Teaching thematic analysis: Overcoming challenges and developing strategies for effective learning

By Victoria Clarke, Virginia Braun. 2013

2,427 citations recorded by the source corpus.

With qualitative research methods an integral part of the psychology curriculum, questions arise of what approaches to teach, and how to teach them. We think thematic analysis (TA) offers a useful – and a relatively easy to teach and learn – basic introduction to qualitative analysis (see Braun & Clarke, 2006; 2012, 2013; Clarke & Braun, 2013); yet even teaching a fairly accessible approach like TA presents challenges in the classroom. Drawing on our experiences, and 38 responses from psychology students to a short qualitative survey on students’ experiences of qualitative and TA teaching, we explore some of the challenges of teaching TA to students new to qualitative research, and suggest strategies for overcoming these. Many of these are not specific to TA; they apply to teaching qualitative research more broadly, but we focus our discussion on TA.

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Citations in the corpus

Doing a thematic analysis: A practical, step-by-step guide for learning and teaching scholars. (2017, methodology): “A further advantage, particularly from the perspective of learning and teaching, is that it is a method rather than a methodology (Braun & Clarke 2006; Clarke & Braun, 2013).”
A Hybrid Approach to Thematic Analysis in Qualitative Research: Using a Practical Example (2018, background): “…been a good deal of literature on the subject of thematic analysis over the past two decades (e.g. see Boyatzis, 1998; Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2013; Clarke & Braun, 2013; Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006; Guest et al., 2012; Joffe, 2011), and the focus of Jennifer Fereday and Eimear Muir-Cochrane’s…”
The effectiveness of formative assessment: student views and staff reflections (2020, background): “Clarke and Braun (2013, p. 121) describe themes as “a coherent and meaningful pattern in the data”.”
Using an LLM to Help with Code Understanding (2023, background): “TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) [36] is a widely used survey that assesses users’ acceptance and adoption of new technologies, and TLX (Task Load Index) [21] is a subjective measure of mental workload that considers several dimensions, including mental, physical, and temporal demand, effort, frust”
How is a sense of well-being and belonging constructed in the accounts of autistic adults? (2016, methodology): “Thematic analysis was selected for data analysis because, located within the interpretivist paradigm, it can be used to produce in-depth interpretative analyses, providing nuanced and complex interpretations of data (clarke and braun 2013).”
Developmental relationships and school success: How teachers, parents, and friends affect educational outcomes and what actions students say matter most (2020, methodology): “Analysis of the qualitative data used thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2013; Clarke & Braun, 2013) informed by a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2008).”
Female Gamers’ Experience of Online Harassment and Social Support in Online Gaming: A Qualitative Study (2018, methodology): “Given the qualitative nature of the data collected, thematic analysis was chosen to analyse the data collected because of its flexibility and depth in allowing for an exploration of participants’ feelings and motivation (Clarke and Braun 2013).”
Women entrepreneurship in developing economies: A gender-based growth model (2021, methodology): “All the interviews were transcribed into word-processed text and analyzed thematically (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Clarke & Braun, 2013) with the aid of NVivo qualitative data analysis software.”
Thematic analysis of qualitative data: AMEE Guide No. 131 (2020, background): “The flexibility that thematic analysis offers can also be seen as a drawback in that it contributes to a perception among some that it is not a rigorous method (Clarke and Braun 2013).”
Learning to Do Qualitative Data Analysis: A Starting Point (2020, methodology): “First, we view thematic analysis as offering tremendous “theoretical flexibility” and potentially being used as “just an analytic method, rather than a methodology, which most other qualitative approaches are” (Clarke & Braun, 2013, p. 120).”