Retroductive Theorizing: A Contribution of Critical Realism to Mixed Methods Research

Mixed methods studies in social sciences are predominantly employed to explore broad, complex, and multifaceted issues and to evaluate policies and interventions. The integration of qualitative and quantitative methods in social sciences most often follows the Peircean pragmatic approach—abductive hypothesis formation followed by deductive and inductive testing/confirmation—with limited theorizing properties. This paper contributes to the field of mixed methods research in social sciences by explicating a two-way interaction process between mixed methods data and [social] theory in a pluralistic inferencing approach espoused by critical realism—retroductive theorizing. The paper further illustrates how through retroductive theorizing, critical realism offers a more epistemologically and ontologically grounded alternative for integrating qualitative and quantitative methods compared to pragmatism.

Comparing Pair and Self Dynamics of Scaffolding by Written Languaging in English as a Foreign Language Learning

This study investigated the extent to which dynamics of scaffolding (self vs. pair) would impact the language learners’ written languaging in terms of quantity, focus, conceptual processes of languaging, and language learning improvement. To this end, in a pretest-posttest research design, we assigned 60 English-as-a-Foreign-Language undergraduate students into two groups of pair languagers and self-languagers before they engaged in three-stage (translating, comparing to the model translation, revising) Persian-to-English translation tasks. Content analysis of written languaging episodes (WLs) indicated that while pair languagers produced more WLs than the self-languagers, both groups used WLs in a descending order from Stage 1 to 3 in translation tasks. Also, distribution of lexis-focused (L-WL) and grammar-focused (G-WL) episodes indicated despite the fact that both pair and self-languagers produced more L-WL than G-WL episodes, pair languagers produced a larger amount of L-WL episodes than self-languagers who had relatively a higher record in production of G-WL episodes. Moreover, the proportions of conceptual processes incorporated into WLs was found to be uneven and more in favor of self-assessment and hypothesis formation by both groups. Finally, statistical analysis of variance (ANOVA) reported the advantage of pair languagers in language learning improvement over self-languagers, despite their mutual progress. The paper was concluded with a number of pedagogical implications.

Unity through diversity in neuroscience: A journey into Scopus indexation

Neuroscience Research Notes (ISSN: 2576-828X) was established in 2018 by a group of neuroscientists out of frustration and struggle to pay off any article processing charges for open access publication. Ever since its establishment, the journal has been steered to cater to high quality, short research and technical reports in all aspects of the nervous system. The journal emphasises hypothesis formation, research methodology, data interpretation and conclusion derived from both positive and negative findings, orphaned studies or neglected observations of related research fields. To date, the journal has received 66 submissions, with a 27% rejection rate. The average number of days for an editor to reach the first decision to accept any manuscript for further peer-reviewing is 5-day. However, it takes about 80-98 days (3 months) from submitting an article to final publication or rejection. The timeline of publishing with Neuroscience Research Notes is considered competitive and reasonable in fulfilling authors’ interest in having their research published as soon as possible while safeguarding the sanctity of the scientific peer-reviewing process.

Control at Work: An Integrative, Lifespan-Informed Review

Control is one of the most ubiquitous and fundamental concepts to the study of psychology, including to theory, research, and practice related to aging and work. Indeed, control constructs exist in many different forms (e.g., self-efficacy, job autonomy, locus of control), and they have been extensively linked to performance and well-being with age. This paper provides a review of age- and work-relevant theory and research pertaining to a variety of “actual,” perceived, and enacted control constructs. The paper seeks to fulfill three goals. First, we review predominant control constructs with respect to theory and research, considering their distinguishing and overlapping features, relationships with age- and work-relevant concerns, and areas of consensus and ambiguity. Second, we synthesize and organize our review findings into a work-focused “lifespan control framework” to guide theoretical revision, hypothesis formation, and construct choice/comparisons, and we provide recommendations to researchers for using this framework. Third and finally, we generate a focused research agenda for impactful studies of age, control, and work. The concept of control has contributed to our knowledge of and practice with work-relevant processes, and this review aims to aid in integration, organization, and innovation to move the study of age, control, and work forward.

Automatic Thinking

This chapter introduces the role of “automatic thinking,” in hypothesis formation. Automatic thinking refers to the default operations of our mind that affect how we view and understand the world. These operations are behind cognitive biases and heuristic reasoning, inductive reasoning, and, most importantly, our tendency to engage in continual, conscious and unconscious, hypothesis generation. Unconscious hypotheses allow us to predict what will happen next and see why things “make sense.” They also account for our susceptibility to the “cognitive illusions,” that lead us astray. The chapter also questions whether “inductive reasoning” should count as a form of “reasoning” at all, since the ability to recognize and respond to regularities in the environment appears to be an adaptive trait shared by all animals and, perhaps, plants as well. This chapter argues that much of the criticism of the hypothesis has failed to take these automatic mental processes into account. The chapter suggests that a better sense of our automatic mental activity can lead to improvements in scientific thinking.

The Interpreter, the Scientist, and the Analyst

Stanley Fish and Bernhard Schlink agree that there can be no rule for finding a correct legal interpretation. Each, however, offers a negative rule to recognize incorrect interpretations. Schlink asserts that incorrect interpretations can be eliminated through the scientific method of falsification. Fish claims that any interpretation not concerned with the author’s state of mind must be rejected. Unfortunately, Fish’s insistence on authorial intent could be read as downplaying the role of the interpreter. Although interpretation is objective in that it involves the examination of an object, it is not merely objective. Communication is collaboration; interpretation needs an interpreter. It is intersubjective. But interpretation cannot be relegated entirely to the intersubjective “symbolic” order where language and law is located. The symbolic can never be disentangled from the orders of the “imaginary” and the “real” that are its logical boundaries. Interpretation has a subjective aspect because it requires the creative act of the interpreter’s imagination. Schlink recognizes that a subjective moment of hypothesis formation is essential to interpretation but tries to distinguish it from a subsequent objective or intersubjective testing process. There is no rule that can disprove our legal interpretations. This is why judging is always a moral act.

Green Brains & Ground Sloths: A Paleoecology-Based Exercise in Hypothesis Formation

In organismic biology, the formation of ecological and evolutionary hypotheses on the basis of observable morphologies is a central element of research, and by extension of teaching and learning. Often it is necessary to take account of complex combinations of factors, some of which may be far from obvious. In the work described here, hypothesis formation and testing was exercised and studied in a learner-centered and object-based manner using an anachronistic, seemingly “nonsensical” plant, Maclura pomifera (Moraceae), in which the link between structure and function only becomes clear when considering past faunistic environments. The element of the unexpected and the allure of the large animals is thought to add to epistemic curiosity and student motivation to engage in the study of plants.