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The much exaggerated death of positivism

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Abstract

Approaches to research in the social sciences often embrace schema that are consistent with positivism, even though it is widely held that positivism is discredited and essentially dead. Accordingly, many of the methods used in present day scholarship are supported by the tenets of positivism, and are sources of hegemony. We exhort researchers to employ reflexive methods to identify the epistemologies, ontologies and axiologies that are salient in their scholarship and, when necessary, transform practices such that forms of oppression associated with crypto-positivism are identified and extinguished.

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Correspondence to Kenneth Tobin.

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Kincheloe, J.L., Tobin, K. The much exaggerated death of positivism. Cult Stud of Sci Educ 4, 513–528 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-009-9178-5

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