Philosophy of educational research PDF
Preview Philosophy of educational research
Philosophy of Educational Research Second Edition Also available: Reflective Practice in Educational Research Linda Evans Quantitative Methods in Educational Research Stephen Gorard Educational Research in Practice Joanna Swann and John Pratt Doing Qualitative Research Geoffrey Walford Educational Research Jerry Wellington Continuum Research Methods Series Series Editor: Richard Andrews Research Questions Richard Andrews Evaluation Methods in Research Judith Bennett Analysing Media Texts Andrew Burn and David Parker Action Research Patrick Costello Ethics in Research Ian Gregory Researching Post-compulsory Education Jill Jameson and Yvonne Hillier Systematic Reviews Carol Torgerson Real World Research Series Developing a Questionnaire Bill Gillham The Research Interview Bill Gillham Case Study Research Methods Bill Gillham Philosophy of Educational Research Second Edition Richard Pring A continuum Continuum The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane 11 York Road Suite 704 London SE1 7NX, UK New York, NY 10038 www.continuumbooks.com © 2000 Richard Pring All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. First published 2000 Reprinted 2001, 2003 Second edition 2004 Reprinted 2005, 2006 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 0-8264-7261-3 (paperback) Typeset by YHT Ltd, London Printed in Great Britain by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wiltshire Contents Preface to Second Edition vii 1 Setting the scene: criticisms of educational research 1 2 The focus of educational research - educational practice and policy 8 3 Different kinds of research and their philosophical foundations 31 4 Key concepts and recurring conflicts in educational research 58 5 Competing philosophical positions 90 6 Research into practice: action research and practitioner research 121 7 Ethical dimensions to educational research 142 8 Conclusion: the nature and future of educational research 158 Postscript 162 Select Bibliography 165 Index 171 To Faye Preface to Second Edition This second edition has changed a little, partly as a result of criticisms, partly because of certain gaps in the previous account, and partly because I needed to reflect upon the nature of the activity I was engaged in - the practice of philosophy about education and in particular about doing research in education. In this, as indeed in the early part of the book, I have benefited from reading and re-reading papers by Professor Wilfred Carr (see, particularly, Carr, 2003). My own view of 'doing philosophy' has, of course, its own presuppositions, and these need to be made explicit and subjected to critical examination. But it is precisely this reflexive intelligence which should be at the heart of all profes- sional practice - working, certainly, within the rules and under- standings of a given practice, but reflecting upon the nature of these rules and understandings so they might be improved or adapted to new and previou sly unseen situations. Practical philosophy in that sense is a particular kind of deliberation. On the other hand, although philosophy about education (and in particular about research activities within it) will be different in different places and eras, nonetheless there are perennial issues and themes which transcend such differences and which make such practical deliberations eventually philosophical. Such issues and questions concern the nature and accessibility of knowledge, what it means to be and behave 'as a person', the basis of the values we think worth pursuing, the relationship between mind and body and between the individual and society. Such issues, though constantly reformulated, will ever remain central to our thinking about education and about the conduct and interpretation of research. This page intentionally left blank -1 Setting the scene: criticisms of educational research There is a great deal of educational research. In the USA, the annual cost of both federal and state funding is over a billion dollars. In the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise in the United Kingdom, the names of 2045 academics were submitted as active researchers - 800 less than in 1996. The grading of their research became extremely important because of the funding consequences - many universities were, as a result, much poorer. Despite such poverty for some, the annual spending of public money upon educational research cannot be far short of £100 million (see Hargreaves, 1996, footnote 1, and 1997). On the other hand, many believe that this money is not well spent, and this was reflected in Britain in the 'Hillage Report' (1998) (hereafter 'Hillage') sponsored by the Department for Education and Employment. First, research does not provide the answers to the questions government asks in order to decide between alternative policies on, say, class size or school organization or the provision of nursery education. Second, research does not help professional prac tice in such matters as the teaching of reading or pupil grouping or teaching methods. Third, research is fragmented - lots of bits and pieces which, though often addressing similar questions, start from different positions or use different samples, not creating a coherent and reliable basis for practice or policy. Fourth, research is often tendentious or politically motivated - and exclusive of those who do not share the ideological underpinnings of the research programme (see Tooley and Darby, 1998). Such criticisms were emerging in the political arena some years before. This is illustrated by the contribution of Lord Skidelsky to the debate in the House of Lords concerning the proposal to transfer responsibility from the Higher Education Funding Council to the Teacher Training Agency for the funding of educational research. 2 Philosophy of Educational Research Many of the fruits of that research I would describe as an uncontrolled growth of theory, an excessive emphasis on what is called the context in which teaching takes place, which is code for class, gender and ethnic issues, and an extreme paucity of testable hypotheses about what works and does not work. (Quoted by Bassey, 1995, p. 33, together with his excellent response in the Times Educational Supplement) This sceptical attitude towards research is by no means confined to teachers and policy-makers - or, indeed, to Britain. The criticism has been made within the educational research community itself. Hargreaves (1996), drawing upon a North American critique of educational research and his own Leverhulme funded research, argued that, despite the enormous amount of money spent on research and the large number of people who claim to be active researchers, there is not the cumulative body of relevant knowledge which would enable teaching to be (like medicine) a research-based profession. For it to be so, it would be necessary to change, first, the content of that research, and, second, the control and sponsorship of it. Content would need to focus on the practice of teaching and learning - to build up sufficient, well-tested bodies of knowledge to serve as guidelines for professional practice in, say, the teaching of reading or in the grouping of pupils in classrooms. Of course, such a corpus of knowledge would be complex and would need to be used flexibly because situations, context and personalities of both teacher and learner affect the relevance of research statements. None the less, such a research exercise would seem possible. Teachers would need to be involved (as doctors are in the development of research-based medicine) in identifying the research needs, in formulating the questions which respond to these needs and in collecting the data - to make it 'rooted ... firmly in the day-to-day professional practices ...'. The relationship between 'professional researchers', as it were, and teachers would be very different - much more integrated in the setting of agendas and in the undertaking of the research. This is, of course, reiterating what Stenhouse (1975, chapter 10) had argued, namely, that only the teachers could appreciate, and have access to, the complexity of data required to understand the interactions of the classroom. As Hargreaves demonstrates by his references, the concern about the quality and the relevance of educational research is by no means a peculiarly British phenomenon. Lortie (1975) is quoted as saying
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