Reality Lost? Re-Use of Qualitative Data in Classroom Video Studies

Abstract

There has been debate on the re-use of qualitative data in the social sciences for more than a decade now. However, video data are rarely explicitly discussed in this regard, even though new media pose both new opportunities and new challenges when it comes to the archiving and secondary analysis of qualitative data. Two illustrative case studies from the educational sciences are presented here to document the processes of archiving and secondary analysis of video data. These cases are based on the two Norwegian classroom video studies PISA+ and Budding Science and Literacy. In light of these two cases, we propose that establishing more common practices for video research and re-use of video data will help address the contextual issues often related to re-use of archived qualitative data, as well as the ethical and practical issues that may weigh more heavily with archived video data than with other types of qualitative data. For the video research communities, this would involve establishing ethical guidelines for re-use and sharing, standardized tools and procedures for generating data, agreed-upon analytical tools, and procedures for logging and archiving video data. By making this the focus of debate, research communities engaged in video research may, in turn, contribute to more cumulative research in the field, and in the educational sciences in general.

URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs130313