The Importance Of Pragmatism In Research

Since I am interested in understanding particular events and situations of English language learners within the contexts of American education systems, and the meaning ELLs have constructed and brought to the social world, I made my first decision on choosing a qualitative research design. I also like the way that as a qualitative researcher, I can be the primary instrument of data collection and analysis. Moreover, qualitative research also attracts me in that it examines the nature of a particular setting in a particular moment or time period so that it does not necessarily have to predict the occurrences or situations in the future. In addition, it is the nature of qualitative research that interprets meanings from natural occurrences in …show more content…
The value of using pragmatic method in research is to look at the practical consequences of a concept, a method or perspective before making decisions to employ it (Dillon, O’Brien & Heilman, 2004). The important reason of adopting pragmatism is to use existing ideas that lead to new ideas or good actions, which is more meaningful under the literacy reform agenda in the 21st century because the purpose of literacy research is to put the theoretical findings into educational practices. The adoption of pragmatism may change the situation of literacy research in that the research questions could be selected for the purpose of solving practical problems of teaching reading and …show more content…
16). According to Merriam (2009), “a case study is an in-depth description and analysis of a bounded system” (p. 40). Also, Miles and Huberman (1994) perceive case study as “a phenomenon of some sort occurring in a bounded context” (p. 25). They visually present it as a circle with a heart in the center. Obviously, the heart is the center of the study, and the circle “defines the edge of the case: what will not be studied” (p. 25). Given this, my study which intends to investigate the impact of multimodal storytelling on the writing of ELLs from a university IEP in a multimodal composing workshop in a full semester confines the boundary of the study in that the participants, the location, and the time spent on conducting the research are all bounded. My case is defined as the multimodal composing workshop where three ELL participants meet, discuss, collaborate and create their multimodal stories. Conversations and interactions taking place within the workshop and the complete multimodal products are the focus of my