[AAACE-NLA][NLA] Scientific logic in the era of Bush II

[George E. Demetrion]

Colleagues:

Given the current political climate, I offer a slightly edited version of
a message I posted on the old NLA some time ago.

George Demetrion
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The fundamental issue is not my view, but  how the federal
government under the Bush Administration is defining  "rigorous" science.
 Any clarification that you or others might be able to bring is welcome. 
 I don't know about you, but I hear alarm bells when I read the following
three sentences on research from the USDoE Strategic Plan.  You know the
quote, I've referenced several; times on this list and not once has
anyone responded by way of explanation or justification.  For the record,
these are the sentences:

"Unlike medicine, agriculture, and industrial production, the field of
education operates largely on the basis of ideology and professional
consensus.  As such, it is subject to fads and is incapable of cumulative
progress that follows from the application of the scientific method and
from the systematic collection and use of objective information in policy
making.  We will change education to make it an evidence-based field."

When the plan asserts that the field of education operates largely on the
basis of ideology and contrasts this to evidence-based science, when
pushed for explanation beyond the cliches of the three sentences, what
might you think defenders would say?   More fundamentally for our
discussion, would the Administration's perspective on evidence-based
scientific research on education be synonymous with yours?  Critical
issues lie in the balnce of these answers.

 It is not I who has initiated this polemic.  It is the federal
government that is polarizing ideology and evidence-based science,
naturalizing the latter, as if it's perspective is not reflective of a
world view--i.e. ideology.  I am but an impoverished stalwart for a
position very much under threat in the new era of Bush-Paige.  I seek to
hold the ground against a torrent of conservative ideology.

Similarly, in an article in Education Week on the Web, January 30, 2002,
authors Lynn Olson and Debra  Vladero discuss how the  ("mantra-like")
phrase "scientifically based research" is now enacted into law and that
the slogan appears more than 100 times in the re authorization of the
Elementary and Secondary Education Act.  The goal, the authors state, is
"to base school improvement efforts less on intuition and experience and
more on research-based evidence."  Again, this pitting of human
experience and practitioner-based knowledge against the surer foot of
evidence-based research is a major concern.  Practitioners teach,
researchers provide the knowledge base information-starved teachers need.
  One of the beauties of Cochran-Smith and Lytle's texts on teacher
research is that human experience and intuition were the basis for
practitioner-based research which still requires what the authors refer
to as "systematic, intentional inquiry."  Does teacher research count as
real research?  I suppose that depends on how one defines the science
upon which it is constructed.  Oh, if Susan L. Lytle were only available
for commentary on these airwaves. (Susan, where are you!)

Dewey argues similarly in linking human research  to problems bursting
forth in an eruption of consciousness requiring resolution through
critical inquiry and reflective, experimental practice.  Dewey, who the
authors of the recently published monograph, Scientific Research in
Education, favorably quote, often spoke both of human problems and
proximate resolution through pragmatic inquiry as an existential
experience where consciousness is a primary indicator of the ongoing
working through from problems identified to what he refers to as
warranted assertions in their proximate resolution.

For Dewey as well as for Cochran-Smith and Lytle, there is no immaculate
conception or methodology, but problems identified and problems
proximately resolved.  Also, Dewey used the term "propositions" to
characterize both theory and data as part of the means-ends continuum in
progressively working through a problem.  In this pragmatic methodology,
theory plays the role of a hypothesis inserted into a problem, as
sometimes the best possible means of moving  resolution forward, which
needs to prove itself in the crucible of experiene.   Data plays a
similar role in providing pieces of the puzzle in the working through
from problems identified to problems resolved.  The validity of the data
is determined by its efficacy in contributing to the work of resolving
the problem at hand.

The end result of a Deweyan and Cochran-Smith and Lytle research project
is not increased knowledge, which serves as a mid-wife,  but the
improvement of a situation, an inherently contestable phenomenon.  The
matter of values as well as that of intuition and human experience
inevitably intrudes.  Evidence-based research may provide important
insight, and that's the point, but I'm not sure what makes it the
foundational discipline upon which all other truths must submit. 

Or, in fact, Sheryl, perhaps  this foundational claim is not the argument
of science, though it does appear to be the contention of the Bush-Paige
position on the role of scientific-based evidence in determining the
validity of legitimate, publicly-funded research.  It is not so much
science that is the issue, but the political-scientific nexus as a
manifestation of political ideology that is the problem.  For
Cochran-Smith and Dewey, the very purpose of research is to help resolve
human problems as defined by the humans directly engaged in the problem
solving, drawing on whatever means are  available to them, including
research and theory construction.  

At least in the Bush-Paige interpretation of evidence-based scientific
research on education, this teacher research, pragmatic inquiry approach
to problem resolution in the arena of education, is probably what is 
meant in the USDoE Strategic Plan  in characterizing the field as
exhibiting fads and ideology.  Whether or not a purer scientific approach
could, in principle, lend legitimacy to the modes of research and human
experience identified by Cochran-Smith & Lyttle, and Dewey, and Mezirow,
and Gardner, and Freire, and Bruner, is an important question, that
could, in turn, reflect on the relationship between  the purer canons of
social science research and the politics of education, which sems to
legitimize a narrow form form of research methodology over other ways of
evaluating human experience.

Then there is the statement in the National Research Council's monograph,
Scientific Research in Education that I quoted recently that states:

"[Q]uestions such as 'Should all students be required to say the pledge
of Allegiance?" cannot be submitted to empirical investigation and thus
cannot be examined scientifically.  Answers to these questions [that is,
those of values] lies in realms other than science" (p. 59).

Now this study is quite rich, which I've only begun to examine.  There's
much there that is of value.  No argument there, but even so, without
getting into its content at this time, there are questions about some of
its core assumptions that I would raise, and perhaps will raise in
another message. We'll let that pass.  The singular point here is that
based on that quote, the twain shall not meet when it comes between the
realm of values and that of empirically-based evidence-based science. 
Perhaps so, as I said in an earlier message, but the fundamental issue,
which no one responded to, is whether the matter of values can be
eradicated from scholarship on education.  If the answer is no, then,
while objective-based empirical science may be quite useful, including in
coming to terms with some of the questions Andrea posed in her message,
it is not the be-all and end-all of scholarly work on education.  Can the
matter of values be eradicated from discussions about such topics as what
the curriculum should consist of, or on the amount of emphasis US history
courses should place on the Constitution and founding political tradition
verses the institution of slavery?

While these may be valid educational questions, in their evaluative
format, they are not the subject of valid scientific investigation.  Very
good.  Well said, the best rationale there is for putting science in a
proper perspective rather than making it  the summa cum laude of the
entire realm of educational research.

There are many areas related to adult education and literacy that do not
fall primarily within the realm of evidence-based science.  if that were
the sole criteria one would, indeed rule out most, if not all of the
books that I mentioned, which are based on a diverse range of
intellectual traditions and disciplines, not very many in the
positivistic-post-positivistic mode.  Rule out, too, such concepts as
Mezirow's "perspective transformation" unless it could be documented by
some experimental or quasi experimental design or through some kind of
placebo effect.

The type of evidence-based science promoted by the Bush-paige 
Administration would have little truck with the philosophical tenets of
hermeneutics, critical theory, feminist theory, narratology,
phenomenology, literary theory, cultural anthropology, unless they could
be somehow reframed through some quasi-experimental filter.  This is
apparently, the kind of struggle  NCSALL is currently undergoing
according to John Coming's recent message, in re-assessing their research
paradigms in terms of current research mandates.  

Not that science in the pure sense is that banal and there is clear
complexity and nuance in the new monograph on scientific research in
education.  More power to the nuance, the complexity, the methodological
pluralism, the systematization where valid, may many flowers bloom.  If
scientific-based research is going there, there may be something to work
with, though even here, the issue of where the intellectual home of adult
literacy studies resides, in the interdisciplinary field of cultural
studies (that's where Henry Giroux would place it) or in the hard social
sciences is no small matter.

I wonder about the usefulness of a methodological litmus test in the
first place, as I am more interested in the general quality of a study,
that is, its content, which doesn't mean evidence isn't important.  But I
am suspicious of an overemphasis on methodological rigor as applicable to
a field that is invariably political, cultural, and value laden.  I would
rather draw on the various canonical frameworks of the various academic
disciplines that may infuse a study and look for what Nicholas Rescher
refers to as "best fit consistent with the data" and not be overly
obsessed about methodology.  Of course, my argument is based on the
assumption that research on education should reflect the "human"
sciences, another metaphor, to be sure.


In terms of methodology, I would  favor an informed eclecticism, focusing
more on the overall quality and usefulness of particular studies, though
that moves invariably into the realm of values.  I remain deeply
suspicious of science even broadly speaking, as being viewed as the
foundational disciplinary framework to base methodological legitimacy.  I
would rather view it as an equal opportunity partner with culture in the
sense that academic disciplines are historically construed and the
disciplines of knowledge allowed by any academic discourse are invariably
interpretative. 


George Demetrion
Sophocles5 at juno.com


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