Describes the ideas proposed by James Mark Baldwin which anticipated much of Jean Piaget's work. The goals, genetic approach, and epistemological assumptions underlying Piaget's inquiry into cognitive development found explicit statement in Baldwin's work. Discusses Baldwin's current importance for psychology. (Author/CB)

Argues that interrater reliability, traditionally used in phenomenographic research, is unreliable for establishing the reliability of research results; it does not take into account the researcher's procedures for achieving fidelity to the individuals' conceptions investigated, and use of interrater reliability based on objectivist epistemology…

Suggests that research practices of a heterosexually constructed social order suppress nonheterosexual knowledge. Advocates research that is designed, constructed, and analyzed from a "queered position" that challenges the dominant view of what may be known and who may be the knower. (SK)

Robert Sternberg's model of giftedness brings together interesting and very important elements of giftedness by synthesizing wisdom, intelligence, and creativity in novel ways. While his model is based on extensive research and utilizes a variety of sources and expertise, the epistemological consistency of Sternberg's model is, in the author's…

This paper explores the subtle (and often not so subtle) cultural, social, political and spiritual meanings behind the very notion of paradigm "proliferation" including the often exclusionary intentions and implications in how research is undertaken, represented and for what (and whose) purposes. Dealing with these contested meanings brings a…

Science tends to find a solution to the problem of the unreliability of human perception by understanding objectivity as the absence of subjectivity. However, from a phenomenological point of view, subjectivity is not so much a problem as an inevitable starting-point. That does not mean that the problem of the correctness of people's accounts of…

The life history method, which achieved a prominent position in the Chicago tradition of sociological research in the early 1920s, has been widely adopted for educational inquiries since the 1980s. The power of the life history method in illuminating subjective teacher experiences in social historical contexts has made it "probably the only…

Discusses three realities used in constructing knowledge and their traditional research methodologies as basis for proposing a research agenda/methodology for rural education. Proposes use of conceptual empiricism and contextual appraisal of self, class, school, and schooling. Suggests currere (self-introspection technique), hegemony, and…

Discusses the process of conducting social research, indicating how the Milan systemic model can help meet the goals of a systemic epistemology in research by offering guidelines for developing research programs which acknowledge social intervention. (MM)

At the heart of the debate over validity in qualitative research are ontological, epistemological, methodological, and axiological questions that are themselves blurred in a postmodern/poststructuralist matrix. This paper explores some of the foundations and criteria for establishing, representing, and evaluating the truth, rigor, and accuracy of…

Argues that standard research methods are the only ethically responsible means for assessing the efficacy of family therapy, that they have provided practical data, and that there are insufficient grounds for divorce between "new epistemology" and standard research. (WAS)

Five major differences between the rationalistic and naturalistic paradigms of inquiry are accounted for: the nature of reality; the nature of the inquirer-object relationship; the nature of truth statements; assumptions about causal relationships; and the role of values within disciplined inquiry. Thirty-one sources are appended. (EJS)

Summarizes the historical roots and the ontological, epistemological, and methodological assumptions underlying phenomenology as a research orientation. Describes phenomenology as a reaction against and an alternative to dominant positivist, behaviorist, and quantitative research, and also as having links to several older, concomitant research…

Considers how to represent students and their writings in composition research, specifically how to represent the students themselves. Suggests that when contemplating the "Guidelines for the Ethical Treatment of Students and Student Writing in Composition Studies," educators need to consider their epistemological stance, their choices in…

Student plagiarism is partly the result of a faulty behaviorist model of the research process and unwitting encouragement by teachers. Middle-school teachers can improve the situation by assigning meaningful research topics, building background knowledge, keeping topic selection open, providing easy source texts, suggesting data-organization tips,…