实证主义,后实证主义,后现代主义所有资料(美国研究生吐血整理).doc

JRMC 8000 Joyce HONG  PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 11 mid-term exam for JRMC 8000 Fall 2012 Based on the readings in your course pack, text book and class discussions, using your own words describe the major differences between these theoretical paradigms: post-positivism, critical theory, constructivism and post-modernism. Opinions on Reality The reality is controlled and predicted by human beings and reality is never perfect but will be consolidated by falsification. The critical theory concerns that the reality is contextual, and the aim of the theory is to emancipation, to break the established facts and prove they are not true, then people find out the reality when they become more sophisticated and informed. It denied the post-positivism for which ignored the human beings’ participation to the construction of the world, instead, it concerns that reality is created by human beings and is inevitably being subjective, relative. . Constructivism concerns that the reality is what we constructed based on our multiple experiences, and so all the voices are equal and there is no absolute reality. Constructivism hold the opinion of relativism, which means that reality is always changing as constructors become more informed and sophisticated. The postmodernism concerns that realities are what we interpret the world based on our own experience. There is no singular truth value and people present multiple truths or realities by just post voice and observation. Epistemology For the post-positivism, the investigator must be objective and value-free, so that they can see “how things really are”. The values of investigator influenced the investigated object and hence, rather than value free, the critical theory is value-mediate.(course packet,page110) the constructivism is similar to critical theory, the investigators and respondents are interactive, and the “findings” are created when different realities come to each other and the investigators began to introspect their ow