Methodological development and innovation in educational research have attracted recent scholarly attention. The National Centre for Research Methods identified a number of methodological challenges for the twenty-first century and highlighted e-research, participatory and creative methods as sites of potential innovation (Crow, 2013). In 2015–17 the British Educational Research Association organized a series of Presidential Round Table Seminars to explore key methodological challenges facing the education research community. These events reflected the complexities of researching diverse and often ‘messy’ educational settings. While methodological ‘innovation’ is a debated term – not least because new approaches tend to be adaptions rather than wholly new approaches – there is widespread interest in genuine attempts to improve different aspects of the research process, which may help to inform the agenda for future research (Wiles et al., 2011).

In this context, this special thematic section includes articles that report on new developments in qualitative educational research. The editors were interested in articles that developed new methodologies, or adapted those that exist, in response to identified challenges, including those relating to: researching new contexts, settings and spaces of education; using new conceptual insights to inform education research; and researching educational practices or actors that have previously been seen as ‘difficult’ to research. They were also particularly interested in articles that sought to explain the authors’ methodological decision-making, so as to provide rich insights into the research challenges they faced, the considerations, dilemmas and events that led to their emergent research methodology and how this influenced their research findings. 

Publication date: 01 November 2019. Volume 17, Issue 3. 

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Guest Editors

Charlotte Vidal-Hall, PhD candidate, UCL Institute of Education, UCL, UK.
Nozomi Sakata, PhD candidate, UCL Institute of Education, UCL, UK.
Rob Higham, UCL Institute of Education, UCL, UK.

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Article list 

Editorial

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Research article

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