stances are interrogated together.
Still other researchers favor a pragmatic stance toward mixing methods, in which the focus is placed not on broad epistemic or ontological claims, but on how particular methods will help researchers to inquire more successfully into particular settings or research questions. This position is derived from the work of American theorists such as Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, who sought to develop a philosophy of how actions, ideas, and methods reflect human experience and advance democratic ideals.
Taking up this position, Morgan (2007) questioned the usefulness of paradigmatic assumptions: “Although paradigms as epistemological stances do draw attention to the deeper assumptions that researchers make, they tell us little about more substantive decisions such as what to study and how to do so” (p. 52). In other words, thinking about such questions as the nature of truth and knowledge may pull researchers away from more immediate questions, such as their reflections on the design of their inquiry.
Additionally, Johnson and Onwuegbuzie (2004) explicitly championed pragmatism as a paradigm for mixed methods. They did so to help scholars find a middle position between a “purist” stance (where mixing methods or paradigms is not defensible) and an “a-paradigmatic” stance (where methods are chosen without regard to broader philosophical concerns). Instead, pragmatism helps research designers to choose philosophical stances, methods, and procedures that speak most directly to their research questions. As Greene (2007) explained, “To approach mixed methods inquiry pragmatically does not mean to ignore or set to one side philosophical assumptions and stances when making practical methods decisions. For that is the a-paradigmatic stance. Rather, a pragmatic paradigm signals attention to transactions and interactions; to the consequential, contextual, and dynamic nature of character of knowledge; to knowledge as action; to the intertwinement of values with inquiry, and so forth” (p. 85).
We call attention to the pragmatic research paradigm to emphasize the connection between research methods and context. In other words, researchers may need to select multiple methods to gain a rich understanding of learning at a particular time and place, particularly in online spaces where learning often happens across many times and places. Although we emphasize this approach, we do not intend to privilege it; rather, we believe that there are multiple valid perspectives in and across research of learning in online spaces, and that it is important for researchers not to feel confined or constrained by one paradigm.
Pragmatic Research and Remix: Considering Multimethod Approaches
Given that pragmatic research connects research design and contexts, researchers have opportunities to take creative and agentive approaches to data collection and analysis. In this section, we introduce the concept of remix as it has been understood in literacy research. Then, we apply the remix framework pragmatically to mixed approaches to suggest that researchers can find the most appropriate and effective methods for their study when they can customize their approach.
Drawing on Creswell’s (2015) concept of multimethod research, this section introduces how researchers might draw on multiple forms of qualitative data from networked field sites. Creswell (2015) indicated that researchers should not conflate mixed methods research with multimethod research. As he explained in A Concise Introduction to Mixed Methods Research, “When multiple forms of qualitative data are collected, the term is multimethod research, not mixed methods research” (p. 3, emphasis in original). Using multiple aspects of various traditions and data sources can lead to methodologically rich inquiries of online learning.
Remix
The concept of remix existed long before the age of the Internet and new media. One can look back to the Star Trek fandom magazines for a brief glimpse into the spaces of remix in popular culture. Star Trek fanzines were magazines written by “Trekkie” fans and based on different episodes, characters, and ideas posed in the various televised episodes. Popular culture and media scholar Henry Jenkins (1992) examined the concept behind Star Trek fandom magazines through Michel de Certeau’s (1984) concept of textual poaching. He found that reclaiming textual materials reflected fans’ beliefs and thoughts versus authorial imposed concepts, thereby providing fans a sense of ownership. As Jenkins claimed, traditional academic writers have been quick to place fans in a marginalized community, disparaging multiple fandoms as infantile, rudimentary, and unsophisticated in their approaches to experiencing texts. However, Jenkins suggested that this type of fan-based textual poaching not only allows for new engagement in and creative remixing of media texts, but also provides a moral economy (a set of rights and ownership) to fans who might otherwise be further marginalized.
More recently, new literacies scholars Michele Knobel and Colin Lankshear (2008) explained that remix has deep roots within the music industry, noting how audio-editing techniques have allowed artists to take apart and reorganize original songs and transform them into other musical creations. Building on this discussion of restructured song creation, Knobel and Lankshear argued that there are many avenues for individuals to engage in remix, particularly in the age of online media creation. Some contemporary examples of remix include:
Fanfiction—narrative or poetic text that enthusiasts create, using and extending characters, ideas, and information from a particular book, movie, videogame, or other fandom.
Machinima—derived from the portmanteau of machine and cinema, it is the creation of films through manipulation of videogame graphics.
Mash-Ups—remixed musical tracks created by blending two or more songs together to create a hybrid song. Mash-ups often combine instrumental music with the vocals from another song.
Memes—first introduced by Dawkins (1976), who used the term to address genes and DNA mutations. The meaning of this word now also characterizes cultural transmissions, often graphics or short animations with textual captions that pass from one person to the next, with slight variations between each passing.
What is central to each of the explanations of remix is the concept of creators’ agency, especially as it involves one building on and reworking established texts and concepts. With remix, customization is both acceptable and encouraged. When applied to discussions of research methods, remix offers flexibility, but it also requires the researcher to constantly negotiate and rationalize methodological and paradigmatic choices. Currently, mixed methodology supports the combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods, and we call attention to remix to highlight researchers’ agentive and creative possibilities when designing and conducting a multimethod qualitative investigation. More specifically, we suggest that a remix-inspired multimethod approach can be used to examine meaning making across online and offline spaces.
As introduced earlier, connective ethnography is an example of researchers taking creative and agentive stances as they investigate learning in online spaces. Leander (2008) acknowledged that “connective ethnography is informed by developments in several other fields, where notions of the research ‘site’ are being disrupted and relations are being traced among sociocultural practices and agents” (p. 37). Deborah A. Fields and Yasmin Kafai (2009) conducted a connective ethnography to examine how inhabitants of the virtual world Whyville moved and participated across the site. Not only did the researchers use a combination of data collection methods—from video to back-end data tracking to field notes and interview—but also they relied on the “insider gaming practice” of teleporting to investigate knowledge sharing and movement within the site (p. 48).
In this way, Fields and Kafai (2009) investigated networked field sites, as the site of the study was neither relegated to a singular space nor temporally limited. We argue that such thoughtful and productive remixing of methods is similar to what Greene (2007) and other mixed methods researchers might call a “dialectical”
