Methodological Pluralism and Graduate Student Research in Education

Abstract

This chapter surveys the range of research attitudes and methodological positions that are represented in contemporary educational research. Oriented by integral methodological pluralism, the discussion includes an analysis of the diverse ways that research foci are conceived, the sorts of conceptual and methodological distinctions that are necessary to deal with different research attitudes, associations to broader categories of scientific study, types of intention manifest in educational research, and varied criteria for claims to truth. The chapter concludes with considerations of the nature and place of methodological pluralism in graduate-level research, specifically, and educational research, more generally.