Session Information
Session 3A, Educational Research Methodology: Philosophical Questions
Symposium
Time:
2005-09-08
09:00-10:30
Room:
ENG
Chair:
Volker Kraft
Contribution
In the past decennium the language of truth in educational research, or at least in philosophical accounts of it, has gradually been disappearing in favour of discourses such as that of narratives, voice, power, interpretation, etc.. This has happened mainly under the impulse of postmodernist and poststructuralist accounts of educational research, but also because of developments in our understanding of qualitative, c.q. interpretative, educational research, in which case the focus is not so much on truth, but on meaning. In this paper it is argued that no harm is done when the concept of truth is thrown overboard in educational research, anyway not to the practitioner. Since the latter's questions do not pertain primarily to truth, but are rather focused around the issue of "what to do when", they are in the first place inherently ethical in nature. No kind of explanatory studies, effect studies, or any other account of research claiming "scientific objectivity" can directly answer the practitioner's worries and questions, since it cannot straighten out "the shifting and uncertain terrain in which we live the great part of our moral lives" (Smith & Standish, 1997). The only harm done, if any, is that to the "scientific status" of educational research: only if it is presupposed that educational research should meet the standards of the positivistic (explanatory) model of doing research in order to be "scientific", the shift away from the language of truth is deplored.
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