(Mis)Understanding Human Beings

Theory, Value, and Progress in Education Research

Bibliographic Data

ID8923752
AuthorsKarl Hostetler (University of Nebraska–Lincoln, corresponding author)
Year2010
Volume46
Issue4
Pages400-415
Publication date2010-07-28
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueEducational Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0013-1946 • E-ISSN: 1532-6993
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00131946.2010.496351
OpenAlexW2091851855
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited23

There is renewed interest in what can be called an experimentist approach to education research. The claim is that if researchers would focus on experiments and evidence-based policies and practices, irreversible progress in education can be achieved. This experimentist approach cannot provide the understanding of knowledge and human beings needed for meaningful progress in education. Lacking is adequate appreciation for the role of theory, particularly ethical and other philosophical theory. We especially need a theory of our human condition and a keen awareness for how some conceptions of scientific work can influence, and distort, our conceptions of human beings and worthwhile lives. As paradoxical as it might seem at first, to move ahead in education and our service to persons' welfare, we need to look backward to revisit old truths. Notes 1. I use Slavin as my example, but there are others who adopt similar attitudes. See (Howe 2005a). 2. Commonly, people distinguish theory from practice. Theory might be interesting, but it isn't practical. As I aim to show, however, theory is supremely practical. When people ask for practical knowledge, what they tend to have in mind is technical or instrumental knowledge. 3. The example comes from Longino (1990, 41). 4. Taylor (1991, 97) advises, "We are forced to operate to some degree according to the demands of modern rationality, whether it suits our own moral outlook." 5. This doesn't mean that the debates are particularly fruitful. It is not uncommon for people to suppose that are clear differences between research paradigms. See, for example, CitationGuba and Lincoln (1994). For one thing, it is not at all clear why we must think of paradigms as competitors (CitationHowe 1988). Claims that there are dramatic differences sometimes are made on the basis of erroneous or distorted depictions of the opposition (as in the CitationGuba and Lincoln 1994). For discussion of that problem, see CitationPhillips and Burbules (2000). Also, consider Bernstein's argument (1976, 235) that "An adequate social and political theory must be empirical, interpretive, and critical" (emphasis in the original). 6. Kuhn (1970, 162–163) speculates that when people claim that philosophy and other nonscientific fields do not progress, what they have in mind is that competing schools of thought persist. But there are competing schools of thought in science, too, although there can be times when it is easier to see scientific progress. 7. Note, also, Putnam's argument (1990, 213) that "the fashion of seeing interpretations of past centuries as wholly superseded by contemporary 'insights' [is] naïve progressivism" (emphasis in the original). One thing philosophers might have over scientists is that they have a keener sense of the history of their field, just because it is so often dependent on historical works. In contrast, if science is conceived as some linear progression, where the current state of the field must be better than any previous one, there is little incentive to study past science. Kuhn complains (1970, 167), "Scientific education makes use of no equivalent for the art museum or the library of classics, and the result is sometimes drastic distortion in the scientist's perception of his discipline's past. ... There are losses as well as gains in scientific revolutions, and scientists tend to be peculiarly blind to the former." 8. For CitationDewey (1929), "Education is by its nature an endless circle or spiral" (77). If Dewey is correct, we should neither expect nor desire some sort of linear, irreversible progress in education

Education theory · Engineering ethics · Epistemology · Higher education · Human welfare · Political science · Sociology · Value (mathematics · Welfare · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Feminist Epistemology and Gender Studies · Law · Political Philosophy and Ethics · Psychology