Philosophy and Educational Research 教育的哲学取向

Philosophy and Educational Research D Bridges,University of Cambridge,Cambridge,UKã2010Elsevier Ltd.All rights reserved.GlossaryAction research–Research carried out bypractitioners in the sites of their practice and designedto improve that practice through a repeated cycle of reflection,research and change in the practice.Empirical–as in‘empirical enquiry’–Based on observation and experience(and contrasted withmore abstract thought characteristic of philosophy, mathematics,and more speculative aspects of science).Epistemology–or theory of knowledge–A branch of philosophy concerned with the natureand justification of belief,truth claims,etc.Ethics–A branch of philosophy concerned with thenature and justification of beliefs about the right and the good,sometimes referred to as moral philosophy.But ethics is also used to refer to codes of(moral)practice governing,for example,professional lives or,asdiscussed in this article,the conduct of research. Normative–Related to norms,in this case thevalues and principles which underpin educationalpolicy and practice.Phenomenography–Enquiry aimed at eliciting and describing the ways in which people experience theworld–an attempt to access,for example,the learner’sor the teacher’s subjective experience of education. Postmodern–Refers to a body of thought andliterature which challenges a whole range of assumptions associated with,in particular,the aspirations of modern science and technology.It is a notion which rather eludes definition(and most ofthose who espouse its various forms would seek toelude definition),but the paragraph in the text seeksto explain what it means in this context.Practitioner research–Research(usually smallscale)carried out by practitioners,most commonly inthis context teachers(see also action research above).The Contributions of Philosophy to Educational ResearchThis encyclopedia will itself bear witness to the fact that the field of educational research is enormously diverse. Education is not a single form of disciplined enquiry:rather,it is a field of enquiry which draws on a wide range of the intellectual resources of the academy as well as the accumulation of practical wisdom drawn from the experience of educational practitioners.(There are of course interesting philosophical questions about the rela-tionship between these two sources which are commented on briefly below).Its intellectual resources and its methods of enquiry are drawn from disciplines as diverse as history and neuroscience,literary theory and philosophy,behav-iorist psychology and ethnography,law and economics, and museology and the creative arts.This(in part philosophical)picture of the nature of educational research itself points to three kinds of contribu-tion which philosophy can and does make to this endeavor. First,philosophy is itself among the scholarly,systematic, and sustained disciplines which can–and many would argue must–be drawn upon to contribute to educational enquiry.This is philosophy as educational research.Second, the claims and limitations of all of the other forms of enquiry which offer contributions to educational research need to be examined and understood,and this is philosoph-ical work of an epistemological character,that is,rooted in theory of knowledge.This is referred to as philosophy of educational research.Third,any research which requires engagement with human participants and the redistribution of their knowledge and of knowledge about them raises issues of an ethical and political character which have their roots in a long-standing tradition of philosophical ethics and social and political philosophy.The remainder of this article on the contribution of philosophy to educa-tional research is organized under these three headings. Philosophy as Educational Research Philosophers may feel a little uncomfortable about their work being described as research,because this term is more commonly applied in contexts in which people are seeking evidence or data of one kind or another.Philoso-phers tend to be more comfortable with the language of scholarship or enquiry.This is not to say that philosophers have to stay removed from the grounded world of practice or empirical enquiry,though they are sometimes criticized for failure to engage directly with these worlds(Phillips, 2005).It is rather that what they do with such material–as philosophers–is to reflect upon it,analyze it,and interpret it drawing on the rich tradition of philosophical writing which is at the heart of the subject.However,they have on29the whole accepted their role as educational researchers as the price of a seat at the table of the national and interna-tional educational-research community.Their presence in the educational-research community is an essential one,because philosophical questions are central to the theory and practice of education itself.You cannot go far in the consideration of educational policy and practice without engaging with fundamental questions about the aims of education and about the values and principles which ought to govern this policy and practice. These are themselves rooted in conceptions of human being and flourishing,about the individual and society,and about the lives we want to lead–all of which are at the core of the philosophical tradition.You cannot go far in consideration of the curriculum without engaging in these issues but also with questions about the nature and structure of knowledge itself,about what it is to know or understand something, about the relationship between knowledge and skilled per-formance,about the authority which can be claimed for different kinds of belief–and about the implications of all of these considerations for what we teach and how we teach it. You cannot go far in pursuit of the social-justice agenda in education without encountering contested interpretations of social justice and conflicts with other social principles and values.How far should the state intervene in the name of justice and at what price to individual freedom and responsibility?How compatible is a pursuit of equality with the pursuit of excellence?How far ought one to respect the rights of minority communities to maintain traditional practices which appear to disadvantage women?(A fuller account of the contribution of philosophy of education to educational enquiry is discussed in the BERA website and elsewhere in the encyclopedia.)It is not that philosophy will necessarily provide sim-ple answers to such questions:it is perhaps more likely to reveal further layers of complexity.The point is that the questions that are illustrated and many like them are questions which have been and continue to be refined, analyzed,discussed,and substantially investigated in a long tradition of philosophical writing,and if any educa-tional practitioner or enquirer ignores this work,they are destined to rehearse simplistic responses which have long been discredited.A research community which claims to represent the highest standards of intellectual endeavor and whose authority lies precisely in its commitment to critical,systematic,and sustained enquiry cannot restrict these requirements to the empirical aspect of enquiry in a field which,as illustrated above,depends significantly upon philosophical considerations.Philosophy of Educational Research Philosophical considerations underpin all or most of the central debates about educational research methods and methodology,for they are all at base about how we can best know about or understand educational policy and practice in their many shapes and forms.In this section this point is illustrated with reference to four of these debates,though this is by no means a comprehensive treatment of the field.Research and Educational PracticeA large proportion of academic research in education seeks to inform educational practice–in schools,colleges, and universities in professional training environments like hospitals and also in nonformal settings in the workplace, the home,and the community.However,we have to ask whether all these need research as the academy under-stands it at all or should we have confidence in the kind of situated practical judgment(a notion derived from Aristotle)and the tacit knowledge(as Polanyi,1966might call it)developed by teachers and other practitioners?If some further investigation needs to be done,might this best be in the form of practitioner research or action research developed in the classroom and in intimate relationship with the sites in which change is expected to take place and under the control of those responsible for any such change? Such questions are essentially philosophical ones which require answers rooted in an understanding of the nature of practice and the ways in which it can be informed and transformed;of the extent to which general educational prescriptions can be applied to particular situations;of the relationship between theory and practice.In this last case it is not just a question of whether and how theory can inform practice but also of whether that dichotomy does not already distort a proper understanding of the nature of practical judgment.All of this is well-worn philosophical territory,which nevertheless continues to excite contem-porary debate(see,e.g.,Carr(1986),Elliott(2001)and the last part of Hammersley(1993)).Research and Educational PolicySimilarly,we may asks questions about the sort of knowl-edge which ought to inform wider educational policy(as distinct from questions about the often bizarre considera-tions which do,as a matter of fact appear to inform the decisions of policymakers).If,as philosophers would cer-tainly argue,policy is always driven by normative con-siderations,where does this leave us in terms of the contribution which educational research can make?(Just possibly with the conclusion that we had better build in some philosophical consideration of this normative framework.)But,clearly,policy needs to be grounded in evidence of some kind about the actual or likely effects and the consequences of doing this rather than that.This in turn prompts the question‘‘so to what sort of research should we look to provide such evidence?’’30Philosophy of Education–Contemporary IssuesThis is a question which has provoked enormous debate in both educational policy and educational-research com-munities.At one end of the spectrum,it has been answered in very restrictive terms.The What W orks Clearing House in the United States has set as the gold standard for what it calls evidenced-based practice research which conforms to the standards of the double-blind controlled experiment which has achieved preeminence in medical research.In the UK,the Evidence for Policy and Practice Information (EPPI)Centre established to conduct systematic reviews of educational research operates with criteria which are not quite so restrictive,but which nevertheless exclude large swathes of the research which is carried on across the educational community.(For a fuller discussion of these issues see Bridges et al.(2009)and Hammersley(2007)).At the same time,as steps are being taken to restrict the range of research which is supposed to inform policy, the wider educational-research community itself has expansively embraced a wider and wider range of intel-lectual resources drawn from almost every corner of the academy–not only from the social sciences(which have themselves extended and hybridized their repertoire) but from the humanities(biography and autobiography, discourse analysis)and,as Elliott Eisner encouraged in his presidential address to the American Educational Research Association,the creative arts(Eisner,1993).It is not proposed to enter these debates in this context. The point to be made is that such debates about what kind of knowledge can and should inform educational policy-making are essentially philosophical ones.The claim that only research which adopts successfully the experimental design of the double-blind controlled experiment and, equally,the claim that educational research can benefit from the contribution of the creative arts are both philo-sophical claims which require not empirical evidence but careful philosophical argumentation and critique if they are to be sustained.The irony for the What W orks movement is that no double-blind experiment will ever demonstrate that the experiment should be the preferred form of educational enquiry.The Qualitative/Quantitative DebateA third and related area of essentially philosophical debate about educational research is closely related to this last one insofar as it is another example of argument about what kind of research can best illuminate educational policy, practice,and experience.The debate which is often couched in terms of the opposition between qualitative and quantitative research paradigms is referred to here, though most sophisticated contributors to this debate immediately point out that this is both a crude and mis-leading dichotomy.It is crude because both terms pick out what are in fact some very diverse forms of enquiry:both large population studies in sociology and small controlled experiments in classrooms,for example,might come under the quantitative label,just as a long-term ethnographic study of playground rituals,a piece of autobiographical writing by a teacher,and a piece of applied critical theory might all be called qualitative.They are misleading because quantitative data might very well have a place in the sort of thick description of,for example,a school or its neighbor-hood provided in what are normally thought of as qualita-tive case studies.Equally,some researchers will subject what might otherwise be regarded as qualitative data,for example a careful transcription of a lesson or an interview, to quantitative analysis while others could apply a different, interpretative analysis to the same data.Such disassembling of the dichotomy has not,however, ended controversy which is seen by some to have ramifi-cations which extend far beyond the educational-research community and into the very fabric of what is presented by some as a modern(ist)world bent on reducing the social world to a technology whose functioning can be rationally managed,controlled,and(the key to all of this) measured(Smith,2007)and by others as a postmodern world,fractured,a-rational,defeating(happily perhaps) centralized,technocratic management,a world in which notions of truth and certainty are replaced by a mixture of social relativism,nihilism,fancifulness,irony–or none of these because it refuses to be captured in any of these ways(Stronach and MacLure,1997;Peters,2004).If not all researchers(nor even all philosophers)iden-tify fully with either of these theoretical camps,this wider argument nevertheless adds an intellectual and political frisson to more modest debates–all of which are similarly philosophically rooted.To take what must surely be a central concept in any educational research agenda:‘‘What learning is taking place in this setting?’’Drawing on the contemporary range of educational research we might find at least the following illustrative range of responses.1.An old style behaviorist psychologist interprets learningas a relatively stable change in behavior.(S)he needs to do some systematic observation of the pupils’behavior and probably conduct a test devised to quantify the learning which has taken place.2.A neuroscientist(and neuroscience is an increasinglyinfluential source of educational research)will need some more sophisticated observational techniques,in-volving technology which will enable him or her to observe(and again probably measure)changes in the structure or activity of the brain.3.A phenomenologist will probably want to conduct anextended interview with a selection of the pupils,ex-ploring their experience of the lessons in questions and their own self-reporting on what they felt they may or may not have been learning,what they benefited from and why.Philosophy and Educational Research31There may be several different reasons why someone might prefer in general to adopt one of these approaches over another.In part the preference will depend on what one means by learning,though an answer to this question will almost certainly depend on how we think of human beings:Are they reducible to their behavior?Do we want to get rid of what Gilbert Ryle referred to as the ghost in the machine(Ryle,1973)?What is the relationship between activity of the brain and activity of the mind? How important is it to think of and to relate to human beings as experiencing beings and to understand the world through their eyes?Beyond these fundamental philosophical questions,there are some more practical ones:How useful is it to whom to know about,for exam-ple,electrical signals in the brain as compared with a child’s own perception of his or her own learning?What can a teacher do with such knowledge?Objectivity and Subjectivity in Educational ResearchThe contrasting styles of enquiry illustrated above also raise issues which are sometimes expressed in terms of objectivity and subjectivity(although again this dichot-omy is probably too crude–at very least,we need to add the notion of intersubjectivity,of the social character of the construction of knowledge,to the spectrum).This distinction operates at two levels at least.First,we might apply it to the objects of our enquiry,so that the behav-iorist and the neuroscientist might claim to be observing the objective world of human behavior and of brain activ-ity,respectively.By contrast,the phenomenologist might be said to be investigating the subjective world of human experience.The distinction gets blurred when,for exam-ple,we attempt to describe human behavior,which is almost impossible without reference to the individual and social significance which human beings attach to different forms of behavior(Is the child who holds two fingers up to his teacher indicating a numerical quantity or something rather ruder?)and to human intentionality, both of which are embedded in the kind of perceptions which the phenomenologist seeks to describe and inter-pret.However,the objectivity/subjectivity distinction continues to frame a lot of educational debate and again we are dealing with matters which are essentially philo-sophical in character.The language of objectivity and subjectivity also serves to distinguish the aspirations of different educational researchers and the way in which they deal with the presentation of their research to a readership.At one end of the spectrum,researchers seek to go as far as they can to eliminate through their methodology and their style of presentation the effect,the visibility,and indeed,the very presence of the researcher.This is indeed one of the aspirations of the double-blind controlled experiment which has been referred to already.Such research goes to great lengths to reduce any impact which the presence of the researcher might have on the research site or partici-pants;it seeks objectivity in the reporting and interpreting of the data;the hand of human authorship is concealed by stylistic devices which replace the first person(I did this and then I observed that...’’)by the third person(The researcher used a standardized test...),or employs the passive voice(the students were observed)rather than the active voice(I observed the students...).Elsewhere on the spectrum are advocates of the view that this search after objectivity is ultimately doomed to failure:subjectivity will always enter into educational research,perhaps through the definition of the research agenda or the research questions;through the selection of research methods and methodology;subtly through what is not asked or noted as well as what is,in the collection of data;in the observation;in the analysis;and in the report-ing.W e deceive ourselves,it is claimed,if we imagine that we can escape such subjectivity.It is‘‘a garment which cannot be removed’’(Peshkin,1988:7).This skepticism with respect to the possibility of objec-tivity is closely linked to a second opinion that,rather than trying to eliminate subjectivity it is better way to enable a reader of research to take account of such sub-jectivity by providing sufficient information about the researcher–his or her background,interests,ideological attachments,etc.(his or her biographical positioning as it is sometimes called)–and thus enable the reader to take this into account in evaluating the import of the research (see,e.g.,Atkinson,2000).This still,in a sense,represents a search after a kind of objectivity,a version of what things are really like,lying behind what is acknowledged to be one human rendering of this reality.A third and more radical position suggests that even this kind of access to reality is illusory.All we have are people’s subjective experience of the social world, people’s perceptions,and people’s narratives.These can enlarge our imaginative understanding of possible ways of seeing the world,and some may appeal to us more than others for a variety of reasons,but none can command special authority.The concern here is not to offer a conclusion to a debate which continues to run through the education research community,but to point out the nature of the argument. These and other related questions about the nature of our knowledge of the social world,about the possibility of and limitations on such knowledge,about the sense in which we can(or cannot)talk about truth and falsity with respect to the claims issuing from educational research–all of these are the very stuff of philosophical writing over two millen-nia.The debates which rang through Socrates’chambers and the halls of medieval disputations between nominalists and realists are as alive today as they ever were.The passing32Philosophy of Education–Contemporary Issuescenturies may sophisticate the terms in which they are constructed,but they do not seem to resolve them in a way that conclusively sets them aside.In this context are illustrated only some of the issues in the methodology of educational research(and in this section the focus is on epistemological questions)which invite and have received substantial philosophical atten-tion.There are many more.Indeed lying behind any disciplined form of enquiry whose resources are drawn into educational research,there is a body of literature which relates to the philosophy of this discipline and which addresses issues to do with,for example,the kind of confidence which might be attached to findings gener-ated by that particular form of enquiry,the extent to which one might generalize from such findings,or the extent to which one might confidently apply these find-ings in a single particular setting.Without making some attempt to engage with these philosophical questions in any research setting,one cannot confidently know how to interpret the research which one reads.The Ethics and Politics of Educational ResearchEducational researchers have become increasingly aware over recent decades of the ethical and,more widely, social and political significance of their interaction with research participants(some of who are of course chil-dren),research users,and research sponsors(who include powerful government and corporate organizations).This has been reflected in the establishment within profes-sional research organizations like the American Educa-tional Research Association and the British Education Research Association of ethical codes to which their mem-bership is expected to subscribe.Individual higher edu-cation and research institutions have similarly adopted ethical codes governing the conduct of research with human participants and ethics committees tasked with overseeing conformity with these codes.Of course,this process has required considerable debate about what are the duties and rights of researchers,of participants in the research,and of sponsors of the research. Among the central issues,perhaps are the following:The issue of informed consent.To what extent does educa-tional research require the informed consent of those who are going to participate in it?Is covert research excluded?Is the answer the same if one is doing re-search with vulnerable people or in the setting of pow-erful government or corporate organizations?Who needs to give consent?If I want to do research in a classroom,is it sufficient to have the agreement of the head teacher or do I also need the agreement of the teacher?The children?The children’s parents? The issue of confidentiality.To what extent can and should the researcher guarantee confidentiality to an institu-tion or individual involved in the research?How does one balance considerations of confidentiality with the public right to know and indeed with participants’rights to acknowledgment of their contribution?The issue of control over data and its interpretation.To what extent should researchers allow participants to,for ex-ample,amend a transcript of a recorded interview or to control the way in which their contribution is inter-preted in a research report?Should researchers pay for contributions to their research?Is research a form of theft of other people’s knowledge?The issues indicated thus far generally assume a sit-uation in which participants’rights need to be protected from an unscrupulous researcher.There are other issues framed by situations in which the researcher’s own hon-est enquiry is threatened by the power of controlling organizations–especially,perhaps,where these organiza-tions are paying for the research:The issue of the level of control and censorship which those paying for research can exercise over what is researched,how it is researched,and how and where it is reported–and hence...The issue of the responsibility of higher education insti-tutions with respect to the kinds of contract which they enter into and the support they give to their researchers.There are two things to note,in particular,about these issues.First,it is easy to see how what at first might be thought of as more narrowly ethical issues carry important social and political significance.Research is about the creation and redistribution of knowledge,which is itself an act with political consequences insofar as it involves a redistribution of power.Such a redistribution has even weightier conse-quences when,as in the field of education,you are dealing with a social practice which itself carries such a high level of public and political investment and which is itself a matter of intense political controversy.So,beyond the narrower construction of an ethics of educational research,we have to engage with the political principles which should govern such research in a democratic setting.Considerations of social justice and the requirement for informed public opinion jostle with each other and also with considerations about,for example,the right to privacy or confidentiality or at least some kind of credit for the knowledge that partici-pants are sharing(see Griffiths,1998;Smith,1999).Second,although all or most of these issues are ad-dressed in the sort of ethical codes referred to,this does not mean that they are now settled.Many remain contro-versial.Others,which might appear to be agreed at the level of general principle,turn out to be much more complex when one has to operationalize them in the field–and this Philosophy and Educational Research33experience has led to a flurry of debate around the situated-ness of ethical judgment and the relationship between gen-eral principles,embodied perhaps in ethical codes and the resolution of issues in the field.Both of these sets of considerations drive educational researchers into the philosophical territory,which is al-ways close to the surface in ethical argument.How are we properly to understand these ethical claims?By reference to what principles can we resolve conflicts between these ethical principles?What is the relationship between gen-eral principle and situated judgment?All of this is well-worn ground in philosophy and an essential resource for educational researchers seeking to engage seriously and systematically with the sort of issues described. ConclusionThese last two sections describe some examples of the sort of issues which arise out of the endeavor of educational research.It has been argued that these are inescapably philosophical in character and that they are indeed the sorts of questions which philosophers have engaged with and continue to engage with in their academic work. Educational researchers,like any other citizens can,of course,lead their lives without any attention to the litera-ture which engages in a serious,sustained,and systematic way with these issues,but at enormous cost.After all,are not researchers’particular claims to authority and their claims on public attention based precisely on the expec-tation that their enquiry is more serious,sustained,and systematic than that which ordinary citizens or even jour-nalists can normally afford?If philosophical questions are, then,central to the research enterprise,then these too must receive the same rigorous attention as is given to the gathering and analysis of empirical data.However,this argument does not only place an onus of responsibility on educational researchers,but it also points to the importance of philosophers of education engaging in a practical way with the work and life of the wider educational research community–as not only researchers in their own right(as indicated in the first section above)but also as co-workers engaged in a con-tinual conversation about the meaning,justification,and right conduct of the research.See also:Philosophy of Education:Overview. 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Howe,K.R.(2003).Closing Methodological Divides:Towards Democratic Educational Research.Dordrecht:Kluwer. McNamee,M.and Bridges,D.(eds.)(2002).The Ethics of Educational Research.London:Blackwell.Paul,J.(2004).Introduction to the Philosophies of Research and Criticism in Education.New York:Prentice-Hall.Pring,R.(2004).Philosophy of Educational Research.London: Continuum.Sikes,P.,Nixon,J.,and Carr,W.(eds.)(2003).The Moral Foundations of Educational Research:Knowledge Enquiry and Values.Maidenhead/Philadelphia,PA:Open University Press/McGraw-Hill. Small,R.(2001).Codes are not enough:What philosophy can contribute to the ethics of educational research.Journal ofPhilosophy of Education35(3),345–360.Relevant Websites–American Educational Research Association, Ethical Standards.–American Educational Research Association, Journal of the American Educational Research Association,Educational Researcher.34Philosophy of Education–Contemporary Issues。