Reconsidering Educational Research

2000

Any research text which has reached a sixth edition must be doing something right and this book has been an international best seller for most of its history. The fifth edition published in 2000 demonstrated to readers that the authors were adept at maintaining currency and were not simply prepared to serve up a time honoured menu of superficial coverage of the broad range of possibilities for educational research. This tends to be the dominant model for research methods texts. The 6th edition of this text is even more impressive and goes even further with additional chapters on analysis; an extension to the paradigms debate including an introduction to the emergence of complexity theory (though I feel the paradigms discussion could have been taken a little further), and an important cross referencing feature which connects the text to a support companion web site.

Issues in Educational Research, 2006

In this article the authors discuss issues faced by early career researchers, including the dichotomy, which many research textbooks and journal articles create and perpetuate between qualitative and quantitative research methodology despite considerable literature to support the use of mixed methods. The authors review current research literature and discuss some of the language, which can prove confusing to the early career researcher and problematic for post-graduate supervisors and teachers of research. The authors argue that discussions of research methods in research texts and university courses should include mixed methods and should address the perceived dichotomy between qualitative and quantitative research methodology.

Vishaal Bharat Sansthan, Varanasi India , 2020

E?~cationa/ research has seen the emergence of issues like 'contextualization ', 'role of participants m order to better understand the problems of education. As a result, there is mushroom growth in research topics at masters' level and in subsequent research degrees. Researchers conceptualize the res~arch problems focusing on teachers, students, parents, classrooms instead of measuring certain vanab/es of academic performances or measuring cognitive emotional ability of the participants. Instead of surveys, researchers seek reasons through opinions of the participants. These changes are unplanned similar to any change in the world, the researcher mostly fail to cognize this. Therefore, ii requires proper orientation and well documented courses of qualitative research in education for students for the 'quality' concerns in these researches. Concern of qualitative research in Education is primarily from its allied disciplines, mainly: Sociology, Psychology and Anthropology. It also has /ayers to its emergence, existence and evolution in Education. Application of qualitative research with incomplete understanding results in: first the challenges in orienting the qualitative researches during supervision; second raising the issues for valid comprehensive conceptualization of qualitative research in educational areas; lastly, designing a course and workshop for analysis of qualitative data that addresses the needs of Education. The paper cites three researches done at masters of education and the challenges of developing a conceptual framework, data collection techniques, analysis that involves coding, elaborating on themes, and analyzing with theoretical understanding. As there is imperative need to root paradigmatic and methodological concerns in educational debate.

Understanding Medical Education, 2007

• Research is concerned with critical or scientific enquiry. It differs from audit, as research is concerned with discovering the right thing to do, and audit, with ensuring that it is done right. Evaluation aims to assess the worth or value of something. • Theoretical perspectives provide the framework for research and inform the basic assumptions that guide the research. A theoretical perspective encompasses important elements: ontology, epistemology and methodology. • Can research combine qualitative and quantitative research methods? One perspective is that the ontological and epistemological assumptions of these approaches are incompatible, and therefore it is not feasible to combine methods. An opposing view sees the two approaches as compatible, and combined approaches become feasible • Researchers are expected to minimise the risk of harm or discomfort to people. Harm from educational or social research is more likely to take the form of psychological distress than physical injury. Research that aims to be published requires an ethical review. What Is Research? Research has been defined as 'a search or investigation directed to the discovery of some fact by careful consideration or study of a subject; a course of critical or scientific inquiry'.(4) This definition may sound straightforward, in that most researchers would agree that they are involved in a critical inquiry of something, but some would argue that their aim is not to establish facts but to increase or change understanding about something. How does research differ from audit? Research is concerned with discovering the right thing to do, and audit, with ensuring that it is done right.(5) Following this definition, audit focuses on what is given and asks questions about the given, while research has the freedom to ask questions about the given, including 'Is this the best or only way to do something?' How does research differ from evaluation? According to Clarke,(6) what differentiates evaluation from research is the question of purpose. 'An evaluation is action orientated. It is conducted to determine the value or impact of a policy, programme, practice, intervention or service, with a view to making recommendations for change'. Robson(7) states that 'to evaluate is to assess the worth or value of something'. Following this definition, evaluation is about setting out to make a judgement. Going back to our definition of research, there is no mention of research leading to judgement, but to the discovery of findings by critical inquiry. Evaluation research is part of research, but in evaluation the aim involves assessing the worth of something. Theoretical Frameworks in Education and the Social Sciences Kneebone(8) published a personal view about his attempt to engage with the education and social science literature. He wrote, 'At first and to my great surprise I found this literature almost impenetrable, of course it was peppered with unfamiliar words … I had the disquieting sensation of moving into alien territory, where familiar landmarks had disappeared'. Kneebone came to the realisation that all his medical training had been based within one view of science, the positivist paradigm, and that this was a very narrow and limited view. He ended with a plea to include an exploration of what the humanities have to offer the medical curriculum, and also with explicit guidance on how to gain access to this world. The aim of this chapter is to make this other 'world' penetrable. The focus of this section is to present some of the frameworks within which quantitative and qualitative research is conducted in education and the social sciences. Quantitative research in education and social science is typically represented by

This article brings an account into educational research and the impact on policy and practice. Research paradigms represent a crucial element in the research project as they influence both the strategy and the way the researchers construct and interpret the meaning of the reality. The research paradigms have a philosophical underpinning and orient the researchers' point of view on the reality as given by nature or constructed by human agency. Depending on the research paradigm, the researchers have been for long divided into two camps: the tenants of the quantitative methods and the tenants of qualitative ones. They have been arguing from opposing stances which method is superior. The quantitative method privilege the numbers, while the qualitative uses the words, therefore it seems like a war of numbers versus words. Lately, a third way is advocating for a mixed methodology, as more beneficial to research. The paper concludes that the different perspectives of research can be considered more as complementing rather than contradicting each other. The paper considers the implications of research on education and the role of research for professional development and educational practice.

Evidence, Theory and Practice, 2013

• Research is concerned with critical or scientific enquiry. It differs from audit, as research is concerned with discovering the right thing to do, and audit, with ensuring that it is done right. Evaluation aims to assess the worth or value of something. • Theoretical perspectives provide the framework for research and inform the basic assumptions that guide the research. A theoretical perspective encompasses important elements: ontology, epistemology and methodology. • Can research combine qualitative and quantitative research methods? One perspective is that the ontological and epistemological assumptions of these approaches are incompatible, and therefore it is not feasible to combine methods. An opposing view sees the two approaches as compatible, and combined approaches become feasible • Researchers are expected to minimise the risk of harm or discomfort to people. Harm from educational or social research is more likely to take the form of psychological distress than physical injury. Research that aims to be published requires an ethical review. What Is Research? Research has been defined as 'a search or investigation directed to the discovery of some fact by careful consideration or study of a subject; a course of critical or scientific inquiry'.(4) This definition may sound straightforward, in that most researchers would agree that they are involved in a critical inquiry of something, but some would argue that their aim is not to establish facts but to increase or change understanding about something. How does research differ from audit? Research is concerned with discovering the right thing to do, and audit, with ensuring that it is done right.(5) Following this definition, audit focuses on what is given and asks questions about the given, while research has the freedom to ask questions about the given, including 'Is this the best or only way to do something?' How does research differ from evaluation? According to Clarke,(6) what differentiates evaluation from research is the question of purpose. 'An evaluation is action orientated. It is conducted to determine the value or impact of a policy, programme, practice, intervention or service, with a view to making recommendations for change'. Robson(7) states that 'to evaluate is to assess the worth or value of something'. Following this definition, evaluation is about setting out to make a judgement. Going back to our definition of research, there is no mention of research leading to judgement, but to the discovery of findings by critical inquiry. Evaluation research is part of research, but in evaluation the aim involves assessing the worth of something. Theoretical Frameworks in Education and the Social Sciences Kneebone(8) published a personal view about his attempt to engage with the education and social science literature. He wrote, 'At first and to my great surprise I found this literature almost impenetrable, of course it was peppered with unfamiliar words … I had the disquieting sensation of moving into alien territory, where familiar landmarks had disappeared'. Kneebone came to the realisation that all his medical training had been based within one view of science, the positivist paradigm, and that this was a very narrow and limited view. He ended with a plea to include an exploration of what the humanities have to offer the medical curriculum, and also with explicit guidance on how to gain access to this world. The aim of this chapter is to make this other 'world' penetrable. The focus of this section is to present some of the frameworks within which quantitative and qualitative research is conducted in education and the social sciences. Quantitative research in education and social science is typically represented by

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.

International Journal of Educational Research & Social Sciences

Differences qualitative and quantitative research to academicians and researchers mainly concentrated on education studies is only able to browse and identify with the fundamental difference merely as example: research that only uses quantitative data but using the qualitative as a benchmark often not considered as a quantitative research Likewise , qualitative research that uses quantitative data is not considered qualitative research. If traced further, actually qualitative and quantitative research very spacious and is a level. Qualitative and quantitative research in the context of methodology includes a researcher's conception of social reality, the researcher's self placement in relation to the reality study and various other reviews. Therefore, in this research article,is stated that the correlation between qualitative and quantitative research in educational research methodology is possible if both are based on the same paradigm. Conversely qualitative and quantit...

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.