Summary of Article “A review of advantages and disadvantages of three paradigms: positivism,

interpretivism and critical inquiry”

Main aim of this research paper is to shed lights on the advantages and disadvantages of three
foundation of research i.e. positivism, interpretivism and critical inquiry. This paper highlights the fast
changing trends as globalization, digitalization and diversification of learning and teaching demands
have challenged our stereotype believes about the learners.

The positivist paradigm mainly focuses on the idea that we can best gain an understanding of human
behaviour through observation and reasoning. Positivist researchers see themselves as outsiders looking
‘in’ on research. This paradigm explains true knowledge is highly based on experience of senses and
researchers can obtain result by observation and experiment. Research findings of these positivist
researchers have high quality standard of validity and reliability and can be generalized to the large scale
of population.

Few advantage of this positivist paradigm are:

 Result of this positivist research allow replicating for different groups of population in social
context.
 Findings are more reliable and support researchers to make scientific assumptions
 High validity of research results

Limitations of this paradigm:

 Impossible to measure phenomena related to intention, attitudes, thoughts of human – it

causes constraints in further exploring
 Individual’s understanding and interpretations are neglected
 Inaccuracy of scientific data collected - as respondents may choose random answers rather than
authentic response

Interpretive researchers see themselves “within the circle”, interpreting the world around them. This
paradigm believes human interprets their world and then acts based on such interpretation.
Interpretivists adapts a relativist ontology in which a single phenomenon may have multiple
interpretations rather than a single truth. Here researchers tend to gain deeper understanding of the
phenomenon.

Advantages of this paradigm:

 In this paradigm, researchers deeply understand the objects, human or events in social context.
 Allows researchers to investigate and prompt things that cannot be observed normally or at a
glance.
 Valuable data collected will provide researchers with better insight for further action later.

Disadvantages:

 It tends to leave out gap in verifying validity and usefulness of the research outcomes
  Findings are subjective rather than objective – research outcomes are highly influenced by
researcher’s own interpretations.
 It lacks the addressing the political and ideological impact on knowledge and social reality.

Critical inquiry, also known as transformative paradigm, is based on relativism. Such researchers adopt
the ethical, moral, political standard to judge the situation and do their research considering social,
economic, political and cultural context.

Advantages of this paradigm:

 It provides the global vision of contemporary societies and cutting edge themes for social
theories
 This paradigm helps solving gross power imbalance in society

Some limitations are:

 The fact that teacher’s role are restricted to their schools implicitly challenges the actionable
role of this paradigm.
 It is not easy to empower people and achieve equality in society – it takes time for reflection in
reality.

This paper concludes by stating that an interrelated application of these paradigms in research studies in
today context is necessary to ensure the best quality of these studies in delivering its notion of validity,
reliability, relevancy and oriented action.