A Critique of Quantitative Methodologies to yield Critical Quantitative Methods in Engineering Education Research (EER)

Abstract

CONTEXT A critical examination of quantitative research methods has been ongoing. Feminist and critical theorists have long problematized quantitative methods for their alleged 'view from nowhere' that offer neutral insights to the questions of inquiry (Haraway, 1988; Nagel, 1989). However, scholars have shown that these seemingly reproducible research methods have negative implications because they do not always consider the researcher assumptions or decisions that go into their design (Zuberi & Bonilla-Silva, 2008; Walter & Andersen, 2016). PURPOSE We position this paper as a bridge between the quantitative methods that are prized for their ability to offer scalability, order, and comparison with the critical methods that emphasize power relations and describe the historical and institutional context. We seek to examine the assumptions and decisions embedded within quantitative research methods by drawing on the analytics of power and knowledge. APPROACH We conducted a qualitative content analysis of a purposeful sample of recent engineering education research articles. Our review consists of recently published quantitative research articles from the Journal of Engineering Education (JEE), Australian Journal of Engineering Education (AJEE), conference papers from ASEE, as well as articles from Race Ethnicity and Education. This is not an exhaustive review of researcher decision-making in quantitative research but allows us to examine the primary modes of decision-making through a lens of power and knowledge relations. ACTUAL OUTCOMES This review results in a synthesis of the considerations that engineering education researchers make when conducting quantitative research. Our focus is not necessarily on reporting standards for specific methods like cluster analysis or regression. Instead, the anticipated outcome is a set of themes regarding how engineering education research can integrate criticality into the quantitative perspective. We, like others in engineering education, are cautious of research methods that lack transparency. These approaches reduce heterogeneous populations of engineering students and faculty to seemingly insular characteristics for the purpose of offering generalizable claims. Through this work we do not seek to promote qualitative research methods over quantitative methods but work to recontextualize researcher decisions through an examination of power in the production of knowledge. CONCLUSIONS Ultimately, research is a human endeavour and as such is entwined with complexities of power and knowledge relations. Through an analysis of decision-making in the quantitative research design process, we develop a practice of critical examination as researchers to make inferences about populations who are different from ourselves.