A New Trend of Early Childhood Educational Research in the Early: A Study on Post-Qualitative Research

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to introduce philosophical foundation of post-qualitative research and its methodological theory by problematizing the epistimic prevalence and dominance of positivism in the field of qualtiative research of early childhood education. This study follows literature review which has been started from 2017 by collecting and synthetically analizing researcher’s continuous and deep reading and intra-active journals. The result can be categorized into three parts: first, the introduction of background of post-qualtitative research and post-philosophy, second, understanding post-qualtiative research: focused on St. Pierre, and third, post-qualtative research methdology as inquiry. The philosophical foundation of post-qualtative research is posthumanism, new-materialism, Barad’s agential realism and Deleuze’s thought. It overcomes the limits of methodological representationism and attempts to turn ontologically. Accordingly, perspective shift to relational ontology and resistance against interpretation during data analysis are important methodological issues. Post-qualitative research, as “thousand tiny methodologies”(Lather, 2013, p.635), goes beyond reflection and representation and is more likely to be diffractive, rhizomatic, experimentational and performative. I hope researchers would regard their own problems, thoughts, theories, concepts and intra-action with materisals valuable. Its own inquiry will be adventure and experimentation as long as it travels towards inquiry-driven way, not method-driven.