Education and qualitative research: Approaches to educational practice as a research object

This essay reflects on the relationship between qualitative research and the study of educational practice. Based on a review and analysis of scientific literature, it is argued that the need to study social practices, especially subaltern ones, is the context of legitimation of qualitative research in the social sciences and this allows us to identify a series of epistemological motives that constitute this approach. Educational practices are problematized from the notion of field proposed by Bourdieu. As central conclusions, the theoretical and epistemological implications of approaching the practices of educational agents from a qualitative approach are argued. The need to strengthen the epistemological, theoretical and ethical-political discussion of research on educational practices is emphasized, and a set of questions that could guide the study of teachers’ reality are problematized.