Eduspaces, where I previously hosted my Ed.D. blog, has given notice that it is shutting down. I have therefore moved my Ed.D. blog here, to edublogs.org. đ
It was a fairly easy process:
- Download RSS feed from Eduspaces.
- Sign up for edublogs.org blog.
- Go to Options/Import in new blog.
- Browse and upload RSS feed from Eduspaces.
- Categories were all wrong, so had to delete them all manually (a bit of a pain)
- Configuration of new blog.
Hopefully this will give me a bit more flexibility and make it easier for people to find my reflections. The only really annoying thing is that the imported posts have ‘James’ as the author instead of me… đ
Inspired by Bredo’s diagrams in ‘Philosophies of Educational Research’ (within Handbook of Complementary Methods in Education Research – see previous post for reference), I’ve produced the following diagram. Hopefully it will help clarify my thinking when it comes to writing the methodology section of my thesis proposal:
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There are two main philosophical traditions when it comes to research methodologies: positivism and constructivism. Positivism holds that the world is ‘out there’ waiting for us to discover it, whilst Constructivism holds that ‘facts’ are socially and psychologically constructed labels and descriptions we place upon the world as we experience it. All research methods – apart from perhaps Pragmatism – fall into one of these two camps.
The Wikipedia article on Methodology sums things up quite nicely:
Methodology refers to more than a simple set of methods; rather it refers to the rationale and the philosophical assumptions that underlie a particular study. This is why scholarly literature often includes a section on the methodology of the researchers. This section does more than outline the researchersâ methods (as in, âWe conducted a survey of 50 people over a two-week period and subjected the results to statistical analysisâ, etc.); it might explain what the researchersâ ontological or epistemological views are.
The following OpenCourseWare resources (found via the very useful oercommons.org website) should help me – especially these in particular:
Some books I shall be looking for to help me with my thesis proposal:?
- Allison, B., et al. (1996) Research Skills for Students (001.44 RES – Education Library)
- Cohen, L., et al. (2000) Research Methods in Education (370.72 COH – Education Library)
- Creswell, J. (2007) Qualitative Inquiry and research design: choosing among five traditions (300.723 CRE – Education Library)
- Patton, M.Q. (2002) Qualitative Research & Evaluation Methods (300.723 PAT – Man Library)
- Phillips, E. (2005) How to get a PhD: a guide for students and their supervisors (378.240941 PHI – Education Library)
- Wisker, G. (2001) The Postgraduate Research Handbook: succeed with your MA, MPhil, EdD and PhD (001.42 WIS – Main Library)
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