Foundations of Education Research

Catalog description

While researchers working in the natural sciences typically share a common set of assumptions concerning their object of study, appropriate methods for investigating that object, and explanatory principles and concepts, the social and human sciences, including education, do not have this unity. Instead, a range of positions that developed in philosophy, primarily through the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, have led to very different, sometimes incongruous orientations to research involving human phenomena. These include Post-Positivism, Interpretivism, the Critical Tradition, Post-Structuralism, and Pragmatism. Although the beliefs, concerns, and priorities underlying these orientations are not always made explicit by researchers, they each offer specific views concerning how knowledge is produced and how that knowledge can best be put to use in the service of humankind. This course engages with these traditions in order to identify the assumptions and commitments underlying them, to appreciate the research that has emerged from each perspective, and to understand what each has to offer education professionals.