Evidence and Argumentation in Educational Research

Researchers have generally stood in a ‘trust me’ relation, in between their readers and the information they analyze. (‘Information’ here can mean quantitative or qualitative data, textual information, multimedia resources, and so on – the bases of analysis or interpretation that underlie the knowledge claims made by the research itself.) While researchers might be quite explicit about their methods of data collection and analysis, the typical situation is that the only ‘raw’ data the reader sees are those samples or summaries the author chooses to use to illustrate particular claims – and this process is by definition selective. This selectivity even pertains to results or quotations cited from other research; we assume that they represent the other work accurately, but unless we are familiar with it ourselves we can never be sure. Such selectivity is not the only area in which the reader must implicitly trust the honesty and integrity of the researcher, but it is one of the most important because we must assume that the samples are representative and not simply chosen tendentiously to buttress specific conclusions.