Paradigmatic Choices for Educational Research

This paper offers an overview of three major educational research paradigms: positivist interpretivist and critical paradigms. These paradigms in turn shape the choice of methodology and methods. The paper explains the ontological and epistemological foundations of each paradigm. The paper can help those embarking on research journey to gather an insight into the three major research paradigms and choose a paradigm according to their personal propensity, aim of their research, or contextual limitations.