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This study examines the current trends and complexities in qualitative research in three major language teaching andlearning journals published from 2006–2015. After categorizing 781 articles into quantitative, qualitative, mixedmethods, and other approaches, 226 qualitative research articles were closely examined and further analyzed in termsof four dimensions: approaches, methods, number of participants, and length of research period. The findingsshowed that case study was the most frequently employed approach, followed by ethnography. The study alsoidentified that while interviews, observations, discourse analysis, and conversation analysis were relatively wellutilized, more than 150 different data collection and analysis methods were used. Although the results of the studyshow a tendency to use certain approaches and methods in qualitative research more than others, they alsodemonstrate the complexity and diversity of qualitative research and the difficulty in clarifying and categorizingtypes of qualitative research in language teaching and learning.
Tojo et al. (Wed,) studied this question.