With the transition from the industrial society to the information society, the rational paradigm has undergone a transformation and left its place to the interpretative paradigm, and this shift has also impacted the aims of education (Özden & Şimşek, 1998). The target gaining importance in education has been to raise individuals who think, question, research, and solve problems and make decisions. In an information society where information is easily accessible, it is necessary to provide individuals with 21st century skills (The Partnership for 21st Century Learning, 2019) or life skills (World Health Organization, 1994) in line with the understanding that knowledge is not the monopoly of the teacher and the answer keys in the test books (Robinson, 2010). Research skill can be considered to be one of these skills. In an information society where learning to learn comes to the fore (Binkley, Erstad, Herman, Raizen, Ripley, Miller-Ricci, & Rumble, 2012), there is a need to develop individuals’ research knowledge, skills, and awareness. This need may be of higher priority when it comes to methodology because individuals who search for a problem are expected to base the research on a scientific method relevant to the problem and to find an answer to the problem by using the method correctly. The paradigmatic transition mentioned above has also found its way into scientific research methods, and qualitative research has also taken its place in the research tradition. Now, in social sciences and especially in educational sciences, it is thought that some variables may be too complex and uncertain to fit into the response categories in the scales that linear relationships between some variables cannot be established (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2018). Therefore, it is difficult to establish a cause-effect relationship, predict, and make generalizations (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2018). As a solution to these limitations of quantitative research, the case to be under scrutiny in qualitative research is described, understood, and interpreted in its integrity, spontaneity, depth, and multiplicity (Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2018). Although the interest in qualitative research in the field of educational sciences has increased in recent years, some researchers who especially adopt the rational paradigm may insist on not viewing qualitative research as scientific. This insistence and prejudice may stem from the lack of adequate knowledge about qualitative research. It is believed that it is necessary to start with the training of researchers who are just at the beginning of the road. Thus, interest in qualitative research, which can contribute significantly to the scientific development of education, can be aroused, and qualified qualitative research can be provided in the field of educational sciences. Also, improving qualitative research knowledge, skills and awareness of graduate students are considered very important in terms of contributing to their development of more flexible and creative thinking skills. In this context, the aim of the training, which was organized online due to the COVID-19 pandemic and entitled as “Developing the Qualitative Research Skills of Graduate Students in the Field of Educational Sciences”, was to contribute to the development of the knowledge, skills, and awareness of the graduate students in the field of educational sciences about the qualitative research methodology. Therefore, the purpose of this research is to gain insight into graduate students’ perceptions about the contribution of the training carried out to develop their knowledge, skills, and awareness of the qualitative research methodology. This research addressed the following question, “What are the perceptions of graduate students in the field of educational sciences about the contributions of the training carried out to develop their knowledge, skills, and awareness of the qualitative research methodology?”

This qualitative research had case study design and explored a case (the training described herein) in a real-life context through empirical inquiry (Yin, 2014). In this regard, the study was carried out within the scope of a training funded by the Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) to develop graduate students’ qualitative research knowledge, skills, and awareness. The participants were selected through criterion sampling, which is a purposive sampling strategy (Patton, 2002). Great attention was paid to determine the participants who were either master’s or doctoral students in the field of educational sciences at public or private universities in Turkey and who have not taken any course related to qualitative research methodology earlier. Second, maximum variation sampling was used to maximize variation based on their characteristics such as gender, universities and graduate programs that they enrolled in, cities and regions of Turkey that they have been living in. Consequently, the participants were 30 graduate students (20 female, 10 male; 19 doctoral, 11 master’s) in the field of educational sciences. This research relies on an emergent methodology, namely qualitative document analysis in which both printed and electronic materials are systematically reviewed or evaluated (Altheide, Coyle, DeVriese, & Schneider, 2008) because document analysis can be used as a stand-alone technique of data collection although it has mostly been complementary to other data collection techniques (Bowen, 2009). In this research, the data were collected through the analysis of documents, namely e-journals, which graduate students kept throughout the training. E-journaling is stated to be “a strategy to support student reflection and understanding” (King & LaRocco, 2006, p. 1). Graduate students were asked to reflect on their thoughts, feelings, and insights in relationship to the training and on a day-to-day basis. The following open-ended questions and statements were provided as a guide: (1) What did I think about in the training today? (2) How did I feel in the training today? (3) What did I learn today? (4) What do I plan to do with what I have learned today? (5) Today, it is good that... (6) Today, I wish… (7) Tomorrow, I… Content analysis was performed to organize and conceptualize the data in these documents (Miles & Huberman, 1994; Patton, 2002; Yıldırım & Şimşek, 2018) after skimming, reading, and interpreting the data (Bowen, 2009), i.e. the content of all student e-journals. Finally, multiple strategies were used to ensure trustworthiness of the research.

The preliminary analysis of the data indicate that the graduate students’ reflections revealed that the training was found as a “once-in-a-lifetime experience”, and the training helped them develop their (1) knowledge, (2) skills, and (3) awareness of qualitative research methodology. First, as reflected by graduate students in the e-journals, the training helped them gain knowledge on the qualitative research paradigm and its significance, qualitative research designs, qualitative research process and ethics, sampling in qualitative research, data collection in qualitative research, analyzing and reporting data in qualitative research, validity and reliability in qualitative research, common mistakes in qualitative research, and writing qualitative research proposals. Second, as understood from graduate students’ reflections, they found an opportunity to systematically plan and write qualitative research proposals. In addition, the training helped them formulate qualitative research questions, develop interview and observation schedules, collect data through interviews and observation, and conduct content analysis of and interpret the qualitative data from interviews and observation. Third, as can be seen from graduate students’ reflections in the e-journals, the training helped them develop positive attitudes toward conducting qualitative research. Even on the first day of the training, there were graduate students who reflected that they would read more about qualitative research and plan to conduct qualitative research. According to graduate students’ e-journals, the training increased their self-efficacy and motivation for conducting qualitative research as well. Many graduate students also reflected that they became aware of common mistakes that they should not make in qualitative research and planned to detect and correct errors in their own research in terms of research questions, sampling methods, data collection techniques, and data analysis. Moreover, it was understood that some graduate students expressed a desire for more seamless Internet connectivity, more effective time management, and more space for practice.

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