Explicating metatheory for mixed methods research in educational leadership

Abstract

Purpose – Mixed methods research can provide a fruitful line of inquiry for educational leadership, program evaluation, and policy analysis; however, mixed methods research requires a metatheory that allows for mixing what have traditionally been considered incompatible qualitative and quantitative inquiry. The purpose of this paper is to apply Jürgen Habermas’s Theory of Communicative Action as that metatheoretical justification. Design/methodology/approach – After reviewing the traditional quantitative/qualitative divide based on incompatible ontologies, the author argues for a pragmatist stance toward educational leadership inquiry. Such a stance allows for mixing methods because it privileges methodology and epistemology in social inquiry, rather than ontological theories of reality. Using Habermas’s metatheory, the author shows how truth claims are linguistically mediated; how they make reference to objective, subjective, and normative formal worlds; and how they are always fallible and revisable. Findings – The author argues that Habermas’s metatheory allows (and requires) integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches to fully understand social phenomena. Such integration is possible if researchers attempt to make methodological decisions explicit by linking methodology (and thus methodical decisions) to all three formal worlds, and articulating the rationale for doing so. The author also argues that making the entire corpus of claims bound within a line of social inquiry subject to critical examination promotes the validity of inquiry. Originality/value – This paper contributes to the discussion on mixed methods research by applying a particular strand of pragmatism. This is an advance in the extant literature, which argues for a pragmatist stance on mixed methods research, but has not yet conceptualized a metatheoretical position supporting this stance.

Effective Preparation Program Features

“…Publications describing program features without also including a means of empirically investigating those features were not included. All modes of inquiry (qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods) were included, as methodological diversity is important to understanding social phenomena (Habermas, 1988; Whiteman, 2015). As described above, studies must be investigations in the U.S. context.…”

Critical Ethnography and the Institutional Logics Perspective for Organizational Analysis

“…Carspecken's (1996) interpretation of Habermas (1984Habermas ( , 1987Habermas ( , 1988 informed his critical ethnographic study design, as well as the data collection and interpretation techniques within the design. Critical ethnographies allow researchers to link local social phenomena to broader social systems (Foley, 1990(Foley, , 2010Willis, 1981), and Habermas's metatheory allows researchers to use institutional analysis as a means of making that connection (Carspecken, 1996;Whiteman, 2015). If systems-level phenomena in Habermas's language can be considered macro-level phenomena in the language of institutional theorists, the use of critical ethnography with a Habermasian metatheory makes sense.…”

“…Because methodology is inquiry into how we can make knowledge claims, it is important to explicitly tie methodology to both knowledge claims and the techniques and methods to gain access to those knowledge claims (Whiteman, 2015). Recall that any utterance or speech act contains objective, subjective, and normative claims (Habermas, 1984).…”

“…This approach to validity eliminates the need for debates about whether or not: (a) subjective claims can be valid; or (b) objective claims always invoke a positivist/postpositivist paradigm; or (c) subjectivity and objectivity work against each other, as in the more objective something is, the less subjective it is (Dennis, 2013, p. 20). Whiteman (2015) drew on Carspecken (2003) and Bernstein (1978) when arguing that in scientific settings, validity is achieved when a researcher presents a convincing or better argument for the researcher's claims. Furthermore, these conditions anticipate the possibility of consensus rather than a limit in which consensus has actually been reached.…”

“…are legitimate questions in educational research and other social science, given that the way studies are designed and executed, as well as the inferences that can be drawn from them, tend to come back to questions of methodology and epistemology. As I argued elsewhere (see Whiteman, 2015), it is crucial that researchers make the metatheoretical foundations of their research clear, and that methodologies are theoretically consistent with the metatheories informing research questions, theoretical framework constructed via literature, and study design.…”