[NLA] A note on scientific based educational research

[George E. Demetrion]

For those who might have an interest and for those who should:

In reviewing the important National Research Council's (NRC) publication,
"Scientific Research in Education,"  I came across the following
statement:

"[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).

Perhaps so. The issue remains, do such questions lay in the realm of
legitimate educational investigation?  To provide another example, the
current Strategic Plan of the United States Department of Education
encourages character education and patriotism.  Drawing on the logic of
the NRC's publication, the issue of whether these should be highlighted
in the K-12 curriculum cannot be investigated empirically because as
questions of value, inquiry about them lies in realms other than science.

Given that assumption are there other sources of reasoning than science
by which to make informed decisions about educational policy?  Can the
issue of values themselves be subject to a substantial inquiry by
communities of scholars, teachers, students, and informed citizens?  Does
the realm of legitimate educational scholarship lie exclusively or even
predominantly in the realm of the sciences?  Or might it also reside in
the realm of the humanities stemming from the field of history, cultural
anthropology, literary discourse theory, political theory, and social
philosophy?  If the latter fields are also viewed as valid sources of
critical scholarly educational investigation, then such issues as
requirements about the Pledge or the nature of the curriculum ( questions
of profound value) are very much legitimate ones.  If science is
construed as emphasizing such criteria as "testability," "refutability,"
"replicability," "objectivity," "reliability," "validity," and viewed as
"rigorous," "cumulative," "fact-based," determined by "experimental" and
"quasi-experimental design," "random sampling," and the "placebo effect,"
then such value laden questions about the Pledge, the curriculum or the
politics of adult literacy education, are simply viewed as outside the
pale of legitimate investigation based on scientific-based educational
research. 

However, if such questions are important dimensions of educational
practice and can be investigated by intellectual traditions other than
science (and science itself is not as rigid as sometimes perceivedboth by
proponents and critics), then those academic disciplines need to be
maintained as legitimate realms of scholarship upon which educational
studies are formulated.  Otherwise, such issues over values cannot be
subject to legitimate scholarly inquiry.

That I need to say this seems utterly absurd except for the political
climate that has landed upon Washington D.C over the past two years. 
>From a scholarly perspective I intend to examine very thoroughly the
NCR's study, "Scientific Research in Education."  From what I've read so
far, it's a sophisticated document that is bringing much important
insight to the field of educational scholarship (Note, I studiously avoid
the terminology "research," because the realm of academic scholarship is
broader than which is connoted by the term "research."  Theory,
imagination, values,  experience, culture, and yea, even the battered
term "ideology" interact in various subtle ways in the canons of the
various academic disciplines which make up the realm of what might be
viewed as legitimate scholarship).  Like it or not, the realm of
educational studies cannot (except at its own peril) avoid the reality of
the pluralistic and contentious scholarly traditions that make up the
canons and research foci of the various academic disciplines, many of
which converge in the making up of the field of adult literacy studies in
its various and sometimes contested interpretations.

In short, educational studies needs to draw on the scientific research
tradition as equal opportunity partners with its sister disciplines in
the humanities, in the honorific fields of history, literary studies,
cultural anthropology, political theory, and social philosophy.  Cut
these latter disciplines off as not representing serious realms of
scholarship or denigrate them by referring to them as not science and you
eradicate them from the  canon of legitimate investigation.  In my view,
that would be a profound loss.  

Of course, strictly speaking, one cannot use such a "subjective"
adjective as "profound" in any scientific treatise because it is not
objectively descriptive of any empirical reality.  Therefore, from the
realm of the scientific research tradition, my use of the term
"profound," is literally, meaningless.  Likewise, the President's
inference that Saddam Hussein represents a profound threat to the
security of the United States might also be dubbed as meaningless. In
short, the term  "profound" does not belong in any scientific study of
educational research.  Neither do questions of the Pledge, or the matter
of patriotism as a legitimate value to instill in the curriculum, nor the
issue of social justice as that, too, is inherently mired in "ideology"
and therefore not the subject of "cumulative" research such as that which
characterizes the field of medicine, agriculture, and industrial
production.

According to current administration visions, educational research is to
become a field for mature, cumulative scientific research like the field
of medicine, agriculture, and industrial production.  Issues to be
resolved by research are largely technical, value free, and ideologically
neutral.  Intuition, imagination, basic human experience,
unscientifically-grounded theory construction, ideology and yea, values,
themselves are okay for practitioners and those not informed by
high-quality research, but they have no basis in scientific
investigations of educational research.  And when it comes to educational
scholarly inquiry, scientific research is the most reliable source of
knowledge construction.  It's indisputable  It says so in the USDoE
Strategic Plan.

Not that I dismiss the realm of scientific research in education.  Far
from it.  However, neither do I view it as the foundatioonal discilpine. 
Rather, I view it as one of the dialogue partners in the collective quest
for valuable knowledge.  I would rather build on the years of scholarship
that have already comprised the emergent field of educational studies
(even with many questions & problems remaining), while pressing forward
toward the progressive problem identification and resolution of current
and  anticipated issues.  

I need to stop.  It's a shade to midnight

George Demetrion
sophocles5 at juno.com
(Ancient Greek playright, historian, and social philosopher)


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