Before going in detail of the above important paradigms of research, it is very necessary to have a look on the word “paradigm”. “A paradigm is a pattern, method or system on which a researcher thinks and precedes his/ her research”. According to Rossman & Rollis “paradigm is shared understanding of reality”. It’s a way of thinking and observing. Everyone has his / her own way of observing and interpreting.
Over the past three decades, a significant transformation has occurred in the paradigms used by natural and social sciences to produce knowledge for development. A research paradigm is defined by Guba and Lincoln (1995) as the basic beliefs and worldviews about the nature of reality, knowledge and values. Based on this definition, Guba and Lincoln (2005) reclassified earlier categorized paradigms into positivism, post positivism, critical theories, constructivism and participatory. The evolution of research paradigms is underpinned mainly by differences on ontology, epistemology and values. To the social scientist, these differences matter, because as Kanbur and Shaffer (2006) indicated, it has practical implication for conceptualizing research
The concept of Positivism is directly associated with the idea of objectivism. In this kind of philosophical approach, scientists give their viewpoint to evaluate social world with the help of objectivity in place of subjectivity (Cooper and Schindler 2006). According to this paradigm, researchers are interested to collect general information and data from a large social sample instead of focusing details of research. According to this position, researcher’s own beliefs have no value to influence the research study. The positivism philosophical approach is mainly related with the observations and experiments to collect numeric data (Easter-by-Smith et al 2006).
The two main paradigms that are used for describing these are using the objective, scientific-based positivist approach and the subjective, phenomological-based interpretivist approach. Since the positivist approach is grounded on a foundation of empirical testing, it looks largely at hypotheses and determines cause and effect relationships based on largely deductive logic as well as the validity and reliability of the research studies conducted. The interpretivist paradigm uses multiple perspectives of reality since this is based on a contextual interpretation of the issues being examined, where reality is a fluid construct and depends on who is being observed under a particular set of
According to Voce, A. (2004), a paradigm is a model on which research ideologies are built. The three main research paradigms are Positivism, Interpretive and Critical theory. The Interpretive paradigm was chosen as a philosophy informing this study. This paradigm was used because the current study aims to report interpretations of individuals not based on facts but rather based on their attitudes, beliefs, shared meaning and understanding of the phenomenon.
Further interpretive does not involve mathematical devices and will be fully concentrated towards the study objectives Positivism was adopted as a paradigm of the particular research. This research develops a model to examine about curriculum that links between industry and academia that paves the gap between the skills demanded
Firstly, I will talk about the Constructivism theory is which known for a long time extends across the centuries. However, according to Applefield, Huber & Moallem (2000) unlike other theories, the Constructivism theory view was that learning is inseparable from the developmental evolution of the relationship between subject and object. More than that, the theory based on observation and scientific study, their view was that each learner has his own way of understanding by builds information and knowledge of the world within the surrounding environment, society and experiencing things which live a significant impact in the construction of knowledge. Nevertheless, the learner in the Constructivism theory builds knowledge within individual mind
According to Kuhn, once scientists agree on a paradigm, the period of crisis science gradually closes off again and all the other paradigms are left behind. The new paradigm will explain the anomalies the old one did not, and new evidence will be elucidated in terms of the paradigm. Darwinism has more support and evidence today than it did during Darwin’s time, making Darwinism a more prominent paradigm over Intelligent
Constructivism argues that people acquire knowledge from the interaction between their ideas and experiences, based on observation and scientific study. Every human being goes through certain experiences and tries to learn and reflect on those experiences. When you encounter something you have never experienced before, you try to form an idea about what happened, in which you include previous experiences. It might be that you change your believes related to the new experience, but it is also possible to discard the new information, if it’s not relevant. Every one of us is constantly active in this process, and most of take decisions during this process based on previous experiences.
Furthermore, positivism is connected with naturalism, or the appropriateness of applying the natural sciences methods to the study of individuals and society (Blaikie, 1993). Consistent with this method, the same method or logic of explanation can be used despite the differences between the subject matter of the natural and social sciences (Popper, 1961). In contrast, interpretivism, also can be termed as social constructivism and phenomenological, sees reality as individual and manifold (Creswell, 1994). This paradigm is connected with the supposition that “reality is socially constructed” (Mertens, 2005, p. 12), that is, “Individuals develop subjective meanings of their experiences” (Creswell, 2009, p. 8). Hence, the researcher creates various and multiple meanings are created as he interacts with the world.