The dominant view of inquiry reflected in graduate educational research courses has been labelled as positivistic or quantitative. Instructional strategies have been designed to train students to become more skilled in the use of complex statistical procedures, more efficient in the development of preordinate designs permitting increasingly higher levels of control over complex socio-behavioral phenomena, and more proficient in reducing complexities of the world to precise and clear formulations, often through the use of mathematical symbols. An alternative view of inquiry, the naturalistic/qualitative theory, is associated with the conduct of research in field settings, use of description as the principal means of reporting the observations generated, involvement of the researcher as participant-observer and as an instrument of data collection, use of inductive logic, and a belief that there is a need to capture the inner perspectives of those under examination. A description is given of a graduate education research course that reflects this alternative research paradigm. Two bibliographies used in the course are attached. One presents references selected as appropriate for the segment of the course dealing with the philosophy of science, theory of inquiry, metatheory and paradigms, functions of theory, and models and types of theory. The second bibliography covers major topics associated with naturalistic-qualitative inquiry dealt with in the class sessions. (JD)