Posing New Researchable Questions as a Dynamic Process in Educational Research

Abstract

In this paper, we argue that posing new researchable questions in educational research is a dynamic process that reflects the field's growing understanding of the web of potentially influential factors surrounding the examination of a particular phenomenon of interest. We illustrate this thesis by drawing on a strand of mathematics education research related to students' justification schemes that has evolved rapidly during the past few decades. Also, we reflect on the possible boundaries of the domain of application of the thesis, and we hypothesize that it would apply equally to other strands of educational research. To support this hypothesis, we briefly consider how the thesis would be applicable in two additional research strands. We conclude by elaborating on three important implications of the thesis: (1) as new potentially influential factors about the phenomenon of interest are identified, findings from past research that had not accounted for those factors might prove to be insufficient or be put into question; (2) there are increased methodological challenges for researchers as they seek to design new studies that pay due regard to research advances about all relevant and potentially influential factors surrounding the phenomenon of interest; and (3) as a wider range of potentially influential factors get discovered and considered about a particular phenomenon, research knowledge becomes not only more refined, and presumably more accurate, but possibly more fragmented too.

Posing Researchable Questions in Mathematics and Science Education: Purposefully Questioning the Questions for Investigation

“…The new researchable questions are worth investigating if they reflect the field's growing understanding of the web of potentially influential factors surrounding the investigation of a particular area. The argument that Stylianides and Stylianides (2020) use is very similar to Schoenfeld's (2020) generative criteria, but Stylianides and Stylianides (2020) explicitly emphasize the collective nature of the field's growing understanding of a particular phenomenon.…”

“…He elaborates on how answering one specific research question leads to another and another. In the context of research on mathematical proof, Stylianides and Stylianides (2020) also illustrate how researchable questions arise from existing research in the area leading to new researchable questions in the dynamic process of educational research. The arguments and examples in both Schoenfeld (2020) and Stylianides and Stylianides (2020) are quite powerful in the sense that this source of researchable questions facilitates the accumulation of knowledge for the given areas of study.…”

Digital resources integration driven by curriculum and teachers’ documentational trajectories

“…However, it is important to specify that these demarcation criteria do not prevent the evolution of theories; nor do they predispose the stagnation on the variety of research problems to be analyzed. In this sense, we can provide two examples; (1) Stylianides and Stylianides (2020) analyze how new research questions relate to the evolving nature of educational research, and (2) seen as research programs, Lakatos (1978) states that the continuity and growth of theories originates "from a genuine research programme adumbrated at the start. The programme consists of methodological rules: some tell us what paths of research to avoid (negative heuristic), and others what paths to pursue (positive heuristic)."…”