RESEARCH DRAFT

Critically analyze two academic, empirical articles from the perspectives of research paradigms, research tools and ethics

[Writer's initials]

[Dated]

Critically Analyze Two Academic, Empirical Articles From the Perspectives of Research Paradigms, Research Tools and Ethics.

Article 1: Thomas, S. & Vanderhaar, J. (2008) 'Negotiating Resistance to Multiculturalism in a Teacher Education Curriculum: A Case Study', The Teacher Educator, Vol. 43 (3), pp. 173-197.

Article 2: Martin, S. (2010) 'Predicting Intercultural Competence in Educational Settings: The Validity, Reliability and Utility of Two Instruments', Evaluation and Research in Education, Vol.23 (4), pp. 233-254.

Introduction

The aim of the study in the first article is to examine 'a teacher education programme' embedded within a framework of social justice and to introduce and instil multicultural education into the curriculum. A three year, undergraduate programme is designed by two teacher educators, and in order to train mostly 'White candidates' to teach in urban schools. This case study is centred on the essential question that 'how should teachers be prepared?' and it contains qualitative research analysis. Thomas and Vanderhaar hypothesize that the candidates' point of view, responses, and performance are not necessarily associated with the planned framework, which creates challenges to maintain a purposeful focus on multiculturalism. Thus, in this designed programme multicultural education seems to be at the heart of the teachers' preparation and researchers are interested in examining reactions of the candidates to the multicultural teacher education.

In the second article, Martin's aim is to determine the possible of individuals to perform in multicultural educational contexts. His study contains quantitative research i.e. methods have been shown to analyze the educational research quantitatively through various quantitative analysis tools. The tools, which are used in this study, are Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (MPQ) and the Self-Efficacy Questionnaire (SEQ). Therefore, in the course of this quantitative study, Martin focuses on comparing these tools in order to predict and measure intercultural competence among individuals who are selected from international students and faculty members at an international school. Moreover, reliability, utility and validity of these tools are also addressed in this study, and investigation of the association between multicultural competence and individual difference variables seem to be the chief target of the research.

Research Paradigms

The nature of research in the first study is qualitative case study. According to Thomas and Vanderhaar, this type of methodology best suited to their study as they aim at analyzing a degree to, which multicultural concepts are reinforced throughout the teacher education curriculum and to provide an account of participants' experiences as well as their perceptions of contexts and events in, which they actively took part. Thus, as the researchers state, case study approach within interpretive paradigm was most suitable for their work as they tend to understand the participants' experiences within a limited system and critically describe 'what happened and why' (Newby, 2010). The theoretical perspective used in this study is associated with interpretivism, which maintains that subjects continuously reconstruct their own meanings of the 'social lifeworld' by their different experiences, perceptions and consciousness. Within this paradigm, then an important task of researchers ...