In this paper we outline a case for including realism as an approach for carrying out research in education. Realism is often missing or under-represented in methodology text books which tend to misrepresent positivism and over-claim the epistemic authority possible for interpretivism. While interpretivism is arguably the dominant research approach in education, we argue it has limitations in regards to producing knowledge generalisable beyond specific research contexts. We suggest that realism has much to offer researchers and advocate for greater recognition of its usefulness in social science research. To this end, we describe the realist approach employed by one of the authors in her research to provide an example of how abstract ideas may look in practice.