This paper begins with the observation that "learning analytics is quite splintered for such a young community," pointing to the variety of conferences in the field as an example. This, it argues, is "due to deeper differences in how different researchers view the fundamental nature of science and indeed, reality." Hence, we have four distinctive perspectives on learning analytics (quoted):
- Reductionism - breaking down those phenomena into their constituent components and then analyzing the relationship between those components
- Dialectic - goal of understanding phenomena as wholes, or understanding systems as systems,
- Existentialism - phenomena should be understood as the participants themselves understand them
- Essentialism - that meaning is inherent in the universe, as it is in, for example, mathematics
This diversity of approaches is not inherently bad, however, the paper argues "there needs to be greater collaboration across researchers from different intellectual paradigms – a move towards inter-paradigmatic work." And the authors "call for a better understanding, within each of us, of how our philosophical stances impact our research and practice."
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