Educational Research in an Era of Paradigm Proliferation: What's a Journal Editor to Do

This editorial/essay functions on at least two levels. At the most obvious level, it is an attempt by the Educational Researcher's new Features Editor to figure out how to play the gatekeeper role at a time when there is little consensus in the field about what re-search is and what scholarly discourse should look like. Specific policies, procedures, and decision rules are articulated to guide the manuscript review process. The problems and issues con-fronting an editor of one of the field's major scholarly journals, however, can also be seen as representative of the types of prob-lems and issues confronting others who play other sorts of roles in the field. Consequently, many of the issues discussed (e.g., the significance of discourse style, the inadequacy of the qualita-tive/quantitative distinction, the problems with the Balkaniza-tion response) and the principles articulated (e.g., the principle of pragmatic incommensurability) can be transferred to other situ-ations beyond this particular case