Designing Qualitative Research

Catherine Marshall is Professor in the Department of Educa­tional Leadership at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Once a teacher in Rhode Island, studies and career moves include doctoral studies at University of California, Santa Barbara, a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, Los Angeles,  and faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Vanderbilt University before moving in 1991 to Chapel Hill. The ongoing goal of her teaching and re­search has been to use an interdisciplinary approach to ana­lyze cultures-of schools, state policy systems, and the professional development of adults working in organizations. She has published extensively about the politics of education, qualitative methodology, and women's access to careers as well as about the socialization, language, and values in educa­tional leadership. She is the author of Reframing Educational Politics for Social Justice, Leadership for Social Justice: Making Revolutions in Education, Culture and Education Policy in the American States and Designing Qualitative Research, and other books, as well as numerous articles on the administrative career, es­pecially the entrant, the assistant principal. 

Gretchen B. Rossman is a Professor of Education at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.  She received her Ph.D. in education from the University of Pennsylvania with a specialization in higher education administration.  She has served as Visiting Professor at Harvard University's Graduate School of Education.  Prior to coming to the University of Massachusetts, she was a Senior Research Associate at Research for Better Schools in Philadelphia.  Her research has focused on local impact of changes in federal, state, and local policy.  In addition to her teaching and research responsibilities, she consults regularly on restructuring in schools and serves as a qualitative evaluation specialist to several educational organizations.