Contents -- List of Illustrations -- Acknowledgements -- 1 Introduction -- Preamble -- Conspectus -- Part 1 Knowledge and Philosophy -- 2 Philosophical Issues in Educational Research -- Philosophy -- Epistemology -- Positivism -- Representational realism -- Textuality -- Postmodern critiques -- 3 Critical Approaches to Research -- Interpretivist/hermeneutic approaches -- Critical theory -- Action research -- 4 Forms of Reasoning -- Induction -- Deduction -- Retroduction -- Abduction -- Part 2 Strategies and Methods -- 5 Experiments and Quasi-Experiments -- Internal validity -- External validity -- One-off case study design -- Single-group experimental design -- The static group comparison -- The pre-test and post-test control group design -- Factorial design -- The problem of time -- 6 Survey and Correlational Designs -- Sampling -- Statistical Processes -- 'School Matters: The Junior Years' -- Causality -- 7 Qualitative Research Design, Case Study and Theory Building -- Logical inference -- Case study -- Quality/quantity -- Epistemology/ontology -- Communicative competence -- 8 Observation -- Participation -- Instrument structure -- Fitness for purpose -- 9 Interviews -- Interview structure -- Epistemological and ontological frameworks -- Power relations -- 10 Biographical and Autobiographical Methods -- Biography/autobiography -- Phenomenological/structural approaches -- The text -- Part 3 Themes and Issues -- 11 Ethics and Educational Research -- Covert research -- Open democratic research -- Open autocratic research -- 12 Evaluation and Research -- Differences -- Commonalities -- 13 Criteria for Evaluating Research -- Naturalistic inquiry -- Alternative criteria -- Examining research texts -- Internal and external criteria -- Types of judgement -- Evidence in judgement -- Parasitic criteria -- External criteria -- Concluding remarks.

14 Transgressive Research -- A postmodern approach -- Feminist approaches to research -- Radical research practices -- References -- Subject Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- Author Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- W -- Y.