So the next set of blog posts will once again be tied to my course, the MSc in Blended and Online Education from Edinburgh Napier University. This semester my virtual-classmates and I are undertaking the Educational Research Methods and Practice module, in preparation for our final dissertations in 2018 (*gulp*). This module takes me about as far out of my comfort zone as I’m likely to get on this course, as is the case with many students doing it for the first time, so the point of the inclusion of these blog posts is to help us reflect upon and consider the concepts being discussed in the hope that it will help us to grasp the ideas more easily.

So we started out a couple of weeks ago (I’m a little late to the party, is anyone surprised?!) considering the educational research philosophies of Positivism and Social Constructivism. I’m going to spend this post trying to break these down and make sure that I (and hopefully you, dear reader) can properly understand them before we go any further.

I’ve always considered myself a scientist at heart – I’ve very much believed in the idea of cause and effect, of scientific experimentation where new knowledge could always be found to disprove a well-understood theory. I still hold with these ideals for the core physical sciences (listen to Dr Brian Cox wax lyrical about this on just about any episode of The Infinite Monkey Cage and you’ll find it hard to argue!), but reviewing these philosophies has made me realise that this approach is not, in my mind, the best one when it comes to education.

Positivism is that scientific, deductive approach – determine your hypothesis, figure out how to measure and test it, and assume it to be true until you (or someone else) can definitively prove it wrong. Then modify your hypothesis and repeat. It assumes that what you are measuring exists independently of those involved (including the researcher), and that only through clear testing and measurable, quantitative data can you prove (or rather disprove) a given theory.

This, in my mind, falls down in a great many areas of study, particularly most theories of education. What a student is able to learn, or an educator able to teach, is very much entwined with the learning and teaching ability of those with whom you study. Run the same module 5 years in a row, with basically the same content, and see how different your results turn out to be dependent upon the students that make up each cohort. The ability to teach effectively is beholden to the students whom you are teaching, and the act of observing a class at work impacts upon those in the class, changing the behaviour and therefore the results of the observation.

This is the Social Constructivist approach – participants in reality affect its existence. In other words, people are core to education, including the researcher. So rather than building a theory and then trying to disprove it, start with the people. Once you’ve determined your broad topic of research, talk with the participants and find out what that topic really means to them. Figure out what the important elements are, and then you can build your theory around them. The approach relies far less on quantitative data and far more on measuring the quality of the topic’s results.

I now find myself far more accepting of qualitative research ideas than I previously though possible, which probably goes against the grain in much of the research community (where research can often only be considered to be “valid” if it has strong quantitative data to back it up, regardless of the amount of quantitative data presented). In modules past, this course has shown me to be an educational constructivist at heart, and this module has shone more of a light on this revelation for me!

Ultimately, it’s down to what you are researching as to the best approach (or indeed a mix of the two – it is really more of a sliding scale than a definitive “us or them” argument), but when it comes to education, I think I’ll continue to lean far more on social constructivist techniques.