From tiny acorns: Co-produced research between
Posted: Tue Jan 28, 2025 10:36 am
Another reason why philosophical and in particular epistemological issues are concealed is related to the power of positivism and its associated representational realist metaphysic. Even when researchers are not conscious of working within the general parameters of positivism, the latter still exerts a powerful influence; an influence which considers reflexive questions to be both undesirable and unnecessary.
There have been from time immemorial calls to adopt approaches to the study of education and the social world – this after all is what we do as educational researchers – that deny the need to address ontological and switzerland email list epistemological issues, however complicated these two ideas are. Advocates for empiricist approaches (for example, John Locke, David Hume, Auguste Comte, A. J. Ayer and Steven Pinker) give the impression that they are operating outside of and in opposition to philosophical framings about the nature of the world and how it can be known.
These philosophers’ and many empirical researchers’ purpose is to support and strengthen a particular view of human behaviour, which favours those forms of research and judgment that can be described as empiricist and technicist. For these empirical researchers, ontological and epistemological beliefs do not underpin the development and use of strategies and methods that they employ. These methods and strategies are determined by how useful they are, and even by whether they are fit for purpose. Instrumental rationality is another example of this type of knowledge framework, that now dominates in faculties and disciplines round the world.
There have been from time immemorial calls to adopt approaches to the study of education and the social world – this after all is what we do as educational researchers – that deny the need to address ontological and switzerland email list epistemological issues, however complicated these two ideas are. Advocates for empiricist approaches (for example, John Locke, David Hume, Auguste Comte, A. J. Ayer and Steven Pinker) give the impression that they are operating outside of and in opposition to philosophical framings about the nature of the world and how it can be known.
These philosophers’ and many empirical researchers’ purpose is to support and strengthen a particular view of human behaviour, which favours those forms of research and judgment that can be described as empiricist and technicist. For these empirical researchers, ontological and epistemological beliefs do not underpin the development and use of strategies and methods that they employ. These methods and strategies are determined by how useful they are, and even by whether they are fit for purpose. Instrumental rationality is another example of this type of knowledge framework, that now dominates in faculties and disciplines round the world.