Learning Pluralism and Researching Pluralistically: Pluralistic qualitative research as a model for teaching and learning qualitative research in psychology

For over a decade, researchers have used pluralistic qualitative research (PQR) methodology to investigate ever-widening areas of interest including motherhood (e.g. Frost, 2009), democracy (e.g. Abbell & Stevenson, 2011) smoking (e.g. Dewe & Coyle, 2014), physical illness (e.g. Arduser, 2014), bereavement (e.g. Steffen & Coyle, 2017), professional athleticism (e.g. MacPherson & Kerr, 2020), mindfulness (e.g. Frank et al., 2021), and disability (e.g. Gibson et al., 2012). Alongside this steady growth in the use of pluralist qualitative methodology, in which a number of qualitative methods are used on the same dataset, we have had a growing appreciation of the benefit of teaching pluralistic research methodology as a starting point to student researchers; facilitating students in developing their understanding of this epistemologically flexible approach can equip them with transferable skills with which to respond to diverse issues in research and, later, in professional practice. The impetus for this focus dovetails with the evolving nature of the traditional higher education learning environment. The latter has seen significant change in recent times, from being primarily in-person to incorporating online and hybrid learning environments. While this change signalled a significant societal issue in terms of education, it also heralds opportunity for educators in PQR to further advance students’ ability to manage diverse and changing research contexts. In the following pages, we discuss how our reflections on our research and teaching practice connect with epistemology in higher education and with calls for new forms of scholarship (Boyer, 1996; Schön, 1995). We briefly outline what we mean by PQR and draw on
our experiences as research-led educators to describe how we incorporate key tenets of PQR, such as reflective learning, in teaching research design and methodology. It is our contention that this approach equips our students to engage critically and reflexively with their assumptions about the
world. This can resource them personally, and professionally, in advancing their ability to respond to challenges of individual and societal significance.