Mixed Methods and the Pleasures of Forgetfulness

• In Event: Roundtable Session 61
  In Roundtable Session: New Perspectives on Mixed Methods

Abstract

This paper writes a conceptual review and critique of the growing literature on 'mixed methods'. On the one hand, the mixed methods literature trades on the intellectual history of the 'paradigm wars', invokes notions of the paradigmatic, and lays claim to a philosophical pragmatism. On the other, however, it gives no evidence of having taken in the enormous conceptual innovations of the 'qualitative and/or linguistic turns' in Anglo–American social science in the second half of the 20th century. The case of the mixed method interview is emblematic of this failure to remember and disposition to forget. In the forgetfulness, there is no obstacle to resurrecting technicist promises of an applied science of education.

Author

• Douglas H. Macbeth, The Ohio State University