Discovery research

Research in one of the major traditions, or paradigms, of research is often referred to as discovery.

“Confirmatory research sets out to test a specific hypothesis to the exclusion of other considerations; whereas discovery research seeks to find out what might be important in understanding a research context, presenting findings as conjectural (e.g., ‘suggestive’, ‘indicative’) rather than definite” (Taber, 2013: 45)

Biddle and Anderson (1986) contrast their ‘confirmatory position’ with what they label the ‘discovery perspective’. This term is used for approaches that, “have in common the belief that social concepts and explanations are socially constructed by both citizens and social scientists. Social knowledge and its use are both assumed to be based on values …and social facts are uninterpretable outside of a theoretical, hence historical, context” (Biddle and Anderson, 1986: 237.)

Biddle, B. J., & Anderson, D. S. (1986). Theory, methods, knowledge and research on teaching. In M. C. Wittrock (Ed.), Handbook of Research on Teaching (3rd ed., pp. 230-252). New York: Macmillan.

“That much of educational research concerns the former, more exploratory, types of study may be partly related to the relative immaturity of educational research compared with the established natural sciences. However there are also inherent features of education that channel much research towards the discovery pole. One of these features…concerns the inherent complexity of educational phenomena, which are often embedded in situations from which they can not be readily be disembodied whilst retaining their integrity.”

Taber, K. S. (2014). Methodological issues in science education research: a perspective from the philosophy of science. In M. R. Matthews (Ed.), International Handbook of Research in History, Philosophy and Science Teaching (Vol. 3, pp. 1839-1893): Springer Netherlands.

Taber, K. S. (2013). Classroom-based Research and Evidence-based Practice: An introduction (2nd ed.). London: Sage.

Index of topics