial, and post-humanist), in relation to their own substantive areas of interest. Towards practicing “epistemically just” research (McIntosh & Wilder, 2022), will discuss and practice strategies to access and collect data (e.g. observation, interviewing, finding existing documents), methods of organizing and representing different forms/genres of data for analysis (e.g. transcripts, electronic texts, images, hand-written notes); and strategies to analyze and represent your analyses for different audiences.

This advanced graduate course seeks to support social work and health science doctoral students to develop appropriate research designs and research proposals for either their comprehensive paper or their doctoral dissertation research. Prior graduate level coursework in epistemology, social theory, and/or critical qualitative methodology is required.

This course is taught by Dr. Rupaleem Bhuyan in the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.