Research paradigms in education

British Educational Research Journal, 2005

Educational research is widely construed as the scientific investigation of the causes of 'effective' teaching. Discussion of values and philosophical problems is condemned as descent into 'ideology'. Opposing this is a conception of teaching as phronesis where educational research and philosophy may be desirable, but have no direct relationship to practice. It is contended in this article that both of these views are misconceived. In educational research, empirical questions are secondary, values are central, and philosophical investigation is central to the determination of these. Philosophy, not social science, directly governs policy and practice; virtue governed by logic, not causation under natural law, is the principal explanatory concept. Educational research, then, is logically tied to practice. This sanctions not the authoritarian 'methods that work' project, but a pluralistic conception of research anchored in the autonomy of teachers and pupils. 'Educational research' The technicist ascendancy Teaching today is treated as a technology-an applied social science (Bennett &

Review of Education, 2019

International Journal of Educational Excellence, 2020

The philosophy of educational research has traditionally been one of the least studied fields in the epistemology of the social sciences and humanities. However, a philosophical reflection on education itself, in the search for an ultimate explanation of what it means in the field of human evolution, necessarily implies knowing how to obtain information for its knowledge. This, in an epistemological context, implies analyzing the research methods used in the educational sciences. Throughout its history, educational research has experienced three stages of methodological evolution in its search for scientific effectiveness: (a) research without adhering to a particular model, (b) research applied to practice, and (c) research inserted into practice. The analysis of these methodological evolutions shows a history of great academic value, of fascinating philosophical debates, which every educator and educational researcher should know, and which nevertheless remains practically unexplored and unstudied in its entirety in the academic field.

Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology (RERM), 2021

This article discusses how it is possible to think with the world in educational research. How can this thinking with the world generate knowledge about the becoming of phenomena? To answer this question this paper undertakes a diffractive reading of selected texts from Niels Bohr, Karen Barad, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Donna Haraway, and Michel Serres. This diffractive reading reveals that the world becomes with itself contributing to an internal principle or an inner selfdifferentiation. This means that all phenomena can be understood as related to the world in one way or another. This paper contends that the researcher body is important to investigations of the becoming of phenomena with the world, therefore a haptic sensorium is developed as a means to visualize bodily affects and to recognize limit values to the world, for example, background noise. The article concludes with a discussion about creating knowledge of this process as a rhizome. The article attempts to illustrate that thinking with the world can generate new knowledge to understand the becoming of phenomena, which can contribute to the development of educational research.

2021

The document presents the analysis and assessment of the paradigms through which educational research can be supported. It provides a rationale for why the researcher clearly defines the paradigm(s) of his/her study, considering the relevance and usefulness of these paradigms in the research process. Focusing on why it is essential to recognize the specificity of the levels of analysis - ethical, epistemological, methodological or axiological, in this type of research? This necessarily presents a complex picture, in relation to its object of study, and its position in the current science system.

Research should be legitimized and clarified by the philosophical frame by which it metaphorically hangs. Such clarity is important in so far as it helps to provide a foundation for guiding researchers’ evaluations of the quality of their research findings. This article focuses on certain philosophical pre-conditions and justifications, i.e. the underlying, pre-theoretical or pre-scientific provisos / specifications / provisions for a researcher’s thinking and hence for his or her decisions about which methodology to follow and methods to apply when researching a problem. In order to achieve this aim, the article discusses the four “sides” or “panels” of the philosophical frame by which a researcher’s research method in general tends to hang, figuratively speaking, namely (a) integrated personality orientation, (b) transcendental orientation, (c) teleological orientation and (d) nomothetic orientation. Overlooking this “frame by which a researcher’s methodological picture hangs”, may have serious repercussions for how one does research.

This article traces the underlying theoretical framework of educational research. It outlines the definitions of epistemology, ontology and paradigm and the origins, main tenets, and key thinkers of the 3 paradigms; positivist, interpetivist and critical. By closely analyzing each paradigm, the literature review focuses on the ontological and epistemological assumptions of each paradigm. Finally the author analyzes not only the paradigm's weakness but also the author's own construct of reality and knowledge which align with the critical paradigm. The English Language Teaching (ELT) field has moved from an ad hoc field with amateurish research to a much more serious enterprise of professionalism. More teachers are conducting research to not only inform their teaching in the classroom but also to bridge the gap between the external researcher dictating policy and the teacher negotiating that policy with the practical demands of their classroom. I was a layperson, not an educational researcher. Determined to emancipate myself from my layperson identity, I began to analyze the different philosophical underpinnings of each paradigm, reading about the great thinkers' theories and the evolution of social science research. Through this process I began to examine how I view the world, thus realizing my own construction of knowledge and social reality, which is actually quite loose and chaotic. Most importantly, I realized that I identify most with the critical paradigm assumptions and that my future desired role as an educational researcher is to affect change and challenge dominant social and political discourses in ELT. The following literature review is the product of my transformation from teacher to educational researcher. I will begin by defining the operational definitions of ontology, epistemology and paradigm. Then, I trace the origins, main tenets, and key thinkers of the 3 paradigms; positivist, interpetivist and critical, focusing on the ontological and epistemological assumptions of each paradigm. Through this analysis of different paradigms, I will expose not only each paradigm's weakness but also my own construct of reality and knowledge.

Compare, 2020

The paper is in two parts. The first part of the paper is a critique of current methodology in educational research: scientific, critical and interpretive. The ontological and epistemological assumptions of those methodologies are described from the standpoint of John Searle's analytic philosophy. In the second part two research papers with different research methodologies were identified (Kumaravadivelu, 2001; Lee, Yoon, & Lee, 2009) and their research methods were critiqued.

This current research paper updates my previous work on the philosophy and application of the educational research . It deals with and fully seeks to the explain such philosophical terms as metaphysics (ontology), epistemology and ethics in depth. The argument leads logically to pragmatism, which is a new philosophical branch through which researchers adopt the best tools to answer their research questions. In fact, the appearance of mixed methods research as a methodological tool has questioned the validity of the philosophically-based assumption that following specific ontological convictions leads (logically) to adopting specific epistemological stance. Example of which is clearly substantiated in the bulk of research conducted by objectivist researchers who normally follow a positivist epistemological route. Such an assumption is no longer valid. Thus, through this paper, I arguebased on Davis Morgan (2014) -that justifying methodological tools on the basis of ontological and epistemological assumptions is old fashioned and no longer useful. Pragmatism should be utilised instead as a valid and practical research philosophy.