Response to Elliot W. Eisner’s “The Promise and Perils of Alternative Forms of Data Representation”

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9735367
AutoresThomas R Knapp (The Ohio State University, autor correspondente)
Ano1999
Volume28
Fascículo1
Páginas18-19
Data de publicação1999-01-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoEducational Researcher (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0013-189X • E-ISSN: 1935-102X
EditoraAmerican Educational Research Association (AERA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.3102/0013189x028001018
OpenAlexW2060185397
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas6
Referências citadas18

I n the August-September 1997 issue of Educational Researcher, there appeared an article by Elliot W. Eisner titled Promise and Perils of Alternative Forms of Data Representation. That article was based on an address that he had given the previous year, and he chose to the spoken (p. 4) in the article by using the first person throughout. I too would like to retain that same quality in my response. Elliot and I are former colleagues, and I offer the following in the spirit of friendly criticism. There are several arguments in his article with which I .. heartily agree, especially his advocacy of a broadened base / for what sorts of things should count as data, but there are a few others to which I take exception. In this response, I will concentrate on the latter. The first point of contention concerns Elliot's claim that Lee Cronbach raised fundamental questions about timehonored assumptions in doing (Eisner, 1997, p. 4) in his 1975 article Beyond the Two Disciplines of Scientific Psychology. The implication is that Cronbach endorsed more qualitative approaches to the advancement of knowledge. My reading of that article is different. Although he (Cronbach) may have raised fundamental questions, he did so in the context of interactions versus main effects, an issue that lies well within the realm of mainline quantitative research. The second place where I disagree with Elliot is in his claim that until quite recently discussions of qualitative research methods almost always were reduced to doing ethnography (Eisner, 1997, p. 5). I am one of those who were around then (Elliot's euphemistic term for all of us old-timers!) In reviewing my set of 25 years' worth of Educational Researcher, 1972-1997, I found that although there were discussions of ethnographic research by Lutz and Ramsey (1974), Overholt and Stallings (1976), Rist (1980), and Fetterman (1982) in the 1970s and early 1980s, there were also discussions of phenomenology, critical social theory, and other qualitative approaches. For examples, see Slavin's (1978) critique of Kerlinger's (1977) article regarding the influence of educational research on educational practice, Tanner and Tanner's (1979) concerns about William Pinar 's reconceptualist approach, Schubert's (1980) elaboration of Joseph Schwab's work, the general articles by Strike (1979), Shulman (1981), Smith (1983), Miles and Huberman (1984), and Soltis (1984) and Elliot's own excellent articles (1981,1983). A third disagreement concerns his juxtaposed sentences

Context (archaeology · Criticism · Cronbach's alpha · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Reading (process · Realm · Representation (politics · Sociology · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Qualitative Research Methods and Applications · Qualitative Research Methods and Ethics