This document discusses four main research paradigms: positivism, interpretivism/constructivism, critical, and pragmatic. It provides an overview of the key aspects of each paradigm, including their ontology (nature of reality), epistemology (nature of knowledge), typical research questions, and common methodologies. The document uses examples from educational technology research to illustrate different studies that fall within each paradigm. Overall, it analyzes the tradeoffs of different paradigms and argues that the choice depends on personal views, the research question, available resources, and supervisory support, with no single best approach.

1. Research Paradigms: Ontology's,
Epistemologies & Methods
Terry Anderson
PhD Seminar

2. Research Paradigms

3. 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)

4. • 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?

5. Ontology
Epistemology
Methodology
Research Paradigm

6. 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

7. 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,

8. • “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

9. Typical Positivist research
Question:
• What?
• How much?
• Relationship between? Or Causes this effect?
• Best answered with numerical precision
• Often formulated as hypotheses

10. • 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?

11. 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

12. 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.”

13. Achievement in Online versus Classroom

14. 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
14
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.

15. Equivalency: Are all types of Interaction
necessary?
Anderson,
2003
IRRODL

16. Anderson’s Equivalency Theorem (2003)
Moore (1989) distinctions are:
 Three types of interaction
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

17. Do the three types of interaction
differ? Moore’s distinctions
17
Achievement and Attitude Outcomes
Achievement Attitudes
Interaction
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)

18. Does strengthening interaction improve achievement
and attitudes? Anderson’s hypotheses
18
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)
Achievement and Attitude Outcomes
Achievement Attitudes
Interaction
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*

19. 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

20. 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?

21. 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)

22. 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.

23. Dora Maar by Picasso

24. Picasso: Mother with Dead Child II,
Postscript to Guernica

25. A phenomenological viewpoint diagram by Martin Parker

26. Typical Interpretive Research
Question
• Why?
• How does subject understand ?
• What is the “lived experience”?
• What meaning does the artifact or
intervention have?

27. Qualitative Example
–Dearnley (2003) Student support in
open learning: Sustaining the Process
–Practicing Nurses, weekly F2F tutorial
sessions
–Phenomenological study using
grounded theory discourse

28. Core category to emerge was “Finding the
professional voice”
Dearnley and Matthew (2003 and 2004)

29. 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

30. 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?

31. 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

32. 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?

33. See Norm Friesen’s
Friesen, N. (2009) Re-thinking e-learning
research: foundations, methods, and
practices. Peter Lang Publishers

34. 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?

35. Do Positivist, Interpretive or Critical
Research Meet the Real Needs of
Practicing Educators?

36. 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.”

37. 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)

38. 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).

39. 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”

40. 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

41. 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

42. 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 and
learners to become designers, not
merely consumers, bosses or

43. 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

44. Design-Based Research Studies
–iterative,
–process focused,
–interventionist,
–collaborative,
–multileveled,
–utility oriented,
–theory driven and generative
• (Shavelson et al, 2003)

45. 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.

46. Integrative Learning Design
(Bannan-Ritland, 2003)

47. • “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

48. • 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)

49. Amiel, T., & Reeves, T. C. (2008).

50. 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

51. 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

53. • 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

54. Paradigm Ontology Epistemology Question Method
Positivism Hidden rules
govern teaching
and learning
process
Focus on reliable
and valid tools
to undercover
rules
What works? Quantitative
Interpretive/con
structivist
Reality is
created by
individuals in
groups
Discover the
underlying
meaning of
events and
activities
Why do you act
this way?
Qualitative
Critical Society is rife
with inequalities
and injustice
Helping uncover
injustice and
empowering
citizens
How can I
change this
situation?
Ideological
review,
Civil actions
Pragmatic Truth is what is
useful
The best
method is one
that solves
problems
Will this
intervention
improve
learning?
Mixed Methods,
Design-Based
Summary

55. 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

56. Questions and Comments??