encourages participants to be part of the research, from its conceptualization to the dissemination of findings. Some researchers have suggested that participatory approaches are crucial for overturning power dynamics inherent in traditional research approaches (Bergold & Thomas, 2012; Morrell, 2006; Onwuegbuzie & Frels, 2013).
Researchers using participatory approaches often strive to empower underrepresented, underserved, marginalized, or oppressed individuals and groups. For instance, when Michelle Fine and colleagues (2005) engaged in an “ethnographic analysis of the political economy of schooling as lived by youth in and around the New York City metropolitan area” (p. 500), they purposely included youth researchers who “played a vital role in determining the research design, questions, methods, interpretations and products” of the study (p. 501). In so doing, they found that the youth-as-researchers developed critical stances related to racism and social justice. Fine and colleagues featured some of the youth researchers’ reflections and discoveries, such as, “I used to see flat. No more... now I know things are much deeper than they appear. And it’s my job to find out what’s behind the so-called facts. I can’t see flat anymore” (p. 523). This suggests that participatory research could inspire a critical awakening among youth-as-researchers.
Critical dialectical pluralism (CDP) is a research philosophy that embraces the ethos of participatory research. In particular, critical dialectical pluralism creates pathways for participants to be maximally involved as researchers throughout the process, especially with respect to the dissemination and utilization of the findings (Onwuegbuzie & Frels, 2013). Adopting a CDP stance, Gerber, Abrams, Onwuegbuzie, and Benge (2014) worked collaboratively with adolescent participants to understand their engagement with multiple online and offline gaming resources as used in a public school remedial reading class. Given that the research took place during the school day, the participatory approach underscored the disruption of power dynamics between the teacher and the student, as well as between the researcher and the participant. The CDP stance allowed the research team to collaboratively trace learning across these resources and spaces, while honoring the perspectives and voices of participants through the entire research process—from conceptualization through research dissemination.
Participatory approaches may suggest that power structures and hierarchies can be eliminated, but such a stance seems idyllic and inaccurate because the reality is that youth-driven research participation remains under adult auspices. Barry Checkoway and Lorraine Gutiérrez (2006) underscore this point in their introduction to their edited volume on youth participation. Not only did they acknowledge the benefits of participatory research, but also they addressed the possible limitations: “Although participation initiatives might be youth-led, adult-led, or intergenerational in their origins, we recognize that none of the ones described here is truly youth-led. However, we reiterate that the quality of participation is not contingent on this approach” (p. 6). These concerns should not undermine participatory research; rather, they remind researchers to be cognizant of inherent power structures, thoughtful of their own presuppositions, and careful in their approach to include participant voices and decisions.
Research Paradigms and Philosophical Stances in a Study’s Design
Creswell (2012) relied on the metaphor of a loom to address the traits of qualitative research. Creswell stated that qualitative research is like
an intricate fabric composed of minute threads, many colors, different textures, and various blends of material. This fabric is not explained easily or simply. Like the loom on which fabric is woven, general assumptions and interpretive frameworks hold qualitative research together. To describe these frameworks, qualitative researchers use terms—constructivist, interpretivist, feminist, postmodernist, and so forth. Within these assumptions and through these frameworks are approaches to qualitative inquiry, such as narrative research, phenomenology, grounded theory, ethnography, and case studies. (p. 42)
Creswell (2012) pointed out that philosophical assumptions, mental models, interpretive frameworks, and approaches to methods are woven tightly together. In other words, researchers’ own understandings, beliefs, and biases are difficult to separate from the tools that they use and craft in order to engage in inquiry, even when the intention is to be as objective as possible.
Methodological approaches to conducting a study should not be chosen arbitrarily. The design of the research questions are determined by the defined research purpose, the research questions, and the worldview, or paradigm, that a researcher brings to a study. A study’s design, and its corresponding research questions, will be strengthened by researchers’ regular reflections on their own assumptions and mental models.
Various researchers (Creswell, 2013; Guba & Lincoln, 1994; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998) have identified major research paradigms that shape a study’s design, including positivism, postpositivism, critical theories, constructivism, and pragmatism. While other paradigms and philosophical stances exist, these broad categories shown in Table 1.1 highlight major defining ideas that frame researchers’ inquiry. In short, using the concept of a “paradigm” to refer to a set of shared beliefs among researchers can be traced to Thomas Kuhn’s (1962) text, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Morgan (2007) has noted that this term has been taken up by social sciences researchers in several ways that are not always easy to distinguish from each other: “Paradigm” can define something as broad as a researcher’s worldview— an epistemic stance that reflects beliefs about knowledge, beliefs that are shared across members of a field—or something as narrow as a model for research. Morgan explained that “these four versions of the paradigm concept are not mutually exclusive. Nor is one of them right and the others wrong. Instead the question is which version is most appropriate for any given purpose” (p. 54). Despite the noted range in definition, the word paradigm is most often used to describe an epistemic belief about knowledge, as in Table 1.1.
A positivist paradigm—a stance that was common through World War II—suggests that it is possible to use scientific methods to identify true, verifiable, value-free statements about the world. However, a postpositivist paradigm places some critical limits on that truth, acknowledging that “truth” and “reality” are by nature imperfect constructions because observations and findings are never free of human theory and intervention.
Table 1.1
A constructivist paradigm might note that facts and truths are constructed by scientists and social scientists within human contexts, and so are unlikely to be verifiable by all observers, while a critical theorist paradigm would seek to understand the value systems that affect how such findings might be perceived among different groups of people or historical periods. (For more detail on these definitions, see, e.g., Lincoln & Guba, 2000; Tashakkori & Teddlie, 1998.)
While approaches to research are rarely directly associated with methods, typically quantitative experimental methods have been associated with positivist and postpositivist paradigms, and qualitative and naturalistic methods with constructivist and critical paradigms. When viewed in this way, it begins to become clear why mixed methods research has been such a significant and controversial evolution in methodology: How is it possible to combine techniques that have different views about the nature of knowledge itself?
Several approaches to mixing paradigms and methods exist, but Greene (2007) favors a “dialectical” stance (pp. 59–60), wherein the multiple knowledge paradigms, methods, and mental models about what those methods help researchers learn or accomplish are brought deliberately into conversation with each other. In this way, researchers can gain insight into more complex findings
