Combining qualitative and quantitative methods in studying education

Abstract

In the humanities, in the last two decades, there has been an evident increase of research combining quantitative and qualitative methods, techniques, approaches, concepts or language. This paper discusses the arguments for and against these research drafts, which most often appear in literature under the title mixed methods research. While some authors consider this type of research as the announcement of the third paradigm in studying social phenomena and the approach that shifts the war between the two paradigms into the past, other authors claim that the paradigms underlying the two basic research orientations are incompatible because they study essentially different phenomena, and therefore the methods from two research traditions cannot be combined in any way. The third viewpoint, which we advocate as well, argues that qualitative and quantitative methods cannot be applied together in one draft for the purposes of triangulation or cross-validation, but that they can be combined for complementary objectives. This paper describes the example of mixed methods draft of complementary objectives in pedagogy, which refers to evaluation of mathematics curriculum. The example shows that combining qualitative and quantitative methods is not only possible, but that it creates the conditions for arriving at data which would not be possible to obtain using only one or the other approach.

U humanističkim naukama, u poslednje dve decenije, evidentan je porast istraživanja u kojima se kombinuju kvantitativne i kvalitativne metode, tehnike, pristupi, pojmovi ili jezik. U radu se raspravlja o argumentima za i protiv ovih istraživačkih nacrta, koji se u literaturi najčešće pojavljuju pod nazivom miks-metodska istraživanja. Dok neki autori ovaj tip istraživanja smatraju najavom treće paradigme u istraživanju društvenih fenomena i pristupom koji pomera u prošlost 'rat' između dve paradigme, drugi autori tvrde da su paradigme na koji- ma su zasnovane dve osnovne istraživačke orijentacije nekompatibilne jer suštinski istražuju različite fenomene, te se metode iz dve istraživačke tradicije nikako ne mogu kombinovati. Treće gledište, koje i mi zastupamo, zalaže se za to da se kvalitativne i kvantitativne metode ne mogu zajedno primeniti u jednom nacrtu za svrhe triangulacije ili unakrsne validacije, ali mogu biti kombinovane za komplementarne ciljeve. U radu je opisan primer miks-metodskog nacrta komplementarnih ciljeva u pedagogiji, koji se odnosi na evaluaciju nastavnog programa iz matematike. Primerom se pokazuje da je kombinovanje kvalitativnih i kvantitativnih metoda ne samo moguće, već da stvara uslove za dolaženje do podataka koje ne bi bilo moguće dobiti samo jednim ili drugim pristupom.