Presentation slides: https://ico-ogss2025.ico-education.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/ICOOGSS2025-Keynote_AnnedelaCroixKeynote.pdf
Handout: https://ico-ogss2025.ico-education.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/The-House-R.pdf
Some words that could come to mind when talking about qualitative research: Rich. Dynamic. Authentic. Subjective. Confusing. Untrustworthy.
Even though qualitative research in medical education has taken flight in the last two decades, many people experience uncertainty when undertaking a qualitative study for the first time, or struggle when writing qualitatively. One of the main reasons for these struggles is that there are some basic assumptions about ‘doing science’ that find their source in a post-positivist stance, which is fairly dominant in our field. However, qualitative research is a different game with a whole different set of rules. To truly appreciate qualitative research, we need to face these post-positivist assumptions and take on a completely different mind-set. A mind-set in which your personal involvement cannot be ignored, in which there is not ‘one truth’ but rather many different possible stories.
In this highly interactive keynote, Anne de la Croix will talk about aspects of this ‘qualitative research mind-set’ that are often misunderstood. Together, we will tidy up some mess, think about houses, and philosophise about IKEA-furniture. After this talk, you will see how embracing the subjective nature of qualitative research can transform struggles to strengths.
Anne de la Croix is an Assistant Professor in Research in Education at Amsterdam UMC. Anne’s research interests are very varied, but reflection, empathy, communication, and patient participation are at the core of most of her work. Annes background is in the humanities (Dutch and Linguistics). After being a secondary school teacher for a few years, she landed in the field of Health Professions Education in 2006 as a PhD student at the University of Birmingham, UK. Since then, she has undertaken many qualitative research projects, making use of a variety of methodologies and approaches. When she became a PhD supervisor herself, she started seeing and understanding the struggles of novice researchers in qualitative research projects. The main message she wants to convey about qualitative work is to embrace its subjective nature.
Presentation slides: https://ico-ogss2025.ico-education.nl/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/ICO-2025-David-Gijbels.pdf
25 years ago, I published my first article in an educational research journal. A lot has changed since then, but at the same time, many lessons that I learned at and since the end of the previous century are still helpful today to improve educational research manuscripts and their chances of getting accepted in relevant journals or book series in our field. When invited to give this keynote, I was offered the choice to share my ideas on publishing in our field or share important insights from my own research. I will try to do both by looking back to the choices I made in my career as an educational researcher so far regarding the type of research that I have been doing, which questions, methodologies, collaborations and research results triggered me to make new choices as well as share my view on publishing these results. Hence, my aim with this keynote is to share my ideas on (publishing) educational research in our field based on my personal experiences as a researcher, administrator, supervisor, collaborator, (co)author, reviewer and editor in the past 25 years.
David Gijbels is full professor of learning and instruction in the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Antwerp. He is co-founder of the Antwerp Social Lab and his research is situated within the EDUBRON research group. He teaches mainly in the ‘education and training sciences’ program (OOW). David serves the editorial boards of Educational Research Review, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Vocations and Learning, and the advisory board of the Journal of Computer Assisted Learning.