There are issues of conceptualizing research with its philosophical and multimodal paradigms in educational spaces due to research orientation, ethical values, and possible data/information generation ventures. In this context, raising critical awareness with theoretical and philosophical insights is crucial to ensure “onto-epistemological shifts” for ensuring the rigor in qualitative research from data generation to the meaning-making process (Thomas & Bellingham, 2020). The awareness is not only related to research methodological paradigms, but also with an understanding of essentialist pattern of observing the society and human selves and postmodern dimensions of redefining identity.
This volume features research studies that critically delve into dimensions of qualitative research with a rigorous post theoretical and philosophical discussion. The chapters justify the criticality of the issue with its social cultural influences and indigenous knowledge system, followed by the contextual description of the research practices. The authors also adopt the insights of decolonial and postmodern perspectives as a lens for discussion. Stewart et al. (2020) argue that the qualitative researchers are heading towards final truth value of their research study with European standards and, thus, overshadowing the postmodern qualitative paradigms. They claim that Foucault’s notion of genealogy is a postmodernist approach which provides a more “realistic genealogically situated concepts” (p. 3) for diversifying the qualitative research dimensions. There is a lacuna in qualitative research philosophical orientation with reductionist visions like talking about doing research, conducting interviews etc. It is a result of our educational orientation about research methodology, in which researchers are not accepting the fact of blurring disciplinary stands and empowering good research scholarships through critical readings and thinking. Thus, this volume aspires to explore the post-disciplinary qualitative research orientation by envisioning unconventional research methods and ontological and epistemological pluralism.