Foreword: Using Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory to frame quantitative, qualitative, and mixed research
Teddlie and Tashakkori (2010) identified the following nine important issues or controversies in contemporary mixed research: (a) conceptual stances; (b) the conceptual/methodological/ methods interface; (c) research question or research problem; (d) language; (e) design issues; (f analysis issues; (g) drawing inferences; (h) practical applications (e.g. pedagogy, collaboration, and other models, funding) and (i) cross disciplinary and cross cultural applications. According to Teddlie and Tashakkori, 'there are obvious overlaps across some of these areas' (p. 12) Indeed, we believe that these nine issues/controversies can be simplified by characterizing them as representing one or more of the following three elements: Philosophy (e.g. conceptual stances in mixed research; the conceptual/ methodological/methods interface in mixed research) policy (e.g. the language of mixed research) and practice (e.g. research question or problem; design issues in mixed research; analysis issues in mixed research; practical issues in the application of mixed research) By philosophy, we are referring to what Greene (2006, 2008) refer to as philosophical assumptions and stances, which are the core epistemological assumptions of the methodology, or what Greene (2008) refers to as mental models, which represent:the set of assumptions, understandings, predispositions, and values and beliefs with which all social inquirers approach their work. Mental models influence how we craftour work in terms of what we choose to study and how we observe and listen, what we see and hear, what we interpret as salient and important, and indeed what we learn from our empirical work. (p. 12)By policy, we are referring to what Greene (2006, 2008) labeled as sociopolitical commitments, which represents specification and justification of how the research is located in society. Finally, by practice, we mean both what Greene (2006, 2008) called inquiry logics, which situates the researcher in the investigation in a manner that the phenomenon of interest is observed, documented, and understood or explained in defensible ways; as well as what Greene (2006, 2008) referred to as guidelines for research practice, which provide specific techniques for research practice such as the sampling design (e.g. sampling scheme, sample size) research design, data collection, and data analysis.This mapping of Teddlie and Tashakkori's (2010) nine important issues or controversies in contemporary mixed research onto the three elements of philosophy, policy, and practice should help to explain our choice of title for this special issue, namely, Mixed Methods Research: Philosophy, Policy, and Practice in Education. Indeed, all three elements are represented by two or more of the seven special issue articles. Specifically, in this special issue, two of the articles represent philosophy, two articles represent policy, and three articles represent practice. With respect to philosophy, the two articles are those by Jean Luc Patry and by Thomas W. Christ. In his thought provoking article entitled, 'Beyond multiple methods: critical multiplism on all levels' Jean Luc Patry discusses the evolution of the concept of critical multiplism, which provided a justification for the use of multiple research approaches and to which mixed research belongs. Jean Luc Patry identifies five levels of research related statements (i.e. theory of science, object theory, methods, data analysis, and research ethics) and then applied critical multiplism to each level. Finally, Jean Luc Patry illustrates that the theory of situation specificity (i.e. different behavior of the same person in different situations) can serve as a theoretical lens for critical multiplism and that it can help address several problems that come to the fore in research. So, as can be seen, Jean Luc Patry's article clearly represents the area of philosophy.Thomas W. Christ's article entitled, 'Paradigm considerations and mixed methods in social science research' is the second article that represents the area of philosophy.