Constructivist grounded theory and educational research: constructing theories about teachers’ work when analysing relationships between codes

Abstract

Constructivist grounded theory has earned a place in research worldwide and been applied in diverse fields. However, in educational research of teachers’ work in the classroom from the perspective of the teacher, it has had a lesser impact on research methodology. We argue for the benefits to educational research when using a constructivist grounded theory methodology. Our arguments focus on three concrete benefits: (1) Constructivist grounded theory focuses on participants’ perspectives, or main concerns, (2) by using an open, exploratory approach, and, (3) could involve investigating the relationships between the focused codes, preferably by using theoretical coding. We argue that constructivist grounded theory adds an analytical edge to work in classrooms, when skilfully deployed. These benefits with constructivist grounded theory differentiate the approach against other qualitative methods. Another important feature is focusing on the actions, and social processes, and thus making use of several theoretical codes. As we will outline in this paper, these features of constructivist grounded theory could help produce theoretical insights that could be valuable additions to educational research and educational practices.