Considering Two Questions One More Time: What Is Science? Is Qualitative Research Scientific?

• In Event: Alternative Facts, Fake News, and Educational Research: Reconsidering Qualitative Methodologies in the Age of Trump

Abstract

Objective/Purpose

Recent talk within the policy community about “alternative facts” and “fake” information suggests the need for qualitative researcher to revisit questions about the scientific (or lack of scientific) nature of their work. To be sure, for certain politicians, questions about the scientific nature of qualitative research are likely to be moot; their cavalier dismissal of the science of climate change is evidence of the correctness of that statement. But the notion that scientific research provides a pathway to truth still has considerable cache for other policymakers, for many members of the general public, and for the research community. Consequently, it is worth asking one more time, in this era of “alternative facts” and “fake news,” whether qualitative research can be considered scientific and, by implication, whether some semblance of the concept of truth can be salvaged in the current era. That is the purpose of this paper.

Perspective/Framework

Because this paper will be an essay that develops an argument rather than a presentation of an empirical study’s results, there is no theoretical framework as such. However, there will be an ongoing constructivist subtext in the paper. The notion that knowledge is constructed rather than discovered has long been accepted in both the social and physical sciences (e.g., Kuhn, 2002), even though there is still considerable disagreement about the implications of this insight for scientific research. Exploring the implications-of-constructivism question has been at the center of much of the author’s scholarly agenda for some time, and that perspective also will play a part in the paper’s discussion of the nature of science.

Mode of Inquiry/Data Sources

As noted, the paper will be an essay, a genre that focuses on presenting a line of argument. In this case, the line of argument will relate to what constitutes science and whether qualitative research can be considered scientific. In the course of developing its argument, the essay will review and critique the writings of a range of early and more recent qualitative research methodologists in (and out of) the education field. In addition, the paper will revisit the 2002 NRC publication, Scientific Research in Education, along with critiques of that publication including papers in the 2002 special issue of Educational Researcher edited by Jacobs and White.

Results/Conclusions

This paper will move beyond qualitative methodologists’ often simple-minded, dichotomous thinking about different types of research methods. It also will move beyond previous critiques of Scientific Research in Education by finding, within the book’s internal contradictions, a rationale for characterizing a variety of qualitative research methodologies as scientific and salvaging a concept of truth that is defensible in a world of “alternative facts.” A unique methodology will be proposed to make operational the salvaged concept of truth.

Significance

To a large extent, the qualitative revolution resulted in balkanizing the educational research field; this balkanization was reified by the authors of Scientific Research in Education. There is a need to rethink this situation in an era of “alternative facts”; this paper attempts to start the rethinking process.

Author

• Robert B. Donmoyer, University of San Diego