Return-Path: <nifl-aalpd@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id h47GQfv14757; Wed, 7 May 2003 12:26:41 -0400 (EDT) Date: Wed, 7 May 2003 12:26:41 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <20030506.210951.6382.0.sophocles5@juno.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-aalpd@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-aalpd@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-aalpd@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "George E. Demetrion" <sophocles5@juno.com> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-aalpd@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-AALPD:351] Additional Reflection on Donna Mertens X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Juno 1.49 Status: O Content-Length: 5743 Lines: 93 To add a little more to the discussion of research traditions and to Donna C. Mertens' text, "Research Methods in Education and Psychology: Integrating Diversity With Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches, I submit the following draft excerpt from my book chapter for considearion. George Demetrion sophocles5@juno.com ____________________________________________________________ Overview of Mertens' Three Research Traditions In Research Methods in Education and Psychology Mertens (1997) systematically reviews theoretical frameworks or "paradigms" that shape social science research as applied to the specific areas indicated in her title. She does not infer that there is no convergence among the paradigms that she discusses, but seeks to make the case that they represent substantially different modes of research that have significant consequences in terms of questions asked, topics explored, and conclusions drawn. Mertens identifies three broad categories, the positivistic/postpositivistic, interpretive/constructvist, and emancipatory paradigms through the realms of ontology (perceptions of the nature of reality), epistemology (the nature of knowledge and the relationship between the knower and the known), and methodology. Through this grid, she examines an extensive range of topics describing specific aspects of each research tradition. She carefully compares and contrasts how the different paradigms treat such issues as validity and reliability, evaluation, data collection and analysis, and human consciousness and social context. Mertens works through her model both in broad philosophical terms and in highly intricate methodological detail to weave her comparison throughout the text, highlighting what she perceives as the strengths and limitations of each paradigm. She supports her discussion by an impressive body of cited research that she skillfully weaves throughout her narrative. Mertens acknowledges that there is a certain selectivity in her choice of research traditions, which follows along similar lines as discussed by Carr and Kemmis (1986). Cherryholmes (1988) has a similar, though slightly different categorization. Mertens' work also shares an affinity with Polkinghorne's (1983) Methodology for the Human Sciences, which examines various research traditions, including classical positivism, pragmatism, human action, and existentialist, phenomenological, and hermeneutical approaches. In terms of social science research in general, Polkinghorne speaks of '[a]n unresolved tension between the requirements of producing indubitable truths [a goal particularly in certain research traditions] and the requirements of addressing the most significant questions about the human realm" (p. 2), which invariably intrudes into the contestable arena of values. This is a position that Mertens acknowledges by the nature of her paradigmatic typology. The thesis of all of these studies is that the topic of human and social science research cannot be separated from the development of 20th century western intellectual history and social philosophy. Mertens deals with her schematic, in part, by illustrating how her broad categories can be drawn upon to include related disciplines, intellectual movements, and methodologies. Under positivism/postpositivism she lists experimental, quasi-experimental, correlational, causal comparative, and quantitative research. In broad terms, this paradigm draws its working model from the hard sciences Within the constructivist/interpretive paradigm, which seeks to illuminate internal representations of human consciousness and social interactionism within local contexts, she places naturalistic, phenomenological, hermeneutic, symbolic interaction, ethnographic, and qualitative research. Within the emancipatory paradigm she lists critical theory, and research based on neo-marxist, feminist, race specific, Freirian, participatory, and transformative perspectives (p. 7). The focus here is on the role of power in its influence of the construction of knowledge. Mertens makes affinities rather than tight correlations between her categories in juxtaposition to others in support of her overall objective in pointing to the existence of different paradigms of research, which have substantial implications for what gets focused on in academic studies in the areas of education and psychology. Mertens notes, but does not discuss a fourth paradigm, that of postmodernism, which this chapter addresses. Mertens' central argument is that "[r]esearchers make methodological choices based on their assumptions about reality and the nature of knowledge that are either implicitly present or explicitly acknowledged" (p. xiv). Rather than existing above history in some value-free arena, Mertens argues that ontology, epistemology, and methodology are inherently interpretive-dependent, reflective of particular worldviews, which invariably impact on both the focus and means of conducting research. Her goals are summative and broadly eclectic. She seeks to clarify, but not to trump any particular paradigm with another in an analysis of research which she defines as "a process of systematic inquiry that is designed to collect, analyze, interpret, and use data to understand, describe, predict, or control an educational or psychological phenomenon or to empower people in such contexts" (original italics) (p. 2). By implication, her operative stance assumes that perception, mediated by thought, emotion, culture, and social interaction powerfully influences, if it does not actually shape cognition, and that social science research can only be understood within the broader context of intellectual history and social philosophy.
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