Philosophical Foundations

• Crotty, M. (1998). Introduction: the research process (Chapter 1) and Positivism: the march of science (Chapter 2). In The foundations of social science research: Meaning and perspective in the research process. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
• Grbich, C. (2007). Qualitative data analysis: An introduction. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 1/2
• Willis, J.W.(2007). World views, paradigms and the practice of social science research (Chapter 1). In Foundations of Qualitative Research: Interpretive and Critical Approaches (pp. 1-26). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Pretty standard introduction(s) to the flow from ontology/epistemology to theory, methodology and methods. I'm not sure if the quantity was helpful...I'm thinking you should find one that resonates rather than take them all in. My $0.02.

I personally find it helpful to see the flow from epistemology to praxis, and not research praxis, the REAL praxis...we are educators, after all. Oddly enough, it sometimes helps me to better understand the research orientations. This comes from page 54 of Reiser and Dempsey's Trends and Issues in Instructional Technology (2007):

Now, Grbich talks about how "some design types occur in more than one tradition, while combinations of design approaches and traditions of inquiry can occur in the same study." This sounds a lot like what I've heard from a prominent ethnographer...the idea that methods are like spotlights trained on a problem...more spotlights are always better. And yet, methods seem to be the most "turfish" things...discursive psychology would want nothing to do with phenomenology, phenomenologists might cringe at critical methodologies. So, someone has some 'splainin' to do.....