Sun-hong’s online journal

John Dewey (1916) argued decades ago, view knowledge as an entity complete in itself unconnected to other forces (p.7).

John Dewey well understood the relationship between teaching as democratic work and the teacher as researcher. In the Sources of a Science of Education (1929) he argued that one of the most important roles of a teacher was to investigate pedagogical problems through inquiry. Writing of the ‘teacher as investigator,’ Dewey saw teachers as the most important inquirers into the successes and failures of the school – he did not see how viable educational research could be produced in any other way. Not only did Dewey’s teacher investigations lead to knowledge about the school, but they led to good teaching (Dewey, 1929: 46-8).  p.38

Constructivism rejects such a dualism and posits an alternative to the Western traditions of realism and rationalism (p.49).

Giambattista Vico p.49 – Constructivism draws upon an anti-Cartesian tradition emerging from the New Science of Giambattista Vico in the early 1700s and extending to the phenomenology, critical theory, and women’s epistemology of the twentieth century.

Advocates of critical action research must walk a tightrope here. While avoiding step-by-step models of the proper methods of educational action research, they must at the same time be sufficiently concrete and specific to provide guidance to teachers who might have no conception of how to begin their lives as practitioner researchers. (p.133)

Phillips represents a host of social science and education researchers who express great discomfort with eclectic qualitative research. If what counts as knowledge, he asks, is always shaped by power, values, and interests and if objectivity is always socially agreed upon, what is left to protect us from relativism? If Individuals can invent their microcosms, how can researchers distinguish truth from fiction? We have gone far enought. In our rejection of positivism we have thrown out the baby with the bathwatehr and in the process, they argue, we have done away with the concept of a mistake. (p.160).

In many ways, the eclecticists argue, positivists are like religious fundamentalists in their belief that there is only one way to heaven. And that one way, my dear friends and true believers, is the straight and narraw path of positivist validation (p.160).

Validation is thus rendered more problematic than many quantitative-empirical researchers would prefer. There is less certainty and more fallibility in survey data-gathering, correlational studies, and control treatment experiments than educational researchers would like to admit. (p.162).

To a critical constructivist teacher researcher, validity means much more than the traditional definitions of internal and external validity usually associated with the concept. Positivism has traditionally defined internal validity as the extent to which a researcher’s observations and measurements are true descriptions of a particular reality; external validity has been defined as the degree to which such descriptions can be accurately compared to other groups. (p.168).

As we cultivate this closeness we make use of our must powerful ways of knowing – our subjectivities and intuitions. We use our images and symbols to help explain the phenomenon we have grown to know so intimately. Our intuition is more than an occasional flash of insight; it is a tool which allows us to see the forest, and trees, and the wood and the simultaneous, multidimensional relationships among them. Research which promotes such insight, which can be used to improve our practice, is of a higher quality than that which holds internal and external validity but tells us little that we didn’t already know or could use in our professional lives. (p.170).

This is where we begin to redefine validation, where we recognize that our assimilations are sometimes constructed not so much by ourselves but by dominant idelogocal and discursive forces within the society. (p.175).

Consciousness itself is a part of this web and a key aspect of  critical complex research involves the  nature of these connections, their effects and their evolution into systems (P.177).

New forms of researcher reflection are demanded, as issues of validity become entangled with the historical, cultural, and linguistic situatedness of the inquirer and with the nature of the relationship between researcher and researched. (p.178).

In highquality critical democratic teacher reesarch, inquirers must possess knowledge of these issues in order to produce worthy knowledge. The empowerment in question involves not only political and pedagogical dynamics but cognitive aspects as well. (p.178).

Understanding that all knowledge is an interpretation, critical constructivist researchers devote much attention to the interpretive world of hermeneutis. No rethinking of validity can take place outside of a context informed by hermeneutics.  (p.179).

Objectivism posits that a fixed, transhistorical, transcultural framwork exists which researchers must use to determine validity. Relativism maintains that all concepts of truth and reality are contingent on a particular cultural or theoretical matrix. Hermeneutics attempts to avoid these bi-polar extremes of epistemology, as it promotes a dialogical notion of knowledge production. The hermeneutic dialogue cannot be objective and universal; it is always shaped by tacit forces making a complicated process even more complex. But this is the hand humans are dealt, and, consequently, we must deal with it. (p.180).

Such dynamics often tie interpretation to the interplay of larger social forces (the general) with the everyday lives of individuals (the particular).

Teahcer’s role : Pedagogical, social, historical, and philosophical.
managerial, and technicial.

As Paulo Freire (1970) argued decades ago, we have to account for social, political, and economic contradictions in our pedagogical efforts to confront and change the world, to become transformative teachers. The complex task of discerning the implications of research for action is part hermeneutics, part self-awareness, part consciousness-raising, and part development of ethical radar. (p.184).

As Phil Carspecken (1996, 1999) contends, these critical dynamics are central to the act of knowledge production.  (p.186).