Return-Path: <nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id h43ClWU15207; Sat, 3 May 2003 08:47:32 -0400 (EDT) Date: Sat, 3 May 2003 08:47:32 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <20030503.084515.6870.3.sophocles5@juno.com> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "George E. Demetrion" <sophocles5@juno.com> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-fobasics@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-FOBASICS:706] Research Traditions X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas X-Mailer: Juno 1.49 Status: O Content-Length: 8342 Lines: 144 The following is a draft from a chapter on the politics of adult literacy education that I'm working on. I'm struggling here to get a focus on the direction of this topic, which is vast, but it's starting to come a little clear. Given the importance of contemporary discussions on what consists of legitimate research and methodology, the following may be of interest to some. The major book I draw on for this introductory section is Donna C. Mertens (1997). Research Methods in Education and Pyschology. Sage Publications. I recommend it to all who have an interest in research methodology, particularly on getting a handle on distinctive research amd methodological traditions. The fundamental issue, of course is that of determining legitimacy and on what basis and on whose authority. Meretens' text could provoke many stimulating discussions. George Demetrion sophocles5@juno.com _______________________________________________________________ Chapter Nine Research Traditions Draft Version George Demetrion May 3, 2003 "Unlike medicine, agriculture, and industrial production, the field of education operates largely on the basis of ideology and professional consensus. As such, it is subjected to fads and is incapable of cumulative progress that follows from the application of the scientific method and from the systematic collection and use of objective information in policy making. We will change education to make it an evidence-based field." (US. Department of Education Strategic Plan, 2002-2007, p., 48). "In some studies… "purity" has taken precedence over theoretical meaningfulness. This could easily lead to methodological fetishism when the direction of research is dictated nether by theory nor by the subject of inquiry, but by the methods that guarantee the reliable reproduction of data" (Kozulin, 1990, p. 230). Scientific-Based Educational Research Mediated Through Neo-Conservative Political Discourse Highlighted in this polarized fashion, as discussion of research traditions sometimes are, there is more than a degree of skepticism that divergent epistemological assumptions that give shape to different scholarly traditions will result in widely-agreed upon working frameworks to orient research on adult literacy education. This conflict, in the exhibition of tensions between positivist/postpositivist, interpretive/constructivist, and emancipatory paradigms (Mertens, 1997) of educational research traditions, particularly in their more polarized manifestations, brooks no easy resolution in the landscape of contemporary U.S. political culture. It is not that these divergent approaches to research are inherently contradictory, though they are based on different assumptions, which opens up divergent areas of investigation. The political issue is which discourse(s) is (are) privileged in discussions of educational research and what consequences follow in terms of what gets attended to and what remains neglected or marginalized. For example, the government (through the National Institute for Literacy) had undertaken a great deal of research in the Equipped for the Future project. In Mertens' terminology, the EFF project is based on the interpretive/constructivist research paradigm, wherein the construction of meaning making of both the researchers and the participants of an educational study critically impact on what is discovered in the process of investigation. What emerges is not the singularity of objective truth, but a plausible interpretation that accounts for and seeks to make sense of the available information. Those operating out of this framework acknowledge that since reality itself is pluralistic and multi-dimensional, various interpretations are plausible in conformance with the data. Under the current Bush administration, EFF's operative assumptions, based on the "softer" sciences of constructivism and ethnography (with an important role to boot for practitioner-based research), are rendered suspect. This is so because the qualitatively focused assumptions that have grounded the EFF project fail to pass muster in the postpositivistic environment that gives shape to governmental research on education in the current environment with its emphasis on an exacting rigorous scientific methodology, which discounts certain insight stemming from the data which qualitative research methodologies might illuminate. The tensions in the diverse research traditions that give shape to educational scholarship are particularly heightened at this time, given the intent of the current Bush administration, which through Congress and executive action, has elevated scientific-based educational research to a level of policy legitimacy never previously achieved by the federal government, in clarity of vision and singularity of purpose. The educational progressivism which underlies the operative assumptions of both the interpretive/ constructivist and emancipatory research paradigms is under a sophisticated political attack by the Bush administration which is re-writing educational policy and establishing educational and research institutions upon the neo-conservative educational premises that have been operative since the Reagan era. The administration's goals in the area of educational research are laid out in the U.S. Department of Education Strategic Plan 2002-2007. A key component is the enforcement of "rigorous" standards in the analysis of fundable research projects that "will match those applied by the most respected research journals and scientific research agencies." By this they do not mean Educational Theory, Educational Researcher, or Adult Educational Quarterly. This focus includes a "rigorous" peer review process "enlisting only qualified scientists who have high levels of methodological and substantive expertise pertinent to the projects being reviewed." The desired result is research publications that "meet the highest standards of scientific rigor" (p. 52). In order to accomplish its objective the Strategic Plan points to the need for "flexibility" in the re-authorization of statues that support the Office of Educational Research and Improvement (OERI) (p. 55). The draft version of the strategic plan may have gotten closer to the Department's intention in calling for "sweeping [legislative] changes" in order to implement its far reaching vision (p. 49). With the passage of the Education Sciences Reform Act OERI was eliminated and replaced with an Academy of Education Sciences designed "to insulate our federal research, evaluation, and statistics activities from partisan or undue political control" (Viadora, 2000, p. 1). To assure professional oversight, the new institution would be led by a director and board of directors rather than an assistant Secretary of Education that managed OERI. Whether politics can be eliminated by funding only "scientifically valid" research (p. 2) is a contestable claim. As stated by Representative Michel N. Castle in the introduction to a bill that led to the legislation, "I want quality education research not fads or anecdotes to inform educators' decisions on the best way to improve student learning and narrow achievement gaps" (Viadero, 2002, p. 1). It is this pitting of such calls for rigorous scientific methodology juxtaposed against rhetorical digs at other types of educational scholarship, which dominate current neo-conservative educational, qua, political discourse. This rhetorical strategy renders problematic any potential of a working synthesis or framework between and among the research traditions that Mertens describes which could inform studies on adult literacy education. This political issue is noted, though largely by-passed in this chapter, which probes into definitional assumptions and critical epistemological divergences among key research traditions in adult literacy education to explore possible creative convergences as well as examining persisting tensions that block them. For analytical purposes, I divide them into distinctive chapters, but practically speaking, the issue of research traditions cannot be separated from discussions of program evaluation and modes of measurement highlighted in Chapter Ten and those of values at the level of political culture, the focus of Chapter Eleven.
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