Understanding the other/understanding ourselves: toward A constructive dialogue about "principles" in educational research

Educational Theory

Volumn 55, Issue 3, 2005, Pages 263-283

  Moss, Pamela A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 65249157959     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (93)

1. Charles Taylor, "Understanding the Other: A Gadamerian View on Conceptual Schemes," in Gadamer's Century: Essays in Honor of Hans-Georg Gadamer, eds. Jeff Malpas, Ulrich Arnswald, and Jens Kertscher (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 292 (emphasis added). This work will be cited as UO in the text for all subsequent references.
2. Examples of philosophers of science and social theory who have turned to Gadamer include Richard J. Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism: Science, Hermeneutics, and Praxis (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983);
3. Richard J. Bernstein, The New Constellation: The Ethical-Political Horizons of Modernity/Postmodernity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1991);
4. David Hoy, "Critical Theory and Critical History," in Critical Theory, eds. David C. Hoy and Thomas McCarthy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 101-214;
5. David Hoy, "Post-Cartesian Interpretation: Hans Georg Gadamer and Donald Davidson," in The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, ed. Lewis E. Hahn (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), 111-130;
6. Georgia Warnke, Justice and Interpretation (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994);
7. Georgia Warnke, Legitimate Differences: Interpretation in the Abortion Controversy and Other Public Debates (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999);
8. Georgia Warnke, "Social Identity as Interpretation," in Gadamer's Century, eds. Malpas et al. (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 307-330. Warnke's book Justice and Interpretation will be cited as JI in the text for all subsequent references.
9. The first quotation is from the National Research Council's Scientific Research in Education, eds. Richard J. Shavelson and Lisa Towne (Washington, D.C.: National Academies Press, 2002), 22. This work will be cited as SRE in the text for all subsequent references. The second quotation is from Michael J. Feuer, Lisa Towne, and Richard J. Shavelson, "Scientific Culture and Educational Research," Educational Researcher 31, no. 8 (2002): 9.
10. Bernstein, The New Constellation, 51.
11. For instance, both the SRE report and Grover (Russ) Whitehurst, director of the Institute of Education Sciences, cite experimental methods as "ideal" (SRE) or "the gold standard" (Whitehurst) for addressing questions of cause and effect. See SRE, 109;
12. and Grover Whitehurst, "The Institute for Education Sciences: New Wine, New Bottles" (paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Chicago, Illinois, April 2003).
13. Michael J. Feuer, Lisa Towne, and Richard J. Shavelson, "Reply to Commentators on Scientific Culture and Educational Research," Educational Researcher 31, no. 8 (2002): 28.
14. See the proposed U.S. Department of Education priority (Federal Register 68, no. 213, November 4, 2003), "to focus federal financial assistance on expanding the number of programs and projects.that are evaluated under rigorous scientifically based research methods." The priority focuses on methods to "assess the effectiveness of a particular intervention": "Evaluation methods using an experimental design are best for determining project effectiveness. Thus, the project should use an experimental design under which participants.are randomly assigned.. If random assignment is not feasible, the project may use a quasi-experimental design with carefully matched comparison conditions.[or] regression discontinuity designs may be employed..Proposed evaluation strategies that use neither experimental designs with random assignment nor quasi experimental designs using a matched comparison group nor regression discontinuity designs will not be considered responsive to the priority when sufficient numbers of participants are available to support these designs."
15. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science, trans. Frederick G. Lawrence (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1981), 85. This work will be cited as RAS in the text for all subsequent references.
16. For Gadamer on interpretations, see Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (1975; reprint New York: Seabury, 1994);
17. Gadamer, Reason in the Age of Science; Hans-Georg Gadamer, "The Problem of Historical Consciousness," in Interpretive Social Science, eds. Paul Rabinow and William M. Sullivan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 82-140;
18. and Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Reply to My Critics," in The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur, eds. Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990). The book Truth and Method will be cited as TM in the text for all subsequent references.
19. See Evelyn Jacob and C. Stephen White, eds., special issue on "Scientific Culture and Educational Research," Educational Researcher 31, no. 8 (2002), http://www.aera.net/publications/?id = 438.
20. For introductions, see Josef Bleicher, Contemporary Hermeneutics: Hermeneutics as Method, Philosophy, and Critique (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980);
21. and Gayle L. Ormiston and Alan D. Schrift, eds., The Hermeneutic Tradition: From Ast to Ricoeur (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990).
22. As characterized by Ormiston and Schrift in The Hermeneutic Tradition, the correct meaning was typically conceptualized as the original intent of the author (by Friedrich Schleiermacher, for example) or as the events or objects experienced by the author (by Wilhelm Dilthey, for example). More recent arguments for this approach to hermeneutics can be found in Emilio Betti, "Hermeneutics as the General Methodology of the Geisteswissenschaften, " in The Hermeneutic Tradition, eds. Ormiston and Schrift; and E.D. Hirsch, The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976).
23. Warnke, "Social Identity as Interpretation," 315-316.
24. While Gadamer's primary focus is the effect of different historical traditions, Warnke and Taylor both note the relevance of Gadamer's argument for understanding our (alien) contemporaries. See Warnke, Legitimate Differences; Warnke, "Social Identity as Interpretation," 307-330;
25. and Taylor, "Understanding the Other," 279-298.
26. Gadamer, "The Problem of Historical Consciousness," 84.
27. Warnke, "Social Identity and Interpretation," 315
28. Of course, "to imagine that one might ever attain full illumination as to his motives or his interests. is to imagine something impossible. In spite of this, it remains a legitimate task to clarify what lies at the basis of our interests as far as possible" (RAS, 107).
29. Gadamer, "The Problem of Historical Consciousness."
30. Gadamer's characterization of hermeneutics has been repeatedly criticized for its conservatism: for privileging the authority of the text and the tradition of its authors, for valorizing agreement and consensus over disagreement and dissensus, and for failing to recognize the limits of hermeneutic understanding in systematically distorted communication. Critical hermeneutics, radical hermeneutics, genealogical hermeneutics, and hermeneutics as interpretive pluralism have all offered challenges to Gadamer, some of which he was able to take up before he died. For some examples of these various criticisms, see Jürgen Habermas, "A review of Gadamer's Truth and Method," and "The Hermeneutic Claim to Universality," both in The Hermeneutic Tradition, eds. Ormiston and Schrift, 213-244 and 245-272;
31. John D. Caputo, Radical Hermeneutics: Repetition, Deconstruction, and the Hermeneutic Project (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987);
32. Hoy, "Critical Theory and Critical History" and "Post- Cartesian Interpretation";
33. Warnke, Justice and Interpretation and Legitimate Differences;
34. and Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Relativism.
35. See also Gadamer's response to some of these challenges in Hans- Georg Gadamer, "Reply to My Critics," 273-297;
36. and Hans-Georg Gadamer, "Reply to D.C. Hoy," in The Philosophy of Hans-Georg Gadamer, ed. Lewis E. Hahn (Chicago: Open Court, 1997), 129-130. While all of these dialogues with Gadamer are relevant and instructive to considering the interpretation of social phenomena, here I will focus primarily on whether agreement is an appropriate goal for a hermeneutic conversation and more briefly on the value of an "outside" perspective in illuminating systematically\ distorted communication.
37. See, for example, Bernstein, The New Constellation; Hoy, "Critical Theory and Critical History"; Warnke, Justice and Interpretation;
38. andWarnke, Legitimate Differences.
39. For a discussion of this point, see Pamela A. Moss and Aaron Schutz, "Educational Standards, Assessment, and the Search for 'Consensus,"' American Educational Research Journal 38, no. 1 (2001): 37-70. There we argue that David Hoy and Georgia Warnke "each build a case for reading Gadamer as pluralist and use that reading in their characterization of hermeneutic conversation." We also note that Gadamer weighed in on this debate, in a response to Hoy's article "Post-Cartesian Interpretation, " asserting that "Perfect understanding surely never means perfect agreement. Mr. Hoy demonstrates this correctly," 130.
40. Hoy, "Critical Theory and Critical History," 264, 182.
41. Warnke, Legitimate Differences, 17 (emphasis added).
42. See, for example, his discussion of Wilhelm Dilthey in Gadamer, "The Problem of Historical Consciousness," 97-108.
43. Bernstein, The New Constellation, 338. For a fuller discussion of this issue, see Moss and Schutz, "Educational Standards, Assessment, and the Search for 'Consensus."'
44. See, for example, Yvonna S. Lincoln and Gaile S. Cannella, eds., special issue, Qualitative Inquiry 10, no. 1 (2004), http://QIX.sagepub.com/ content/vol10/issue1/;
45. and Patti Lather and Pamela A. Moss, eds., special issue, Teachers College Record 107, no. 1 (2005), http://www.tcrecord.org.
46. In this section I focus on SRE. In the following section I focus on the critical responses to SRE and the rejoinder by NRC committee members and staff published in Educational Researcher
47. For example, here is the full excerpt: "[S]tudents representing dozens of native languages may attend a single school;
48. in some school districts students speak more than 125 languages..Students from immigrant families are often defined by a characteristic they commonly share - a lack of English fluency. Scratching just below the surface, however, reveals stark differences. Schools serve students who are new immigrants - often unfamiliar with American life beyond what they might have seen in movies - as well as many Hispanics, African Americans, Asian Americans, and American Indians whose families have lived here for generations and who have varying degrees of English proficiency. Along with linguistic diversity comes diversity in culture, religion, and academic preparation. Some students visit their home country frequently, while others have no contact with their or their parents' birthplaces. Some immigrant students have had excellent schooling in their home countries before coming to the United States; others have had their schooling interrupted by war; and still others have never attended school. Some are illiterate in their own language, and some have languages that were only oral until recently;
49. others come from cultures with long literary traditions. The differences between these students - their age and entry into U.S. schools, the quality of their prior schooling, their native language and the number of native languages represented in their class, their parents' education and English language skills, and their family history and current circumstances - will affect their academic success much more than their common lack of English" (SRE, 90).
50. See, for example, the discussions of laboratory experiments on will power (SRE, 78) and design studies on children's understanding of ratio and experiment (SRE, 121).
51. In two instances, when the core principles are paraphrased in SRE, context is included and replication/ generalization is left out (see SRE, 6, 97). For example, in one case, they note that "To be scientific, the design must allow direct, empirical investigation of an important question, account for the context in which the study is carried out, align with a conceptual framework, reflect careful and thorough reasoning, and disclose results to encourage debate in the scientific community" (SRE, 6, emphasis added). Perhaps the absence of replicate and generalize from this list can be explained by the fact that they are talking about a single study rather than a program of research. My un-Gadamerian speculation is that attention to context was considered as a principle but ultimately rejected because it undermined the argument that "at its core scientific inquiry is the same in all fields." It is not surprising to find somewhat different interpretations within a single document like SRE, given that it was authored by a committee of people and assembled by a sponsoring agency. Based on my experience as a member of two similar committees, it is likely that different people wrote different sections, and it is unlikely that many of the authors fully agree with everything the document says. Gadamer's anticipation of a "unity of meaning" may be more problematic with committee-authored documents such as this one
52. In the interests of space, I have not addressed the critique by James Pellegrino and Susan Goldman because it spoke less directly to the "X" I have constructed than the other responses;
53. see James Pellegrino and usan Goldman, "Be Careful What You Wish For - You May Get It: Educational Research in the Spotlight," Educational Researcher 31, no. 8 (2002): 15-17.
54. David C. Berliner, "Educational Research: The Hardest Science of All," Educational Researcher 31, no. 8 (2002): 18-20;
55. and Frederick Erickson and Kris Gutierrez, "Culture, Rigor, and Science in Educational Research," Educational Researcher 31, no. 8 (2002): 21-24.
56. Berliner, "Educational Research," 18.
57. Erickson and Gutierrez, "Culture, Rigor, and Science in Educational Research," 21.
58. Berliner, "Educational Research," 19.
59. Erickson and Gutierrez, "Culture, Rigor, and Science in Educational Research," 22-23
60. Berliner, "Educational Research," 20;
61. and Erickson and Gutierrez, "Culture, Rigor, and Science in Educational Research," 21.
62. Berliner, "Educational Research," 20.
63. Feuer et al., "Reply to Commentators on Scientific Culture and Educational Research," 29. They are responding directly to Berliner here, but the point is relevant to Erickson and Gutierrez's analysis as well.
64. In an essay cited in SRE, David K. Cohen, Stephen W. Raudenbush, and Deborah L. Ball, "Resources, Instruction, and Research," in Evidence Matters: Randomized Trials in Education Research, eds. Frederick Mosteller and Robert Boruch (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2001) illuminate the ways in which instructional resources are mediated by classroom discourse. They go on to suggest that experiments about these resources will require "instructional regimes" that enable consistency across classrooms through intensive communication among teachers involved or through relatively tight scripting. They note that the answers to questions about resources or effects, and I assume subsequent implementation under the warrant provided by the experiment, could not be "regime-free." Is that what SRE authors have in mind?
65. Elizabeth A. St. Pierre, "'Science' Rejects Postmodernism," Educational Researcher 31, no. 8 (2002): 25-27. This work will be cited as SRP in the text for all subsequent references.
66. In a subsequent article, St. Pierre notes, accurately I believe, that "Neither the NRC report nor the response to my critique cite the work of scholars who are 'extreme' postmodernists." See Elizabeth St. Pierre, "Refusing Alternatives: A Science of Contestation," Qualitative Inquiry 10, no. 1 (2004): 134
67. Feuer et al., "Reply to Commentators on Scientific Culture and Educational Research," 29.
68. Ibid.
69. It also points to another question beyond the scope of this essay about the effects of generalizations on both researcher and researched.
70. See, for example, Elizabeth Atkinson, "Thinking Outside the Box: An Exercise in Heresy," Qualitative Inquiry 10, no. 1 (2004): 111-129;
71. Marianne Bloch, "A Discourse that Disciplines, Governs, and Regulates: The National Research Council's Report on Scientific Research in Education," Qualitative Inquiry 10, no.1 (2004): 96-110;
72. Pamela A. Moss, "Toward 'Epistemic Reflexivity' in Educational Research: A Response to Scientific Research in Education," Teachers College Record 107, no. 1(2005): 19-29;
73. Patti Lather, "This IS Your Father's Paradigm: Government Intrusion and the Case of Qualitative Research in Education," Qualitative Inquiry 10, no.1 (2004):15-34;
74. and Thomas Popkewitz, "Is the NRC Committee's Report on Scientific Research in Education Scientific? On Trusting the Manifesto," Qualitative Inquiry 10, no. 1 (2004): 62-78.
75. Robert Slavin, "Education Research Can and Must Address 'What Works' Questions," Educational Researcher 33, no. 1 (2004): 27-28.
76. See Kenneth Howe, "A Critique of Experimentalism," Qualitative Inquiry 10, no.1 (2004): 42-61, for a critique of SRE that responds to this question.
77. For an overview of debates in the philosophy of social sciences, see Michael Martin and Lee C. McIntyre, eds., Readings in the Philosophy of Science (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994
78. As others have argued, the SRE report risks disempowering researchers and scholars in multiple subtle ways: by what it rejects (including so-called extreme forms of postmodernism), by what it largely ignores or fails to represent (for instance, those who do not believe that quite similar epistemological perspectives underlie all science), by the boundaries it blurs, and by what it positions as supplementary within the particular frame it adopts for science. It magnifies these effects when it offers advice about the constitution of peer review panels, about graduate education, about common frameworks, and so on.
79. See, for example, St. Pierre, "'Science' Rejects Postmodernism";
80. St. Pierre, "Refusing Alternatives"; Atkinson, "Thinking Outside the Box"; Howe, "A Critique of Experimentalism";
81. and Popkewitz, "Is the NRC Committee's Report on Scientific Research in Education Scientific?"
82. I recognize the word "relevant" raises another set of problems. Who gets to decide who counts as relevant? These are ethical and political issues as well as epistemological ones. Like Warnke, I would prefer to err on the side of inclusiveness.
83. Bernstein, The New Constellation, 66.
84. Gadamer, "The Problem of Historical Consciousness," 125.
85. She is talking here about the role of political theory in promoting social justice. While the argument she makes is relevant to our particular concern with promoting democratic dialogue within a professional field, I also want to acknowledge the power of her broader argument and the injustices it is intended to rectify.
86. Against Gadamer, in part, the sympathetic critics upon whose work I have drawn call for routine examination of dialogues from outside perspectives that can illuminate the social forces at work in ways that the participants may not be aware of.
87. See, for example, Habermas, "A Review of Gadamer's Truth and Method";
88. Habermas, "The Hermeneutic Claim to Universality"; Hoy, "Critical Theory and Critical History";
89. and Warnke, Justice and Interpretation.
90. Kenneth Howe's original frame for this issue, later revised, was structured productively in this way: "I'll frame the volume in terms of the general distinction between experimentalist-quantitative and interpretivist-qualitative methodologies. Following this, there will be two articles on each of three topics: (1) causal inference;
91. (2) replication, generalization, and accumulation of knowledge;
92. and (3) the voice of research participants." Howe, e-mail message to author, August 20, 2003.
93. Hoy, "Critical Theory and Critical History," 257-258.