Paradigm (Education)

A set of presuppositions, beliefs, and practices shared by a community of researchers. It is a way of thinking held in common by the group, and it has many of the features of a social culture. A research paradigm includes beliefs about philoso phical issues (ontology, epistemology), conceptual systems, research findings, and appropriate methodo logies. Thomas Kuhn brought the idea of research paradigms to the attention of social and natural scientists with his famous book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962). He argued that science usually operates in a period of conformity called normal science. During normal science, researchers work on what he [Page 370]called puzzle solving, meaning specific research problems that are legitimated by the paradigm and that do not challenge the core beliefs of the paradigm. Researchers are socialized into the paradigm by their textbooks, their professors, and professional journals. Books and certain published research studies serve as exemplars, which are examples of appropriate research sanctioned by the paradigm. Researchers study these exemplars and emulate them as they learn to become good researchers in the paradigm. Kuhn also famously pointed out that over time, paradigms are challenged by anomalies, and at some point, during what he called revolutionary science, paradigms are replaced by new paradigms that are radically different. For example, Newton's classical physics was replaced by Einstein's general relativity and quantum physics during the first 30 years of the 20th century. Paradigms are said to be incommensurable, which means that different paradigms have radically different languages and definitions and views of the world; this results in difficulty in communication across paradigms. People in different paradigms define concepts in different ways, and they “see” and experience different worlds because of the influence of the paradigm. One paradigm change in psychology was the shift in the adherence of many researchers from behaviorism to cognitivism. Because behaviorism still is used along with cognitivism in psychology, psychology would appear to fit into what Kuhn called a preparadigmatic discipline, which he thought was common in the young sciences. The concept of the paradigm is commonly used in education and literature to refer to different “epistemologies,” and each is said to have its own set of appropriate or legitimate methods. At the broad level, the methodological paradigms are divided into quantitative research, qualitative research, and mixed methods research. At the more epistemological level, paradigms include constructivism, critical theory, poststructuralism, postmodernism, feminism, and several other “standpoint epistemologies.” Paradigm debates in education and the social sciences often concern what knowledge is, what kinds of research issues resear chers should focus on, what methodologies are appro priate, the role of values in research, and appropriate standards for judging the quality of research. For more information, see Kuhn (1962).