This discussion will highlight the discussion question What are the experiences of special need students and special need instructors with online classes and how does this relate to online learning success (Topic selection, n.d.; Manguilimotan et al., 2022). The question uses the Ethnographical approach as it is exploring the experiences of the special needs sub-group (students and instructors) and their experiences with online classes.

Methodological Approach

Ethnography consists of two general types; realist ethnography and critical ethnography (Creswell & Poth, 2018). Where realist ethnography is the traditional approach dealing with an objective account of a situation. Ethnography research starts with the generation of a questions that the researcher then takes into the field (Coates & Catling, 2021). In the field, data is typically collected in the field using observations, surveys, interviews, focus groups, and document analysis collecting information of what is learned from the participants. A characteristic of ethnography is the iterative nature of data collection and analysis in the fact that data is collected then analyzed. Then further data is collected if needed and the existing data is further verified. On the other-hand critical ethnography is used by political activists to right the wrongs that they find through their research and advocate for groups that they feel are marginalized by society (Creswell & Poth, 2018).

One of the research models that is used for realist ethnographic research is AART which stand for abduction, abstraction, retroduction and testing (Decoteau, 2017). Where in abduction empirical findings lead to the generation of hypothesis. At the same time abstraction is taking place in conjunction with abduction. In abstraction, the researcher moves from the details of empirical research into the realm of theory. Next is retroduction where the researcher theorizes different avenues that further explains how the applicable events maybe impacted. Finally in testing the generated theories along with the data are analyzed and verified where applicable.

The last 30 years have seen a significant expansion in the use of computational tools and infrastructure by realist ethnographers (Abramson et al., 2017). These tools have especially been of great help in both producing and querying large dataset which are often the result of ethnographic research. For analysis ethnographers fall back onto computational methods which provide important tools for operating under NST (normal scientific tradition). Further the tools assist with 1) scaling ethnography, 2) improving transparency, 3) allowing basic replications, and 4) addressing concerns about validity.

Rationale to Methodological Approach

The iterative nature of ethnography, where the researcher collects data then analyzes it before collecting additional data in support of verifying both the collected data and generated theories(Coates & Catling, 2021). This iteration goes towards helping the ethnographer in searching for the patterns within the collected data representing a groups social behaviors, mental activities, beliefs and anything else that makes the applicable group unique (Creswell & Poth, 2018). Further the use of computational tools will help the realist ethnographer in analyzing and processing the collected data (Abramson et al., 2017). Using these tools will assist the ethnographer in evaluating the data, seeing the hidden patterns and validating the research. In all it will assist the researcher in answering the research questions.

Respond to the post of at least. Comment on the choice of the research methodology and how the methodology fits with the research question?