Based on their knowledge claim, positivists adopted quantitative method to state reality in the world whereas constructivists espouse qualitative method to construct the meaning of the phenomena under investigation. The positivist believes that the knowledge is universal and absolute whereas the later believe that there may be more than a fixed knowledge and it is fallible in the universe by non-positivism thought. Based on their knowledge claim they are constructivists, positivists and pragmatists respectively. In this context, Denzin and Lincoln, Geven, Tashakkori & Teddlie, Bryman, Ritchie and Lewis and Klenke state that there are three communities of researchers in the educational field: qualitative oriented methodologists, quantitative oriented methodologists and mixed methodologists. This confusing state has been created sometimes because of conflicting situations in paradigm. They often find difficulties to choose possible alternative methods to carry out their research work. The Educational researchers are still in dilemma to choose a particular methodological stand point to approach a research problem. This article is expected to be useful to novice researchers who are in quandary to adopt explanatory sequential mixed method as a research method and it also creates a roadmap in educational research indicating methodological possibilities for new knowledge claim. This article highlights on the growing interest of educational researchers on sequential mixed method design in order to collect and analyze data for legitimize knowledge claim. In this connection, this article aims at explaining the holistic ideas of mixed method design focusing particularly on philosophical premises, generating research questions, data collection and analysis process, potential ethical issues, quality of inference and teaching mixed methodology. In this confounding situation, this article guides them to fuse both qualitative and quantitative stand points to explore reality from another perspective which is known as pragmatic paradigm. Many novice educational researchers are in dilemma to adopt research design in order to explore reality through their research endeavor because of a tag of war on ontological epistemological and axiological perspectives among qualitative and quantitative researchers. Educational fraternity is moving towards research based practices to improve educational standards.

Sequential qualitative research design