Qualitative Research Skill Training: Learning Ethnography in the Field

Abstract

Tourism education has an important role to play in helping students to critically understand their own methodological position and how this relates to particular interpretations of tourism. Despite this, (post)positivism continues to be privileged throughout tourism education, including in the Asian context. This chapter focuses in on the role of methodology and methods education or ‘training’ in furthering a shift toward non-positivist approaches to qualitative research in tourism. In particular, the chapter discusses an ethnographic fieldwork training programme related to tourism and development. The program is run as a fieldwork-focused extended field trip in the northern part of Thailand and, in addition to attending classes on research ethics, design and methodology, students undertake ethnographic research exercises which build upon each other to encourage development of skills related to interpretive qualitative research methods. Whilst the programme is open to all Masters level students, the majority of students enrolling on this optional programme have thus far been from Asia, and predominantly from China. Hence, the fieldwork programme suggests, and indeed further produces, an increased interest in and openness toward non-positivist qualitative tourism research in Asia. The programme thus not only forms an example of how a shift toward non-positivist approaches to qualitative research in tourism can be and is being made, but it also highlights the important role that education and ‘training’ play in making this shift.