To my mind a likely reason for the high level of lurking is that this is a not a simple issue: I haven't offered you the option of debating the proposition: Qualitative = good; Quantitative = bad. In consequence the responses we have had, in particular from Lloyd Rieber [21 Mar 97], Tom Reeves [21 Mar 97], and Walter Wager [21 Mar 97.b] have raised even more daunting and complex questions.
This reinforces the distinction I sought to make between epistemology and methodology. In general, a quantitative (in Salomon's terms "analytic") approach implies that one can "manipulate and control situations so as to increase internal validity and isolate specific causal mechanisms and processes." This is the view which Clark and others have been so successful in refuting, and I don't recall that any of the contributors to the 1993 Educational Technology Research & Development debate admitted to this stance.
Alternatively, a qualitative, or systemic approach to learning research is based on the assumption that "each event, component, or action in the classroom has the potential of affecting the classroom as a whole." Which is why simplistic research projects, such as Walter Wager's example of testing a Psych class on learning from hypertext versus linear text, are not acceptable. Yet it seems they are common.
From the general silence on this question I must assume that either there is widespread agreement among the members of the Forum about the need to take a "systemic" approach to the question of learning with technology, or there are a lot of guilty consciences.
Walter Wager is "weary of case study dissertation research", Tom Reeves points to nine common signs of pseudoscientific research and notes that "some researchers seem drawn to qualitative inquiry because "they perceive it as easier (i.e., no statistics)" (also possibly as a way of avoiding accusations of pseudoscience?) and Lloyd Rieber sees researchers being obsessed with methodology and self-image at the expense of clarifying the question.
What's going on here? Who is allowing this poor research to flourish? Who is publishing it? Who is supervising it? Who is laying down the requirement that research is the only way to earn a university degree?
If you are 20 years old the world is full of simple, black and white issues. Maybe a 20 year old can be excused for thinking that it is acceptable to poll a first year Psych class, test one or two variables, calculate a few standard deviations and earn a Ph.D. But someone must be giving out these Ph.D.s. So maybe universities are under pressure to turn out increasing numbers of graduates (and therefore do more and more research) in order to justify themselves? Are we pursuing a "research imperative" for its own sake?
One aim of my paper is to point out that there are many styles of research apart from those currently sanctioned by the gatekeepers, all of which have their merits and their weaknesses. Given our apparent acceptance of the complexity of this subject, it is important that we address three questions:
(a) Is the research worth doing in the first place? (I suggest re-reading Tom Reeves' 1995 paper Questioning the Questions of Instructional Technology Research.)
(b) Is the methodology you plan to use likely to provide a level of insight and validity which will make your conclusions worth reading?
(c) Do you have the skills and background knowledge to analyze and interpret whatever results you obtain, whether they be statistical or ethnographic?