Complete thesis - Murdoch University

4.1 Research in Education and ITEducational researchUntil the 1990s, most educational research was adapted from quantitative research methodsin the physical and biological sciences. Although having a briefer history than in thesefields, quantitative educational research has yielded useful understanding of education. Morerecently, however, methods used in educational research have increasingly been adopted fromthe social and behavioural sciences and humanistic disciplines such as philosophy. The changein focus is an acknowledgement that education involves individuals and events in a naturalstate within a specific context. The individual’s perception of inner experience and the worldaround (the phenomenological reality) is seen to be of prime importance, and best describedqualitatively.This should not be seen as a disjunctive paradigm shift: as late as 2004 educational researchwas seen to seek a comprehensive educational effectiveness theory: a search for what causespeople to become educated. This can be considered as continuing the quest to place educationalresearch more firmly on a scientific, ideology-free footing, and to remedy what is seenas its chronic other-worldly drift (Clark, 2005). Both Nisbet (2005) and Clark (2005) providean extensive review of the changing perspectives in educational research, while Lather (2004)provides a critical review of the move to legislate scientific research into education in theUnited States.A paradigm of Praxis, the art of acting on the conditions faced in order to change them, isseen to have closest affinity to research in educational contexts (Lather, 1986). Hollingsworthand Sockett (1994, p 9) characterise this impulse toward Praxis within the education researchmovement as being based on...disenchantment with the view of control as a means of improving education,a concern with teacher autonomy, and a growing understanding of knowledge asa source of power in society created an ideological convergence which provides aclearer realization of the interconnected nature of knowledge, research and practice.An emerging area based on this belief is that of Learning Sciences. This field is interdisciplinary,drawing on multiple theoretical perspectives and research paradigms to buildunderstandings of the nature and conditions of learning, cognition, and development. Whileaccepting the importance of context for understanding, learning scientists see education asa design science, as opposed to a social science, to be compared to the natural sciences.178