Reshaping Graduate Preparation in Educational Research Methods: One School’s Experience1

Questions about the proper preparation in research methodologies of doctoral students in education are again on the front burner, fed by deepening skepticism about the value of educational research as well as a revived “paradigms war ” and broad criticism of the state of graduate education. Faculty struggle to decide whether or not to re-quire all doctoral students to study both quantitative and qualitative research methods, regardless of students ’ diverse talents, interests, and career aspirations. Should students be required to “appreciate” both methodologies or to be able to use both? How should research methodologies be taught, and what proportion of doctoral study should they occupy? This article describes the processes and cir-cumstances in which the faculty in a school of education at a research university grappled with these questions and, in time, significantly re-designed its doctoral curriculum. Although the faculty’s experience is necessarily particular, their engagement in practical reasoning, local knowledge, and local politics may, as an instance of curriculum deliberation, inform reflections on graduate preparation in other schools of education. The contemporary ferment in the academy over disciplinary boundaries, methods of inquiry, the purposes of scholarship, and the preparation of doctoral students is only too familiar in schools of education. Educational studies has always been a borrowing field (Apple, 1979; Lagemann, 2000) and, especially since the late sixties, it has experienced the zest and tumult of multidiscipli-narity, as well as diverse and ever more pointed demands from university, school, and public constituents. Contention about research methodologies has been central to the tumult, and a revived “paradigms war”(Gage, 1989) is again at center stage.2 It is spurred by three cross-cutting develop-ments. First is the continuing growth of interest in qualitative re-search, along with an increasingly trenchant critique of tradi