Kankam boadu
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- CHAPTER FOUR
- Research paradigms
- Positivism
- Interpretive paradigm
Summary of the chapterThe chapter has underscored the various contexts within the education set-up of Ghana where citizenship education can be taught to ensure proper national development. It is said that the habit one cultivates is very difficult to do away with. Therefore, if pupils are introduced with citizenship education right away from the pre-school through to the tertiary level, there is the likelihood that they will acquire the knowledge, values and skills needed in citizenship education for the purposes of national development. The chapter has also revealed that social studies is the main focus of citizenship education. And that the social studies education started in the United State of America. In Africa, the social studies conference that took place in Mombasa, Kenya, in 1968 laid the foundation for social studies education. In Ghana, the development of social studies education in the colleges of education has been characterized by unsteadiness due to tutors’ and students’ perceptions and attitudes towards its inception. In the next chapter, the methodology of the study will be discussed in depth; the chapter locates the study in the main paradigm that will be used. More importantly, the research design, population, sample and sampling procedures, instruments and their administration as well as data analyses techniques will be considered. CHAPTER FOURRESEARCH METHODOLGYOverviewThis chapter first discusses the main research paradigms, research design, and population, sample and sampling procedures. Then the instruments being used to collect the data are also presented. The chapter concludes with discussion of the validity, reliability, the ethical considerations of the study, and data analysis techniques. Research paradigmsA research paradigm is a perspective about research held by a community of researchers that is based on a set of shared assumptions, concepts, values and practices (Johnson & Christensen, 2008). The research must address questions based on four identified sets of assumptions proposed by Burrell and Morgan (1979) in building the research paradigm. These are ontological, epistemological, human nature and methodology. An ontological assumption is concerned with the nature or essence of the social phenomena being investigated. Here, the researcher asks, is social reality external to individuals-imposing itself on the consciousness from without or is it the product of individual consciousness? Is reality of an objective nature or the result of individual cognition? Is it given “out there” in the world or is it created by one’s mind? These questions, according to Cohen, Manion and Morrison (2004), emanate directly from what is known in philosophy as the nominalist-realist debate. The second set of assumptions identified by Burrell and Morgan (1979) are of epistemological kind. These concern the very basis of knowledge. That is, its nature and forms, how it can be acquired and how it can be communicated to other human beings. The epistemological assumption determine extreme positions on the issues of whether knowledge is something which can be acquired on the one hand or is something which has to be personally experienced on the other hand. The third set of assumptions concern human nature and specifically the relationship between human beings and their environment. Cohen et al. (2004) stress that since the human being is both its subject and object of study, the consequences for social science assumption of this kind are far-reaching. It can be summed from the above that the three sets of assumptions have direct effect for the methodological concerns of researchers since the contrasting ontologies, epistemologies and models of human beings will in turn demand different research methods. Invariably, researchers adopting an objectivist (positivist) approach to the social world and who treat it like the world of natural phenomena as being hard, real and external to the individual will choose from a range of traditional options such as surveys and experiments. On the other hand, others welcoming the more subjectivist (anti-positivist) approach and who view the social world as being of a much softer, personal and humanly created kind will select from emerging techniques such as accounts, participant observation and personal constructs. The fourth set of assumptions deal with methodological issues. This perspective expresses itself most forcefully in a search for universal laws which explain and govern the reality which is being observed (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). PositivismThe positivist paradigm is the idea that only what can empirically be observed is important and that science is the only true source of knowledge (Johnson & Christensen, 2008). The positivist philosophy, located within normative studies, is underpinned by the assumption that “human behaviour is essentially rule-governed” (Cohen et al., 2004:6). Therefore, positivists recommend the use of scientific methods to uncover reality. The positivists believe that there is one reality in the world. The researcher’s role is therefore, to discover the universal laws that govern human behaviour. To the positivist, human behaviour is described by predictability and causality. It follows that behaviour is both observable and measurable, which makes it possible to discover the patterns and regularities of such behaviour. Interpretive paradigmThe interpretive paradigm developed as a critique of positivism in the social sciences. In general, interpretivists share the belief that reality as we know it is constructed inter-subjectively through the meanings and understandings developed socially and experientially. Therefore, we cannot separate ourselves from what we know. The investigator and the object of investigation are linked such that who one is and how one understands the world is a central part of how one understands himself/herself, others and the world (Blumer, 1984). Interpretive paradigms rely heavily on naturalistic methods (interviewing and observation and analysis of existing texts). These methods ensure an adequate dialogue between the researchers and those with whom they interact in order to collaborate meaningfully with reality (Dash, 2005). The interpretivist considers educational research and the people in them as being social construction rather than the result of external mediators assumed by the positivist research paradigm (Carr & Kemmis, 1986). From the epistemological point of view, people generally perceive social reality in diverse ways. As a result, their actions and decisions are influenced by the interpretations and other social reality (Radnor, 2002). The interpretative researcher’s role is to make meaning of their world. With this perspective, the researcher obtains information from talking to the participants in their natural setting in which they create their realities. Many researchers question the legitimacy of the interpretivist paradigm in sociological and educational research. In the recent past, qualitative research was seen as ‘“soft”, unrigorous and subjective, with researchers always having to justify their “unconventional” methodology and having to “prove” the validity of their outcome” (Scott & Usher, 1999:10). However, the situation seems to have changed since interpretivist paradigm influences the methodologies and methods in most research in educational and sociological context in recent times (Cresswell, 2003).This notwithstanding, some aspect of the current study is founded on the interpretive paradigm. On the basis of the purpose and research questions raised in this study, the study is premised on both the positivist and interpretative paradigms. Thus, the researcher combines the two paradigms. The main focus of the study is to examine tutors’ and teacher trainees’ perceptions of citizenship education. It is anticipated that the prospective respondents will create, modify and interpret the world they live in, in accordance with their subjective experience. Consequently, the study is based on the assumption that its participants have variations of understanding about citizenship education. Informed by the relativistic nature of the social world, the aim of the study is to provide explanations and interpretations about the world as it is perceived by the participants. The study intends to make inferences from its subjects and understanding of respondents’ perceptions by using an induction process. It is anticipated that by probing into the account of respondents’ action, it will provide an understanding about what they are really doing in their settings (Almanema, 2006; Cohen & Mannion, 2004). Based on the fact that the interpretative perspective is characterized by the subjectivity of knowledge, the researcher has to involve himself with the participants in order to understand their views on citizenship education in the colleges of education. The interpretative and positivist views would be used in the study. The questionnaire, which is the main instrument in positivist research together with interviews from the interpretative view points are used, the intentions of which is to cover responses that interview schedules cannot cover and to triangulate the method of data collection from different sources . 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