Critical approaches in qualitative educational research: epistemology and political relations

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Introduction

Epistemology is the study of knowledge. One aspect of this is the role of ethical or political values in the construction or discovery of knowledge. This is especially relevant to educational researchers who are taking a critical approach to their studies.

What is at issue here? The relation of knowledge to values and the relation of knowledge to truth are particularly important issues over which disagreements occur. There is a continuing debate between those on the one hand who are looking for certainty and for generalisable, universal knowledge. On the other hand, are those who consider that such knowledge is, at best, unattainable (except for logical truths) and at worst, as contributing to a technical rationality which is damaging to education.

I tend to the second way of thinking. In Educational Research For Social Justice, I say (pp. 44-5):

“Some researchers argue that facts are objective and unbiased if, and only if, they are not contaminated by values. They say that once the facts are established, values are brought into play in order to use the knowledge well: to make progress and to improve things. Against this, others would argue that such facts do not, and could not, exist. A particular facet of this debate is the place of power in the construction of values and knowledge, including in some Foucauldian versions, the ethics underpinning the ‘regimes of truth’ which constitute knowledge in any particular society. One consequence of this position is a radical uncertainty about the very possibility of knowledge and truth. These are complex arguments, with more than two sides to them; scepticism about the possibility of reaching any objective facts or certain, universal truth comes from more than one theoretical debate.”

For instance, Maxine Green, writing about the USA, explains (1994, pp.424-5):

“Some of the restiveness [about mainstream educational science] has been a response to the apparent uselessness of research in overcoming “savage inequalities” (Kozol, 1991) that have plagued the schools and raised obstacles to achievement for so long. Some has been a response to a sense of powerlessness when it comes to the suffering and violations of children and young people: the drug cultures, the endemic violence, the abandonments, the gropings of so many young strangers whose worlds are not understood. A good deal, of course, has been due to the disenchantment mentioned above and to the separation of research or positive inquiry from moral considerations or the ethical perplexities troubling so many Americans today. The literature of critical theory, with its emphasis on the linking of mainstream science and “instrumental rationality” (Held, 1980, pp. 379-400), and the technical controls to which it has so often led have convinced many people of the problems of contemporary science. For Jurgen Habermas, it was the “a priori organization of our experience in the behavioral system of instrumental action” (1971, p. 309) that explained the intention to effect technical control over processes conceived to be objectified. Like Habermas and the other scholars of the Frankfurt School (Held, 1980, pp. 65-70), certain educators began to see connections between this and the development of a bureaucratically administered, postindustrial society. Seeking ways of thinking and inquiring other than those associated with mainstream science, numbers then turned their attention to critiques of ideology and, when possible, the clarification of discourse. Their objective, in most cases, became the emancipation of people from linguistic and cognitive constraints, from domination of many kinds. Other thinkers and researchers were attracted to the methods of ethnographers, to humanistic psychologists, and to participant or “qualitative” research in live contexts and with live informants in always changing schools.”

The debate is a complex one but may be simplified and summarised as follows:

1. There is the question of the role of political relations (i.e. social power relations, values, culture, history and so forth) in the discovery and construction of knowledge;
2. There is the (related) question of the nature of knowledge (e.g. its relation to truth) and hence, of what kind of knowledge is relevant to any particular enquiry and its underlying purpose.

The role of political relations

The first question, the role of political relations is a complex one. It includes issues of the relationship of facts to values, of the nature of power, and of the kinds of inquiry which would best provide knowledge – universal, generalisable knowledge, or particular knowledge of specific contexts. Some of this is discussed in Griffiths (1998) especially Chapter 4. Maxine Greene alludes to the significance of values and perspectives for epistemology in the passage quoted in the introduction. Perspectival knowledge is situated and context dependent. It may be contrasted to the ‘view from nowhere’ or the ‘God’s eye view’ (also see pages on theory/perspectival knowledge).The criticism of the search for universal knowledge as contributing to technical rationality, and so to a form of domination, implies the need for other non oppressive forms of knowledge. Bridges, Smeyers and Smith (eds.) (2008) contains a number of articles discussing the confidence that can be placed in a range of sources of educational knowledge including: systematic reviews, large scale population studies, case study, stories and narratives, action research, philosophical enquiry, and the use of the imagination through engagement with literature.

The nature of knowledge

The second question, the nature of knowledge, is also complex and is addressed by separate, although overlapping approaches.

1. In his influential ‘Report on Knowledge’, The Postmodern Condition, Lyotard argues for a distinction between knowledge that can be measured against a yardstick of efficiency (information and competence) and other kinds of knowledge for instance, that which is concerned with ethics, ethical wisdom, individual human beings or with beauty. As he points out, knowledge of information and competence can be measured and then expressed using numbers, which is why it can be stored in computers. In contrast, ethics, ethical wisdom, aesthetic knowledge or knowledge of a person cannot. All of these may make use of numbers but they each require a human being, a knower, before they can be adequately expressed or preserved. They are more likely to be expressed in words, stories, pictures, gestures, dance, etc.
2. Also useful is the classic discussion by Gilbert Ryle (1949, 1971) of ‘knowledge that’ (i.e. knowledge expressed as a proposition) and ‘knowledge how’ or ‘knowledge how to’ (i.e. practical knowledge of procedures, skills and techniques). For more discussion, see: Barrow (1987), Griffiths (1987), Mason (1999) and Star (2006).
3. Another view understands knowledge as a social construction, only to be understood and evaluated in the context of specific social practices. This view can be applied to both to theoretical and practical knowledge. See for instance, Burbules and Smeyers (2002) and Griffiths (2006).
4. Ethical wisdom features in many current approaches. The concept derives, implicitly or explicitly, from Aristotle’s discussion of intelligent practical action. He distinguished praxis, roughly translatable as practical wisdom, from techne, technical know-how, on the one hand and episteme, contemplative knowledge, on the other.
5. Knowledge need not be seen as differing from reality; as being a representation of something distinct from knowledge itself. In their article Osberg, Biesta and Cilliers say (2008, p.213):

“With this understanding, knowledge reaches us not as something we receive but as a response, which brings forth new worlds because it necessarily adds something (which was not present anywhere before it appeared) to what came before.”

The creation of practical knowledge is argued by many researchers to being key to action research or reflective practice of various kinds. In one version of this, Jean McNiff and Jack Whitehead argue:

First, we explain the relationship between the idea of ‘teacher as researcher’ and ‘teacher as ‘educational theorist’, and how we try to honour those relationships in our living practice. Making this relationship explicit enables us to demonstrate the methodological and logical meanings in our pedagogical practices.

Second, we explain how we judge our professional practices in terms of our identified critical living standards of judgement that are themselves a transformation of our ontological and epistemological values into the social criteria that act as the grounds of our living ontological and epistemological standards of judgement.

Third, we explain how by integrating the analysis of our values into the synthesis of our living practices we can come to a deeper understanding and living realisation of our lives as a creative work of art. We link our ideas of the good with the fulfilment of the aesthetic, in the sense that the realisation of our embodied values is accompanied by a feeling of a resonating harmony.

Truth and truthfulness

Academic arguments rage in philosophy, the humanities and the social sciences about the nature of truth. These arguments are many-sided and complex. There is no space here to do more than allude to them. Bridges’ influential discussions (1999, 2003) summarise some mainstream philosophical discussions about different theories of truth (correspondence, coherence, pragmatic, etc) in relation to education. These theories are discussed further in Heikkenen et al. (2000, 2001). Walker and Unterhalter (2004) discuss the significance of multiple perspectives, experiences and interpretations when judging how far to trust a story or set of stories. MacLure (2003) draws on Derrida and Foucault to argue that truths are always textual, discursive and suffused with power relations. Such truths cannot be straightforwardly reported, she argues. Similarly, the feminist philosopher Lugones argues that those whose identity is marginalised (Lugones, 1989, p.285):

“know truths that only the fool can speak and only the trickster can play out without harm.”

Carr’s (1998) book discusses these issues from a contrasting perspective which seeks to avoid ‘intellectually indiscriminate postmodernism’.

Griffiths and Macleod (2008) discuss a useful strategy for sidestepping some of the arguments about the nature of truth, drawing on a discussion by Bernard Williams. He proposes that we focus less on truth and more on truthfulness. He usefully distinguishes two basic virtues associated with truthfulness: accuracy and sincerity. He points out (Williams, 2002, p.45):

Each of the basic virtues of truth involves certain kinds of resistance to what moralists might call temptation – to fantasy and the wish.

References

Bridges, David (1999) Educational Research: pursuit of truth or flight into fancy? British Educational Research Journal 25 (5)

Bridges, David (2003) Fiction written under Oath? Kluwer

Bridges, David Paul Smeyers and Richard Smith (2008) (eds.) Evidence based educational policy: What evidence? What basis? Whose policy? Oxford: Blackwell

Barrow, R. (1987) Skill talk, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 21 (2)

Burbules, Nicholas and Smeyers, Paul (2003) Wittgenstein, the Practice of Ethics, and Moral Education. In Scott Fletcher (ed.) Philosophy of Education, Urbana, Illinois: Philosophy of Education Society, 248–257.

Carr, David (1998) Education, Knowledge and Truth: Beyond the Postmodern Impasse, Routledge

Greene, Maxine (1994) Epistemology and Educational Research: The Influence of Recent Approaches to Knowledge, Review of Research in Education 20, pp. 423-464 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1167390

Griffiths, M. (1987) The teaching of skills and the skills of teaching: a reply to Robin Barrow, Journal of Philosophy of Education, 21 (2)

Griffiths, M. (1998) Educational Research for Social Justice: Getting off the Fence Buckingham: Open University Press

Griffiths, M. (2006) ‘The feminisation of teaching and the practice of teaching: threat or opportunity?’ Educational Theory 56(4) Fall

Griffiths, M. and Macleod G. (2008) ‘Personal narratives and policy: never the twain?’ Journal of Philosophy of Education 42 (s1).

Habermas, J. (1971) Toward a Rational Society, (trans.) J. J. Shapiro, Heinemann

Heikkinen, H.L.T., Huttunen, R. and Kakkori, L. (2000) ‘And this story is true’: On the problem of narrative truth, Paper presented to ECER, Edinburgh, September, (Accessed 28 February, 2007)

Heikkinen, H., Kakkori, L. and Huttenen, R. (2001) This is my truth, tell me yours: Some aspects of action research quality in the light of truth theories, Educational Action Research 9(1) pp. 9-24

Held, D. (1980) Introduction to Critical Theory University of California Press

Lugones, M. (1989) ‘Playfulness, “world”-traveling and loving perception’ in Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (eds.) Women, Knowledge and Reality, (Boston, Unwin Hyman)

Lyotard, Jean Francois (1984) The Postmodern Condition: a Report on Knowledge, Manchester University Press

Mason, Mark (1999) Outcomes-based Education in South African Curricular Reform: a response to Jonathan Jansen, Cambridge Journal of Education, 29 (1)

MacLure, M. (2003) Discourse in Educational and Social Research, (Buckingham, Open University Press)

Osberg, Deborah, Biesta, Gert and Cilliers, Paul (2008) From representation to emergence: Complexity’s challenge to the epistemology of schooling, Educational Philosophy and Theory, 40 (1)

Ryle, Gilbert (1949), The Concept of Mind London: Hutchinson

Ryle, Gilbert (1971) Teaching and training, in: Collected Papers, Vol. 2 Hutchinson

Star, J.R. (2000) On the Relationship Between Knowing and Doing in Procedural Learning. In B. Fishman & S. O’Connor-Divelbiss (eds.) Fourth International Conference of the Learning Sciences Erlbaum

Walker, M. and Unterhalter, E. (2004) Knowledge, narrative and national reconciliation: storied reflections on the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 25 (2) pp. 279-297

Williams, B. (2002) Truth and Truthfulness: An essay in genealogy, (Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press)