Nature of Inquiry for Research Methods in Nursing Education

The Nature of Inquiry for Research Methods in Nursing Education. Research, a more formal aspect of inquiry, uses disciplined approaches to discover information, develop nursing knowledge, and guide practice.

Nature Of Inquiry for Research Methods in Nursing Education

Inquiry in nursing education is a broad concept encompassing the systematic pursuit of knowledge and understanding of nursing practice, education, and related issues through various methods. It involves asking questions, seeking answers, and exploring diverse perspectives to advance the field and improve patient care.

Introduction: Three Lenses for Understanding Educational Research In Nursing

This blog post  explores the context of educational research. It sets out three significant lenses through which to examine the practice of research:

(a) Scientific and positivistic methodologies;

(b) Naturalistic and interpretive methodologies;

(c) Methodologies from critical theory.

Our analysis takes as a starting point an important notion from Hitchcock and Hughes (1995:21) who suggest that ontological assumptions give rise to epistemological assumptions; these, in turn, give rise to methodological considerations; and these, in turn, give rise to issues of instrumentation and data collection. This view moves us beyond regarding research methods as simply a technical exercise; it recognizes that research is concerned with understanding the world and that this is informed by how we view our world(s), what we take understanding to be, and what we see as the purposes of understanding.

The blog post outlines the ontological, epistemological and methodological premises of the three lenses and examines their strengths and weaknesses. In so doing it recognizes that education, educational research, politics and decision-making are inextricably intertwined, a view which the lens of critical theory, for example, brings sharply into focus in its discussions of curriculum decision-making. Hence this introductory blog post draws attention to the politics of educational research and the implications that this has for undertaking research (e.g. the move towards applied and evaluative research and away from ‘pure’ research).

Search for Truth: Three Pathways to Understanding

The search for truth People have long been concerned to come to grips with their environment and to understand the nature of the phenomena it presents to their senses. The means by which they set out to achieve these ends may be classified into three broad categories: experience, reasoning and research (Mouly, 1978). Far from being independent and mutually exclusive, however, these categories must be seen as complementary and over lapping, features most readily in evidence where solutions to complex modern problems are sought.

The Search for Truth: Three Pathways to Understanding

In our endeavors to come to terms with the problems of day-to-day living, we are heavily dependent upon experience and authority and their value in this context should not be under estimated. Nor should their respective roles be overlooked in the specialist sphere of research where they provide richly fertile sources of hypotheses and questions about the world, though, of course, it must be remembered that as tools for uncovering ultimate truth they have decided limitations.

The limitations of personal experience in the form of common-sense knowing, for instance, can quickly be exposed when compared with features of the scientific approach to problem-solving. Consider, for example, the striking differences in the way in which theories are used. Laypeople base them on haphazard events and use them in a loose and uncritical manner. When they are required to test them, they do so in a selective fashion, often choosing only that evidence that is consistent with their hunches and ignoring that which is counter to them. Scientists, by contrast, construct their theories carefully and systematically.

Whatever hypotheses they formulate have to be tested empirically so that their explanations have a firm basis in fact. And there is the concept of control distinguishing the layperson’s and the scientist’s attitude to experience. Laypeople generally make no attempt to control any extraneous sources of influence when trying to explain an occurrence. Scientists, on the other hand, only too conscious of the multiplicity of causes for a given occurrence, resort to definite techniques and procedures to isolate and test the effect of one or more of the alleged causes.

Finally, there is the difference of attitude to the relationships among phenomena. Laypeople’s concerns with such relationships are loose, unsystematic and uncontrolled. The chance occurrence of two events in close proximity is sufficient reason to predicate a causal link between them. Scientists, however, display a much more serious professional concern with relationships and only as a result of rigorous experimentation will they postulate a relationship between two phenomena.

The Evolution of Reasoning: From Deduction to Induction

The second category by means of which people attempt to comprehend the world around them, namely, reasoning, consists of three types: deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and the combined inductive deductive approach.

Deductive Reasoning: The Aristotelian Legacy

Deductive reasoning is based on the syllogism which was Aristotle’s great contribution to formal logic. In its simplest form the syllogism consists of a major premise based on an a priori or self-evident proposition, a minor premise pro viding a particular instance, and a conclusion. Thus: All planets orbit the sun; the earth is a planet; therefore the earth orbits the sun. The assumption underlying the syllogism is that through a sequence of formal steps of logic, from the general to the particular, a valid conclusion can be deduced from a valid premise.

Its chief limitation is that it can handle only certain kinds of statement. The syllogism formed the basis of systematic reasoning from the time of its inception until the Renaissance. Thereafter its effectiveness was diminished because it was no longer related to observation and experience and became merely a mental exercise. One of the con sequences of this was that empirical evidence as the basis of proof was superseded by authority and the more authority’s one could quote, the stronger one’s position became. Naturally, with such abuse of its principal tool, science became sterile.

Francis Bacon’s Revolutionary Approach

The history of reasoning was to undergo a dramatic change in the 1600s when Francis Ba con began to lay increasing stress on the observational basis of science. Being critical of the model of deductive reasoning on the grounds that its major premises were often preconceived notions which inevitably bias the conclusions, he proposed in its place the method of inductive reasoning by means of which the study of a number of individual cases would lead to a hypothesis and eventually to a generalization.

Mouly (1978) explains it like this: ‘His basic premise was that if one collected enough data without any preconceived notion about their significance and orientation—thus maintaining complete objectivity inherent relationships pertaining to the general case would emerge to be seen by the alert observer. Bacon’s major contribution to science was thus that he was able to rescue it from the death-grip of the deductive method whose abuse had brought scientific progress to a standstill.

He thus directed the attention of scientists to nature for solutions to people’s problems, demanding empirical evidence for verification. Logic and authority in themselves were no longer regarded as conclusive means of proof and instead became sources of hypotheses about the world and its phenomena.

The Modern Scientific Method: Combining Induction and Deduction

Bacon’s inductive method was eventually followed by the inductive-deductive approach which combines Aristotelian deduction with Baconian induction. In Mouly’s words, this consisted of: a back-and-forth movement in which the investigator first operates inductively from observations to hypotheses, and then deductively from these hypotheses to their implications, in order to check their validity from the standpoint of compatibility with accepted knowledge.

After revision, where necessary, these hypotheses are submitted to further test through the collection of data specifically designed to test their validity at the empirical level. This dual approach is the essence of the modern scientific method and marks the last stage of man’s progress toward empirical science, a path that took him through folklore and mysticism, dogma and tradition, casual observation, and finally to systematic observation. (Mouly, 1978).

Although both deduction and induction have their weaknesses, their contributions to the development of science are enormous and fall into three categories: (1) the suggestion of hypotheses; (2) the logical development of these hypotheses; and (3) the clarification and interpretation of scientific findings and their synthesis into a conceptual framework.

Research: The Systematic Path to Truth

The third means by which we set out to dis cover truth is research. This has been defined by Kerlinger (1970) as the systematic, controlled, empirical and critical investigation of hypothetical propositions about the presumed relations among natural phenomena.

Three Distinguishing Characteristics of Research

Research has three characteristics in particular which distinguish it from the first means of problem-solving identified earlier, namely, experience. First, whereas experience deals with events occurring in a haphazard manner, research is systematic and controlled, basing its operations on the inductive-deductive model outlined above. Second, research is empirical. The scientist turns to experience for validation. As Kerlinger puts it, ‘subjective belief…must be checked against objective reality.

Scientists must always subject their notions to the court of empirical inquiry and test’. And, third, research is self-correcting. Not only does the scientific method have built-in mechanisms to protect scientists from error as far as is humanly possible, but also their procedures and results are open to public scrutiny by fellow professionals.

As Mouly says, ‘This self-corrective function is the most important single aspect of science, guaranteeing that incorrect results will in time be found to be incorrect and duly revised or discarded.’ Research is a combination of both experience and reasoning and must be regarded as the most successful approach to the discovery of truth, particularly as far as the natural sciences are concerned (Borg, 1963).

Educational Research: Two Competing Views

Educational research has at the same time absorbed two competing views of the social sciences the established, traditional view and a more recent interpretive view. The former holds that the social sciences are essentially the same as the natural sciences and are therefore concerned with discovering natural and universal laws regulating and determining individual and social behavior; the latter view, however, while sharing the rigout of the natural sciences and the same concern of traditional social science to describe and explain human behavior, emphasizes how people differ from inanimate natural phenomena and, indeed, from each other.

These contending views and also their corresponding reflections in educational research stem in the first instance from different conceptions of social reality and of individual and social behavior. It will help our understanding of the issues to be developed subsequently if we examine these in a little more detail.

Two Conceptions of Social Reality: Understanding the Philosophical Divide

Two conceptions of social reality the two views of social science that we have just identified represent strikingly different ways of looking at social reality and are constructed on correspondingly different ways of interpreting it. We can perhaps most profitably approach these two conceptions of the social world by examining the explicit and implicit assumptions underpinning them. Our analysis is based on the work of Burrell and Morgan (1979) that identified four sets of such assumptions.

1. Ontological Assumptions: The Nature of Reality

First, there are assumptions of an ontological kind assumption which concern the very nature or essence of the social phenomena being investigated. Thus, the authors ask, are social reality external to individuals imposing itself on their consciousness from without or is it the product of individual consciousness? Is reality of an objective nature, or the result of individual cognition? Is it a given ‘out there’ in the world, or is it created by one’s own mind?

These questions spring directly from what is known in philosophy as the nominalist-realist debate. The former view holds that objects of thought are merely words and that there is no independently accessible thing constituting the meaning of a word. The realist position, however, contends that objects have an independent existence and are not dependent for it on the knower.

2. Epistemological Assumptions: The Nature of Knowledge

The second set of assumptions identified by Burrell and Morgan are of an epistemological kind. These concern the very bases of knowledge—its nature and forms, how it can be acquired, and how communicated to other human beings. The authors ask whether ‘it is possible to identify and communicate the nature of knowledge as being hard, real and capable of being transmitted in tangible form, or whether knowledge is of a softer, more subjective, spiritual or even transcendental kind, based on experience and insight of a unique and essentially personal nature.

The epistemological assumptions in these instances deter mine extreme positions on the issues of whether knowledge is something which can be acquired on the one hand, or is something which has to be personally experienced on the other’ (Burrell and Morgan, 1979).

Implications for Research Approach

How one aligns oneself in this particular debate profoundly affects how one will go about uncovering knowledge of social behavior. The view that knowledge is hard, objective and tangible will demand of researchers an observer role, together with an allegiance to the methods of natural science; to see knowledge as personal, subjective and unique, however, imposes on researchers an involvement with their subjects and a rejection of the ways of the natural scientist. To subscribe to the former is to be positivist; to the latter, anti-positivist.

3. Human Nature Assumptions: Determinism vs. Free Will

The third set of assumptions concern human nature and, in particular, the relationship between human beings and their environment. Since the human being is both its subject and object of study, the consequences for social science of assumptions of this kind are indeed far-reaching. Two images of human beings emerge from such assumptions—the one portrays them as responding mechanically to their environment; the other, as initiators of their own actions.

Burrell and Morgan write lucidly on the distinction: Thus, we can identify perspectives in social science which entail a view of human beings responding in a mechanistic or even deterministic fashion to the situations encountered in their external world. This view tends to be one in which human beings and their experiences are regarded as products of the environment; one in which humans are conditioned by their external circumstances.

This extreme perspective can be contrasted with one which attributes to human beings a much more creative role: with a perspective where ‘free will’ occupies the center of the stage; where man [sic] is regarded as the creator of his environment, the controller as opposed to the controlled, the master rather than the marionette. In these two extreme views of the relationship between human beings and their environment, we are identifying a great philosophical debate between the advocates of determinism on the one hand and voluntarism on the other.

4. Methodological Implications: Choosing Your Research Approach

Whilst there are social theories which adhere to each of these extremes, the assumptions of many social scientists are pitched somewhere in the range between. (Burrell and Morgan, 1979) It would follow from what we have said so far that the three sets of assumptions identified above have direct implications for the methodological concerns of researchers, since the contrasting ontologies, epistemologies and models of human beings will in turn demand different research methods.

The Objectivist/Positivist Approach

Investigators adopting an objectivist (or positivist) approach to the social world and who treat it like the world of natural phenomena as being hard, real and external to the individual will choose from a range of traditional options—surveys, experiments, and the like. Others favoring the more subjectivist (or anti-positivist) approach and who view the social world as being of a much softer, personal and humanly created kind will select from a comparable range of recent and emerging techniques—accounts, participant observation and personal constructs, for example.

Where one subscribes to the view which treats the social world like the natural world—as if it were a hard, external and objective reality—then scientific investigation will be directed at analyzing the relationships and regularities between selected factors in that world. It will be pre-dominantly quantitative. ‘The concern’, say Burrell and Morgan, ‘is with the identification and definition of these elements and with the discovery of ways in which these relationships can be ex pressed.

The methodological issues of importance are thus the concepts themselves, their measurement and the identification of underlying themes. This perspective expresses itself most forcefully in a search for universal laws which explain and govern the reality which is being observed’ (Burrell and Morgan, 1979). An approach characterized by procedures and methods designed to discover general laws may be referred to as nomothetic.

The Subjectivist/Anti-Positivist Approach

However, if one favors’ the alternative view of social reality which stresses the importance of the subjective experience of individuals in the creation of the social world, then the search for understanding focuses upon different issues and approaches them in different ways. The principal concern is with an understanding of the way in which the individual creates, modifies and interprets the world in which he or she finds himself or herself. The approach now takes on a qualitative as well as quantitative aspect.

As Burrell and Morgan observe, the emphasis in extreme cases tends to be placed upon the explanation and understanding of what is unique and particular to the individual rather than of what is general and universal. This approach questions whether there exists an external reality worthy of study. In methodological terms it is an approach which emphasizes the relativistic nature of the social world. (Burrell and Morgan, 1979)

Such a view is echoed by Kirk and Miller (1986:14). In its emphasis on the particular and individual this approach to understanding individual behavior may be termed idiographic.

Bringing It All Together: Implications for Educational Research

In this review of Burrell and Morgan’s analysis of the ontological, epistemological, human and methodological assumptions underlying two ways of conceiving social reality, we have laid the foundations for a more extended study of the two contrasting perspectives evident in the practices of researchers investigating human behavior and, by adoption, educational problems.

It identifies the four sets of assumptions by using terms we have adopted in the text and by which they are known in the literature of social philosophy. Each of the two perspectives on the study of human behavior outlined above has profound implications for research in classrooms and schools. The choice of problem, the formulation of questions to be answered, the characterization of pupils and teachers, methodological concerns, the kinds of data sought and their mode of treatment—all will be influenced or determined by the viewpoint held.

Conclusion: The Ongoing Debate

Because of its significance to the epistemological basis of social science and its consequences for educational research, we devote much of the rest of this blog post to the positivist and ant positivist debate.

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