Philosophy, Methodology and Educational Research - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1405145137 ISBN 13: 9781405145138

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007

Synopsis

This book evaluates the increasingly wide variety of intellectual resources for research methods and methodologies and investigates what constitutes good educational research.

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• Written by a distinguished international group of philosophers of education
  
• Questions what sorts of research can usefully inform policy and practice, and what inferences can be drawn from different kinds of research
  
• Demonstrates the critical engagement of philosophers of education with the wider educational research community and illustrates the benefits that can accrue from such engagement

About this title

Book Description

Educational policy-makers are increasingly employing the rhetoric of research-based or evidence-based policy and practice, thus insisting on a particularly narrow definition of educational research. At the same time, educational researchers themselves are drawing on an increasingly wide variety of intellectual resources for their research methods and methodologies ndash; methods and methodologies derived from the social sciences, broadly conceived, but also from the humanities and the creative arts. The context for this publication is thus one of intense debate around what counts as good educational research. What sorts of research can usefully inform policy and practice, and what inferences can be drawn from different kinds of research? Is the main function of educational research to inform policy and practice in any case? The debate raises, too, difficult questions about how researchers can understand peoplersquo;s very different experiences of education, and about the consequences of educational interventions. Such debate invites, and this book provides, serious philosophical attention in the form of analysis and argument rooted in epistemology and the philosophy of social science. As well as exploring the philosophy of educational research the book also examines the contribution that philosophy itself can make as educational research, in its own right. The collection brings together twenty-two contributions written for this purpose by a distinguished international group of philosophers of education. It represents an authoritative contribution to the literature and will be a key point of reference both for those examining these issues at a policy level and for those teaching and studying educational research methods and methodologies in university departments, as well as for students of philosophy of education. It demonstrates too the critical engagement of philosophers of education with the wider educational research community and illustrates the benefits that can accrue from such engagement.

About the Author

David Bridges is currently Executive Director of the Association of Universities of the Eastern Region and a Professorial Fellow at the Centre for Applied Research in Education, University of East Anglia.

Richard Smith is Professor of Education at Durham University.

Edition details

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1405145137
• ISBN 13: 9781405145138
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 372
• Editor: Bridges David