This article discusses the National Research Council (2002) report’s six guiding principles that define good scientific educational research. The principles and discussion focus on good educational research in terms of the “rigor” of the research as well as the “scientific” base and principles adhered to in doing the research. This article critically examines the normative base from which the consensual definitions of rigorous research and good science were drawn for the report and by its authors, and looks at the margins where other research falls, by definition. By using a variety of examples of research from around the world that highlights the need for complex historical, political, and cultural lens to examine policy, research, knowledge and power constructions, Bloch suggests that the report represents only one truth among many, limiting further inquiry. By examining the relation between knowledge and truth, the danger in a limited perspective is underlined.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Anderson-Leavitt, K., Bloch, M., & Soumare, A. (1998). Inside classrooms in Guinea: Girls’ experiences. In M. N. Bloch, J. Beoku-Betts, & B. R. Tabachnick (Eds.), Women and education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Power, opportunities, and constraints (pp. 99-130). Boulder, CO: Lynn Reinner.
2.
Apple, M. (1994). Official knowledge. New York: Routledge Kegan Paul.
3.
Bleier, R. (1984). Science and gender: A critique of biology and its themes on women. New York: Pergamon.
4.
Bleier, R. (Ed.).(1991). Feminist approaches to science. New York: Teachers College Press.
5.
Bloch, M. N. (1987). Becoming scientific and professional: Critical perspectives on the history of early childhood education. In T. S. Popkewitz (Ed.), The formation of school subjects (pp. 25-62). London: Falmer.
6.
Bloch, M. N. (1989). Young boys’ and girls’ play at home and in the community: A cultural-ecological framework. In M. N. Bloch & A. D. Pellegrini (Eds.), The ecological context of children’s play (pp.120-154). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.
7.
Bloch, M.N. (2003). Global/local analyses of the construction of “family-child welfare”. In M.N. Bloch, K. Holmlund, I. Moqvist, and T.S. Popkewitz (Eds.), Governing the children, family, and education: Restructuring the welfare state (pp.195-230). New York: Palgrave Publishing Co.
8.
Bloch, M. N. (2003a, February). Play, literacy, and educational debates about standards/assessments. Paper presented at the Society for the Study of Play, Charlottesville, SC.
9.
Bloch, M. N., Holmlund, K., Moqvist, I., & Popkewitz, T. S. (Eds.). (2003). Governing the child, family, and education: Restructuring the welfare state. New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.
10.
Cannella, G. (1997). Deconstructing early childhood education. New York: Peter Lang.
11.
Cronbach, L. J. (1975). Beyond the two disciplines of scientific psychology. American Psychologist, 30, 116-127.
12.
Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
13.
Finn, C., Jr. (2001). Trouble ahead? Philanthropy, 15(3), 36-37.
14.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings by Michel Foucault (C. Gordon, Ed. & Trans.). New York: Pantheon.
15.
Foucault, M. (1985). The history of sexuality: The use of pleasure (Vol. 2, R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Vintage.
16.
Foucault, M. (1991). Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon, & P. Miller (Eds.), The Foucault effect: Studies in governmentality (pp. 87-104). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (Original work published 1979)
17.
Gross, P. R., Levitt, N., & Lewis, M. (1997). The flight from science to reason. New York: New York Academy of Sciences.
18.
Hacking, I. (1999). The social construction of what? Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
19.
Haraway, D. (1989). Primate visions: Gender, race, and nature in the world of modern science. New York: Routledge Press.
20.
Haraway, D. (1990). A manifesto for cyborgs: Science, technology, and socialist feminism in the 1980s. In L. J. Nicholson (Ed.), Feminism/Postmodernism (pp. 190-233). London: Routledge.
21.
Haraway, D. (1991). Simians, cyborgs, and women: The reinvention of nature. New York: Routledge Press.
22.
Harding, S. (1986). The science question in feminism. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
23.
Kaestle, C. (1993). The awful reputation of education research. Educational Researcher, 22(1), 26-31.
24.
Kliebard, H. (1986). The struggle for the American curriculum. London: Routledge Kegan Paul.
25.
Lagemann, E. C. (2002, January 24). Usable knowledge in education. A memorandum for the Spencer Foundation Board of Directors. In Annual report of the Spencer Foundation-2002. Chicago: The Spencer Foundation. Available at www.usableknowledge@spencer.org
26.
McNeil, L. (2000). Contradictions of school reform: Educational costs of standardized testing. New York: Routledge Kegan Paul.
27.
McNeil, L. (in press). Faking equity: High stakes testing and the education of Latino youth. In A. Valenzuela (Ed.), Assessment and educational equity: Why Texas style accountability fails. New York: State University of New York Press.
28.
National Research Council. (2002). Scientific research in education (Committee on Scientific Principles for Education Research, R. J. Shavelson & L. Towne, Eds., Center for Education, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education). Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
29.
Popkewitz, T. (1998a). The culture of redemption and the administration of freedom as research: The redemptive culture of the educational sciences. The Review of Educational Research, 68(1), 1-34.
30.
Popkewitz, T. S. (1998b). Dewey, Vygotsky, and the social administration of the individual: Constructivist pedagogy as systems of reason in historical spaces. American Educational Research Journal, 35(4), 535-570.
31.
Popkewitz, T. S., & Bloch, M. N. (2001). Administering freedom: A history of the present (rescuing the parent to rescue the child for society). In K. Hultqvist & G. Dahlberg (Eds.), The changing child in a changing world (pp. 85-118) London: Routledge.
32.
Reynolds, A. (2002). Age 21 cost-benefit analysis of the Title I Chicago Child-Parent Centers (Institute for Research on Poverty Discussion Paper No. 1245-02). Madison: University of Wisconsin-Madison.
33.
Rogoff, B. (2003). The cultural nature of human development. New York: Oxford University Press.
34.
Rogoff, B., & Wertsch, J. (Eds.). (1984). Children’s learning in the “zone of proximal development”. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
35.
Scott, J. (1992). Experience. In J. Butler & J. W. Scott (Eds.), Feminists theorize the political (pp. 22-40). New York: Routledge.
36.
Smith, L. T. (1999). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and indigenous peoples. London: Zed Books.
37.
Swadener, B. B., & Lubeck, S. (Eds.). (1995). Children and families “at promise”: Deconstructing the discourse of risk. Albany: State University of New York Press.
38.
Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in society: The development of higher psychological processes (M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, & E. Souberman, Eds.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
39.
Wagner, P. (2001). History and theory in the social sciences: Not all that is solid melts into air. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
40.
Wallerstein, I. M. (2001). Unthinking social science: The unity of 19th century paradigms. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
41.
Weisner, T.S., Gibson, C., Lowe, E.D., & Ramich, J. (2002). Understanding working poor families in the New Hope Program. Poverty research news, 6(4). Available at www.jcpr.org/newsletters/vol6_No4/index.html
42.
Wertsch, J. (1985). Vygotsky and the social formation of mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
