Post-positivism: an effective paradigm for social and educational research.

This paper attempts to justify the position of post-positivism as a rich paradigm for educational research, specifically pedagogical research. It aim to discuss how educational research has been dominated by constructivist or interpretivist approaches thus, ignored in the context of scientific investigations. In the context education, scientific methods such as the use of quantitative approaches are not very much emphasised and the focus is mostly on qualitative data. Therefore, it is discussed that how post-positivism could be helpful in addressing the problem of the lack of the more scientific research approach in education. The position of post-positivism and its connection to educational research has been clarified and critically discussed. The article further goes on enumerating the advantages of post-positivism in education research specifically focusing on its pluralistic and critical multiplistic aspects. For example, despite the fact that post-positivism uses various instrument to examine a phenomenon clearly and closely, it still believes that no universal truth is found and post-positivist research is only an attempt to explore a phenomenon as much as possible. Finally, the article also discusses how post-positivism is suggestive of mixed methods research and it is different from pragmatism as a paradigm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]