Research words, figures, and tables are not the experiences or objects they represent. Nor are they long the offspring of the researcher. For immediately on release, they become creations also of the reader, differing from reader to reader, yet carrying common genetic threads. The researcher influences what the reader will create. In research as in all communication, all representations are, at least to a degree, misrepresentations.
Data can but imperfectly disclose their objects.
The appearance of precision in our indicators of teaching, learning, and schooling may be the researcher's curse. Most of the time they think it is their choice to follow one theory or another, one methodology or another, one epistemology or another. But what they choose to believe in, as evidence, is more determined than volitional, more intuitive than rational. The elusive history and crossdisciplinarity of constructivism and its relation to interpretivism have been handsomely sketched by Tom Schwandt, who pointed out that for some time specialists in whole language, science, and mathematics education have emphasized that each child is a constructor of knowledge. Similarly, the history of all research shows a great freedom for researchers to choose the variables and indicators and instruments by which they will investigate and represent education.