ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on mathematical modelling in educational research. The fact that, increasingly in this field, the predominance of quantitative methods is evident, may lead one to conclude that the quantitativ
e/ qualitative debate has been settled in favour of the former.18 To some extent, this is as a result of managerial pressures and the need to produce research findings which allow predictions to be made by managers, at both institutional and systemic levels. In addition, they reflect scientistic pressures to mirror the procedures and methods of the natural sciences: that predictive, determinate, rational and impersonal knowledge is possible in the social sciences and that our failure to solve many of the problems in society reflects a distortion of those methods rather than the application of a misguided epistemology and ontology. However, we need to examine whether in fact the world can be known in this way; whether, in other words, a distortion occurs when educationalists revert to mathematical modelling.
