Prayer

God of Power and Might

Every good and perfect gift comes down to us from
you.
Implant in our hearts the love for your name.
Increase in us the zeal for your service.
Nourish what is good within us and tend it with your
watchful care.
Through Christ our Lord
Amen
 ED 500
Educational Research Methods

By
Herbert Makinda
METHODS OF ACQUIRING KNOWLEDGE
Human beings have always sought to
understand themselves and their
natural, physical and social
environments.
The methods used to obtain knowledge
may be classified into three broad
categories: everyday ways of knowing,
reasoning and the scientific method.
 EVERYDAY METHODS OF KNOWING
Authority
• One of the most common sources of knowledge is the authorities
in different spheres of knowledge.
• In many societies people rely on the wisdom of elders. They have
a better understanding of things. Statements and
pronouncements by experts are not challenged or questioned.
• Examples of such people are elderly people in rural areas, heads
of religious organizations and dictators.
• A major weakness of this method is that authorities in most cases
tend to make false statements in order to justify and preserve
their status.
 News Titles (Media)
• Kilifi Woman Shocks Residents After Giving Birth to a
Fish-Like Creature
• A Colombian Woman Gave Birth To A Baby With A
Twin Growing Inside Her
• Cow gives birth to calf with human features in South
Africa
The Mystical Method
In this method the correctness of the knowledge is
assumed to reside in the supernatural source.
The knowledge producers such as traditional medicine men and
diviners are an authority because they claim that they are able to
receive and decipher messages from ancestral spirits .

To convince people that they actually communicate with the

spirits of dead ancestors, they use rituals, ceremonies and
unusual language .

Like the first method, this approach is based on faith .

 Tenacity (Custom and Tradition)
• Many people tend to believe things because
people in their society regard them as the truth,
even when there are clearly conflicting facts.
• They even go to the extent of inferring “new”
knowledge from beliefs that may be false.
 Personal Experience
• People tend to believe that what is in their mind is
generally true.
• Similarly, people tend to believe that a social
encounter they have had is generally true.
• For example, a person who has been swindled by a
policeman believes that most policemen are
dishonest.
Limitations to using Everyday Methods of Knowing
as sources of Knowledge
• Lay people generally make no attempt to control any
external sources of influence when trying to explain the
cause of an event.
• There is no questioning or testing of information. People
tend to accept things simply at face value.
• The methods are individualistic and subjective.
Authorities can be biased due to natural inclination to
protect our self-esteem.
• They make knowledge static.
• Tradition makes it difficult to accept new knowledge
and mitigate the desire to question existing practices.
• Personal experience depends on what we have
observed and how we have interpreted it, but we do
and can make mistakes in our observations and
interpretations.
• Some authoritative statements are unverifiable.
REASONING/RATIONALISTIC METHOD
• Reasoning is the second category of methods used by
human beings to understand their environment. By
reasoning is usually meant the ability to expound
one’s thoughts logically and to make conclusions.
• Rationalists believe that knowledge is innate in human
beings and pure reason is sufficient to produce
verifiable knowledge.
• Two types of reasoning: deductive reasoning and
inductive reasoning.
 The Rational Method
• René Descartes proposed that valid conclusions about the
universe could be drawn through the use of pure reason, a
doctrine called rationalism.
• This proposal was quite revolutionary (at the time most
scholars of relied on the method of authority to answer
questions.
• Descartes’ method began with skepticism, a willingness to
doubt the truth of every belief.
• Descartes noted, as an example, that it was even possible
to doubt the existence of the universe.
• After establishing doubt, Descartes moved to the next
stage of his method: the search for “self-evident truths,”
statements that must be true because to assume otherwise
would contradict logic.
• Descartes reasoned that if the universe around him did not
really exist, then perhaps he himself also did not exist.
• It was immediately obvious to Descartes that this idea
contradicted logic—it was self-evidently true that if he did
not exist, he certainly could not be thinking about the
question of his own existence.
• And it was just as self-evidently true that he was indeed
thinking.
• These two self-evident truths can be used as assumptions from
which deductive logic will yield a firm conclusion:
• Assumption 1: Something that thinks must exist.
• Assumption 2: I am thinking.
• Conclusion: I exist.
• Consider the syllogism:
• First Premise: All men are mortal
• Second Premise: Herbert is a man
• Conclusion: Therefore, Herbert is _________.
• Using only his powers of reasoning, Descartes had identified two
statements whose truth logically cannot be doubted.
• Hence, “Cogito, ergo sum” (Latin for “I think, therefore I am”).
• Although the method satisfied Descartes, we must approach
“knowledge” acquired in this way with caution.
• The power of the rational method lies in logically deduced
conclusions from self-evident truths.
• Unfortunately, precious few self-evident truths can serve as
assumptions in a logical system. If one (or both) of the assumptions
used in the deduction process is incorrect, the logically deduced
conclusion will be invalid.
• Because of its shortcomings, the rational method is not used to
develop scientific explanations.
• However, it still plays an important role in science. The tentative
ideas that we form about the relationship between variables are
often deduced from earlier assumptions.
THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD
What is science?
• The word science is derived from the Latin noun
scientia, (meaning knowledge), and the verb soire,
(meaning to know).
• The scientific method of acquiring knowledge is a
systematic process of investigating a research problem
following some principles.
• According to McMillan (1992, p.3), the scientific
approach to research is objective, systematic and
testable and is relatively uninfluenced by personal
beliefs, opinions and feelings. Rather, science seeks to
obtain knowledge objectively by relying on verifiable
observation and experimentation.
• Kerlinger and Howard (2000, p. 14) defined scientific
research as systematic, controlled, empirical, amoral,
public, and critical investigation of natural
phenomena.
 Properties of Scientific Research
• The following are the main properties of scientific research:
• Scientific research is empirical. Only knowledge gained through
experience or the senses – touch, sight, hearing, smell or taste is
acceptable. The empirically oriented social scientist goes into the
social world and makes observations about how people live and
behave.
However, Nachmias (1992) cautioned against interpreting
empiricism in the narrow definition of the five senses – touch,
smell, hearing, listening and seeing. (p. 8).
• It is systematic and logical. Observations are done systematically
one at a time, starting with description, explanation and finally
prediction. In addition, the correct order must be followed.
• It is replicable. Since the observation is objective anyone carrying out a
study in the same circumstances should come up with the same findings.
• Research is self-correcting. It has in-built mechanisms to protect
investigators from error as far as is humanly possible. In addition
research procedures and results are open to public scrutiny by other
researchers.
• Scientific research is question-oriented. It is directed by a research
question or problem and several specific questions. These questions
might spring from observation of natural or social phenomena, a
practical concern or gaps in what is reported in previous research studies
and other scholarly literature.
• Scientific research is public. Because findings from scientific research
may be used to make decisions that affect people and society at large,
scientific research must be open to public scrutiny and examination and
criticism by other scholars.
• Scientific research is cyclical. It proceeds in stages starting
with the research problem, followed by research design,
measurement design, data collection, data analysis and
generalizations or tentative answers and starts all over again
by asking new questions for further research.
• Scientific research is self-critical. It critically examines its
strengths, limitations and weaknesses, and discovers and
reports its validity and reliability.
• Researchers strive to overcome their personal biases as
much as possible. They do this by clearly defining the
phenomena being studied and using research procedures to
study those phenomena that other scholars will agree are
accurate.
• Scientific research is objective. Empirical evidence is assumed to exist
outside of scientists themselves. However, in the usual sense of term
(to mean observation that is free from emotion, conjecture, or personal
bias), objectivity is rarely, if ever, possible (Singleton and Straits, 1999, p.
30)
• Quantitative researchers strive to make their findings generalizable to
the target population. Generalizability is achieved through the selection
of representative samples.
• One major goal of conducting scientific research is to accumulate
evidence over time that can be used to validate or disapprove
commonly held notions about social reality. For these reasons,
researchers attempt to design their studies in such a way that other
researchers can replicate their research findings. Unlike everyday
methods of knowing, the entire process of inquiry can be reproduced by
other researchers.
Differences between Scientific Research and
Everyday Methods of Knowing
• While a researcher using the scientific method systematically
collects and analyses data, the person using everyday
methods blindly accepts fanciful explanations of natural and
human phenomena.
• The researcher systematically and empirically tests theories
and hypotheses. The person who uses everyday methods
also tests his theories and hypothesis, but in a selective
fashion. He/she only uses evidence that is in harmony with
his/her hypothesis.
• The researcher normally controls extraneous
sources of evidence in a systematic manner. The
layman does not bother to control extraneous
variables.
• Researchers normally rule out metaphysical
explanations i.e. a proposition that cannot be
tested. E.g. some people are poor because of the
sins committed by their ancestors.
 Major Phases in the Scientific Method
• Identification of a problem.
• Formulation of hypothesis: After identifying the problem, the
scientist normally formulates a hypothesis.
• Deductive reasoning: During this stage, the scientist identifies a real
life situation that will allow him to test the hypothesis. The scientist
deduced the consequences of the hypothesis he formulated. During
this stage the scientist may discover that the problem he has
formulated cannot be solved with present tools. This can make him
modify his problem.
• Hypothesis testing: The fourth stage is the testing of the hypothesis
by collecting data and experimentation. On the basis of the data, the
hypothesis is rejected or not rejected.
 Role of Educational Research
• Educational Research gives an accurate account of the
characteristics of particular programmes in education.
• It identifies relevant and appropriate messages and contents
for different target groups.
• Identifies constraints to the implementation of an
educational programme.
• Can be used to determine actions and innovations that have
an impact on the target groups.
• Provides useful data for programme planning.
• Gives new knowledge on how specific educational
programmes are working.