Educational Philosophy and Theoy, Vol. 34, No. 3, 2002 Carfax Publishing @ TayiorhFraniirGroup

Book Review

Philosophy of Educational Research Richard Pring, 2000 London, Cassell 168 pp., E16.99 ISBN 0826448135 (pbk)

Philosophies of Educational Research and the Democratic Form of Life

Richard Pring begins the Conclusion of his important book Philosophy of Educational Research by recounting Diane Ravitch’s little thought experiment where she is treated by educational as opposed to medical researchers for an illness. She draws the negative conclusion that educational researchers would disagree about how to make a diagnosis and would ‘argu[e] endlessly about whether I was even sick’. This little vignette disturbed me: there seemed to be something intrinsically wrong with its formulation. Can educational research really be compared to medical research, especially of the sort that leads to diagnosis and treatment? Should educational research be assimilated to the diagnostic and treatment model of medical research? Is this a good model for educational researchers to attempt to emulate?

I came to think that the main reason that the medical model was held up as a comparison in the first place was that it offered an allegedly clear example of how research related to practice. It is an example that has been referred to by politicians such as Sam Galbraith, (the immediate past Scottish minister for education) and officials who want a clear, simple and unambiguous relationship between educa- tional research, on the one hand, and the improvement of educational practice, on the other. Yet when we begin to explore the analogy a little further the issues involved become more complex. First, the distinction between educational and medical research in some fields overlaps considerably, especially in the so-called treatment of cognitive and disability disorders. Second, medical research focusing on the administering of drug treatment to young children for certain learning-related problems, such as the use of Ritalin to treat ‘hyperactivity’, gives us a ready example of Ravitch’s brave new world of educational research. It is one that is more problematic than any ‘educational’ treatment, if we are to believe the evidence- misidentification of the problem, overprescription, alleged medicalisation of a ‘so- cial’ condition, behaviour side-effects (aggressivity), misdiagnosis, the problem of long-term effects and so on. (There are in the order of 20,000 youngsters in Scotland alone being treated in this way and over two million children in the USA). Third, the recommended assimilation of educational research to the medical model can reduce children to the status of a patient to be treated. This is a very passive model of ‘treatment’ and one, I would argue, that runs against all precepts and

ISSN 0013-1857 print; ISSN 1469-5812 online/02/030357-04 0 2002 Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia DOI: 10.1080/00131850220150291

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principles of a democratic education or learning society that is committed to the ideal of the learner’s active participation in their own education. In other words, to invoke the medical model is to reduce education to a treatment, to focus on the problem and to ignore the sociocultural context, and to falsely infer that if a learning problem proves recalcitrant it needs more treatment.

Fourth, there are many other issues that intrude upon such a comparison, not least, the complexity of the different fields and methods that constitute both medical and educational research: what are we really comparing? Medical sociology with classroom interaction studies? The results of forensic medicine with critical theory in education? Epidemiology with educational cognitive science? Pharmacology with educational policy analysis? Improvement in surgical practice with those from educational testing and measurement? There are many other political and ethical issues as well: the political economy of differential state and private funding of medical and educational research; the different histories of training regimes and models of professionalisation; and so on.

I have laboured the point here because there is a concerted political move in England and elsewhere to review and reform the nature and organisation of educa- tional research so that it contributes more effectively to the improvement of educa- tional practice. This is, in part, the impetus that lies behind the Hillage Report, as Pring indicates in his review of the recent criticisms levelled at educational research in Chapter 1. It is also certainly, in part, the reasoning behind the National Educational Research Forum’s (NERF) national strategy consultation paper Re- seurclz uiid Dewloprnent for Education (2001). Often underlying reports of this kind is a concern for a ‘stronger linkage between research, the design and implementation of education policies and the delivery in practice’, as Sir Michael Peckham puts it in his Foreword to the NERF’s paper. By contrast, Jenny Ozga (2000), conscious of the project to reform educational research and the educational profession, argues that research iiito policy ought not to reduce research to the status of a preliminary f.r policy as in some examples of evidence-based models.

Pring’s book, beginning with recent criticisms of educational research in the UK, investigates the focus of educational research (i.e,, practice and policy) (Chapter 2), the philosophical foundations of different kinds of research (Chapter 3), key con- cepts (Chapter 4), competing philosophical positions (Chapter 5), research into practice, with a focus on action research (Chapter 6 ) , ethics of research (Chapter 7) and a conclusion on the nature and future of educational research.

The kernel of Pring’s argument against the medical analogy is that educational practice differs from medical practice in the sense that it is ‘concerned with learning that which is judged to be of value-given what we believe to be of value in the cultural resources upon which the teacher draws and given what we believe to be a worthwhile form of life to pursue.’ Pring concludes ‘Research into “educational practice”, therefore, cannot by simply a branch of the social sciences’ (p. 158) and he goes on to argue:

The object of research will necessarily be secn differently by different practitioners (and by different traditions of practice within which they

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work) as they select different cultural resources for inspiration and different forms of life to aspire to. Educational research cannot avoid the systematic reflection upon the controversial values which pick out what is significant to study, what constitutes as educational outcome, what is to count as value added. (p. 158)

I think there is something fundamentally right about the position he embraces here. Can we say simply that all conceptions of education-and ips0 facto, of teaching and learning-are both value-laden and essentially contestable? And this is the case even though the vast majority of us subscribe to a democratic form of life, that is, even though there is a shared substratum of experience and aspiration?

This aspect of Pring’s argument, I think, needs further development. John Willinsky (200 l), writing in the pages of Educational Researcher, stresses the public value of research in his discussion of The Strategic Education Research Program (SERP) developed by the National Research Council (NRC) in the USA. SERP’s initiative is outlined in a booklet entitled Improving Student Learning: A Strategic Plan for Educational Research and Its Utilization, which as Willinsky indicates consists of large-scale experimentation focused on, above all, ‘the translation of the research findings into forms useful for educational practice’ (cited in Willinsky, 2001, p. 5 ) . Willinsky questions the model of translation as a return to top-down, linear R&D models of the 1950s and 1960s and suggests that SEW seek to pursue their own stated goal of ‘knowledge utilisation and mobilisation’ and the knowledge and action gap in education through democratic forms of collaboration and exchange. In other words, Willinsky thinks that SEW, and other major educational research pro- grammes, are well placed to ‘create a more usehl and relevant source of public knowledge’ and he argues:

This would mean connecting its highly focused research program to the larger complex of theory and practice, critique and validation, that make up this field of educational inquiry. It would mean forging links between research and related classroom practices, teachers’ experiences, curriculum resources, education policies, and public reports, in ways that would enable educators and people generally to make sense and make choices, to take in the broader picture and to focus on the learning experience. (p. 6)

He argues that a neglected overarching research question is: ‘How can research knowledge contribute more to public and professional understanding and deliberation?’ And he reminds us that ‘democratic education is about increasing people’s ability to participate in their own governance’ (p. 9). Willinsky, like Pring, indicates that while educational research will never of itself dictate what should be done in schools (a major difference to clinical medical research), ‘it still can inform and inspire people in their efforts to articulate “creative democratic solutions” ’ in education. (The phrase is Ian Shapiro’s, who uses it in analysing an informative role for the Supreme Court in American political life).

While Pring does make useful references to Dewey and to Stenhouse’s notion of ‘teacher as researcher’ within the traditions of action and practitioner research in the

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growth of professional knowledge, he does not adequately situate these issucs as he well might within larger spaces of deliberative public and policy communities.

The strength of Pring’s book lies not only in its timing but also the common-sense argument that philosophy has something important to contribute to the discussion. As Pring argues, philosophy can help clarify, first, what should be researched and the distinctiveness of educational research as an inquiry into educational practice; second, the relevance and applicability of social science research, and; third, ‘the links between the laiigzrage and concepts of research and those of practice’ (p. 6). Pring’s philosophy of educational research, however, is also schooled by his own education. Pring’s philosophy of educational research is a mixture of Stenhouse’s democratic emphasis on ‘teacher as researcher’, buoyed by Dewey, a strong dose of Oxford ordinary language philosophy and London school on the clarification and ‘logical geography’ of concepts of research, and an ineradicable dash of Ayer’s verificationism, with a strong predisposition to favour a form of scientific realism (cvcn although he is not unsympathetic of postmodernism).

While I do not agree with Pring’s philosophy of educational research, his book makes a useful contribution to the debate, disabusing us of both the easy accommo- dations and the wild assertions often made by those demanding greater relevance from educational research and its more effective contribution to educational practice and policy. At the same time, Pring does not let educational researchers off lightly. As he argues, much research carried out in the name of education is ideologically- driven, fragmented, methodologically ‘soft’, non-cumulative and trivial. Most im- portantly, Pring does us a service in opening up educational research to philosophy analysis. Lxt’s hope that other philosophers, beginning from different principles, are also inspired to pick up the challenge.

References ”4.1 I O S ~ L EDuc:-\TIos..IL RESE.AKCH FORU.\\ (2001) Research mid Dezelopmeirt for Educutioii, A

OZGA, J. (2000) P o ~ i c ~ ~ Rcseai~lz in Etlircariorzul Sertilrgs (Milton Keynes, Open University Press). W:I~ i . i s sKy , J. (2001) The Strategic Education Research Program and the Public Value of

A V d o m / Srratcgv Corrrirlrarioir Paper (Sottingham, NERF Publications).

Research, Edrrsizriotlul RcscarL.her, 30( l ) , pp. 5- 14.

MICHAEL PETERS Uniz~eni@ qf Glasgozu & University of Auckland