Research Paradigms: Ontology's,

Epistemologies & Methods

Terry Anderson
PhD Seminar
Research Paradigms
 Paradigm
• “a philosophical and theoretical framework of
a scientific school or discipline within which
theories, laws, and generalizations and the
experiments performed in support of them
are formulated” Merriam Webster Dictionary,
2007)
• “the set of common beliefs and agreements
shared between scientists about how
problems should be understood and
addressed” (Kuhn, 1962)
• Ontology: ways of constructing reality,
“how things really are” and “how things
really work”.. Denzin and Lincoln, (1998; 201)
• Epistemology: different forms of
knowledge of that reality, what nature of
relationship exists between the inquirer
and the inquired? How do we know?
• Methodology: What tools do we use to
know that reality?
Research Paradigm
Research Paradigms
Positivism - Quantitative ~ discovery
of the laws that govern behavior

Constructivist - Qualitative ~
understandings from an insider perspective

Critical - Postmodern ~ Investigate and

expose the power relationships

Pragmatic - interventions, interactions

and their effect in multiple contexts
 Paradigm 1
Positivism - Quantitative Research

• Ontology: There is an objective reality and we

can understand it and it through the laws by
which it is governed.
• Epistemology: employs a scientific discourse
derived from the epistemologies of positivism
and realism.
• Method: Experimental, Deduction,
• “those who are seeking the strict
way of truth should not trouble
themselves about any object
concerning which they cannot have
a certainty equal to arithmetic or
geometrical demonstration”
– (Rene Descartes)
• Inordinate support and faith in
randomized controlled studies
 Typical Positivist research
Question:
• What?
• How much?
• Relationship between? Or Causes this effect?
• Best answered with numerical precision
• Often formulated as hypotheses
• Reliability: Same results different times,
different researchers
• Validity: results accurately measure and
reliably answer research questions.

• “Without reliability, there is no validity.”

• Can you think of a positivist measurement
that is reliable, but not valid?
 Examples Positivist 1 –
Community of Inquiry- Content Analysis
• Garrison, Anderson, Archer 1997-2003
– http://communitiesofinquiry.com - 9 papers reviewing results
focusing on reliable , quantitative analysis
– Identified ways to measure teaching, social and cognitive
‘presence’
– Most reliable methods are beyond current time constraints of
busy teachers
– Questions of validity
– Serves as basic research as grounding for AI methods and major
survey work.
– Serves as qualitative heuristic for teachers and course designers
 Quantitative – Meta-Analysis
• Aggregates many effect sizes creating large N’s &
more powerful results.
• Ungerleider and Burns (2003)
• Systematic review of effectiveness and efficiency of
Online education versus Face to face
• The type of interventions studied were extraordinary
diverse –only criteria was a comparison group
• “Only 10 of the 25 studies included in the in-depth
review were not seriously flawed, a sobering statistic
given the constraints that went into selecting them for
the review.”
Achievement in Online versus Classroom
 Is DE Better than Classroom Instruction?
Project 1: 2000 – 2004
• Question: How does distance education compare
to classroom instruction? (inclusive dates 1985-
2002)
• Total number of effect sizes: k = 232
• Measures: Achievement, Attitudes and Retention
(opposite of drop-out)
• Divided into Asynchronous and Synchronous DE
Bernard, R.M., Abrami, P. C., Lou, Y. Borokhovski, E., Wade, A., Wozney, L.,
Wallet, P.A., Fiset, M., & Huang, B. (2004). How does distance education
compare to classroom instruction? A meta-analysis of the empirical literature.
Review of Educational Research, 74(3), 379-439. 14
Equivalency: Are all types of Interaction
necessary?

Anderson,
2003
IRRODL
Anderson’s Equivalency Theorem (2003)
Moore (1989) distinctions are:
 Three types ofinteraction
o student-student interaction
o student-teacher interaction
o Student-content interaction
Anderson (2003) hypotheses state:
 High levels of one out of 3 interactions will produce
satisfying educational experience
 Increasing satisfaction through teacher and learner
interaction interaction may not be as time or cost-effective
as student-content interactive learning sequences

16
 Do the three types of interaction
differ? Moore’s distinctions
Achievement and Attitude Outcomes

Interaction Achievement Attitudes

Categories k g+adj. k g+adj.
Student-Student 10 0.342 6 0.358
Student-Teacher 44 0.254 30 0.052
Student-Content 20 0.339 8 0.136
Total 74 0.291 44 0.090
Between-class 2.437 6.892*

Moore’s distinctions seem to apply for achievement (equal importance), but not for
attitudes (however, samples are low for SS and SC)

17
 Does strengthening interaction improve achievement
and attitudes? Anderson’s hypotheses

Achievement and Attitude Outcomes

Interaction Achievemen Attitudes
t
Strength k g+adj. SE k g+adj. SE
Low Strength 30 0.163 0.043 21 0.071 0.042
Med Strength 29 0.418 0.044 18 0.170 0.043
High Strength 15 0.305 0.062 5 -0.173 0.091
Total 74 0.291 0.027 44 0.090 0.029
(Q) Between-class 17.582* 12.060*

Anderson’s first hypothesis about achievement appears to be supported

Anderson’s second hypothesis about satisfaction (attitude) appears to be

supported, but only to an extent (i.e., only 5 studies in High Category)

18
 Bernard, Abrami, Borokhovski, Wade, Tamin,
& Surkes, (2009). Examining Three Forms of
Interaction in Distance Education: A Meta-
Analysis of Between-DE Studies. Review of
Research in Education
 Quantitative Research Summary
• Can be useful especially when fine tuning well
established practice
• Provides incremental gains in knowledge, not
revolutionary ones
• The need to “control” context often makes results of
little value to practicing professionals
• In times of rapid change too early quantitative
testing may mask beneficial positive capacity
• Will we ever be able to afford blind reviewed,
random assignment studies?
 Paradigm 2
Interpretivist or Constructivist Paradigm
• Many different varieties
• Generally answer the question ‘why’ rather
then ‘what’, ‘when’ or ‘how much’?
• Presents special challenges in distributed
contexts due to distance between participants
and researchers
• Currently most common type of DE research
(Rourke & Szabo, 2002)
 Interpretivist Paradigm
• Ontology: World and knowledge created by
social and contextual understanding.
• Epistemology: How do we come to
understand a unique person’s worldview
• Methodology: Qualitative methods –
narrative, interviews, observations,
ethnography, case study, phenomenology etc.
Dora Maar by Picasso
Picasso: Mother with Dead Child II,
Postscript to Guernica
A phenomenological viewpoint diagram by Martin Parker
 Typical Interpretive Research
Question
• Why?
• How does subject understand ?
• What is the “lived experience”?
• What meaning does the artifact or
intervention have?
 Qualitative Example
–Dearnley (2003) Student support in
open learning: Sustaining the Process
–Practicing Nurses, weekly F2F tutorial
sessions
–Phenomenological study using
grounded theory discourse
Core category to emerge was “Finding the
professional voice”

Dearnley and Matthew (2003 and 2004)

 Qualitative example 2

• Mann, S. (2003) A personal inquiry into an experience of

adult learning on-line. Instructional Science 31
• Conclusions:
– The need to facilitate the presentation of learner and teacher
identities in such a way that takes account of the loss of the normal
channel
– The need to make explicit the development of operating norms and
conventions
– reduced communicative media there is the potential for greater
misunderstanding
– The need to consider ways in which the developing learning
community can be open to the other of uncertainty, ambiguity and
difference
 3rd Paradigm
Critical Research
• Asks who gains in power?
• David Noble’s critique of ‘digital diploma mills’
most prominent Canadian example
• Are profits generated from user generated
content exploitative?
• Confronting the “net changes everything”
mantra of many social software proponents.
• Who is being excluded from social software?
• Are MOOCs really free?
 Critical Research Paradigm
• Ontology: Reality exists and has been created
by directed social bias.
• Epistemology: Understand oppressed view by
uncovering the “contradictory conditions of
action which are hidden or distorted by
everyday understanding” (Comstock) and
work to help change social conditions
• Methodology: Critical analysis, historic
review, participate in programs of action
Typical Critical Paradigm Questions
• How can this injustice be rectified?
• Can the exploited be helped to understand
the oppression that undermines them?
• Who benefits from or exploits the current
situation?
See Norm Friesen’s

Friesen, N. (2009) Re-thinking e-learning

research: foundations, methods, and
practices. Peter Lang Publishers
 Sample Critical Questions
• Why does Facebook own all the content that
we supply?
• Does the power of the net further marginalize
the non-connected?
• Who benefits from voluntary disclosure?
• Why did the One Laptop Per Child fail?
• Does learning Analytics exploit student
vulnerabilities and right to privacy?
Do Positivist, Interpretive or Critical
Research Meet the Real Needs of
Practicing Educators?
But what type of research has most
effect on practice?
– Kennedy (1999) - teachers rate relevance and
value of results from each of major
paradigms.
– No consistent results – teachers are not a
homogeneous group of consumers but they
do find research of value
– “The studies that teachers found to be most
persuasive, most relevant, and most
influential to their thinking were all studies
that addressed the relationship between
teaching and learning.”
But what type of research has most
effect on Practice?

– “The findings from this study cast doubt on

virtually every argument for the superiority
of any particular research genre, whether the
criterion for superiority is persuasiveness,
relevance, or ability to influence practitioners’
thinking.” Kennedy, (1999)
 Paradigm #4
Pragmatism
• “To a pragmatist, the mandate of science is
not to find truth or reality, the existence of
which are perpetually in dispute, but to
facilitate human problem-solving” (Powell,
2001, p. 884).
 Pragmatic Paradigm

• Developed from frustration of the lack of

impact of educational research in educational
systems.
• Key features:
– An intervention
– Empirical research in a natural context
– Partnership between researchers and
practitioners
– Development of theory and ‘design principles”
 Pragmatic Paradigm

• Ontology: Reality is the practical effects of

ideas.
• Epistemology: Any way of thinking/doing that
leads to pragmatic solutions is useful.
• Methodology: Mixed Methods, design-based
research, action research
 Typical Pragmatic
Research Question
• What can be done to increase literacy of adult
learners?
• Can collaborative Learning online, increase
student satisfaction and completion rates?
• Do blog activities increase student satisfaction
and learning outcomes?
• How can we encourage teachers to use more
web 2.0 tools in their classroom
 Design Tradition
• “Learning and productivity are the
results of the designs (the
structures) of complex systems of
people, environments, technology,
beliefs and texts” New London
Group 2000
• Design Based Research opens the
door for teachers, researchers an d
learners to become designers, not
merely consumers, bosses or
 4th Pragmatic Paradigm
Design Based Research Method
• Related to engineering and architectural
research
• Focuses on the design, construction,
implementation and adoption of a learning
initiative in an authentic context
• Related to ‘Development Research’
• Closest educators have to a “home grown”
research methodology
 Design-Based Research Studies
– iterative,
– process focused,
– interventionist,
– collaborative,
– multileveled,
– utility oriented,
– theory driven and generative
• (Shavelson et al, 2003)
 Critical characteristics of
design experiments
• According to Reeves (2000:8), Ann Brown
(1992) and Alan Collins (1992):
– addressing complex problems in real contexts in
collaboration with practitioners,
– integrating known and hypothetical design
principles with technological affordances to
render plausible solutions to these complex
problems, and
– conducting rigorous and reflective inquiry to test
and refine innovative learning environments as
well as to define new design-principles.
Integrative Learning Design
(Bannan-Ritland, 2003)
• “design-based research enables the creation
and study of learning conditions that are
presumed productive but are not well
understood in practice, and the generation of
findings often overlooked or obscured when
focusing exclusively on the summative effects
of an intervention” Wang & Hannafin, 2003
• Iterative because
• ‘Innovation is not restricted to the prior
design of an artifact, but continues as artifacts
are implemented and used”
• Implementations are “inevitably unfinished”
(Stewart and Williams (2005)
• intertwined goals of (1) designing learning
environments and (2) developing theories of
learning (DBRC, 2003)
Amiel, T., & Reeves, T. C. (2008).
 Design Based research and the Science of
Complexity
• Complexity theory studies the emergence of
order in multifaceted, changing and previously
unordered contexts
• This emerging order becomes the focus of
iterate interventions and evaluations
• Order emerges at the “edge of chaos” in
response to rapid change, and failure of
previous organization models
 DBR Examples
Call Centres At Athabasca:
• •

Answer 80% of student inquiries

Savings of over $100,000 /year
Anderson, T. (2005). Design-based research and its application to a call center
innovation in distance education. Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology,
31(2), 69-84
• Need to study usability, scalability and
innovation adoption within bureaucratic
systems
• Allow knowledge tools to evolve in natural
context through supportive nourishment of
staff

Conducting Educational Design Research by

Susan McKenney and Thomas C Reeves
 Summary
Paradigm Ontology Epistemology Question Method

Positivism Hidden rules Focus on reliable What works? Quantitative

govern teaching and valid tools
and learning to undercover
process rules

Interpretive/con Reality is Discover the Why do you act Qualitative

structivist created by underlying this way?
individuals in meaning of
groups events and
activities
Critical Society is rife Helping uncover How can I Ideological
with inequalities injustice and change this review,
and injustice empowering situation? Civil actions
citizens

Pragmatic Truth is what is The best Will this Mixed Methods,

useful method is one intervention Design-Based
that solves improve
problems learning?
 Summary
• 4 educational research paradigms
• Choice for research based on
– Personal views
– Research questions
– Access, support and resources
– Supervisor(s) attitudes!
• There is no single, “best way” to do research
• Arguing paradigm perspectives is not
productive
Questions and Comments??