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Paper short abstract:

The "methodological turn" has gained significant attention in recent years. As a result, in this presentation, I will give a theoretical discussion of paradigms in methodology through a literature review.

Paper long abstract:

The world of the 21st century is undergoing rapid transformation, and people are becoming increasingly mobile. It is vital to question the ideas of language teaching and learning, culture, and coexistence and perceive a complex world from a new perspective. Hence, the "methodological turn" has gained significant attention in recent years due to the study methodology (Phakiti et al. 2018). The methodology is not the only approach but also includes the philosophical worldview of the study, namely paradigm. According to Guba (1990), a paradigm is " a basic set of beliefs that guides action", and we think that by reflecting on paradigms, researchers might explore novel ways to understand this complicated world.

In the field of Japanese language education, there are some discussions of methods, but they are not active discussions of methodologies. Hence, through a survey of the literature, I will provide a theoretical explanation of paradigms in technique in this session. I performed a survey of 532 articles published in major academic journals associated with Japanese language education regarding research methods. One of the questions about was the paradigm of research methods. As a consequence, paradigm descriptions were found in 24 out of a total of 532 articles (or around 4.5%). The terms were divided into "positivism" and "social constructionism. Based on the survey results, theoretical arguments will be made in this presentation about (1) the role of paradigms in research and (2) the connection between paradigms and language education research.

Guba. E. (1990). The Paradigm dialog: Newbury Park, Calif. Sage Publications.

Phakiti, A., DeCosta, P., Plonsky, L., & Starfield, S.（Eds.）（2018）. The Palgrave handbook of applied linguistics research methodology. London: Palgrave Macmillan.