Online research in philosophy

How should educational research be contracted? And is there anything wrong with the way that public funding of educational research is currently administered? We endeavour to answer these questions by appeal to the work of two of the most prominent philosophers of science of the twentieth century, namely Popper and Kuhn. Although their normative views of science are radically different, we show that they would nonetheless agree on a number of key rules concerning the extent to which scientific practice should be influenced ‘from the outside’. We then show that these rules are often broken in the way that research is publicly funded in the UK.

This paper argues for more randomised controlled trials in educational research. Educational researchers have largely abandoned the methodology they helped to pioneer. This gold-standard methodology should be more widely used as it is an appropriate and robust research technique. Without subjecting curriculum innovations to a RCT then potentially harmful educational initiatives could be visited upon the nation's children.

Three polemical exchanges between Bertrand Russell and F. H. Bradley, F. C. S. Schiller, and the prosecutor in Russell's trial for violating the Defence of the Realm Act in 1916 are examined in order to bring to light some paradigms of informal reasoning, with a view to encouraging research into the logic of natural language. Ten such paradigms are expressed, e.g., Agree with the contention but not for the reasons given; Agree that the criticism is valid and report that one has modified the criticized doctrine but not in the manner suggested.

In this position statement it is argued that educational neuroscience must necessarily be relevant to, and therefore have implications for, both educational theory and practice. Consequently, educational neuroscientific research necessarily must embrace educational research questions in its remit.

Perhaps the most significant feature of current artificial intelligence research is the co-existence of a number of vastly different and often seriously conflicting paradigms, competing for the attention of the research community (as well as research funding). In this article, two competing paradigms of artificial intelligence, the connectionist and the symbolic approach, will be described. Brief analysis and criticism of each paradigm will be provided, and possible integration of the two will also be discussed as a result of the analysis on their respective shortcomings.

Building theory can be thought of as a never-ending journey. Theory building is particularly important to disciplines that are emerging and growing. Compared to older and more established academic disciplines, logistics does not have a rich heritage of theory development. This paper aims to construct a framework that combines different research paradigms with research approaches for logistics theory building. This framework can be used for positioning studies that aim at building and articulating core logistics theories. The framework is illustrated by providing examples from logistics research adhering to different research paradigms (positivism, scientific realism and interpretivism) and using different research approaches (deduction, induction, and abduction). The paper discusses how these different research paradigms and research approaches contribute to theory building in their own way.

Despite considerable attention to the need for systemic education for a new society, it is surprising to note how little research has actually been conducted in this area with transdisciplinary approach. Besides, there are many papers about new educational approaches but they are focused on a specific level, for example on higher education. Very little has been done in terms of a systemic and comprehensive approach capable of guiding human development from preschool to postgraduates studies-and beyond. This paper has two purposes: (a) first, to articulate the theoretical framework of a new educational paradigm that responds to current needs of society and that integrates evolutionary perspectives on cultural and human development; (b) second, to suggest a research agenda that may be followed in the future to expand our knowledge base in the new educational paradigms area.

Some sociologists argue that sociological theory does not grow and the reason why it does not grow is that the discipline lacks a core of highly developed, almost universally accepted, paradigms; even worse, because it is reflexive, its criteria of problem and theory choice are so noncognitive that there are no paradigms, hence no progress, in its future. We do not question that sociology lacks a core of almost universally accepted paradigms, nor that highly developed paradigms may be a sufficient condition of theory growth, but we question both that universal acceptance of them is necessary and that sociology has nothing like them. We argue that theoretical research programs-sets of strategies, sets of interrelated theories embodying these strategies, and empirical models interpreting these theories-are sufficient for theoretical growth. An examination of three theoretical research programs in this article shows that they perform some of the same functions for theory growth as, in Kuhn, are performed by paradigms. Sociology may lack a universally accepted core, but there are theoretical research programs in sociology, and therefore already there is theory growth if it is looked for in the right place. Nor is there any warrant for the view that because its criteria of problem and theory choice are inescapably noncognitive, there are no paradigms, hence no progress, in sociology's future. If that were true, not only would sociology lack paradigms, but also theoretical research programs. We conclude from our study that sociology need not wait on the emergence of a universally accepted core. It is sufficient for the growth of theory that it develops further its existing theoretical research programs and that it encourages the creation of new programs.