The Paradigm Wars: Is MMR Really a Solution?

Ryan Thomas Williams
Additional contact information
Ryan Thomas Williams: School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Law, Teesside University, Middlesbrough, Tees Valley, TS1 3BX, United Kingdom

American Journal of Trade and Policy, 2020, vol. 7, issue 3, 79-84

Abstract: Educational research has several competing views of the social sciences, often referred to as paradigms. Hammersley (2013, p. 13) portrays paradigms as ‘not simply methodologies; they are ways of looking at the world, different assumptions about what the world is like and how we can understand or know about it. The paradigm wars’ boils down to a simple conflict between academics and scholars of qualitative and quantitative research, which concerns the relative merits of the different perspectives. In the 1980s, the objectivity-seeking quantitative researcher diminished, whilst post-positivists, interpretivism, and critical theorists flourished throughout this same period. Mixed methods research (MMR) combines elements of both qualitative and quantitative approaches and has often been branded as a ‘transformative paradigm.’ The importance of MMR means that the author can combine knowledge sets and move away from one’s allegiance to a particular research perspective. This literature review will examine the paradigms commonly associated with education research. There is an active debate in the research community on the wars' paradigms, which will also be examined in relation to MMR.

Keywords: MMR; Paradigm wars; Educational research (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://abc.us.org/ojs/index.php/ajtp/article/view/507/993 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:ajotap:0031

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Trade and Policy is currently edited by Charles A. Rarick

More articles in American Journal of Trade and Policy from Asian Business Consortium Asian Business Consortium, 10-B-6, Darussalam Tower, Mirpur Road, Dhaka-1216, Bangladesh.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alim Al Ayub Ahmed ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).