Qualitative Research in Education: Towards the Generation of Theory Through the Analytical Process

Abstract

This paper pretends to help approaching qualitative analysis of gathered information during the process of educational research. Here, some analytical procedures are compared, emphasizing the Analytical Induction and the Method of Constant Comparision. With the objective of clarifying the processes of codification and categorization –which constitute the basic substrate for the future generation of theory- an example is presented, a text coming from a focus group of the Fondecyt Project 1030278 “Towards the Professional Autonomy of the Docent. The Teacher as a Researcher in the Classroom”. Finally, advantages and disadvantages of informatic tools applied to the qualitative analysis are discussed.