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#KathyCharmaz, creator of Constructivist Grounded Theory, died today. She greatly influenced my thinking about research, so here's a short thread on why her work matters. 1/7
Glaser and Strauss created Grounded Theory (GT) in the 1960s, when epistemology was dominated by Popperian Falsificationism. This was before constructivism, interpretivism, post modernism, critical realism and the idea of paradigms took hold. 2/7
They wrote "Discovering Grounded Theory." *Discovering.* They were focused on helping researchers discover what was really there rather than force their observations into half-baked, a priori theories 3/7
However, grounded theorists don't really discover; they create. Theories don't really "emerge" from data; researchers construct theories from data, using imagination and interpretation. That's where #KathyCharmaz comes in. 4/7
Charmaz brought GT into contemporary epistemology. Instead of researchers pretending to find theories just lying around, Charmaz' work helps us more honestly explain how we get from observation to theory rigorously, while recognizing the role of imagination and creativity. 5/7
I regret never meeting Kathy. I only communicated with Kathy via email. But she was kind and helpful despite receiving what must have been an enormous number of methodology-related queries. 6/7
If you haven't read Constructing Grounded theory, you should.
https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/constructing-grounded-theory/book235960
And if we all endeavoured to be a little more like #KathyCharmaz, the scientific community would be a better place. 7/7
https://uk.sagepub.com/en-gb/eur/constructing-grounded-theory/book235960
And if we all endeavoured to be a little more like #KathyCharmaz, the scientific community would be a better place. 7/7
