Paradigm ‘wars’

There has been much discussion of ‘paradigm wars’ or ‘science wars’ suggesting that researchers in different paradigm ‘camps’ can be considered to be competing with each other, with one side being in the right. Whilst some individuals might take such a view, a principled view of research in education recognises that as it concerns a range of different foci  and represents various stages in developing knowledge of different topics, there is no reason why we should not expect a diversity of kinds of high quality research in  education.

Kuhn talked about paradigms developing in mature fields in the natural sciences. The notion was taken up in the social sciences – but often led to the assumption that social research always took one form. (One response in the educational field is the advent of ‘mixed methods’ – but this is not always well conceptualised.) In educational research we deal with a wide range of very different foci for research – some of which are much better understood than others; some of which are purely human constructions, others more natural phenomena – we should develop an understanding of what is already known/believed/understood  about our research foci, to inform our approach to research.

References:

Kuhn, T. S. (1974/1977). Second thoughts on paradigms. In T. S. Kuhn (Ed.), The Essential Tension: Selected studies in scientific tradition and change (pp. 293-319). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Kuhn, T. S. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (3rd ed.). Chicago: University of Chicago.

Taber, K. S. (2012). Prioritising paradigms, mixing methods, and characterising the 'qualitative' in educational research. Teacher Development, 16(1), 125-138. doi: 10.1080/13664530.2012.674294

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

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