Empiricism and the Knowledge Base of Educational Practice

Abstract

Man who lives in a world of hazards is compelled to seek security.-John Dewey, The Quest for CertaintyAs John Dewey recognized, humans have always longed for security in an uncertain universe and have sought to achieve command over nature in order that they might better be insulated against disaster and, perhaps, also be able to improve their lot. Myths, legends, and superstitions often reflect these deepseated human urges; so do fairy tales. Consider the wonderful story by the brothers Grimm of Rumpelstiltskin, the gnome who had gained enough control over nature to be able to spin straw into gold. The unfortunate young maiden to whom Rumpelstiltskin gave assistance had to pay a terrible price for his help. In the end, thankfully, the maiden learned Rumpelstiltskin's name. She thereby not only avoided Rumpelstiltskin's price but also ended up gaining control over him.Today humanity is more advanced: Primitive faith in magic has been replaced, in many cases, by belief in the findings of empirical research. Indeed, we can go further: Some modern educational researchers seem to be intellectual descendants of Rumpelstiltskin, claiming to possess the capacity to spin the dross of hard data into educational gold using meta-analysis and other statistical techniques. But no less than the maiden in the fairy tale, one needs to stop and ask if the price they exact is too high. In the case of the lengthy and painstaking work of Wang, Haertel, and Walberg (WHW, 1993a), we shall argue that the answer is yes.We shall pursue two different lines of thought; we are grateful to WHW for providing such a rich setting in which to cash out these important issues. First, although the issues are complex, in the final analysis the atomistic or reductionistic methodology used by WHW in their work (and which is so popular in many educational research circles) does not do justice to the educational phenomena that they wish to illuminate; while pursuing this general theme, we will make a number of points about the relation of theory and evidence in science, and we will touch on certain crucial assumptions that are made about educational research. Second, WHW have too simple a view of the relation between educational research and educational practice. But before turning to these, it may be worthwhile to summarize their general line of thought. 305at NANYANG TECH UNIV LIBRARY on June 9, 2015 http://rer.aera.net Downloaded from

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