Introduction

When researching education and social practices, methodological considerations are no longer-if indeed they ever were- linear, seamless, or even consistently coherent. Increasingly, the markers of difference among research methodologies in the social sciences are challenged, ambushed even, as fit-for-purpose methodological relationships are constructed. This edited collection echoes such developmental trajectories from the oppositional stances of quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods to the emerging nimble, fluid, recursive, and iterative paradigms evocative of the messiness characterising the web of independent problems that emerge as research progresses (Ackoff, 1979; Law, 2004; Hester & Adams, 2014). Through an eclectic mix of research cases where methodological approaches are manoeuvred to fit the research context, this book engages with the confusion and difficulties faced by doctoral candidates and early career researchers.