The Future of Educational Research: Looking Through the Lenses of Metamodernism

Abstract In today’s complex and unsettling global landscape, it is crucial to seek, define, and legitimize educational perspectives and research that are underpinned by philosophical paradigms that enable us to respond to unforeseen challenges and effectively address the ever-growing complexity and multiplicity of reality. The evolving nature of education – in particular – underscores the urgent need for a paradigm shift. Education itself is in crisis, dominated by unsustainable approaches and narrowly conceived solutions. The main objectives of this study are to provide a summary of the metamodernist paradigm as introduced in previous works and to conceptualize the newly established interdisciplinary principles of metamodernism for the current and future educational research. The theoretical discussion in this paper adopts a constructivist-based integral eclecticism as its methodological framework. Following a concise introduction to metamodernism as an emerging cultural paradigm, the main body of the paper examines the ontological, epistemological, axiological, and methodological dimensions of research through a metamodernist lens. These four aspects of educational research are then contextualized within a broader interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach to educational sciences, emphasizing their relevance to social practice. The paper concludes with a brief discussion on the practical implications of the concepts and conclusions presented.