A Diagnosis of Tenets of the Research Process: What is it to Know Anything?

Abstract

This paper explores the tenets of the research process, that is, the processes involved in gaining new knowledge on a problematic phenomenon. The paper examines philosophical standpoints adopted by researchers and where such standpoints might be located in the knowledge sphere. For the reader to get a better understanding of issues related to knowledge, a comparison between a priori and a posteriori knowledge is made as well as discussions on the sub-disciplines of the philosophy of education, namely epistemology, ontology and logic. The place of these sub-disciplines of education in knowledge creation cannot be overemphasised and hence their understanding is paramount.The authors argue that researchers are conformists who follow established systematic ways of doing research. Also, doing research is viewed as a human action and deciding on a particular research approach derives from the nature of the social phenomena to be explored as well as what the researcher thinks will work in the particular situation s/he finds her/himself in.

Keywords: research process, knowledge, epistemology, philosophical assumptions, paradigms, feminism.