>1)I've been using dialectics as a method and it was a powerful and quite
>comfortable means of analysis for me (Have I appropriated or internalized
>it?), however , recently I discovered limitations of dialectics as a method=
=2E
>Should we as researchers stay in the confines of the same method the theor=
y
>was built on in our analysis, theory development and practice or/and we can=
go
>beyond mono-methodological paradigm? Two years ago I would probably say th=
at
>we should have a unity of method, and apply the same method to analysis as
>the theory was constructed with, but now I am not quite sure, although
>powerful cultural constrains are holding me up as a researcher from time to
>time. I've just returned from Russia, where a group of Columdia University
>professors and doctoral students had a five-day seminar on the ideas of cro=
ss-
>cultural research, design in education, cultural historical psychology
>/qualitative research, etc. and this question puzzled me throughout our
>discussions.
=46irst of all, I would distinguish between methodology and method. By
methodology, I mean a coherent set of general principles and guidelines of
research associated with a certain philosophical orientation or theoretical
framework. A method, in contrast, is a specific technique or procedure of
research.
Dialectics is a philosophical orientation, or rather a family of
philosophical orientations, that has a very long history. Dialectics can be
turned into a methodology, but that is no easy task and there are different
attempts at it. For me, Ilyenkov's attempt of formulating a methodology of
ascending from the abstract to the concrete has been the most interesting.
Davydov has a reasonably accessible discussion of it in his 'Types of
Generalization in Instruction'. Good examples of putting this methodology
in practice are rare.
The methdology of ascending from the abstract to the concrete is general
enough to allow the use of and experimentation with a large variety of old
and new specific research methods. I'm less comfortable with the idea of
combining different methodologies. This is not an issue of ideological
purity. The issue is: If you combine more than one methodology, how do you
make explicit and how do you justify which set of principles you are using
at any given moment of your research? If you don't, you end up in the kind
of eclecticism which eliminates accountability from research.
Yrjo Engestrom