Reason & Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research

Designed for novice as well as more experienced researchers embarking on a thesis or dissertation, as well as those advising them, this book presents conceptual frameworks as a mechanism for aligning literature review, research design, and methodology. Defined as an argument about why the topic of a study matters, and why the methods proposed to study it are appropriate and rigorous, the book explores the conceptual framework as both a process and a framework that helps to direct and ground researchers as they work through common research challenges.

Sharon M. Ravitch is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. She engages in numerous applied research projects in India, serving as a visiting scholar at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) in Mumbai and working as a co-researcher and key resource expert in policy advocacy, professional development, and community-based participatory research related to corporate social responsibility through TISS’s corporate social responsibility hub. She is involved in the design and implementation of assessment and evaluation of statewide performance through mixed-methods research in the Ministry of Human Resource Development’s major policy initiative, Rashtriya Uchchatar Shiksha Abhiyan (RUSA), a countrywide reform initiative aimed to resurrect India’s state public university system. Ravitch is also an expert adviser at the Center for Academic Leadership and Education Management at TISS. The center provides professional development and policy advocacy support to school education leaders across India. Ravitch works in the center’s capacity-building program to collaboratively develop case studies and technology-innovation frameworks for the higher education and K–12 sectors using a participatory approach. She received the prestigious GIAN Scholar Award from the government of India for 2016–2017 and the RUSA Scholar Award for 2017–2018. Ravitch also received a Fulbright Fellowship to engage in research and applied development work in India from 2017 to 2019.

Ravitch has published five books: Applied Research for Sustainable Change: A Guide for Education Leaders (with Nicole Carl, 2019); Qualitative Research: Bridging the Conceptual, Theoretical, and Methodological (2nd ed., with Nicole Carl, 2020); Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research (2012; 2nd ed., with Matthew Riggan, 2016); School Counseling Principles: Diversity and Multiculturalism (2006); and Matters of Interpretation: Reciprocal Transformation in Therapeutic and Developmental Relationships With Youth (with Michael Nakkula, 1998).