Navigating the path between positivism and interpretivism for the technology academic completing education research

Research is a complex endeavour. Whether we are talking about scientific work with chemicals, technology work with computers or education work with students, the parameters of a research design are a complicated set of variables that must be uniquely set for each research project. Whilst it could be argued that the purpose of all research is the same in its quest for knowledge and answers to unanswered questions, the variations in these questions can be quite wide, leading towards significantly different research design depending on the discipline (Bryman, 2012). Many universities seek to address this by teaching students about the more popular research methodologies within their discipline but, by its very nature, this leads to a discipline-focused understanding of research design by a particular researcher. In short, whilst this research has the same process, the experience of that process by each individual researcher will be different, with their resulting understanding of research design influenced by their discipline background. Against this context of differing discipline-focused research design we have the situation of a researcher looking to change their research focus. The movement of researchers from a traditional quantitative model to a qualitative model would suggest a much broader focus on research design. In particular, in my case, as a technology researcher looking to the field of education, I find myself confronting challenges to a taken-for-granted mindset regarding epistemology, leading to a change in the other facets of their research design. How best can I deal with this change when my existing mindset regarding research design is so discipline focused and quantitative in nature? This chapter will discuss my own experience as a researcher in the field of information and communication technology, a field typically steeped in experimentation, working through the methodological manoeuvring required to contribute to qualitative research in learning and teaching. Building on the work of Chinn, Buckland and Samarapungavan (2011), who argue that epistemological perceptions must be broadened to help with cognition, this chapter will break apart my original epistemology as a technology academic, explaining the components of this positivist epistemology. This will include how it was communicated to researchers completing research in technology during the author's PhD, focusing in particular on how epistemology in this discipline was downplayed in favour of discussion of methods and taken-for-granted methodology. A bridge will then be established between this common epistemology of technology researchers and the epistemology of qualitative learning and teaching researchers. This presents a contrast to the work of Sinatra and Chinn (2012), who looked at the enhancement of scientific reasoning in students as a form of conceptual change, instead looking at how tech­nology researchers could implement social science concepts. Specifically, the use of positivist epistemology in learning and teaching research will be explored using my own work as a case study, along with methods for researchers to interpret other paradigms such as interpretivism. Finally, using work such as that by Hofer and Bendixen (2012) on "personal epistemology",the position of different epistemologies and their relationships to research questions will be discussed, with strategies identified to allow researchers coming from technology research to navigate an epistemological shift for learning and teaching research and discussion on why this might be required.