Discourse on research paradigms, methodologies

Bahir Dar University is currently operating under the guidance of vision 2025 in which it set a destiny of becoming one of the top ten premier research institutions in Africa by 2025. It is plain that the university would achieve its goal if it can create skilled individual researchers.

The Blue Nile Book Club of the Faculty of Social Sciences has recently conducted a cross-faculty and multi-disciplinary discourse on research paradigms and methodologies. The objective of the program was to create a dialogue among faculty staff on issues pertaining to research paradigms and methodologies.

Various philosophical paradigms focusing on the ontological and epistemological foundations of human understanding of the world with particular focus on their implications in social science research have been discussed.

Specific issues related to positivism, structuralism, empiricism, ethnography, postmodernism, social constructivism etc. were presented and lively discussions were made. The discourse was so Socratic that a lot of critical questions were raised from the audience and thorough discussions were made.

The philosophical paradigms were discussed with particular relation to research methods and methodologies. Both qualitative, quantitative and mixed research methods and methodologies were discussed in light of the grand research paradigms.

The program was unique in its kind since it is for the first time that a seminar with such a specific focus on research paradigms and methodologies has taken place in Bahir Dar University.

The Faculty of Social Sciences has a vision of continuously hosting such a methodology seminar on annual basis at university scale, inviting outstanding scholars with a rich knowledge and expertise in the area.

Faculty staff and students as well as instructors from other faculties have attended and enjoyed the seminar.Since such an intellectual venture is apparently at the heart of the true business of scholarship, it seems quite essential for other academic units of Bahir Dar University to draw on this necessary experience.