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reflection of a journal article

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Introduction ‘The origin of mixed methods lies in two major research paradigms’ (Terrell, 2012, 257), namely qualitative and quantitative paradigms. The former exhibits many features of natural science approach such as dependency on numerical forms of data, whereas the latter focuses on exploration of social in-depth interpretations in the form of narrative words (Bryman, 1988). However, there has been a debate on the compatibility within qualitative approach and quantitative approach adopted in one enquiry. Advocators for the “incompatibility thesis” (Robson, 2011:162) maintain that ‘the two paradigms cannot be combined since they do not study the same phenomena’ (Sale, Lohfeld & Brazil, 2002, p. 43). I am not in favor of the …show more content…

Murphy et al.’s adoption of mixed research design should be driven by their research questions and their research aims/purposes that are leading their research (Robson, 2011). Their research intends to explore responses to three questions, which are how children perceive science and its assessment, to what extent KS2 assessment affects children’s interest in science, and how children reflect on science SATs abolition (Murphy et al. 2013). Given Greener’s suggestion that open questions beginning with ‘how’ and ‘what’ incline to qualitative research with purpose for exploring deep understandings (Greener, 2012 p. 10), a qualitative research design alone could address Murphy et al.’s research questions. Nevertheless, it can be seen from the journal article that exploring in-depth understandings of how children perceive science and science assessment is, though, one of Murphy et al.’s intentions, the primary aim of the funded research is to enhance the generalization of its findings to a much larger population so as to cope with the nationwide lack of information on English and Welsh pupils’ view of testing and assessment (Murphy et al., 2013). Whilst quantitative approach is able to facilitate generalizable findings, it could undermine the depth of the understanding of the phenomena studied (Patton, 2002). Thereby

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