Case Study:
According to Patton (1997), the investigation of a process of implementing of new policies suggests the following consequences. Firstly, the researcher sends a message which parts of a programme to explore and what needs to be changed and improved. Secondly, the researcher can collect data with the further purpose of improving the program. Thirdly, the researcher engages program participants in more critical ways, by providing them with opportunities to be more reflective about their practice. Patton (1997) suggests that program evaluation can be beneficial for organizational development by engaging people to develop evaluative thinking and providing the opportunity to understand and effectively use the programme.
This research was based on teacher perceptions of job satisfaction and making relevant recommendations for policy and practice which justifies conducting this study based on a pragmatic paradigm. Research can be identified as systematic scrutiny or inquiry with planned data collecting, analyzing and further interpretation in order to understand or control educational phenomena (Burns, 1997). Choices have to be made relating to every stage of research. However, the choice of paradigms influences the way the study is conducted and interpreted (Mackenzie and Knipe, 2006). According to Cohen, Manion and Morrison (1994), the term paradigm can be identified as philosophical intention for conducting the study. In fact, paradigms of inquiry can be acknowledged as ways and places from which to discern the phenomena.
Although there are plenty of theories about research paradigms, this particular study was based on a pragmatic paradigm. According to Creswell (2003), pragmatism implies that research is problem-centered and real–world practice oriented. Pragmatism implies that the researcher uses both qualitative and quantitative methods in order to gain a better understanding of a phenomenon. What is more, the researcher might employ tools from positivist and interpretivist paradigms, for example interviews and surveys (Mackenzie and Knipe, 2006).
In summary, pragmatists’ view of the world relates closely to reality, and denotes that reality might have different layers. Thus, there is the question of how phenomena which has various layers can be measured or observed. Mixed methods research can offer the use of quantitative methods to identify some facets of the phenomenon and qualitative methods for others (Feilzer, 2010). Consequently, it can be clearly seen that pragmatism as a research paradigm can maintain the use of mixed methods and initially it is directed by researcher’s aspiration to conduct inquiry which will be useful for society. Thus, I decided to conduct the study by applying a pragmatic paradigm that allowed me to use different forms of data collection such as questionnaires and interviews.
The pragmatic paradigm used in this study was linked to both qualitative and quantitative approaches. Mixed-methods research has become popular and it seems to be a new trend in research (Creshwell 2003, Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009). Many researchers argue that a qualitative method can complement a quantitative method in order to gain deep knowledge for the investigation (Creswell 2003, Teddlie and Tashakkori, 2009).
To sum up, in order to avoid insufficiency of one method I tried to enhance inquiry by adding a second method. Although combining methods was challenging for me as I was novice researcher I decided that using mixed methods would me allow triangulating data and get in-depth insight into inquiry. Moreover, due to the limitations of the sample 22 participants for questionnaire and 3 interviewees I tried to offset the weakness of the inquiry by drawing on the strengths of the quantitative and qualitative data.