Reimagining how the Critical Realist Ways of Methodological Triangulation Might Allow for Resolving Paradigm In/Commensurability in Research Methodologies

Abstract

For a long time research methodology scholars have tended to adopt the diverse and non-convergent positions when it comes to the possibility of the paradigm in/commensurability. However, not much is well researched and thus evidenced in practice, about the potential ways of addressing the binaries. This paper will report on the recently completed project where the reviewers seemed to take contrasting positions on the particular case of research methods. While in practice, the research could have been declared as anchored on mixed methods and the power of methodological triangulation, it seemed that the positionality of the reviewers conditioned the ways they would assess the final research report and thus make them differ in ways that would call for the external assessor/adjudicator beyond the review stage. The case, as it were, seemed to pose risk to the project itself. This would be the case of a raw deal for the project and from the reviewers comments, which indicated their limited understanding about the philosophical or social basis for one's work. Based on this experience, the paper then suggests how engaging research as the idea of being/ontology and becoming/epistemology might allow for the potential resolution points about research especially from the perspective of educational management and development fields of study and of practice.