Unit 10: The things you CHOOSE to measure, the questions you choose to ask. Digging deeper into variables and questions

34 Paradigms — What’s in the box?

Here’s the thing about paradigms, they affect the way(s) that people see the world. That means that they affect your gut reaction when you are presented with “research”, from “harump! How can that possibly be true. Everybody knows that statistics lie!” to “15 people?? They talked to 15 people?? How can anyone possibly come to a legit conclusion talking to so few people??”

Paradigms also affect the way that scholars – and other people conducting research (at least those who are trained to conduct research…in contrast to those who are not trained and act like experts…not that that’s extraordinarily irritating to the people who trained for 10 years or anything) – see the world. Paradigms affect the questions researchers think are worth asking, the choices they make to answer those questions, and the way they write it up. Do you see where I’m headed here? Paradigms affect The things you CHOOSE to measure, the questions you choose to ask.[1] A paradigm isn’t anything you can necessarily see, hear, touch, taste, or smell…but it’s about as important to understanding research as air is to your lungs. Anyway, enough from me. Turning it over to your student textbook authors…

Learning Objectives

Further solidify understanding of paradigms (and ologies!)

Paradigms


PARADIGMS are like a …

  • …kid catching fireflies because they force nature into a box
  • …teacher because they transmit through education
  • …police officer because they enforce a particular ideology
**This Textbook Contribution was submitted by students who did not include their identity. DO YOU KNOW THESE STUDENTS? Tell ’em to message me and we’ll get their work properly allocated. (also, in case we haven’t mentioned it more than 600 times yet, please use the templates for submitting these assignments!)

Ologies (what we learned in the last unit) form paradigms. They influence the way we see research.

/ˈperəˌdīm/
See definitions in:
Philosophy
noun
noun: paradigm; plural noun: paradigms
  1. 1.
    a typical example or pattern of something; a model.

    “there is a new paradigm for public art in this country

    Similar:
    model
    pattern
    example
    standard
    prototype
    archetype
    ideal
    gauge
    criterion
    paragon
    exemplar
    • a worldview underlying the theories and methodology of a particular scientific subject.
      “the discovery of universal gravitation became the paradigm of successful science”
  2. 2.
    LINGUISTICS
    a set of linguistic items that form mutually exclusive choices in particular syntactic roles.
    “English determiners form a paradigm: we can say “a book” or “his book” but not “a his book.””
  3. 3.
    (in the traditional grammar of Latin, Greek, and other inflected languages) a table of all the inflected forms of a particular verb, noun, or adjective, serving as a model for other words of the same conjugation or declension.
Origin
late 15th century: via late Latin from Greek paradeigma, from paradeiknunai ‘show side by side’, from para- ‘beside’ + deiknunai ‘to show’.
  • Think of a paradigm as…
    • a way of seeing and acting on reality
    • fundamental concepts and aims of a field of study
    • accepted examples of practice
    • starting point for research traditions (same rules and standards)
    • determines how “evidence” is identified and interpreted in a given discipline
    • subject to change through further education or discoveries
  • Paradigms set the problem to be solved.
  • Scholars are trained to conduct research and “send it through the box!”
    • “The box” = Metatheoretical considerations/paradigms box demonstration

You’ll should be able to rock the following activity after watching both ology/paradigm videos (above and here) and reading the chapters.

The images from this video lecture are here, the powerpoint slides are here.


  1. Right? It's almost like I planned that or something.
definition