Conceptualizing the method and methodological comparison of the quantitative and qualitative approaches in teacher education research

Although the methodology is the foundation of teacher education research, and today the domain of this research has encountered methodological ambiguity, limited studies have been conducted on it in recent years. This shortcoming has led some studies to ignore the theoretical requirements of research and suffer from frequent conceptual fallacies. Therefore, it is necessary to seriously review and rethink the methodological concepts in the teacher education research. In fact, it is necessary to re-conceptualize the method in teacher education research using the fundamentals of this field. In this regard, the present study intends to take a comprehensive look at the developments in the domain of research and the emergence of the third methodological movement, to conceptualize the method versus research method and examine the relationship between the methodology and ontology, epistemology and axiology and then compare the quantitative and qualitative approaches in the teacher education research from a methodological point of view. To achieve these goals, using systematic documentary methods in a regular process, 28 related articles on the educational methodology were retrieved and analyzed, and the selected texts were reviewed and criticized. Findings indicated that the research methodology in the teacher education research has homogeneous philosophical foundations at the ontological, epistemological and axiological levels, which is necessary to be considered to shape the research methods as the operational research techniques.  Also, the qualitative and quantitative research at all the mentioned levels were investigated, and their differences and similarities were evaluated. Using these findings, the researchers in the domain of teacher education could avoid many of the methodological fallacies in the results of the contemporary research on the teacher education and achieve a deeper and more conceptual understanding of the research method.