The main focus of this text is to examine, from a variety of philosophical and theoretical perspectives, the process of systematic inquiry that constitutes research and evaluation in education and psychology. The typical process for planning and conducting a research or evaluation study is displayed in Box 1.2. This process is rarely as linear as this figure suggests; it can be very iterative in nature. Although these steps are used to organize the information in this text, in actual practice, the researcher may take one step forward, three steps back, and then jump to Step 4, only to find it necessary to revisit Step 2.
In fact, the nonlinearity of planning and conducting research suggests that readers may choose to use this book in a nonlinear fashion. The first three chapters do provide an overview of the nature of research and evaluation and how to begin identifying a research topic. It would seem prudent, therefore, to begin with those chapters (although readers may choose to skip the chapter on evaluation if that is not included in their course syllabus). If readers have a goal of designing a research proposal, they might start in the appendix to read about how to develop a research proposal and use that as a guide to deciding how to navigate through the rest of the text.
After that, readers might choose to read any of the subsequent chapters on specific research approaches (e.g., experimental design) and then complete their understanding of the process for that approach by reading the last three chapters on sampling, data collection and analysis, and reporting. Readers could then return to earlier chapters to learn about other approaches to research and build on what they learned in the first go-round with the text. Alternatively, readers who have a strong feeling that a specific research strategy is of interest to them could start with the chapter on that approach (e.g., survey research) and then jump to the last three chapters of the book.
Some research methods textbooks address quantitative research methods (research that measures variables in a quantifiable way) or qualitative research methods (research that captures holistic pictures using words). (These definitions are overly simplistic; they are expanded in later chapters.) An increasing number of books and journals have begun to focus on mixed methods research. In this book, I make the assumption that readers need to understand both quantitative and qualitative approaches to research before they move to mixed methods. Several of the sample studies used throughout the text use mixed methods and there is a separate chapter focused specifically on this approach.
Box 1.2Steps in the Research/Evaluation Process
Step 1: Identify your own worldview and situate your work as research or evaluation (Chapters 1 and 2)
Step 2: Establish the focus of the research (Chapters 1–3)
Step 3: Literature review; research questions (Chapter 3)
Step 4: Identify design—quantitative, qualitative, or mixed (Chapters 4–10)
Step 5: Identify and select sources of data (sampling) (Chapter 11)
Step 6: Identify and select data collection methods and instruments (Chapter 12)
Step 7: Data analysis, reporting, and utilization (Chapter 13)
Step 8: Identify future directions (Chapter 13)
This text sets the research methods within four major paradigms (ways of viewing the world), along with their respective philosophical assumptions. Two of these paradigms—postpositivist and constructivist—are commonly included in research methods texts. The transformative paradigm is frequently recognized in research methods texts (e.g., Creswell, 2009; Greene, 2007; Mertens, 2009). The pragmatic paradigm has emerged as one of the underlying philosophical frameworks for some advocates of mixed methods research (Morgan, 2007; Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009). These four paradigms are explained in the next section on the history of research.
Why get tangled up in philosophy, theories, and politics? Why not just explain the methods? Because doing so is very important. It is true that there are a variety of viewpoints about the importance of linking methodological choices to philosophical paradigms, and leaders in the field do not agree about the need to acknowledge an underlying paradigm, nor do they agree on the role that such paradigms serve in the research process. The contrasting viewpoints with regard to the place of paradigms in the research design community range from Michael Patton’s (2008) position that they are unnecessary and possibly handicapping to Thomas Schwandt’s (2000) position that they are inescapable. See their comments below:
My practical (and controversial) view is that one can learn to be a good interviewer or observer, and learn to make sense of the resulting data, without first engaging in deep epistemological reflection and philosophical study. Such reflection and study can be so inclined, but it is not a prerequisite for fieldwork. Indeed, it can be a hindrance. (Patton, 2008, p. 72)
The practice of social inquiry cannot be adequately defined as an atheoretical making that requires only methodological prowess…. As one engages in the “practical” activities of generating and interpreting data to answer questions about the meaning of what others are doing and saying and then transforming that understanding into public knowledge, one inevitably takes up “theoretical” concerns about what constitutes knowledge and how it is to be justified, about the nature and aim of social theorizing, and so forth. In sum, acting and thinking, practice and theory, are linked in a continuous process of critical reflection and transformation. (Schwandt, 2000, pp. 190–191)
Ladson-Billings (Ladson-Billings & Donnor, 2005) takes an even stronger stance than Schwandt in asserting that the choice of a paradigm (and its associated epistemology or systems of knowing) represents a choice between hegemony and liberation. She recommends that the academy go beyond transformation to reconstruction, meaning that teaching, service, research, and scholarship would be equally valued and used in the service of furthering intellectual enrichment, social justice, social betterment, and equity.