Educational Research Approaches: A Comparison

Abstract

Choosing a research approach is not an easy task, given the number and variety of viable alternatives in different educational research contexts. Educational research approaches hold different perspectives on reality and research. Foregoing these differences at a technical level, this article focuses on the fundamental questions that each research approach should address: Why do researchers conduct educational research? What is its aim? What is the object of study? What type(s) of entities exist? What is knowledge? Whose knowledge counts? How can knowledge be achieved? To such fundamental questions, different educational research approaches provide different answers. This article addresses these questions, with the aim to support educational researchers in selecting a research approach(es). The initial section discusses the Philosophical Backgrounds of Educational Research Approaches. Next, research approaches are presented and compared, divided into the following three broad groups based on the overall research aim: Discovering Causal Effects and Mechanisms, Transformative Approaches, and Investigating Realities. Within each group, various approaches are described. The last three sections discuss how research approaches can be compared and combined. Comparing Research Approaches: Handbooks on Education and Social Science Research discusses comparisons of approaches to education and social science research found in the methodological literature. In Comparing Research Approaches: Comparing Approaches in Action, to further underscore these differences, publications are presented in which various approaches have been used to examine the same real-life phenomenon. The final section presents the various ways in which researchers have been Combining Research Approaches.