Sunday, June 07, 2020

The fallacy of objectivity in educational research: scientism as neo-liberal ideology
Citation metadata


Authors: Emery J. Hyslop-Margison and John A. Dale
Date: Winter 2005

From: Journal of Curriculum Theorizing(Vol. 21, Issue 4)
Publisher: Caddo Gap Press

Document Type: Article
Length: 4,020 words


Article Preview :
There are concerted attempts to promote scientifically-based research in contemporary education to the exclusion of other research paradigms. These efforts are reflected "in the No Child Left Behind Act and the reauthorization and reorganization of the Office of Educational Research and Improvement as the Institute for Educational Science" (Maxwell, 2004, p. 3). This prevailing trend within education is predicated on empiricist assumptions that mistakenly believe student achievement and attainment are best enhanced through scientific analysis, measurement and related program reform. Further, the instrumental implications of scientism in educational research are ideological because the approach insulates foundational problems in education from critique and transformation.
The view that science improves education is at least partially indebted to Herbert Spencer's 19th century pseudo-scientific learning principles and Auguste Comte's misguided faith in positivism as a means to understand human interaction. Although science has profoundly influenced education since the middle of the nineteenth-century, its ability to enhance learning is not evident in available statistics on student achievement (Egan, 2000). Nevertheless, the Bush administration's No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act advances social science assumptions as a means to improve education by demanding that learning programs be based on research that, "employs systematic, empirical methods that draw on observation and experiment" (2000, n.p.).
In this paper, we launch a multi-pronged attack against the commitment to scientism as a means to improve student achievement, in part, by arguing that empirical research in education violates three necessary conditions of meaningful scientific inquiry: (a) empirical research in education is neither objective or value free; (b) empirical research in education commonly makes theoretical assumptions in the interpretation of collected data; and (c) the methods and theories emerging from empirical research in education are not inter-subjective (Railton, 1991). Research findings are considered inter-subjective and scientific when different investigators employing rigorous data collection and analysis methods ultimately reach the same conclusion. We are not arguing against scientific research or science in the main, but we simply wish to emphasize that scientific investigation must satisfy specific epistemological requirements that are not met by existing research practices in education. Our more general intent in this paper is to strip the veneer of science from a conservative ideologically agenda seeking to reduce research in education to instrumental and socially reproductive forms of inquiry.
Ironically, much of the available empirical data regarding academic achievement and attainment accrued by the sociology of education over the past forty years is entirely ignored by the same individuals who openly advocate empirical research in NCLB. Voluminous empirical evidence indicates unequivocally that economic status is the primary variable in determining student academic achievement (Sadovnik, Cookson, & Semel, 2001). Indeed, the significant correlation between socio-economic status and educational outcomes strongly suggests that academic achievement is largely contingent on the social structure of opportunity. This empirical data, and the inter-subjective inferences it generates, are conveniently overlooked by the authors of NCLB who choose instead to emphasize testing, measurement and micro level accountability.
Based on this convenient oversight by the political architects of NCLB, and...

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