Applying Thematic Analysis to Education: A Hybrid Approach to Interpreting Data in Practitioner Research

“Based upon a set of codes, definitions, examples, and “when to use” and “when not to used” sections, a codebook can be developed as a guide to help analyze data (Guest et al., 2006).”

“In “Using Thematic Analysis in Psychology,” Braun and Clarke (2006) delineate a straightforward, step-bystep approach to conducting TA and now is referred to as reflexive TA (Braun & Clarke, 2019).”

“…made to detail a step-by-step guide to apply TA to practice in psychology, nursing, and sport and exercise research (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Braun et al., 2019; Braun et al., 2017; Clarke & Braun, 2014; Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006; Nowell et al., 2017), there is a paucity of description…”

“In addition to detailing the steps of conducting TA as other practical examples have undertaken (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006; Nowell et al., 2017), this article has its strength in outlining multiple data collection tools and their associated analytical processes.”

“It seems confusing for researchers to distinguish and choose between TA and content analysis, considering many similarities between the approaches and the least thoughtful discussion in the literature (Vaismoradi et al., 2013).”

“There are different approaches to TA (Boyatzis, 1998; Guest et al., 2011).”

“Thematic analysis (TA) is a commonly used qualitative data analysis approach in psychology (Braun & Clarke, 2006), health care (Braun & Clarke, 2014), sport and exercise (Braun et al., 2017), and many other fields (Boyatzis, 1998).”

“Saturation is an elastic concept (Morse, 1995), and the crux of our discussion is to clarify when and how data saturation was reached in our practitioner inquiry.”

“…a step-by-step guide to apply TA to practice in psychology, nursing, and sport and exercise research (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Braun et al., 2019; Braun et al., 2017; Clarke & Braun, 2014; Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006; Nowell et al., 2017), there is a paucity of description addressing the field…”

“Informed by grounded theory, codes can come from the data itself (inductive coding) as well as particular theoretical or epistemological positions (deductive coding; DeCuir-Gunby et al., 2011).”

“Although digital analysis software packages such as NVivo scaffold data management, analysis, and write-up (Maher et al., 2018), Basit (2003) argues that the choice will be made contingent on the size of the project, availability of time and funds, and preference and expertise of the researcher.”

“It was our reflexivity and prolonged engagement with data and analytic process that led to a thicker description of this particular practitioner inquiry, contributing to transferability and dependability as criteria for evaluating qualitative studies (Maher et al., 2018).”

“However, as two coders were engaged in the generation and testing of the codebook as well as reviewing themes, a clear trail of evidence for the validity and interrater reliability has been improved (Roberts et al., 2019).”

“However, a lack of description about the process and details of analysis often leads the TA report readers to wonder how exactly qualitative information is systematically coded and how themes emerge from the data (Tuckett, 2005).”

“TA aligns with these data collection tools that seek to explore the events, meanings, and experiences from verbal interviews and textual data (journal entries) generated by those experiencing them (Joffe, 2012; Vaismoradi et al., 2013).”

“Framing refers to controls on communication in the pedagogic relationship between the teacher and students (Singh, 2002).”

“Considering students’ low socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds, we assume that “treatment” associated with disengagement is supposed to be directed at a wider social context instead of individuals (Furlong, 1991).”

“It is especially important for those disadvantaged students who have been bearing the greatest brunt of educational inequalities and disempowerment over long periods of time (Munns, 2007; Willis, 1977).”

“Student engagement in learning experiences is understood to relate to their cognitive (think hard), affective (feel good), and operative (work toward being more productive learners) engagements that need to be occurring simultaneously at high levels (Munns et al., 2013).”

“It involves the identi fi cation and reporting of patterns in a data set, which are then interpreted for their inherent meaning (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Liebenberg et al., 2020; Xu & Zammit, 2020); these patterns can be found on the basis of understanding the meaning of keywords used by participants.”

“To be specific, we followed several stages (Xu and Zammit, 2020) to analyse the primary and secondary data.”

“We analyzed the data following a deductive/inductive hybrid thematic analysis approach [29, 101]: First, the transcripts were coded by five researchers using a deductive coding approach, where each researcher identified topics in the transcripts independently according to four categories in our…”

“For thematic data analysis, a hybrid approach that employed both deductive and inductive processes was taken to prepare a coding scheme (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Xu & Zammit, 2020).”