In the Path of Creating a Relational “How” in Research: From Instrumentalization to Re-Humanization

Problematizing Qualitative Research

I still remember school classes where the scientific method was the model to become researchers. Indeed, Bunge (1981, 2013) in his book La ciencia, su método y su filosofía was an earlier reference in my life to define research. Hypothesizing, testing those assertions and predictions about the world, while restating them as validated explanations became a different way to approach my existence. This view of research led me to the distinction of scientific knowledge from common sense, privileging the former (Tasar, 2006), according to official frames for researching in educational environments. Thus, I gained a formal teaching on what research was and how to conduct it. In this spirit, I introduce this section that problematizes qualitative research by reflecting upon “the darker side of western modernity” (Mignolo, 2011) embedded in this approach to inquire into our realities and construct knowledge in Applied Linguistics (AL) to ELT.