[AAACE-NLA] A Brief Critique: The Foundations of Research Catherine B. King

[Catherine B. King]

Hello Kearney:  (This is long)

The last part of your question is much easier to answer than the first:

You ask:  "At which parties working in education today do you direct your 
critique, and why?"

First, using a four part analogy, if we relate (1) students, (2) educational 
topics, (3) then methods, (4) then philosophical underpinnings, to (1) 
leaves, (2) branches, (3) trunk, and (4) roots, the critique is directed at 
the roots (philosophical underpinnings) which, in turn effect in various 
ways all of the other aspects of education up-the-line (1-2-3 above), all 
the way to the students, whether it be in positive and/or negative 
applications to, or ignoring of, those students.

Second, the critique is directed at those in research and other 
educational/et al, fields whose philosophical underpinning (referred to in 
some research literature as philosophical paradigms) are formed around and 
limited to the positivist/post-positivist framework.  As philosophical, that 
framework defines (and limits) very basic notions about what constitutes 
authentic arenas of research, and its integration with evaluations and 
applications.

"Authentic" here refers to what the researcher/educator/etc., means by 
various notions and terms, e.g., scientific, critical, good-bad/evaluation, 
knowledge, true/truth, reality, etc. basically, the limit is not one of 
method, but to a defined data field, e.g., statistics, drawing from the 
tenets and expectations/outcomes of the natural/physical data fields and 
applying them with little or no mediation to the much more complex, nuanced, 
historical, and language/individual-oriented fields of human data, for 
instance, education.

Politically?  For the teacher:  In its worst form, it famously regards 
teacher insights and wisdom as merely "anecdotal"  (translated:   Not 
valid/authentic knowledge, and not harboring a critical approach to 
truth/reality, even in their own arena of activity and import), 
fundamentally disregarding, disarming, and/or disempowering the teacher as 
an authentic operator in the applications field of education.  Here, a 
"teacher-proofed" curriculum/programming/assessments is commonly "guided" by 
post-positivist principles embraced by well-meaning people who, in many 
cases, do not enter the classroom to see how debilitating such principles 
can be when a good teacher is faced with real-live students.

For the student:  VERY Complex; however, besides suffering the gamut of 
developmental effect of such well-meaning but powerless pseudo-teachers, the 
student is left with the vague idea that they--the student--are not the ones 
who are important here, but rather the assessments, etc.  Or said another 
way, the student is not the end of the educational process, but rather the 
means to someone or something else's needs, e.g., getting funding for a 
program.  The whole thing is basically backwards when driven by these 
principles alone.  There is much more to say to this effect, but this is way 
too long already.

Further, there is the matter of the humanity of the researcher and his/her 
already-established gamut of foundational background and developmental 
horizons.  Whereas positivist principles ignore these, or deny that they 
exist, attempting to perform research from a "godseye" presumably humanless 
viewpoint (as if the ideal for "objectivity" were to drain all humanity out 
of the research situation, e.g., natural/physical data-results), other 
paradigms/methods add a self-other critical eye to such backgrounds and 
developments, and bring those questions into the research situation as 
aspects and nuances of very-human objectivity, acknowledging them--not as 
necessarily "biased," but as richly integrative factors in any and all 
research and educational situations.  This means that we acknowledge that 
ALL research, from raising the question to applying conclusions, has an 
ethical-political component to it.  Knowing and stating what that is, though 
difficult, is much more **critical** than trying to ignore it or by reaching 
for some humanless "objectivity."  (That's only one of the great ironies of 
the last century.)

Third, this critique is not to reject this framework and its methods, etc., 
outright.  Rather, it's to secure its' place in the context of a variety of 
paradigms and their methods so that the full human reality can be, well, 
**realized** in our field of education, instead of trying to put complex and 
historical human beings, our critical sciences, and our education into the 
too-small box of natural/physical/statistical science data-to-outcome 
framework.  Ethics, of course, falls to this limiting paradigm as an 
unnecessary adjunct to the "scientific" situation where "scientific" is 
defined in the post-positivist philosophical framework.

The argument, by far, is not settled in any of the fields; however, the 
effects of the post-positivist framework is particularly relevant and 
evident in education--because it's in education that teachers know-so-well 
that individual persons/students are worthwhile and valuable in their own 
right (and not only as statistical data), are historical (have names and 
dates and lasting memories and relationships), and where teachers can know 
real progress, regardless of how that progress plays out or doesn't play out 
in an assessments situation, especially one governed by statistical orders 
alone.

We also know that, like any creative venture, trying counts (guided 
process), even if/when we know that sometimes it won't work, or we cannot 
say at that point whether it "works" or not.  So the expectations that come 
built into the different paradigms come into play here.   Further, if we 
knew that it would work every time, it wouldn't be creative, and in the 
worst form of working in this framework, the teacher is covertly equated 
with a factory worker, and the student an article on an assembly line, the 
more "successful" for conforming to a researchers' embedded but 
unacknowledged politics and for being just like all of the other articles.

I hope I've answered your question to some degree anyway: "Forgive me, but I 
am not fully comprehending the philosophical grounding of your latest post. 
Can you please make less subtle what you mean by "a regard for the 
not-so-subtle politics at work in education today"?

The problem is that when people talk about leaves or branches, they only 
imply the trunk and the roots, e.g., Tom Stitcht's recent and earlier 
arguments.  And so if we don't agree with the trunk and the roots, then the 
branches and leaves may look good on the surface, and even be quite logical; 
however, there's something wrong, even though we cannot put our finger on 
it. And we really don't want to answer at the topical level for fear of 
having to accept the root with the branch.

Catherine King


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Kearney Lykins" <kearney_lykins at yahoo.com>
To: <aaace-nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Friday, June 23, 2006 3:52 PM
Subject: Re: [AAACE-NLA] Catherine B. King


> Catherine,
>
> Forgive me, but I am not fully comprehending the
> philosophical grounding of your latest post. Can you
> please make less subtle what you mean by "a regard for
> the not-so-subtle politics at work in education
> today"?
>
> Which politics are not-so-subtle? >
> Cheers,
>
> Kearney Lykins
> ESOL Teacher
> Virginia Beach Adult Learning Center
> Virginia Beach, VA
> kearney_lykins at yahoo.com
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
> _______________________________________________
> AAACE-NLA mailing list: AAACE-NLA at lists.literacytent.org
> http://lists.literacytent.org/mailman/listinfo/aaace-nla
> LiteracyTent: web hosting, news, community and goodies for literacy
> http://literacytent.org
>