Description

Research method in education: The frame by which the picture hangs

JOHANNES L VAN DER WALT AND FERDINAND J POTGIETER

North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, Private Bag X6001, Potchefstroom, South Africa

Abstract

Research should be legitimized and clarified by the philosophical frame by which it metaphorically hangs. Such clarity is important in so far as it helps to provide a foundation for guiding researchers’ evaluations of the quality of their research findings. This article focuses on certain philosophical pre-conditions and justifications, that is, the underlying, pre-theoretical or pre-scientific provisos/specifications/provisions for a researcher’s thinking and hence for his or her decisions about which methodology to follow and methods to apply when researching a problem. In order to achieve this aim, the authors discuss the four ‘sides’ or ‘panels’ of the philosophical frame by which a researcher’s research method, in general, tends to hang, figuratively speaking: namely, (a) integrated personality orientation; (b) transcendental orientation; (c) teleological orientation; and (d) nomothetic orientation. Overlooking this ‘frame by which a researcher’s methodological picture hangs’ might have serious repercussions for how one conducts research.

Keywords: integrated personality, spirituality, transcendental, teleological, nomothetic