ABSTRACT
This chapter explores how to choose an overall research methodology and three educational research paradigms (positivist, interpretive and action research) and their ethical implications. It looks at the bigger picture of how research methodologies can help teacher, as a teacher-researcher to formalise their actions, reflections and evaluations. A research paradigm is about the worldview of the researcher. Researchers who use positivist methodology create new knowledge about education and educators. Replicability, which is a key criteria of good quality positivist research, is not possible in classroom/school-based research. A quantitative understanding of knowledge where knowledge is looked on as an object that can be measured is not the only explanation of knowledge in a classroom research setting. Many teachers may feel overwhelmed by assessment policies and bureaucratic directives coming from educational authorities. In much positivist educational research, the researcher is reporting on the work as an external observer who is expected to be objective.
