Running head: Comparing and Contrasting Major Philosophies

Comparing and Contrasting Positivist and Interpretivist Philosophies in Educational

Research

Yuvarajan Devandran

881209 – 08 -5045

PWA 180004

Lecturer : Dr. Irene

Running head: Comparing and Contrasting Major Philosophies

Abstract

This paper deciphered the contrasting characteristics between two major

philosophies in educational research, Positivism and Interpretivism. This paper

explored the history of each philosophies briefly and two distinctive underlying

assumptions which sets these two philosophies apart. Each assumption is backed by

results, methods utilised and analysis for both philosophies. Each philosophy is

being defined in a simplistic manner so that readers will be able to grasp the gist of

what each philosophy is all about. Comparing research merely by labels of

quantitative and qualitative researches does not do justice as they are quite shallow.

Instead, the underlying epistemological assumptions is a better way to contrast

between both philosophies.

Keyword: Comparing and contrasting, Interpretivism, Positivism, Paradigm

Running head: Comparing and Contrasting Major Philosophies

Introduction

Philosophy plays a critical role in our daily life. It is irrefutable to say any individual

live their life totally free and not being influenced by any one or more philosophies. It

is revered by some, and some even taken them as a guiding path to lead them to

achieve their life the best they can. According to Science and Philosophy (n.d.),

philosophy is a field that tries to comprehend the happenings of life as it is through

various lenses. It also tries to discover the fundamentals elements of life - the good,

the bad and the ugly. Interaction between human beings and nature are also being

scrutinised to generate a greater understanding about one’s presence on earth.

Philosophy is a product of human’s nature of eagerness to discover the unknown.

Therefore, philosophy is a constant evolving cycle of questioning, reflecting, criticism

and conclusions.

In educational research, there are various philosophies adapted by certain sects of

academicians. However, this paper emphasises more on Positivism and

Interpretivism philosophies. This paper dissects the elements of both philosophies,

how they differ and their effects on the process of framing the underlying theories

and their respective methodologies.

Running head: Comparing and Contrasting Major Philosophies

Positivist versus Interpretivist Philosophical Paradigm

Richard Pring in his book, Philosophy of Educational Research has mentioned that

by tradition, there was a known dual between two very contrasting extremes of

philosophies. Positivism is a “black-and-white” approach to view on the world, which

is based on lab-like, controlled setting to obtain the desired outcome. On the other

side, phenomenology or interpretivist which recognised individual experiences and

meanings constructed via social interactions and agreed on multiple realities. These

two philosophies are against each other and constant debates would arise between

the two partisans’ group of researchers. However, it is unfair to simplify the

contrasting elements of both philosophies as they do have something in common.

Educational research is both publicly accessible and privately privileged and

simultaneously neither of the both(Pring, 2006).

Positivism has its roots way back in the nineteenth century with Auguste Comte that

many agree on as the founding father of positivism. Positivism is a well-arranged,

observable, clear cut studies on concrete facts. They tend to be the testing grounds

of theories to increase the credibility on the guessing the future events based on the

theories (Myers, 2004). As mentioned earlier, in the laboratory-like setting, generic

assumptions are being put to test via the identification of variables (independent and

dependent) and how they are linked between each other. This normally involves the

scrutiny of gathered numerical data to support pre-determined deduced statements

as positivist strongly believed in observable data(Pring, 2006). If one cannot see it,

then they can omit the assumptions. Myers (2008) defined epistemology, which hails

from the Greek word episteme as the way one’s knowledge is being obtained. Thus,
Running head: Comparing and Contrasting Major Philosophies

rather than just simplifying contrasting between quantitative and qualitative research

methods, epistemology assumptions provides a more in-depth contradictions

between positivism and interpretivism.

Interpretivists are more interested in the invention of contextual meanings in the

interactions between researcher and the participants. Myers (2008) mentioned that

both the researchers and the research subjects need to function in a similar

language or at least within the aligned level of comprehension among both. This is

because interpretivism is more inclined to be socially evolving meanings of

experiences of the world. However, as mentioned earlier, any qualitative research is

not a definite member of an interpretivist research as a qualitative research can be

any one of the three underlying epistemologies namely positivist, interpretivist and

critical research.

According to Myers (2008), positivism tend to rely on experiences which can be

judged, scrutinised and free of theoretical explanation. The researchers have totally

zero influence on the recorded responses from the subject. The data obtained is a

litmus test for the proposed theories. For example ,in the research on relationship

between leadership style and school effectiveness, this research has 5 independent

variables ; supporting leader achievement, dictatorship leader characteristics,

participatory leader satisfaction, reward and punishment performance and

charismatic leader (Boonla & Treputtharat, 2014). None of these variables is being

influenced by the researchers, instead the researcher merely observed and gathered

the data from the questionnaire without tinkering with the data.

On the other hand, interpretivists tend to convert the data based on aligned

interpretations of the researcher and the subject and even the underlying facts are
Running head: Comparing and Contrasting Major Philosophies

modified based on the interpretation. (Myers, 2008). The researcher and participant

joined to construct meanings from their interactions. For an example, in the research

on the paternalist leadership style of organizational trust, semi-structured interview

was being used where the researcher prepared the interview questions combining

various forms of trust in an organizational level. Next, the findings were then

analysed by using content analysis which consist of coding of data, discovering

themes, arrangement of codes and themes, recognizing findings and commenting.

(Karasel, Altınay, Altınay, & Dagli, 2018) The information obtained from the interview

transcripts is being divided into lines and rows. Important keywords or points which

might answer the question posed by the research framing is being labelled and

grouped according to similar thematic groups. Thus, this clearly shows that

interpretivists have done some tinkering on the research findings but somehow

comes to a consensus with the respondents.

The second epistemological assumptions of positivism, according to Myers (2008) is

a theory deemed to be trustworthy one only after the hypotheses formed in the early

part of the research being scrutinised and eventually has the backing of the data. As

positivist has the utmost belief of physical, concrete, observable findings, it is crucial

to have the hypotheses pass the litmus test of data scrutiny. For an example, in the

research on teacher’s leadership style on a classroom level, the researcher

perceived the notion that leadership style and power bases of classroom teachers

influences the positive social climate of the classroom and students’ affective

performance. The researcher did the correlation measuring evaluation to put the

researcher’s presumptions to the test. The findings backed the researcher’s

presumption and answered all the research questions conclusively. The data

showed there was a strong correlation between teachers’ leadership style and power
Running head: Comparing and Contrasting Major Philosophies

bases on the social climate of the classroom and students’ emotional level.(Cheng,

1994)

For the interpretivists, however Myers (2008) a theory is deemed to be good if it

assists the researcher to comprehend the meanings and intention of the

respondents. As mentioned earlier, data drives the waypoint of the theory of an

interpretivist research. Wherever the data leads to, the thematic assumptions of the

data obtained will be utilised to answer the research questions formed by theoretical

framing of the research. For an example, in the research to understand the senior

teacher’s leadership style through their perceptions and contexts in formal schools,

the researchers used interviews to gather the perceptions of the teachers and

eventually devised five approaches namely, constructivism, hierarchical-individual

approach, hierarchical-collective approach, distributed-individual approach and

distributed-collective approach (Saini & Goswami, 2019). Initially, these were themes

obtained from the coding process before going through peer-checking process with

the respondents to get the alignment of the approaches. Thus, the data determined

the themes obtained from the research.

Conclusions

Positivist and interpretivist may have jostled against each other over the years.

However, both philosophies have their strength and weaknesses. Both philosophies

have their own distinctive nature of knowledge (epistemology), viewpoint on realities

of the world (ontology) and ways to gather new findings (methodology). Both have

ways to uphold their trustworthiness and validity of their findings. Both have their

own versions of “litmus tests”. It is intriguing to discover that one research issue may

have different comprehending facts and findings obtained through wholly distinctive
Running head: Comparing and Contrasting Major Philosophies

methodologies via contrasting research paradigms. Thus, it is impossible to point a

finger to state which philosophy is the outright better than the other.