[NLA] Evidence-Based Research & the Politics of Literacy

[George E. Demetrion]

Longer

From: "Debbie Yoho" <dwyoho at earthlink.net>

Tom, I would just like some clarification about what your opinion is
regarding "evidence-based" research?  This last post, I think, could be
interpreted as part of a call to standards and "rigor," especially when
making the case for funding quality adult learning systems.  On the other
hand, sometimes I sense, or maybe read in, some underlying sarcasm or
discomfort with the administration's rhetoric along these lines, and a
subtle message that even our field's research leaders are buying into
ideas
of "rigor" that George Demetrion sees as really a statement of political
philosophy.  So how do you really see the issue?   

Hello Debbie and others,

 Building on Freire, Henry Giroux,  Michael Foucault as well as the
neo-marxist school of social criticism (still valuable for its critique
of capitalism), my position is that knowledge construction and power have
sort of an inextricable connection, even if this linkagecannot always be
correlated in precise exact relationships.  

Still, this is a two-edged sword.  On the one hand, there is the
positivistic and post-positivistic intellectual traditions which
represent a form of legitimate science, which, in principle, can be drawn
upon in support of any political philosophy.  I am not well-trained in
this school of research, though I suspect that the recent publication,
Shavelston and Towne (2002) Scientific Research in Education reflects
this position. Regardless of how politics may or may not be reflected in
the promotion of this type of scholarship, its iintellectual premises
needs to be examined on the grounds on which it is articulated.  

An examination of this text is on my to-do list, which I'm not sure when
I'll get to.  When I do so, my plan is to compare and contrast its modes
of inquiry with those of John Dewey's, particularly in his opus, Logic:
The Theory of Inquiry (1938). The Shavelston and Townestudy quote Dewey
liberally throughout their text, but as far as I can tell, do not
sufficiently (or at all, perhaps) grapple with the implications of
Dewey's pragmatic epistemology.   I am also likely to bring in Rescher, N
(2001).  Philosophical Reasoning:  A Study in the Methodology of
Philosophy.  In this scenario, I will be looking less at methodology per
se, and more at epistemology (what passes for valid knowledge and how we
come to know).  Drawing on what Catherine King has recently stated, I
will be attempting to draw out a mode of inquiry relevant for the human
sciences.   

My informal position has been that the type of research presented in the
National Research Council text provides important information and insight
that any serious educational scholar should work through, and, depending
on what sets of questions are being asked or raised, should be part of
the discussion on what counts as legitimate knowledge in educational
scholarship. 

 I only balk when the positivistic-neo-positivistic traditions become
viewed as the queen of legitimate scholarship and contend that there are
various other legitimate frameworks through which one can work, which
opens up other discourse venues that this tradition as queen, tends to
restrict.  I think in particular of the realms of knowledge opened up by
critical pedagogy, feminist philosophy, postmodernism, and the tradition
I seek to work out of (in part, as a reasoned article of faith, as I
suspect, all academic disciplines are based on), the pragmatic
epistemology of John Dewey, Charles Peirce, and Jurgen Habermas.

There's also a political component to consider, particularly on how power
constrains certain views from coming to the fore and legitimizes other
regardless of their "inherent" (if such a thing exists!) scholarly
integrity.  I draw on the President's Iraqi policy as an example.  If
such an entity as an outside neutral observer dispassionately examined
the best evidence for and against the President's (changing?) policy,
including all the evidence that has been suppressed, repressed,
marginalized, and trashed on talk TV & radio, one would be hard pressed
to make the case that the Administration's policy carried because it
represented the best argument based upon the most convincing evidence. 
Without going into a long analysis here, it carried because those who
supported that position controlled and manipulated the power structure,
including setting the agenda for the last election and using the threat
of the election to get (craven?) Democrats to sign on.

So it is when the phrase, scientific-based (or evidenced based) research
is used as a mantra in the policy identification of what is and what is
not legitimate research.  I'm not sure, for example, if any of the 40 or
so books that I listed in a recent posting would qualify as legitimate
from an "evidence-based" or "rigorous" perspective, though I doubt that
the vast majority would, particularly the texts by Freire, Henry Giroux,
Dewey, and Gardner.

The phrase "rigorous" is used to characterize the type valid research
that evidence-based research supports.  This is a useful term. It creates
an imagery of exactness, preciseness, careful deliberate correlations,
cool objectivity, inductive reasoning, and conclusions (however
tentative) drawn from the most exacting analysis possible of the given
evidence.  Such research (I assume--what do I know about these fields?)
is the basis for scholarship in the fields of mathematics, the hard
sciences, and the "harder" social sciences like certain branches of
economics and cognitive psychology (I presume).  From this perspective,
anything else might fall in the category of science fiction. 

 In defining the word "rigor," my pocket Webster Dictionary refers to
such terms as  "strict precision" and "exactness."  It also includes the
phrase, "the quality of being inflexible or unyielding" and refers to the
words, "harshness" and "severity."  On the one hand, the term may serve
as a useful shorthand to convey what scientists actually do in their
laboratories. From another perspective, one would be hard pressed not to
conclude that Henry Giroux, for example is not a "rigorous" thinker.  But
his scholarship focuses on the realm of ideas and the relationship of
ideas to political power.  Nonetheless, as a scholar, his work is very
precise and exacting.  Are we going to rule out of court scholarship such
as his, as rigorous as it might be, though it focuses in the realm of
ideas and political culture?  If so, what does that say about what
"evidence-based research" is proposed to illuminate?  If not, if Giroux's
scholarship falls within the canon of  what is perceived as "rigorous,"
how does that change the dynamics of what becomes viewed as legitimate
scholarship in the field of educational studie? So, let us say there are
various connotations to the term "rigorous" through which "legitimate"
scholarship might be defined.

 On the other hand, I would not want us to ignore how the term is used as
a metaphor or perhaps as a cultural sign to convey a vision of control of
the data, a sense of objectivity, and a preciseness that very well may
not be explicit in the evidence, alone.  More fundamentally, when the
term "rigorous research" is used for policy purposes or as a means to
convey what scientists do to (literally, no pun intended here)a lay
public and when those are linked to a political agenda such as
fundamentally transforming the US Department of Education as articulated
in its Strategic Plan, reflecting a powerful neo-conservative ideology
(and one needs to look beneath the surface here), then such terms as
rigorous or evidence-based research should be examined with a very
critical eye.  What I'm mostly concerned about is that in one felt swoop,
the USDoE Strategic Plan, the government proposes to de-legitimize a
great deal of scholarship that if it's going to be de-legitimized, needs
to occur through rigorous debate within a broad array of public sectors
and not simply by proclamation and political fiat.

In short, if the message is that the positivistic-post-positivistic
intellectual traditions needs to become more thoroughly incorporated into
educational studies as an important discipline along with other already
established intellectual disciplines and traditions upon which a century
of educational studies has been established such as cultural
anthropology, literary studies (which, among else, studies the use of
rhetoric), social philosophy, sociology, political science (in its
various branches) and history, well and good. 

Let us become increasingly critical and rigorous, as well as, say,
imaginative and pluralistic in methodology  in the exploration of the
broad array of issues which inform adult literacy studies, including a
discriminating analysis of the relationship between reading (a
technology) and literacy (the acquisition of knowledge).  Let us focus
less on rigid methodology per se, except to acknowledge that all studies
need to be based on solid (variously defined, to be sure) evidence, and
instead, focus on the quality of any piece of scholarship, including
empirically-driven research and more theoretically-driven essays.  The
latter remains important as long as we are talking about the human
"sciences" (in quotes because science here is used as a metaphor), which
can only be eliminated at the expense of something fundamental of what it
means to be a human being.  

On the latter (the importance of theory), I submit that it would be
impossible to have coherent discussion on such topics like, (1), of what
should the curriculum consist, (2) what should policy support, (3)  in
what ways does education contribute to the public good--how do we define
the public good.  These issues point to the importance of values, which
can only be coherently discussed if the contentious matter of theory
plays a significant role in the shaping of public/policy discourse on
public education.  And by theory, I do not simply mean that which is
allowable following the rigorous canons of scientific-based
positivistic/post-positivistic research (though not rejecting such
findings), but also stemming from a broader notion of epistemology that
has given shape to a considerable array of 20th century scholarship in
various fields related to the human sciences.  I recommend two books that
get at this diversity and range of 20th century social science research:

a)  Polkinghorne, D. (1983.)  Methodology for the Human Sciences: 
Systems of Inquiry.  SUNY Press.
b) Sica. A (ed). (1998).  What is Social Theory:  The Philosophical
denbates.  Blackwell Publishers.

We neglect this at a great peril.   

I strongly suspect, with evidence to back it up, that the push of the
current USDoE toward scientific-based education is strongly inmfluenced
by the neo-conservative ideology that has given shape to educational
policy and standards discussions from the 1990s as reflected in the work
of ED Hirsch, Jr. BV Manno, William Bennett, Dianne Ravitch, Lynne
Cheney, and others.  By proclaiming the mantra of evidence-based research
as the summa cume laude of educational scholarship, the neo-conservative
ideologues, often in centrist clothing, eliminate in one felt swoop
eliminate 100 years of progressive educational scholarship.  That's a lot
of mileage from 500 disputable Florida votes and a contentious 5-4
Supreme Court decision. 

 My argument is that the current Adminsitrative call for evidence-based
research in the realm of education can not easily be separeted from the
neo-conservative ideology that has given shape to much of the value
structure of the USDoE Plan calling for a focus on reading, patriotism,
character education, standardized testing, and to be sure, scientific
research.  Let us carefully examine the various relationships between
political power and knowledge construction in the examintaion of
public/policy discourse on public education at all levels and not allow
the latter to get a pass simply through the influence of the former.

George Demetrion
sophocles5 at juno.com


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