Since many of the concerns motivating research on bilingual education are inherently those of a conflict theory approach, it is not surprising to find increasing dissatisfaction with the traditional quantificational mode of research, as contrasted with the qualitative mode. There is likely to be a close link between research questions, method of investigation, and the researcher's discipline. In the literature of bilingual education, there is a confusion between methodology and the researcher's perspective, and one is argued in terms of the other. Differences in ways of defining problems, often based on political and moral values, become covertly discussed in terms of research methodology. The joint application of ethnographic and quantitative approaches means that the research can benefit from the advantages of each. Quantitative studies gain from the element of description, and ethnographic studies gain from quantitative concerns for reliability and validity. The next decade will probably see considerable advances in research techniques stemming from the merging of qualitative and quantitative methods. (MSE)