This paper offers a defense of Robin Barrow's main arguments in "Giving Teaching Back to Teachers", including additional material concerning the inability of the aggregate data and statistical methods employed in research in education (and research on teaching) to speak to individual teachers and students or to particular classrooms.…

This excerpt from our collective biography emerges from a dialogue that commenced when Noel interjected the concept of "becoming-cyborg" into our conversations about Annette's experiences of breast cancer, which initially prompted her to (re)interpret her experiences as a "chaos narrative" of cyborgian and environmental…

The characteristics of the middle level philosophy as described in This We Believe closely parallel the collaborative research process. The journey of one research team is described in relationship to these characteristics. The collaborative process includes strengths such as professional relationships, professional development, courageous…

In this article, the author compares the practices, philosophy, and history of action research, also known as participatory action research, to the purposes and practices of dance education. The comparison yields connections in four categories, enhancing self-reflective teaching and curriculum design, taking responsibility for teaching outcomes,…

This article presents the authors' review of "Globalizing education, educating the local: how method made us mad," by Ian Stronach. In the opening chapter of their highly influential 1997 book "Education Research Undone: The Postmodern Embrace," Ian Stronach and Maggie MacLure draw upon the work of Derrida to argue for…

Social science is fundamentally about humanity and human relationships. Humans, alone and in interaction with one another, are situated--in a context, a time, and a place. Their action and interaction has potential for unpredictability, agency, growth, change. As a science, it rests uncomfortably in the positivistic framework: the social always…

This essay offers an educational understanding of truth deriving from the work of Jacques Ranciere. Unlike other educational accounts--the traditional, progressive, and critical accounts--of truth that take education as a way of approaching pre-existing truths (or lack of pre-existing truths), this essay establishes an account of truth that is…

In this essay, Robert Floden reviews three recent volumes in the Philosophy, Theory, and Educational Research series that address the philosophical implications of three "isms"-- postpositivism, pragmatism, and poststructuralism--for empirical educational research. These volumes, written by D.C. Phillips, Gert J.J. Biesta, and Michael A. Peters,…

In Norway "Pedagogikk" was institutionalised as an academic field of knowledge in the first part of the twentieth century. As a professional field of knowledge, however, pedagogy developed gradually from the 1840s, mainly through rurally based teacher seminars. In this article, relations between the progressive movement and the…

This paper reports on a study undertaken to investigate international perspectives of what constitutes research in education for sustainable development (ESD). By employing inductive thematic content analysis, the authors sought to examine the perceptions of 66 ESD researchers from 19 countries. The findings reveal a concern with the…

In this article, three theoretical perspectives are used to extend Bulterman-Bos's (2008) argument regarding a clinical approach to education research. First, three intellectual virtues identified by Aristotle--"episteme," "techne," and "phronesis"--are related to the requirements of the "pure" education researcher, the skilled practitioner, and…

In the last years of the nineteenth century, educational psychologists created what they called a "science of education." Their aim was to make education a professional field, thereby freeing teachers and school administrators from political interference, and they believed they could do this by concentrating on studies that might…

A reply to Lawrence Ferrara's Chapter 4 in R. Phelps, R. Sadoff, E. Warburton, and L. Ferrara, "A Guide to Research in Music Education," 5th Edition is presented. It it curious that Ferrara disagrees with Jack Heller and Edward J. P. O'Connor's view that "philosophy" is not "research," yet in the chapter headings in the book A Guide to Research in…

Considers Aristotelian and Galilean views of the relationship between theory and empirical research, and argues that current models in research on teaching are Aristotelian in overly emphasizing the empirical and methodological branches of research programs to the detriment of the theoretical and conceptual. (SLD)

Explores John Dewey's influence upon the history of educational research. Considers the genesis of Dewey's approach to the systematic study of education and investigates some of the reasons his approach to educational inquiry did not endure as well as those of Edward L. Thorndike. Examines the nature of these various traditions. (KO)