So, at the end of Week 3 of this final taught module, I have been reading and absorbing the tutorials and recommended reading throughout the week, and attempting to gather together some rational thoughts and reflections of my understandings so far…
On reading the Whitehead (2007) article, it seems that the key difference between education and educational research is that, for education research, the perspective is too constricted, too parochial, too short-term. The education researchers are the practitioners – they are the teachers, the tutors, the mentors. Therefore, their interpretation of the research paradigm is more pragmatic and based on what individuals can learn and implement immediately into their practice. Educational research, on the other hand, appears to be more the domain of the researchers, the theorisers, those who perceive the bigger picture of educational research and seek to develop theoretical foundations for the domain. The challenge, as expressed in this article, is that the vast majority of education-related research is driven by the practitioners, not the theorisers, therefore slowing and inhibiting the progression of the field as a theory-driven research domain. In order to reverse this trend, education-related research should be more ambitious and consider what the larger teaching community can learn from the findings of the study, not just those immediately related to the findings.
It seems from reading the Denzin and Lincoln (2011) chapter that the paradigm wars of the 1980s has created an atmosphere of “us and them” whereby perceptions of research paradigms have become much more dichotomous and critical. Rather than consider different methodological approaches in terms of their appropriateness and congruence with the research study, as discussed in Tutorial 1, it appears that more emphasis is being placed on subjective (and very often biased) views regarding their academic merits in general, as was the focus of Tutorial 6. The adoption of relativism, as discussed in Tutorial 5 and which lies in the middle of the research paradigm continuum by assuming that it is difficult to gain a clear understanding of the two extremes (posisitivism vs constructionism), appears to be less favoured nowadays as researchers feel compelled to subscribe strongly to one extreme or the other. Thus, Denzin and Lincoln speak of how Positivists “allege that the so-called new experimental qualitative researchers write fiction, not science” (p. 2). This raises the question of at what point does confidence in your own personal epistemological position begin to cloud your judgement and preclude you from considering the potential benefits and relevance of a range of approaches? The fact that both positivism and constructionism paradigms are essentially caricatures with no clearly defined definition, as Tutorial 2 pointed out, adds a further level of obscurity to the situation.
The first thing that struck me about the Darlaston-Jones (2007) paper was the honesty of the author in admitting that, despite her insistence that there should be a stronger correlation between the epistemological foundation of the research and the methods used, her own decisions were driven at least partially by the fact that she ‘personally subscribes’ to the constructionist worldview. To what extent should we permit our own personal preferences to dictate our choice of paradigm or indeed research methods? As scholars, it is our duty to provide a solid and intellectual rationale for these important decisions. I recently marked down a Masters dissertation where the student had adopted to conduct one focus group of her fellow students – not because it was the most appropriate method of data collection but merely the easiest. The Tutorial 1 video advises that the philosophy of research should perhaps be objectively perceived as a guidepost, from which we will be informed about the most workable methods and the clarity of the associated research design. Darlaston-Jones argues that understanding the relationship between your personal view of reality is vital in terms of then articulating the following logical steps in relation to the chosen epistemology and research methods. I agree with this view, although I believe that your ontological viewpoint should perhaps not be too firmly established as to create any kind of bias towards one particular paradigm. I believe that in order to base your rationale on the realities of the proposed research study in addition to philosophical logic, the practicalities of what you intend to research should very much inform this personal ontological view.
References
Darlaston-Jones, D. (2007) The Australian Community Psychologist, 19(1), p19-27
Denzin, Norman K. & Lincoln, Yvonna S., (2011) “Chapter 1 : Introduction, the discipline and practice of qualitative research” from N/A, The Sage handbook of qualitative research pp.1-19, Thousand Oaks:
Whitehead, J. (2007), Article 3, Research Intelligence, British Educational Research Association, Vol 100, p17.
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