Session Information
13 SES 11 B, Parallel Paper Session
Parallel Paper Session
Contribution
Discussion on what philosophers of education ‘do’ or what philosophy of education ‘is’ are well-rehearsed and equally well contested (see, for example, Pring, 2001; Carr, 2004; Bridges and Watts, 2008; Hayden, 2012). In an educational landscape dominated by imperatives to demonstrate impact and relevance, this conference call to ‘The Need for Educational Research to Champion Freedom, Education and Development for All’ provides a space for reflection, a pause for thought. Can educational research be a ‘means to ensure and enforce freedom and promote education and the comprehensive development of citizens of the whole world’? Many philosophers of education would relish that question, wrestling with the concepts it raises and selecting, with great care, the words to form a cogent argument in response. But will their resultant papers and the activity that led to those papers be ‘research’? I shall argue here that a philosophical response would constitute research and that ‘philosophy as research’ is an under-valued and under-taught form of enquiry. Following Thompson (2011: 449), it is the ‘… task of educational-philosophical theory to work critically on the historically developed cultural constructs that shape our (educational) experience’ and that ‘… the activity that educational theorists are to perform is the critical reflection of the ‘‘limits of our world’’ by drawing on philosophical references and theories’. I shall argue that the omission of philosophy as research from research methods discourses and, especially, methods courses for Masters and Doctoral students, is an omission affecting both philosophical and empirical researchers. Lesham and Trafford (2007:93) have pointed to the importance that doctoral examiners, in the UK, attach to ‘conceptualisation in a doctoral thesis’ whilst noting that doctoral candidates frequently ‘encounter difficulties in conceptualising their research’. Whilst philosophers of education can and often do serve as honourable handmaidens of empirical research, advising on epistemology and ontology, much of their work, unless they are philosophers of science, remains outwith the range of postgraduates engaged in empirical research projects. Conceptual enquiry often extends only as far as empirical research methodology and postgraduates seem only rarely encouraged to pursue philosophical research to support critical scrutiny of their topics. In Europe, the three Dublin Descriptors are clear that ‘research’ covers a wide range of activity and that it is ‘not used in any limited or restricted sense, or relating solely to a traditional 'scientific method’. Whilst that approach bodes well for philosophy as research, it is not the impression that one gains from current research methods practices and proclivities in the UK. I shall argue here for the philosophy of education to become embedded in research methods courses and for philosophy as research to be set on an equal footing with empirical research in order that we might realise Schram’s (2004: 431) ‘real pluralism for social science, not one of a diversity of techniques, but of a diversity of knowledges, not assimilated to an exclusive model with a “scientific frame,” but one where different models of good research each emphasized the best route to their distinctive form of knowledge’.
Method
Expected Outcomes
References
Bridges, D., and Watts, M. (2008) ‘Educational Research and Policy: Epistemological Considerations’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 42, S1, pp. 41-62. Carr, W. (2004) ‘Philosophy and Education’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 38, 1, pp. 55-73. Hayden, M.J. (2012) ‘What Do Philosophers of Education Do? An Empirical Study of Philosophy of Education Journals’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 31,1, pp. 1-27. Mejia, A. (2008) ‘My Self-as-Philosopher and My Self-as-Scientist Meet to do Research in the Classroom: Some Davidsonian Notes on the Philosophy of Educational Research’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 27, pp. 161-171. Nussbaum, M.C. (1997) Cultivating Humanity: Classical Defense of Reform in Liberal Education, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, M.C. (2010) Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pring, R. (2001) ‘The Virtues and Vices of an Educational Researcher’, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 35, 30, pp. 407-421. Schram, S.F. (2004) 'Beyond Paradigm: Resisting the Assimilation of Phronetic Social Science', Politics and Society, 32, 3, pp. 417-433. Solomon, R. (1999) The Joy of Philosophy - Thinking Thin versus the Passionate Life, New York: Oxford University Press. Thompson, C. (2011) ‘Exercising Theory: A Perspective on its Practice’, Studies in Philosophy and Education, 30, pp. 449-454.
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