Moving Beyond the Paradigm Wars: Emergent Approaches for Education Research

Abstract

I 2002, the National Research Council (NRC) released a report that articulated its vision about education research (Eisenhart & Towne, 2003; Feuer et al., 2002), which focused on scientifically based research methods. The release of the report was followed by an extensive debate and is broadly understood as part of the long-standing “paradigm war”1 in the field (Fischman & Tefera, 2014; Munoz-Najar Galvez et al., 2019). Some of the scholars defending the criteria advanced by the report had somewhat traditionally dismissive views of education research “as something of a stepchild, reluctantly tolerated at the margins of academe and rarely trusted by policy makers, practitioners, or members of the public at large” (Lagemann, 2000, p. x). A similar perspective was advanced by Grover Whitehurst, the influential director of the Institute of Education Sciences from 2002 to 2008, who claimed that the