[Fwd: Re: [NLA] Evidence-based practice in Adult Literacy Education]

[Catherine B. King]

Hello David:

The basic philosophical method underlying the human
sciences is called "genetic method," which is based on
a verified (and therefore scientific) cognitional theory
rooted in what is called "general empirical method."
(Bernard Lonergan, [Insight, A Study of Human
Understanding, ].")

A relevant work that implicitly reflects the above methods
is Donna M. Mertens' "Research Methods in Education
and Psychology--Integrating Diversity with Quantitative
and Qualitative Approaches" (1998, Sage Publications,
Thousand Oaks).

As the title suggests, in Mertens' work she discusses how
three methods intertwine in human sciences (specifically
education and psychology).  She starts with (1)  statistics and
quantitative method and devotes several chapters to this
approach; then moves to (2) qualitative methods, then (3)
history and narrative study of lives.  She develops many facets
of each of these methods.

Most important about Merten's work is that she identifies
the movements beyond the positivist-quantitative approaches
(1 above) as major paradigm shifts in methodological work
in the human sciences.  First, the positivist and post-positivist
approaches; second the interpretive-constructivist paradigm;
and third, the emancipatory paradigm (e.g., Friere's and
Mezirow's work) where the reigns of personal and political
power--even in the movement of the research questions--are
handed over and shared with the "data" under review--i.e.,
the humans under study and/or the adults in our programs.

This third methodological approach (and paradigm shift we
are struggling with now) is the most inflammatory for those who
are settled in nicely with research-to-policy-to-political-
ideology packaged as the status quo, and it is the central
method that reflects what is burning at the center of the whole
idea of democracy.  This is where educational method meets
our own policy-makers' political underpinnings.  And, guess
what, they don't like it.   And it is what is under direct attack
from an interpretation of "critical" and "scientific" as
exclusively owned by the positivist paradigm cum political
ideology cum "false consciousness."

The crux of the argument is that, on the side of positivism, they
have it right that we cannot give up critical evidence and truth
to return to mythical consciousness in science.  But what is
misguided in their argument is their too-narrow, self-serving,
and limiting definition of what constitutes critical evidence
cum truth that emerges from the meaning behind the very
formation of our questions--questions that must match the
data by anyone's notion of what science is, including the
natural sciences.   Openness is the centerpiece and "gold
standard" of the scientific tradition, and these folks are as
closed as can be.  Closedness is not scientific.

But when science moves from natural to human data,
transpositions and distinctions must be made to account for
the nuances in human data and concerns, and positivists are
wrong in their unwillingness to consider those transitions and
therefore they understand label them as uncritical and
unscientific.

(Lonergan [above] makes these transpositions explicit in his
philosophical work.  This has been my study for many years.
Many of my students are teachers and most have assumed
the positivist stance, though they all also recognize something
terribly wrong in its application to their real live students.
Changing the underpinnings once set is a difficult thing to do,
but it is what must happen, especially for teachers.)

Though Mertens (above) has not read Lonergan, she gives
an excellent account of the actual development and recovery
of emerging methods that better match the data--human and
nuanced, but still truthful and critical, in a way that EFF
addresses and in a way that gives methodological ground to
the creative and developmental aspects of human beings,
and to what the researcher might not already know or even
yet have questions about.  In education, this aspect is crucial
and its avoidance constitutes the grandest of oversights.

Also, Mertens gives full credit to the important perspectives
that positivist methods bring to the data--and they are many.
The difference is that she makes the important observation
that the study of human beings requires much more than this
method will afford our researchers as scientists in the field
where the data is human and continues to learn as the
scientist does.  Used alone in human sciences and education
without the dialogue with other emerging methodologies, the
positivist paradigm-cum-method as the exclusive owner of
scientific critical truth is nothing less that deadly and rings
of Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, and the film "Brazil."   This
is not an overstatement, but is what inspired all of these, and
more, artistic works.

With positivist science, we need to keep truth, and critical
science; but against positivism we must be open to making
the transpositions of a more nuanced methodology that is
called for in the different and more nuanced meaning that
informs the data under review--human beings.

In human science and education, there is a "with" element
between the researcher and the data, between the teacher
and the student, between the policy maker and his-her
constituents, that is remote or even removed in the natural
sciences.

The emerging paradigms and the methods they employ are
a recovery of this "with" element at the level of theory and
method that every teacher I have ever met understands.
I trust those on this list who work with adults know full well
what "The With Element" means.   These are the theories
and methods that support you in your understanding of your
being "with" your students.

Regards,
Catherine King
Adjunct Instructor
Department of Education
National University
San Diego, CA
----- Original Message -----
From: David J. Rosen <DJRosen at theworld.com>
To: <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Friday, April 05, 2002 6:38 AM
Subject: [Fwd: Re: [NLA] Evidence-based practice in Adult Literacy
Education]


>
> NLA Colleagues,
>
>
> If someone has this methodology list, please post it to the NLA list.
Thanks,
>
> David J. Rosen
> NLA List Moderator
>
>
>  AWilder106 at aol.com wrote:
>
> >David,
> >
> >Could you re-post the methodology list of USDOE approved types of
studies?
> >As I recall the list went from most acceptable methodological criteria on
> >down.  Thanks.
> >
> >Andrea
> >
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
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>

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