教育心理学において,近年多数の論文が現れつつある質的研究について吟味した。『教育心理学研究』の掲載論文を中心に,質的研究に関わる動向を振り返った。教育心理研究を内在的に批判した吉田(1989)の論考に基づいて,2つの課題を定めた。第1は,メタ理論の重要性である。質的な心理学研究がどのように実証主義と関連するのかを議論した。第2は,言語的な解釈と記述の問題である。質的研究の言語的解釈は,対話的拡張と縮約の2方向からなり,縮約はいくつかのミニマリズムの指針に基づいて行われることを論じた。

In the present article, I review the recent trend toward qualitative methods and research in Japanese educational psychology, focusing mainly on articles that appeared in the Japanese Journal of Educational Psychology. My re-reading of critiques of Yoshida's (1989) research in educational psychology focused the present article on two themes. The first is an appreciation of the meta-theoretical directions in qualitative psychological research. Reviewing how qualitative researchers have connected to and dissociated their work from a traditional positivistic research philosophy allowed me to gain a picture of the inter-relations between various orientations, including constructionism, contextualism , and positivism. The second these relates to problems of interpretation and description in qualitative methods. I contend that interpretive descriptions are based on bidirectional textual work, one direction being dialogical expansive, and the other, a curtailment resulting from interpretive minimalism.