Interpretive Paradigm, Ethnomethodology and Education Research

Education and debate Effect of interpretive bias on research evidence

Facts do not accumulate on the blank slates of researchers’ minds and data simply do not speak for themselves. Good science inevitably embodies a tension between the empiricism of concrete data and the rationalism of deeply held convictions. Unbiased interpretation of data is as important as performing rigorous experiments. This evaluative process is never totally objective or completely indepe...

Towards Paradigm Peace in Physics Education Research

(2) Thus from the jungle wars of the 1980's, educational researchers, including those concerned with teaching, emerged into a sunlit plain a happy and productive arena in which the strengths of all three paradigms (objective-quantitative, interpretive-qualitative, and critical-theoretical) were abundantly realized, with a corresponding decrease in the harmful effects of their respective inadequ...

Doing interpretive research

Received: 29 November 2004 Revised: 26 July 2005 Accepted: 4 November 2005 Abstract Interpretive research in information systems (IS) is now a well-established part of the field. However, there is a need for more material on how to carry out such work from inception to publication. I published a paper a decade ago (Walsham, 1995) which addressed the nature of interpretive IS case studies and me...

Subverting the Comparative Research Paradigm: The Potential for Ethnomethodology in Evaluating the Effects of Algorithm Visualization on Learning

Illustration of Paradigm Pluralism in Computing Education Research

This paper argues for paradigm pluralism in computing education research. The value of mixing paradigms, and the choice of methodological eclecticism and mixed methods is explored using pragmatic knowledge claims. A research study, which focused on the design of an introductory object-oriented programming (OOP) course for undergraduate students, is introduced as an illustration of paradigm plur...