The ideological war between different methodology paradigms has never lost its fever during the tea time in academia. The “beef” between a quantitative researcher and a qualitative one, sometimes, is far more interesting than what their research findings are. Individual researcher’s eagerness for superior research status exemplifies Nietzsche’s observation of human beings’ will to power. Hiding behind a lofty research flag, there might be a research politician.
Despite the apparent incongruity between different methodology parties, a common thread does connect these differences. Generally speaking, most educational researchers are interested in why individuals (e.g., psychology)/groups or systems (e.g., sociology) act the way they (have) act(ed) (e.g., history) and/or interested in how to maintain or change the action. This similar tendency reveals a potential and exciting collective effort to uncover the unknown by using a variety of tools. That is, different research methods serve different functions, and adding up these functions allows individuals to stand at a vantage point to see, to infer, and to reconsider.
This diversified view of research paradigms is to treat different methods as complementary rather than contrasting. To investigate the impact of a certain technology-enhanced instruction such as flipped classrooms, there is a primary need to describe the phenomena of interest in the classroom first. Then, the association between variables may be explored. For instance, is teachers’ certain kind of technology use correlated with students’ motivation and achievement? Last, there is a need to conduct a series of experimental studies to investigate the causal relationship between the association observed previously. However, experimental studies usually can only demonstrate an overarching pattern and trend. If we want to obtain more in-depth information about the occurrence of the causal relationship, one still needs to return to the descriptive investigation. This cycle of investigation is what Rosenshine and Furst (1973) called a descriptive-correlational-experimental loop.
This loop affirms the value of different kinds of research methods and points out the direction of finding things out through collective efforts. It is research purposes that determine the appropriateness of research methods.
I’ve caught on reading all of your journal entries. Your entries represent the eclectic background that you bring to educational technology. I appreciate your willingness to engage with diverse perspectives outside traditional ed scholars (e.g., Foucault) and try to bring them to bear on both the course concepts and your own practice. I strongly encourage you to keep this interdisciplinary perspective as your scholarship evolves.