Synthesis and literature review of different mixed methods designs in pedagogical research in physical education

Abstract

Introduction:In recent years, hybrid methodologies have undergone considerable development. For sport pedagogy research, this mixed methods design is helpful because it moves beyond paradigm wars or conflicts between qualitative and quantitative research.However, mixed research in physical education remains rare, whereas the literature is much richer in the sports field.Purpose: This paper gives a synthesis of the use of hybrid methods in sport pedagogy research both in a literature review and in this special issue entitled "Mixed methods in intervention sciences in PSE: a heuristic enrichment or a weakening of frameworks?".Methods: For the literature review, we used the EBSCO database using SPORTDiscus. The keywords selected were "physical education" and "pedagogy" crossed with "multimethod" or "mixed methods" or 'multilevel analysis' or "multisource" or "multimodal" or "combined analysis". In total, 23 articles were found, and we retained 11 articles corresponding to the selection criteria. We added the six articles of this special issue. Thus, 17 articles were analyzed by identifying: the object of study, the type of data collected, the articulation of approaches, the articulation of methods, the articulation of data and the function of the MMR used. Findings:The results of this literature review show that the term "mixed methods" covers the largest number of studies. The articles selected are recent with most studies from 2018 onwards. The 17 articles selected present different objects of study (mainly focusing on student perspectives, intervention programs and physical activity). The articulation of approaches shows that theoretical frameworks are often based on a contextualized approach, mainly in the classroom. Most of the studies presented in this review do not work on the congruence of the theoretical frameworks (most often, the articulation is not specified). However, it is different in the special issue with precision about paradigm emphasis.Articulation of methods is mostly convergent, implementing both quantitative and qualitative methods in a single phase. The quantitative data analyzed are audio and/or visual recording, measure of physical activity (accelerometry), measures of performance or motor skills and surveys. The qualitative data are mainly from interviews (mostly semi-structured interviews in the literature review, and self-confrontation interviews in the special issue). Articulation of data priority is often given to qualitative data. The function of the mixed methods is mainly complementarity. Discussion and conclusion:This section highlights the strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities of MMR, questioning its supremacy as a third research paradigm. The conclusion indicates the limitations of this literature review and offers perspectives for future research, advising making the articulation more explicit especially in theoretical concerns.

‘The teacher could correct me without being there’: Adapting distance education approaches to promote physical activity during lockdown

“…This integrated methodology goes beyond the divisions between the quantitative and qualitative data analysis to retain benefits of different types of evidence, increasing the strength of studies and diminishing the weaknesses of studies from a single perspective (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004). This methodological approach was initially used by Camerino et al (2019) in a PE teaching context, and then more recently by Adé et al (2022), Girard et al (2022) and Vors and Bourcier (2022). Overall, mixed methods research has five key aims (Greene et al 1989): (a) triangulation of results from different methods, (b) investigating complementarity of findings between different methods, (c) developing use of findings from one method to help inform implementation of another method, (d) stimulating innovations that seek new perspectives of frameworks and (e) seeking to expand the breadth and range of an inquiry by using different methods for different components of the study.…”

“…We conducted a mixed methods investigation including a longitudinal follow-up of participants (Figure 1). Mixed methods have been defined as a ‘third methodological paradigm’ (Vors and Bourcier, 2022), which include a quantitative method to analyse numeric data and a qualitative method to analyse verbalised insights (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2017; Greene, 2007). This integrated methodology goes beyond the divisions between the quantitative and qualitative data analysis to retain benefits of different types of evidence, increasing the strength of studies and diminishing the weaknesses of studies from a single perspective (Johnson and Onwuegbuzie, 2004).…”

“…Following PA evolution and diligence, we performed a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) on participants who were exposed to PM, to identify clusters and representative paragons (Vors and Bourcier, 2022). Paragons corresponded to participants in the middle of each cluster, in the centre of the scatter plot.…”

“…In addition, the IPAQ has normally been used with a seven-day recall period, whereas in this study, the recall period was longer, drawing on memories from before the covid-19 lockdown. Three other limitations are acknowledged: (a) the limited number of enactive interviews conducted while pre-existing studies conduct on average five interviews per cluster (Vors and Bourcier, 2022), (b) the infeasibility of collecting data after 12 April 2020, as this was a school holiday period, and (c) the lack of information on the nature of educational monitoring, which other studies have also alluded to (Goodyear et al, 2021).…”

Measuring Anxiety Level of Learning English Language among Refugee Teenagers in Malaysia

“…Our main reason using mixed-method research because according to Poth & Munce (2020) To get deep insights into study phenomena not completely grasped by qualitative or quantitative methodologies. A mixed-methods methodology synergizes many data sources to explore complicated issues.. Education is one of the most prominent examples of a field in the social sciences research where MMR (mixed-method research) is unavoidable due to the practical context's demand for both generalizability and particularity (Åkerblad et al, 2021;Vors & Bourcier, 2022). The following is the research flow, as shown in Figure 1.…”