Broadening Conceptions of Educational Research

Educational research is contested terrain, too often succumbing to narrow conceptions of what constitutes legitimate ways of knowing. What does it mean to be “scientific” when doing educational research? What counts as data? Can books count as a “data set” (St. Pierre, 2013)? Most graduate students in education are introduced to educational research in research methodology courses, most of which include required textbooks on qualitative and quantitative methods. Most research methodology textbooks obscure the notion that there is anything other than empirical research. As one example, perhaps the most dominant methods textbook is Creswell’s (2018) Educational Research: Planning, Conducting, and Evaluating Quantitative and Qualitative Research, which states that “A research method is a specific and detailed procedure for answering research questions. These methods can be grouped into qualitative and quantitative approaches” (p. 3).