characteristics are features or qualities belonging typically to a person, place, or thing and serving to identify them. Just like every other educational concept educational research has has its distinguishing features. According to Leedy, Educational research process has the following characteristics:
- Educational Research originates with an Educational question or problem: The educational mileu is filled with many unanswered questions and unresolved problems. Everywhere we turn, there are things that make us wonder or ask questions. And by asking questions, we strike the first spark igniting a chain reaction that terminates in the research process. An inquisitive mind is the beginning of research. He asserts that the hope of mitigating our ignorance lies in the question we ask and the information we gather in whose collective meaning we may find insight.
- Educational Research require a clear articulation of goal: a clear unambiguous statement of the problem is critical. This statement means that ambiguity must be avoided in research an d goals must be stated clearly and precisely.
- Educational Research are guided by specific research problems; question or hypothesis: A hypothesis is a logical supposition, a reasonable guess, an educated conjecture. It may direct your thinking to the possible source of information that will aid in resolving the research problem through the re solution of attendant sub-problems. Hypotheses are constant recurring features of everyday life. They present the natural working of the human mind. Each of these hypotheses provides a direction for exploration to locate the information that may resolve the problem of malfunction. It is noteworthy that hypotheses are never proved; they are either rejected or accepted. After the hypotheses come data. The data either support or f ail to support the hypotheses. Many of the greatest discoveries i n science have begun as hypotheses.
- Educational Research accepts certain critical assumption: In research, assumptions are equivalent to axioms in geometry i.e. self-evident truths, the sine qua non of research. The assumptions must be valid or else the research cannot proceed. For this reason, careful researchers in academic research – set forth a statement of the assumption as the bedrock upon which their study must rest. In research, therefore, it is important that others know what you assume with respect to your study. Note, that an assumption is a condition that is taken for granted, without which the result situation would be impossible. For the beginning researcher, you need to state your assumptions, for it is better to be over explicit than to take too much for granted.
- Educational Research requires the collection and interpretation of data in attempting to resolve the problem that initiated the research: Having isolated the problem, divided it into appropriate subproblems, posited reasonable questions or hypo theses and recognised the assumptions that are basic to the entire effort, the next step is to collect whatever data that seem appropriate and to organise them in meaningful ways so that they can be interpreted. Data, events, happenings and observations are of themselves only data, events and observations – nothing more.
