Educational Research Methods
A site to support teaching and learning...
Research programmes
“A research programme involves an ongoing series of studies building upon one another....
This is a personal site of Keith S. Taber to support teaching of educational research methods.
(Dr Keith Taber is Professor of Science Education at the University of Cambridge.)
Taber, K. S. (2013). Classroom-based Research and Evidence-based Practice: An introduction (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
...The research programme is defined through a ‘hard core’ of commitments that researchers in that particular tradition share, and an agreed plan for developing understanding in the topic through particular lines of research. The philosopher Lakatos* (1970) suggested that theory developed in the programme acted as a ‘protective belt’, as it was always understood in ways that were consistent with the hard core assumptions, and could be sacrificed (replaced, modified) to protect those assumptions if the interpretation of new evidence required it. However, the programme was only worth supporting as long as such changes in the theory in the protective belt were seen as progressive (for example, offering better explanatory and predictive power – rather than just constantly patching up the theory in an ‘ad hoc’ fashion to fit data already collected).” (Taber, 2013: 115-116)
Imre Lakatos (1922 – 1974) was a Professor at the London School Of Economics. He proposed the ‘methodology of scientific research programmes’ (Lakatos, 1970) - which can be seen as part of the Popper-Kuhn debate about the objectively of ‘scientific’ knowledge.
Lakatos, I. (1970). Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programmes. In I. Lakatos & A. Musgrove (Eds.), Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge (pp. 91-196). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
