Generating grounded theory of/for educational practice: the journey of three epistemorphs

This article portrays the conceptual journey of three professionals as they grapple with the epistemological, ontological and axiological underpinnings of grounded theory within the context of practice‐based research. Writing from the stance of ‘epistemorph,’ the authors use the concepts of ‘functionalist drift’ and ‘interpretive drift’ to depict the intellectual crosscurrents set in motion by their taken‐for‐granted assumptions about the nature of knowledge. An evolving set of questions reflects shifts in thinking that occur as these assumptions are surfaced and examined. From the ‘ground’ of this journey, the authors come to an interpretive reframing of key ‘logics’ of the grounded theory method including theoretical sensitivity, theoretical sampling, coding, constant comparative analysis and memoing.