HAMMERS AND SAWS FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH

This article examines different conceptions of causation and their implications for understanding educational phenomena and conducting educational research. Specifically, I discuss four research designs for pursuing questions about causation in education. Two of these research designs take a variance approach to causation (that is, they attempt to show correlations between earlier events and subsequent ones), while the other two take a process approach (that is, they attempt to show a demonstrable sequence of events by which one variable flows into or leads to another). The point of the discussion is to illustrate, first, their respective strengths and, second, their necessary interdependence. Ultimately, I argue that just as both hammers and saws are needed to build a good house, both variance and process approaches are needed to build a good understanding of causation in education.