Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Munoz-Najar Galvez, Sebastian
• Heiberger, Raphael
• McFarland, Daniel

Titel

Paradigm Wars Revisited: A Cartography of Graduate Research in the Field of Education (1980–2010)

Ist Teil von

• American educational research journal, 2020-04, Vol.57 (2), p.612-652

Ort / Verlag

Los Angeles, CA: SAGE Publications

Erscheinungsjahr

2020

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

ERIC

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Education entails conflicting perspectives about its subject matter. In the late 1980s, the conflict developed into a war between interpretive and causal paradigms. Did the confrontation result in a balance between these warring sides? We use text analysis to identify research trends in 137,024 dissertation abstracts from 1980 to 2010 and relate these to students’ academic employment outcomes. Topics associated with the interpretive approach rose in popularity, while the outcomes-oriented paradigm declined. Academic employment remained stably associated with topics in the interpretive approach, but their effect is moderated by the prestige of the students’ institutions. The relation between topic popularity and employability provides insight into field change and how the benefits of cultural shifts fall along the lines of institutional power.