In the light of recent writings of Richard Pring, and in relation to the application of empirical research methods in education, this paper offers a corrective to a neo-realist viewpoint and develops a critical realist perspective. The argument is made that the deployment of empirical research methods needs to be underpinned by a meta-theory embracing epistemological and ontological elements; that this meta-theory does not commit one to the view that absolute knowledge of the social world is possible; and (...) that critical realism is the most appropriate meta-theory to underpin the use of empirical research methods. Further to this, unhelpful dualisms between quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and between structure and agency, are discussed in relation to neo-realist and critical realist perspectives. (shrink)

In the light of recent writings of Richard Pring, and in relation to the application of empirical research methods in education, this paper offers a corrective to a neo-realist viewpoint and develops a critical realist perspective. The argument is made that the deployment of empirical research methods needs to be underpinned by a meta-theory embracing epistemological and ontological elements; that this meta-theory does not commit one to the view that absolute knowledge of the social world is possible; and (...) that critical realism is the most appropriate meta-theory to underpin the use of empirical research methods. Further to this, unhelpful dualisms between quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and between structure and agency, are discussed in relation to neo-realist and critical realist perspectives. (shrink)

Much education research takes place under a convenient but spurious assumption that there is a common purpose to education research, and a common epistemology. This book takes a clear-sighted and perceptive look at the underlying truths of education research, and in refining our understanding of the subject paves the way to improving our methods and practice. It addresses the theoretical conceptual elements educational discourses that inform most debates about educational research, including: education and its (...) relationship to research; the problems and possibilities of quantification; and the diversity of methods researchers can use to create theory. In a second section the book explores these issues as they relate to a number of current and controversial debates in education, such as: researching school effectiveness; the study of curriculum, policy, sociology and anthropology; and the role of post-modern though in debates on education. (shrink)

Empirical educational research enjoys a methodological and theoretical debate that is characterized by a number of unresolved and lively debated controversies. This compilation thesis is an attempt to contribute to this debate using the toolbox of philosophy of science. -/- The thesis consists of an introductory chapter and four essays. In the introductory chapter I identify three methodological and theoretical controversies that are discussed within the field of educational research. These are: 1) the controversy concerning the (...) scientific status of educational research; 2) the controversy between cognitive and sociocultural theories of learning; and, 3) the controversy between realist and constructionist interpretations of theories of learning. -/- I provide in the essays a critical assessment of the claims behind each of these controversies, and argue for an alternative reconstruction of these issues. -/- In Essay I, I criticize a view about the interpretation of human action, labeled in the text as interpretivism. This view posits a sharp separation between the natural and social sciences, to the effect that the methods of the latter cannot be applied to the former. The first controversy seems to rest on this position. As I argue, the arguments in support of interpretivism are contradicted by actual research practice. I conclude that the interpretivistic claims lack support and that the general separation claim appears as problematic. -/- A further debate has fueled the first controversy, that is, the supposed distinction between qualitative and quantitative methods. In Essay II, I argue against this distinction. More specifically, I discuss the concept of empirical support in the context of qualitative methods (for short, qualitative support). I provide arguments that although there are two specific and non-trivial properties of qualitative support, there is no methodological separation between quantitative and qualitative methods concerning empirical support. -/- Considered together, the first two essays indicate two points of methodological continuity between educational research and other scientific practices (such as the natural sciences). I therefore conclude that the controversy concerning the scientific status of educational research rests in large part on unjustified claims. -/- Essay III focuses on the second controversy. In this article I argue that Suárez’ inferential approach to the concept of scientific representation can be used as an account of scientific representation in learning, regardless of whether learning is understood as a cognitive or social phenomenon. -/- The third controversy is discussed in Essay IV. Here, I discuss some ontological aspects of the framework of the actor-network theory. Reflecting on the use of this framework in the research field of Networked Learning, I argue that the assumption of an ontology of relations provides the solution for two puzzles about the ontology of networks. The relevance of my argument for the third controversy is that it suggests a point of connection between constructionist and realist interpretations of the ontology of learning. -/- The last two essays suggest two points of continuities between theoretical frameworks that have been and still are argued to be incompatible. (shrink)

What is research and who is a researcher? Why engage in research and what can be its value? How do we come to know what lies beyond our horizons? <I>Paradigms of Research for the 21st Century opens the door for wondering about these and other questions pertaining to the nature and process of educational research. It offers an insightful and detailed account of Western and non-Western philosophical traditions and perspectives on reality, knowledge, and values that (...) have been responsive to past and present developments of educational research in North America. These accounts form a paradigm - a system of inquiry, a model, or a way of knowing. Empirical-analytic, pragmatic, interpretive, critical, poststructuralist, and transcendental paradigms are distinguished as an alternative to a quantitative-qualitative typology of paradigms in educational research. This book can be used for introductory and advanced research methods courses at the master's and doctoral levels. (shrink)

Since the advent of the twenty-first century, science has experienced a crisis pertaining to the replicability of quantitative research findings, which has become known as the ‘replication crisis’. The replication crisis has particularly afflicted research in the behavioural sciences, and psychology in particular. Given the relevance of psychology to education, it is unsurprising that the replication crisis also presents an issue for quantitative educational research, thus potentially compromising its practical usefulness. This article outlines the (...) replication crisis in psychology, and highlights its significance for quantitative educational research. Greater methodological rigour, aimed at addressing methodological deficiencies in the conduct of scientific research, has been suggested as a response to the replication crisis. Following a review of various calls for greater methodological rigour, the current article argues that, whilst methodological deficiencies may be a contributory factor, there is potentially a more fundamental reason for the replication crisis. The case is made that the non-separability of a measured attribute from the measurement instrument, and the irreducible uncertainty in unmeasured attributes, may be the principal reasons for the replication crisis in psychology and education. Implications of such an explanation for the crisis are articulated in relation to the evidence-based policy agenda in education. (shrink)

This paper charts the journey that led to the author's discovery of phenomenology as a potential research methodology in the field of science education, and describes the impact on his own thinking and approach of his encounters with the work of Husserl and Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Van Manen. Drawing on this theoretical framework, the author argues that, as a methodology for investigating scientific thinking in relation to life experience, learning and curriculum design, phenomenology not only provides a means of (...) accessing subjective knowing and pure perception, but is sufficiently rigorous and systematic to represent the lifeworld experiences of research participants with a high degree of accuracy. In the process, he highlights the uniqueness and value of phenomenology in relation to quantitative and other qualitative research methods. The aim of this paper is to inspire insight into the value in science education research of using a methodology that fosters a deeper understanding of both teachers’ and learners’ lived experience of the scientific world. The challenge to science specialists, whether educators or researchers, would be to shift their default mode of understanding from the object pole to the ego pole, from the physical object to the human subject, from the observable and measurable to the lived as the true source of human knowledge. (shrink)

It is not uncommon in educational research and social science in general either to eschew the word truth or to put it in scare quotes in order to signify scepticism about it. After the initial wave of relativism in the philosophy of natural science, a second wave has developed in social science with the rise of postmodernism and poststructuralism. The tendency here is to relativise truth or to bracket out questions of truth. In contradistinction, this paper revindicates the (...) metaphysical nature of truth. Truth is a transcendental precondition of educational inquiry and is best understood as a formal, regulative norm. Realism about truth enjoins a defence of the correspondence theory, which is provided here. At the same time, however, the development of realism in the social sciences has ironically followed the postmodernists in its scepticism about truth and its rejection of the correspondence theory. This paper critically appraises such recent developments, since all research is unintelligible without realism about the social world and whether our substantive knowledge-claims correspond with it. (shrink)

This essay defines and critiques ‘methodocentrism’, the belief that predetermined research methods are the determining factor in the validity and importance of educational research. By examining research in science studies and posthumanism, the authors explain how this methodocentrism disenables research from taking account of problems and non-human actants that are presumed to be of no importance or value in existing social science research methodologies, both qualitative and quantitative. Building from a critique of these (...) methods as profoundly anthropocentric, the authors examine three crucial problematics in which methodocentrism functions in educational research: the institutionalization of graduate training, a wide-spread privileging of the visual, and the seeming necessity of ‘data’ in social scientific research methodologies. Ultimately, this article does not reject the necessity of particular studies having methods—rigorous, philosophically grounded approaches to problems in the world—but it argues that the belief that methods must be selected from existing options and assembled before approaching the ‘objects’ of study is not only a form of bad science, it is also deeply implicated in anthropocentric and colonialist politics. Instead, what research requires today is a thorough rethinking of the very distinction between subject and object and a renewed questioning of how agency functions in specific research settings. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to Lawrence Ferrara’s Chapter Four in R. Phelps, R. Sadoff, E. Warburton, and L. Ferrara, A Guide to Research in Music Education, 5th Edition (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2005)Jack HellerIt is curious that Lawrence Ferrara disagrees with Jack Heller and Edward. J. P. O'Connor's view1 that "philosophy" is not "research," yet in the chapter headings in the book A Guide to Research in (...) Music Education, 5th Edition, Chapter 4 is labeled "Philosophical Inquiry," while other chapters are labeled "Qualitative Research," "Nonexperimental Research," "Quantitative Research," and "Historical Research" (italics added). Why not "Philosophical Research?" Maybe he, too, believes that philosophy is not research.In our Handbook Chapter2 we pointed out that research should be systematic and based on "empirical observation." To make things worse we said that research should try to provide "unbiased evidence." Ferrara ascribes to us a positivistic view that we did not make nor believe. That view, according to Ferrara is that the "key reason for their [our] dismissal of philosophical inquiry (notice inquiry not research) as a bona fide research design is the invariable criterion that they [we] assign to all research if it is indeed research: to present 'unbiased evidence.'" [End Page 89] We still believe that research should try to be as objective as possible while realizing that all observations are researcher dependent and have error. Research should strive to reduce error as much as possible.My reading of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions does not conflict with what was written in our Chapter. We did not claim that data are unbiased but rather that research should try to limit bias and try to interpret observations that can be supported by specific behavior.Philosophy, or more properly model building, should lead research. Assumptions that appear in a model are just that. They are assumptions. Not fact; not unbiased opinion. But these assumptions or philosophical conclusions should not be called research in music education because they do not provide any behavioral evidence as support. The deductive process used in philosophy (syllogistic reasoning, for example) should help to develop hypotheses that can be investigated by an inductive process (data collection). Philosophy is a time honored scholarly activity. We certainly do not mean to diminish its importance. All research should have a philosophical underpinning that should produce a theoretical model. This model then should be tested by research. Our Handbook Chapter takes this position. Philosophy is philosophy, not research.Ferrara paraphrases Rom Harre3 by stating thatthere are at least three realms of scientific research and theory: the first realm is marked by ordinary perception in which what is known is based on observable and empirically verifiable facts; in the second realm, perception may catch up with conception–there is a promise of technological development... through which researchers will eventually be able to 'observe' and empirically verify what they only conceived (as in philosophical inquiry) as the probable explanation; and in the third realm there are genuine theoretical acts of imagination... that will never be directly (italics added) perceived, for example, empirically observed or verified.Ferrara points out that this "positivist dictum [the Harre quote above]... is unrealistic in relation to actual (italics added) scientific research and practice."4 It is not clear to which "actual scientific research and practice" Ferrara refers. This entire view is misguided. Ferrara does not believe "the methodology of the natural sciences can appropriately be utilized in the human sciences and arts research, retaining the level of objectivity (italics added) achieved in the natural sciences." Who does Ferrara believes carries out natural science research? Are they not humans, constrained by the same problems of observation that all humans encounter? Are their observations more "objective" as Ferrara seems to believe? The natural scientist, like all other researchers, faces the issue of error in observing phenomena that all researchers face. (See the many examples of [End Page 90] this view in Jacques Barzun and Henry Graff.5 ) Neither philosophical inquiry, nor logical positivism, nor the "new realism" approach that Ferrara proposes for research is free from observational error. The role of all research is to minimize error.A quick romp through some... (shrink)

The report on educational research, commissioned by the Office for Standards in Education, written by James Tooley with assistance, and published under the title Educational Research: a critique, set out to ‘help provide some badly needed evidence to inform the debate about the quality of educational research’ . Whether this ‘snapshot’ actually upholds Hargreaves' contention that there is a considerable amount of ‘second rate educational research’ is far from clear, although Tooley does (...) conclude that the majority of studies surveyed lacked a clear focus, employed sloppy methodology and displayed partisanship. Now, those whose work was critiqued might, with some justification, grumble about Tooley's own ideological bias given his well‐known right‐wing, market‐oriented views about education. Concern could also be directed at the report's methodological inadequacies, including the procedures adopted to select the journal sample, the categories employed for analysis, and the validity of the conclusions reached. I leave all of these for others to address. Rather, I shall examine two basic distinctions which Tooley adopts and deems important for his investigation into the state of educational research in Britain. The first is between empirical and non‐empirical research, the second is between quantitative and qualitative empirical research. Philosophically, both of these distinctions are highly problematic and as a philosopher Tooley should, at the very least, have acknowledged their contentiousness rather than simply taking them for granted. The purpose of this short note is to indicate why Tooley's reliance on these two distinctions will not do. (shrink)

The report on educational research, commissioned by the Office for Standards in Education, written by James Tooley with assistance, and published under the title Educational Research: a critique, set out to ‘help provide some badly needed evidence to inform the debate about the quality of educational research’. Whether this ‘snapshot’ actually upholds Hargreaves' contention that there is a considerable amount of ‘second rate educational research’ is far from clear, although Tooley does conclude (...) that the majority of studies surveyed lacked a clear focus, employed sloppy methodology and displayed partisanship. Now, those whose work was critiqued might, with some justification, grumble about Tooley's own ideological bias given his well‐known right‐wing, market‐oriented views about education. Concern could also be directed at the report's methodological inadequacies, including the procedures adopted to select the journal sample, the categories employed for analysis, and the validity of the conclusions reached. I leave all of these for others to address. Rather, I shall examine two basic distinctions which Tooley adopts and deems important for his investigation into the state of educational research in Britain. The first is between empirical and non‐empirical research, the second is between quantitative and qualitative empirical research. Philosophically, both of these distinctions are highly problematic and as a philosopher Tooley should, at the very least, have acknowledged their contentiousness rather than simply taking them for granted. The purpose of this short note is to indicate why Tooley's reliance on these two distinctions will not do. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A Response to Lawrence Ferrara’s Chapter Four in R. Phelps, R. Sadoff, E. Warburton, and L. Ferrara, A Guide to Research in Music Education, 5th Edition (Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2005)Jack HellerIt is curious that Lawrence Ferrara disagrees with Jack Heller and Edward. J. P. O'Connor's view1 that "philosophy" is not "research," yet in the chapter headings in the book A Guide to Research in (...) Music Education, 5th Edition, Chapter 4 is labeled "Philosophical Inquiry," while other chapters are labeled "Qualitative Research," "Nonexperimental Research," "Quantitative Research," and "Historical Research" (italics added). Why not "Philosophical Research?" Maybe he, too, believes that philosophy is not research.In our Handbook Chapter2 we pointed out that research should be systematic and based on "empirical observation." To make things worse we said that research should try to provide "unbiased evidence." Ferrara ascribes to us a positivistic view that we did not make nor believe. That view, according to Ferrara is that the "key reason for their [our] dismissal of philosophical inquiry (notice inquiry not research) as a bona fide research design is the invariable criterion that they [we] assign to all research if it is indeed research: to present 'unbiased evidence.'" [End Page 89] We still believe that research should try to be as objective as possible while realizing that all observations are researcher dependent and have error. Research should strive to reduce error as much as possible.My reading of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions does not conflict with what was written in our Chapter. We did not claim that data are unbiased but rather that research should try to limit bias and try to interpret observations that can be supported by specific behavior.Philosophy, or more properly model building, should lead research. Assumptions that appear in a model are just that. They are assumptions. Not fact; not unbiased opinion. But these assumptions or philosophical conclusions should not be called research in music education because they do not provide any behavioral evidence as support. The deductive process used in philosophy (syllogistic reasoning, for example) should help to develop hypotheses that can be investigated by an inductive process (data collection). Philosophy is a time honored scholarly activity. We certainly do not mean to diminish its importance. All research should have a philosophical underpinning that should produce a theoretical model. This model then should be tested by research. Our Handbook Chapter takes this position. Philosophy is philosophy, not research.Ferrara paraphrases Rom Harre3 by stating thatthere are at least three realms of scientific research and theory: the first realm is marked by ordinary perception in which what is known is based on observable and empirically verifiable facts; in the second realm, perception may catch up with conception–there is a promise of technological development... through which researchers will eventually be able to 'observe' and empirically verify what they only conceived (as in philosophical inquiry) as the probable explanation; and in the third realm there are genuine theoretical acts of imagination... that will never be directly (italics added) perceived, for example, empirically observed or verified.Ferrara points out that this "positivist dictum [the Harre quote above]... is unrealistic in relation to actual (italics added) scientific research and practice."4 It is not clear to which "actual scientific research and practice" Ferrara refers. This entire view is misguided. Ferrara does not believe "the methodology of the natural sciences can appropriately be utilized in the human sciences and arts research, retaining the level of objectivity (italics added) achieved in the natural sciences." Who does Ferrara believes carries out natural science research? Are they not humans, constrained by the same problems of observation that all humans encounter? Are their observations more "objective" as Ferrara seems to believe? The natural scientist, like all other researchers, faces the issue of error in observing phenomena that all researchers face. (See the many examples of [End Page 90] this view in Jacques Barzun and Henry Graff.5 ) Neither philosophical inquiry, nor logical positivism, nor the "new realism" approach that Ferrara proposes for research is free from observational error. The role of all research is to minimize error.A quick romp through some... (shrink)

Resumen: Este artículo trata del método y su relación con la investigación educativa. El objetivo es analizar la relevancia del método en ciencias humanas y sociales, en especial, en educación. Para ello, dividimos este artículo en tres secciones: 1. ¿Hay método? 2. ¿Hay uno o varios métodos? 3. La discusión sobre el método en la investigación educativa. A la primera pregunta, respondemos que hay método. Respondemos a la segunda señalando la necesidad de adoptar un pluralismo metodológico. La tercera sección (...) defiende que las discusiones sobre el método de investigación educativa implican dimensiones ontológicas, epistemológicas y éticas que se han tornado críticas, y se hace una revisión de cada una de ellas. En el apartado conclusivo, sugerimos algunas vías para desanudar esos asuntos críticos en la investigación educativa.: This article deals with method and its relation to educational research. The objective is to analyze the relevance of method in human and social sciences, especially in education. To this end, we divide this article into three sections: 1. Is there a method? 2. Is there one or more methods? 3. The discussion on method in educational research. To the first question, we answer that there is a method. We answer the second question by pointing out the need to adopt methodological pluralism. The third section argues that discussions on the method of educational research involve ontological, epistemological, and ethical dimensions that have become critical, and a review is made of each of them. In the concluding section, we suggest some ways to disentangle these critical issues in educational research. (shrink)

This article responds to and reflects upon the articles in this special issue. Specifically, it deals with the usage of theory in each of the articles, what we might see, as examples of re-descriptive usage in autonomous theorizing. The articles utilize different theories and varying intellectual resources—Foucault and Deleuze, Bourdieu, Levinas and Butler —to analyse the topic of the My School website and associated new accountabilities in Australia schooling. This article argues that their usage of the My School website must (...) be seen as a condensation symbol to signify a broader neo-liberal agenda in Australian schooling that has global as well as national elements to it. The fact that the social today is no longer straightforwardly homologous with the nation also challenges ‘methodological nationalism’ and suggests the pressing need to ‘deparochialize’ theory in research and reject a reading of Northern theory as universal. The article uses the provocations of these articles to reflect upon the necessity of theory in educational research more generally, and to consider its usage in research with different purposes, while accepting that theory should be endemic in all stages of research. Theory serves a different purpose in research with different goals; quantitative correlational research demands theory to move to explanation, interpretive research requires theory to strengthen interpretation and plausibility, while critical research utilizes theory to uncover the hidden as a step towards emancipation. These articles implicitly suggest alternative forms of accountability and politics, but I argue in conclusion that, additionally, we need a broader politics that will move us towards a non-utopian post neo-liberal social imaginary. (shrink)

The traditional divisions in the methodology of educational research include two types of methods: quantitative and qualitative. These comprise e.g. quasi-experiment, comparative research, observat...

Introduction and initial thoughts -- Critical realism and empirical research methods in education -- Resolving the quantitative-qualitative divide -- Epistemic relativism, ontological realism, and the possibility of judgemental rationality -- Educational judgements : epistemic, parasitic and external criteria -- Judgemental rationality -- Empirical indicators and causal narratives -- Structure and agency : key ontological concepts -- Educational critique -- Arbitrary and non-arbitrary knowledge.

This article describes and evaluates the application of an explicitly critical realist methodology to a quantitative doctoral research project on the causes of family homelessness in Australia. It...

This article responds to and reflects upon the articles in this special issue. Specifically, it deals with the usage of theory in each of the articles, what we might see, as examples of re-descriptive usage in autonomous theorizing. The articles utilize different theories and varying intellectual resources—Foucault and Deleuze (Richard Niesche), Bourdieu (Carmen Mills), Levinas (Sam Sellar) and Butler (Christina Gowlett)—to analyse the topic of the My School website and associated new accountabilities in Australia schooling. This article argues that their (...) usage of the My School website must be seen as a condensation symbol to signify a broader neo-liberal agenda in Australian schooling that has global as well as national elements to it. The fact that the social today is no longer straightforwardly homologous with the nation also challenges ‘methodological nationalism’ and suggests the pressing need to ‘deparochialize’ theory in research and reject a reading of Northern theory as universal. The article uses the provocations of these articles to reflect upon the necessity of theory in educational research more generally, and to consider its usage in research with different purposes, while accepting that theory should be endemic in all stages of research. Theory serves a different purpose in research with different goals; quantitative correlational research demands theory to move to explanation, interpretive research requires theory to strengthen interpretation and plausibility, while critical research utilizes theory to uncover the hidden as a step towards emancipation. These articles implicitly suggest alternative forms of accountability and politics, but I argue in conclusion that, additionally, we need a broader politics that will move us towards a non-utopian post neo-liberal social imaginary. (shrink)

It is now widely accepted that qualitative and quantitative research traditions, rather than being seen as opposed to or in competition with each other should be used, where appropriate, in some kind of combination. How this combining is to be understood ontologically, and therefore epistemologically, however, is not always clear. Rather than endlessly discussing the relationship between different approaches, this paper explores some of the assumptions of the ontologies that underpin such apparent differences, arguing that approaches which declare (...) themselves to be distinct theoretically are often surprisingly similar methodologically. It is argued that dominant ontologies and epistemologies struggle with the conceptualisation and representation of particularity, difference, process, interactions through time, multiple and de-centred forms of causation, and dynamic structure. Complexity/dynamic systems theory is then introduced and examined for its potential to offer the basis of a different kind of ontology: one which is able not only to accommodate these things, but which is itself based upon them. In conclusion, the implications of this perspective are discussed in relation to the problems that have been identified, particularly in relation to the conceptualisation of 'context'. (shrink)

In recent years, digital tools, such as WhatsApp, have been increasingly deployed to support group interaction and collaboration in higher education contexts. To understand contemporary, digitally-mediated collaborative dynamics – including the role played by tutors and the situated nature of group development – robust and innovative methodologies are needed. In this paper, we illustrate how integrating qualitative methods with quantitative tools used in qualitative ways makes it possible to trace how tutors adapt their style to support group development, which (...) in turn triggers student development in a circular and responsive process. To make visible this contemporary phenomenon, we combine thematic content analysis – a qualitative tool – with a quantitative method: Social Network Analysis. Drawing on data generated by two WhatsApp learning groups in research exploring the collaborative construction of boundary objects in a master’s level “E-learning Psychology” course, we suggest that our methodological approach has the potential to support interrogation of complex and dynamic digitally-mediated group interactions. Our results show the situational nature of an effective tutorship style through its complex adaptation to learners’ maturity, digital tools, and learning goals. (shrink)

Research Methodology for Social Sciences provides guidelines for designing and conducting evidence-based research in social sciences and interdisciplinary studies using both qualitative and quantitative data. Blending the particularity of different sub-disciplines and interdisciplinary nature of social sciences, this volume: Provides insights on epistemological issues and deliberates on debates over qualitative research methods; Covers different aspects of qualitative research techniques and evidence-based research techniques including survey design, choice of sample, construction of indices, statistical inferences, and (...) data analysis; Discusses concepts, techniques, and tools at different stages of research beginning with design of field surveys to collect raw data and then to analyze the data using statistical and econometric methods; With illustrations, examples and a reader friendly approach, this volume will serve as a key reference material for compulsory research methodology courses at Doctoral levels across different disciplines like Economics, Sociology, Women's Studies, Education, Anthropology, Political Science, International Relations, Philosophy, History, Business Management and the like. This volume will also be indispensable for post-graduate courses dealing with quantitative techniques and data analysis. (shrink)

When should listening through observation stand alone? --.

En la Universidad Médica “Carlos J. Finlay”, se realiza una intervención educativa con el objetivo de valorar la concepción y aplicación de un programa para un curso de preparación de metodólogos en correspondencia con sus funciones en condiciones de universalización de las Ciencias Médicas de Camagüey, en el periodo de septiembre de 2005 a junio de 2007. Se emplean diferentes métodos investigativos: los teóricos, así como la técnica de discusión grupal, permitió diseñar el programa del curso para la (...) preparación de metodólogos en condiciones de universalización y los empíricos, la obtención de algunos datos de interés acerca de los metodólogos que reciben el curso y sus valoraciones en relación con el mismo. Se constata que la preparación pedagógica y experiencia en el desempeño es insuficiente para asumir el rol de metodólogo y valoran de muy importantes los contenidos desarrollados, los métodos y formas organizativas concebidas, por lo que se concluye que el programa del curso cumple con las expectativas del metodólogo al estar diseñado teniendo en cuenta las funciones que estos desempeñan y sus necesidades sentidas A study was carried out about the intervention in education developed to increase teacher's methodological preparation under their new functions due to the fresh conditions of learning within the community applied to medicine training and education in Camagüey. It was carried out in the period of September 2005 to June 2007. Different research methods were used: the theoretical ones and the technique for group discussion help to design the course syllabus and the assessment for those teachers that received the course. It was verified that the methodological preparation and performance experience are insufficient to play their role; but they value as very important the contents, the methods and the organization of the course. The authors conclude that the course meets the expectations of training, because it was designed keeping in mind the teachers' functions and their necessities. (shrink)

Postdigital Play and Global Education: Reconfiguring Research is a re-turn to a large-scale, international project on children's digital play. Adopting postqualitative and posthumanist theories, research practices are reconfigured, all the way down from what counts as 'data', 'tools', 'instruments', 'transcription', research sites', 'researchers', to notions of responsibility and accountability in qualitative research. Through a series of vignettes involving complex human and more-than-human collaborators (e.g., GoPros, octopus, avatars, diaries, sack ball, LEGO bricks), the authors challenge who and (...) what can be playful and creative across contexts in the global north and south. The diffractive methodology enacted interrupts western developmental notions of agency that are dominant in research involving young children. The concept of 'postdigital' offers fresh opportunities to disrupt dominant understandings of children's play. Play emerges as an enigmatic and shape-shifting human and more-than-human agentic force that operates beyond digital/non-digital, online/offline binaries. By attuning to race, gender, age and language, invisible and colonising aspects of postdigital worldings the authors show how global education research can be reimagined through a posthumanist decentering of children without erasure. Postdigital Play and Global Education puts into practice Karen Barad's agential realism, but also a range of postdevelopmental and posthumanist writings from diverse fields. The book will be of particular interest to researchers looking for guidance to enact agential realist and posthumanist philosophies in research involving young children. (shrink)

This article advocates for the validity of Realist Evaluation (RE) as a manifestation of Critical Realism in evaluation research despite criticisms suggesting that the former disregards principles from Bhaskarian ontology. Specifically, I argue that critics overstate RE's philosophical actualism in their argument that its inclination towards technocratic knowledge impedes its scrutiny of stratified social systems. Notwithstanding its limitations in fully elucidating causal structural mechanisms in social inquiry, I argue that RE's research rationale can contribute to the stages of (...) explanatory research based on CR by bridging the comprehension of mechanisms linked to micro-interventions with exploring potential structural forces operating across levels of reality. To illustrate this point, I present a case of a policy evaluation study I led that demonstrates how a RE-oriented research design facilitated a transition from investigating specific programme mechanisms within the interventions' context to proposing transcendental questions about the governance of the education system in Colombia. (shrink)

The critique of philosophical foundations of neoclassical economics is significant, because of its hegemony on economic education and research programs in Iran and worldwide academies. Due to an epistemological fallacy, methodological individualism plays a prominent role in the philosophy of economic; since the ontological aspects of economy are reduced to methodological considerations. Accordingly, critique of methodological individualism is regarded as the main entry for philosophical analysis of neoclassical economics. This article aims to analyze and appraise the methodological individualism from (...) critical realism’s point of view. Critical realism is taken as a stand for criticizing methodological individualism, because critical realism and neoclassical economics as a positive approach to economics, both share a realistic worldview. The critical realism’ critique of methodological individualism is bases on analyzing the concepts of formalism, syllogism, social atomism, isolation and reduction. From critical realism’ point of view because of unrealistic postulations of methodological individualism, neoclassical economics is turned to an abstract and deductive science such as mathematics with a low potentiality of explanation. (shrink)

Southern Africa, where most of these book chapters originate, has been identified as one of regions of the world most at risk of the consequences of environmental degradation and climate change. At the same time, it is still seeking ways to overcome the century long ravages of colonial and apartheid impositions of structural and epistemic violence. Research deliberations and applied research case studies in environmental education and activism from this region provide an emerging contextualized engagement that is related (...) to a wider internationally articulated quest to achieve social-ecological justice, resilience and sustainability through educational interventions. This book introduces a decade of mainly southern African critical realist environmental education research and thinking that asks the question: "How can we facilitate learning processes that will lead to the flourishing of the Earth’s people and ecosystems in more socially just ways?" The environmental education research topics represented in this book are wide-ranging. However, they all exhibit the common theme of social justice and wanting to create change towards a better future. All the authors have used critical realist or critical realist-influenced research methodologies. Offering contributions from a small but growing community of researchers working with critical realism in the global South, this book will be of interest to students, scholars and practitioners in the areas of environmental education, sustainability, development and the philosophy of critical realism in general. (shrink)

It is now widely accepted that qualitative and quantitative research traditions, rather than being seen as opposed to or in competition with each other ( ; ) should be used, where appropriate, in some kind of combination (; ). How this combining is to be understood ontologically, and therefore epistemologically, however, is not always clear. Rather than endlessly discussing the relationship between different approaches, this paper explores some of the assumptions of the ontologies that underpin such apparent differences, (...) arguing that approaches which declare themselves to be distinct theoretically are often surprisingly similar methodologically. It is argued that dominant ontologies and epistemologies struggle with the conceptualisation and representation of particularity, difference, process, interactions through time, multiple and de‐centred forms of causation, and dynamic structure. Complexity/dynamic systems theory is then introduced and examined for its potential to offer the basis of a different kind of ontology: one which is able not only to accommodate these things, but which is itself based upon them. In conclusion, the implications of this perspective are discussed in relation to the problems that have been identified, particularly in relation to the conceptualisation of ‘context’. (shrink)

In this paper, key concepts from the philosophy of critical realism and meta-Reality are used to develop an art education research project that can enhance the freedom of art students in their art work and, potentially, contribute to the promotion of emancipation beyond the world of art work. In the process of developing this project, the author engages in a two-way interrogation of both concepts and empirical research. The stratified model of reality, the ontological status of absence and (...) the concepts of transcendental identification, transcendental agency and the ground-state have informed decisions about data collection and contributed to the analysis of data in this study. The research results offer some empirical support for the philosophy of critical realism and meta-Reality, whilst also identifying potential inconsistencies. A further original feature of the paper is that it draws on the flow theory of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to complement Roy Bhaskar's account of the ground-state and of the nature of free-flowing activity; also using neuroscience to provide some neurological evidence for the differences between mindful and spontaneous activity. It is anticipated that the cross-analysis between cases resulting from the two-way interchange between theory and empirical evidence could help to generate a model for ‘unblocking the creative block’, experienced not only by students practising art-making, but also by the wider community. (shrink)

_Researching Education Policy, Public Policy, and Policymakers_ is a theoretical and hands-on practical guide to conducting qualitative research on education policy and public policy, with an emphasis on studies that involve senior participants and high-status government and non-government organisations. Building on over a decade of extensive experience in qualitative research on education policy among the most senior policymakers, this book explores and illustrates successful approaches to working with senior policymakers through examples from both the UK and Israel. Whilst (...) policy studies are traditionally either theoretical or quantitative, this book explains the theory, methodology, and ethics of harnessing qualitative methods to the study of senior policymakers and their settings. Key topics include: Designing and planning the qualitative policy study Document analysis as a policy research tool Interviewing policymakers and observing policy Mapping qualitative policy analysis methods Writing policy reports Ethics and trust This practical guide, built upon a sound theoretical framework, will prove both inspirational and helpful to academic and professional researchers across all disciplines involving public policy. (shrink)

O presente artigo objetiva refletir acerca de possíveis inflexões ofertadas pela proposta metodológica amplamente conhecida como Cartografia. Procurando cumprir tal intuito, primeiramente explanaremos minimamente de que se trata a perspectiva cartográfica e em que ela difere de outros modos de fazer pesquisa, baseados, sobretudo, pelo impacto epistemológico conduzido por Deleuze & Guattari – propositores desse conceito – no campo da filosofia e que acaba por respingar no que concerne à produção investigativa na área das Ciências Humanas em geral e especialmente (...) no campo da Educação. Nesse sentido, o conceito de Rizoma proposto pelos autores pode ser útil para entendermos de que se trata tal giro filosófico/epistemológico. Posteriormente, utilizando como motor reflexivo a imagem da intervenção artística “Espiral do Conhecimento” de André Dalmazzo – intervenção esta proposta em uma aula de Metodologia da Pesquisa em Educação – pretendemos inferir algumas noções e estender nossa reflexão acerca de inflexões que pesquisas em educação permeadas por traços metodológicos cartográficos parecem apresentar. Três questões/inflexões foram selecionadas para serem desenvolvidas no texto, a partir do evento citado. São elas: primeiramente o incômodo causado na turma mediante uma situação inusitada, a seguir a questão de que para cada um que se embrenhou no espaço da sala de aula tomada pela intervenção artística “Espiral do Conhecimento” a experiência ocorreu de uma forma, contudo, fazer tal afirmativa não se trata de reduzir os pontos de vista a mero subjetivismo e, finalmente, a questão/inflexão que nos parece cintilar da experiência relatada diz respeito à complexidade do evento de pesquisar e à construção investigativa como uma produção a partir de fragmentos, sobras, vestígios. Desses três apontamentos concluímos que a Cartografia como estratégia metodológica parece criar inflexões de acordo com os terrenos múltiplos que o pesquisador encontra, desdobrando-se por esferas e caminhos que oferecem material para a produção de sentidos e composições diversos. (shrink)

Notwithstanding diverse opinions and debates about mixing methods, mixed methods research (MMR) is increasingly being used in sport and exercise psychology. In this paper, we describe MMR trends within leading sport and exercise psychology journals and explore critical realism as a possible underpinning framework for conducting MMR. Our meta-study of recent empirical mixed methods studies published in 2017–2019 indicates that eight (36%) of the 22 MMR studies explicitly stated a paradigmatic position (five drew on pragmatism, two switched paradigms between (...) qualitative and quantitative elements of the study, and one was situated in relativist-interpretivism). The remaining 14 (64%) studies did not report their underpinning research philosophical assumptions. Evaluating the merits and limitations of these positions against critical realist assumptions suggests that several paradigmatic disagreements are potentially reconcilable. These include (a) maintaining that ontological and epistemological concerns are important for methodological integrity of a mixed methods study; (b) switching between paradigms in the same study is problematic; and (c) refuting the qualitative-quantitative incommensurability thesis, therefore allowing mixed methods research without compromising philosophical coherence. From a critical realist position, we suggest that both quantitative and qualitative designs are justifiable in a mixed methods study because (1) they help corroborate, refine, or refute plausible explanations of phenomena (epistemological), but (2) with different methodologies utilised to perform different tasks in the same research design related to different psycho-social system features (ontological). We call for a collaborative engagement by researchers across paradigmatic positions to work towards the advancement of methodological pluralism in our research community. (shrink)

Research shapes our understanding of practice in powerful and important ways, in sports coaching as in any other discipline. This innovative study explores the philosophical foundations of sport coaching research, examining the often implicit links between research process and practice, descriptions and prescriptions. Arguing that the assumptions of traditional single-disciplinary accounts, such as those based in psychology or sociology, risk over-simplifying our understanding of coaching, this book presents an alternative framework for sports coaching research based on (...) critical realism. The result is an embedded, relational and emergent conception of coaching practice that opens new ways of thinking about coaching knowledge. Drawing on new empirical case study research, it demonstrates vividly how a critical realist-informed approach can provide a more realistic and accountable knowledge to coaching stakeholders. This knowledge promises to have important implications for coaching, and coach education and development practices. Sport Coaching Research and Practice: Ontology, Interdisciplinarity and Critical Realism is fascinating reading for any student or researcher working in sports coaching, sport pedagogy, physical education, the philosophy or sociology of sport, or research methodology in sport and exercise. (shrink)

todas las esferas de la sociedad cubana, en tal sentido, la presente investigación ofrece una metodología para promover un accionar más activo y transformador de las instituciones sociales en la Educación Comunitaria desde el trabajo comunitario integrado que vincula los intereses y necesidades de la población en las tareas del desarrollo social. The existence of indifference behaviors to principles reveals the need for strengthening the educative work in all spheres of the Cuban society. In that sense, the present (...) class='Hi'>research provides a methodology in order to promote a more active and transforming work of social institutions in the community education from the integrated community work connecting the interests and needs of the people on duties of social development. (shrink)

El artículo muestra una estrategia metodológica para garantizar la dirección del proceso educativo para el desarrollo de la habilidad intelectual modelación en los estudiantes; devela sus principales fundamentos epistémicos, sus etapas y acciones esenciales. Para ello se aplicaron métodos científicos de investigación. La constatación de los resultados brinda evidencias positivas acerca de su pertinencia, al considerar el carácter coparticipativo y coprotagónico que adquieren las influencias educativas en el contexto institucional en la dirección de un proceso educativo único. (...) The article shows a methodological strategy to ensure the teaching process direction in order develop intellectual skill modeling in students; It reveals its main epistemic foundations, its stages and essential actions. That is the reason for which different research scientific methods were applied. Verification of results provides positive evidence of its pertinence when considering the collaborative nature of the educational influences within the institutional context in the direction of a unique educational process. (shrink)

Recent research shows that research programmes (quantitative, qualitative and mixed) in education are not displaced (as suggested by Kuhn) but rather lead to integration. The objective of this study is to present a rationale for mixed methods (integrative) research programs based on contemporary philosophy of science (Lakatos, Giere, Cartwright, Holton, Laudan). This historical reconstruction of episodes from physical science (spanning a period of almost 300 years, 17th to 20th century) does not agree with the positivist image (...) of science. Quantitative data (empirical evidence) by itself, does not facilitate progress (despite widespread belief to the contrary), neither in the physical sciences nor in the social sciences (education) A historical reconstruction shows that both Piaget and Pascual-Leone’s research programs in cognitive psychology, follow the Galilean idealisation quite closely, similar to the research programs of Newton, Mendeleev, Einstein, Thomson, Rutherford, Millikan and Perl in the physical sciences. This relationship does not imply that researchers in education have to emulate research in the physical sciences. A major argument in favor of mixed methods (integrative) research programs is that it provides a rationale for hypotheses, theories, guiding assumptions and presuppositions to compete and provide alternatives. Similar to the physical sciences, this proliferation of hypotheses leads to controversies and rivalries, and thus facilitates the decision making process of the scientific community. It is concluded that mixed methods research programs (not paradigms) in education can facilitate the construction of robust strategies, provided we let the problem situation (as studied by practicing researchers) decide the methodology. (shrink)

Recent research shows that research programmes (quantitative, qualitative and mixed) in education are not displaced (as suggested by Kuhn) but rather lead to integration. The objective of this study is to present a rationale for mixed methods (integrative) research programs based on contemporary philosophy of science (Lakatos, Giere, Cartwright, Holton, Laudan). This historical reconstruction of episodes from physical science (spanning a period of almost 300 years, 17th to 20th century) does not agree with the positivist image (...) of science. Quantitative data (empirical evidence) by itself, does not facilitate progress (despite widespread belief to the contrary), neither in the physical sciences nor in the social sciences (education) A historical reconstruction shows that both Piaget and Pascual-Leone’s research programs in cognitive psychology, follow the Galilean idealisation quite closely, similar to the research programs of Newton, Mendeleev, Einstein, Thomson, Rutherford, Millikan and Perl in the physical sciences. This relationship does not imply that researchers in education have to emulate research in the physical sciences. A major argument in favor of mixed methods (integrative) research programs is that it provides a rationale for hypotheses, theories, guiding assumptions and presuppositions to compete and provide alternatives. Similar to the physical sciences, this proliferation of hypotheses leads to controversies and rivalries, and thus facilitates the decision making process of the scientific community. It is concluded that mixed methods research programs (not paradigms) in education can facilitate the construction of robust strategies, provided we let the problem situation (as studied by practicing researchers) decide the methodology. (shrink)

This paper aims to interrogate the potential and challenges in interdisciplinary working across disciplinary boundaries by examining a longitudinal partnership designed to research student experiences of digital technologies in undergraduate medicine established by the two authors. The paper is situated in current methodological trends including the changing value of replicability and evidence based methods and increases in qualitative and mixed methods studies in Medical Education, whilst education research has seen growing encouragement for randomised controlled trials and large-scale (...) class='Hi'>quantitative studies. A critical analysis of the partnership interactions is framed by Holland’s positional and imagined identities, negotiated across ‘figured’ worlds and the concept of epistemic games that guide knowledge construction. We consider social, political and cultural challenges and how ‘in between’ sites of knowledge were established where the academic identity of each was shaped by engaging with the other and new theoretical, methodological and ethical understandings were co-constructed. The paper concludes that despite the on-going challenges, ‘bottom up’ partnerships can contribute to a growth in interdisciplinarity which might itself be understood as a boundary object. Interdisciplinarity necessitates improvisation and boundary crossing and can therefore always be considered a matter of negotiation, creativity and collaboration. (shrink)

The use of empirical research methods in bioethics has been increasing in the last decades. It has resulted in discussions about the ‘empirical turn of bioethics’ and raised questions related to the value of empirical work for this field, methodological questions about its quality and rigor, and how this integration of the normative and the empirical can be achieved. The aim of this paper is to describe the attitudes of bioethics researchers in this field towards the use of empirical (...) research, and examine their actual conduct: whether they use empirical research methods, and whether they have made attempts at integrating the empirical and the normative. An anonymous online survey was conducted to reach scholars working in bioethics/biomedical ethics/ethics institutes or centers in 12 European countries. A total of 225 bioethics researchers participated in the study. Of those, 200 questionnaires were fully completed, representing a response rate of 42.6%. The results were analysed using descriptive statistics. Most respondents indicated that they use or have used empirical methods in their work. A similar proportion of respondents reported having had at least some training in qualitative or quantitative methods, respectively. Among the ‘empirical researchers’, more than a fifth had not received any methodological training. It appears that only 6% or less of the ‘empirical researchers’ considered themselves experts in the methods that they have used. Only 35% of the scholars who have used empirical methods reported having integrated empirical data with normative analysis, whereas for their current projects, 59.8% plan to do so. There is a need to evaluate the current educational programs in bioethics and to implement rigorous training in empirical research methods to ensure that ‘empirical researchers’ have the necessary skills to conduct their empirical research in bioethics. Also imperative is clear guidance on the integration of the normative and the empirical so that researchers who plan to do so have necessary tools and competences to fulfil their goals. (shrink)

The paper focuses on the reflective analysis of one of the most powerful philosophical and methodological programs for the development of reflective thinking in Russia. This is the “Program for the Development of Regional Social Systems by Means of Education”, developed in the 90s of the last century by a team of young scientists on the basis of the theory of developing education of V.V. Davydov. The author studies the problems to be solved by the program as well as the (...) main stages of its implementation. Such projects as “Metropolitan Education”, “Updating the content of education: meta-subjects, meta-subject technologies”, “Education of design activities: School of General Designers”, – are in the centre of analysis. The author discusses also the structures of solutions that have been aimed at the developing educational practices (experimental sites, innovative networks) and reflective thinking in the metropolitan education system (Expert Council). The results of the implementation of the program at each stage are summed up. The limitations in the application of the reflection method are analyzed and the path of further research is outlined. (shrink)

Recent research shows that research programmes (quantitative, qualitative and mixed) in education are not displaced (as suggested by Kuhn) but rather lead to integration. The objective of this study is to present a rationale for mixed methods (integrative) research programs based on contemporary philosophy of science (Lakatos, Giere, Cartwright, Holton, Laudan). This historical reconstruction of episodes from physical science (spanning a period of almost 300 years, 17 th to 20 th century) does not agree with the (...) positivist image of science. Quantitative data (empirical evidence) by itself, does not facilitate progress (despite widespread belief to the contrary), neither in the physical sciences nor in the social sciences (education) A historical reconstruction shows that both Piaget and Pascual-Leone's research programs in cognitive psychology, follow the Galilean idealisation quite closely, similar to the research programs of Newton, Mendeleev, Einstein, Thomson, Rutherford, Millikan and Perl in the physical sciences. This relationship does not imply that researchers in education have to emulate research in the physical sciences. A major argument in favor of mixed methods (integrative) research programs is that it provides a rationale for hypotheses, theories, guiding assumptions and presuppositions to compete and provide alternatives. Similar to the physical sciences, this proliferation of hypotheses leads to controversies and rivalries, and thus facilitates the decision making process of the scientific community. It is concluded that mixed methods research programs (not paradigms) in education can facilitate the construction of robust strategies, provided we let the problem situation (as studied by practicing researchers) decide the methodology. (shrink)

This paper challenges the common assumption that some phenotypic traits are quantitative while others are qualitative. The distinction between these two kinds of traits is widely influential in biological and biomedical research as well as in scientific education and communication. This is probably due to both historical and epistemological reasons. However, the quantitative/qualitative distinction involves a variety of simplifications on the genetic causes of phenotypic variability and on the development of complex traits. Here, I examine three cases (...) from the life sciences that show inconsistencies in the distinction: Mendelian traits, Mendelian diseases, and polygenic mental disorders. I show that these traits can be framed both quantitatively and qualitatively depending, for instance, on the methods through which they are investigated and on specific epistemic purposes. This suggests that the received view of quantitative and qualitative traits has a limited heuristic power—limited to some local contexts or to the specific methodologies adopted. Throughout the paper, I provide directions for framing phenotypes beyond the quantitative/qualitative distinction. I conclude by pointing at the necessity of developing a principled characterisation of what phenotypic traits, in general, are. (shrink)

Experimental taxonomy was a diverse area of research, and botanists who helped develop it were motivated by a variety of concerns. While experimental taxonomy was never totally a taxonomic enterprise, improvement in classification was certainly one major motivation behind the research. Hall's and Clements' belief that experimental methods added more objectivity to classification was almost universally accepted by experimental taxonomists. Such methods did add a new dimension to taxonomy — a dimension that field and herbarium studies, however rigorous, (...) could not duplicate. Nonetheless, experimental techniques were never completely divorced from traditional taxonomic methods. In practice, all experimental taxonomists employed a combination of descriptive and experimental methods. Most researchers freely acknowledged a debt to traditional taxonomy. Furthermore, the greater rigor of twentieth-century taxonomy was not due entirely to experimentalism. Both the experimental and descriptive aspects of taxonomy were improved by the increased use of quantitative methods, particularly statistics.52From the beginning, a number of experimental taxonomists were interested primarily in classification. But many approached their research from fields other than taxonomy. These botanists were concerned primarily with ecological and genetic problems rather than with classification. There is little indication that they drew a sharp distinction: for example, taxonomic and cytogenetic conclusions were interwoven in Babcock and Stebbins' 1938 study of Crepis 53 (this was even more true of Babcock's final mongraph on the genus, published in 1947). Similarly, the extensive series of monographs, “Experimental Studies on the Nature of Species,” initiated by the Carnegie Institution group in 1940 combined ecological, cytogenetic, and taxonomic conclusions. Indeed, the significance of the major projects completed by experimental taxonomists was largely due to the fact that they were comprehensive studies rather than strictly taxonomic or cytogenetic.In a general sense, the primary motivation behind much of experimental taxonomy was evolutionary. Beginning in the second decade of the century Hall and Clements exhorted taxonomists to take an explicitly evolutionary perspective on research. Hall undoubtedly spoke for the majority of experimental taxonomists when he stated, “If there be anything at all to organic evolution, then taxonomy is dealing with the products of evolution and it is this that gives to taxonomy both its highest mission and its greatest responsibility.”54Aside from a common interest in evolution, however, the theoretical orientations of experimental taxonomists were varied. This diversity is strikingly illustrated by the evolutionary views of members of the Carnegie Institution research group. Experimental taxonomy was initiated by Clements as one aspect of his Lamarckian study of adaptation and speciation. In contrast, Hall's research was inspired by a broad concern for evolutionary problems. Hall rarely referred to specific evolutionary mechanisms; rather, he applied a general conception of evolutionary processes to deduce phylogenetic relationships. His later associates at the Carnegie Institution explicitly dissociated themselves from Clements' theoretical framework. The neo-Darwinian interpretations of adaptation and speciation presented by Clausen, Keck, and Hiesey could hardly have been more different than those of Clements. However, this major shift in theoretical orientation should not obscure significant similarities between the research of Clements and later Carnegie workers. In terms of research problems and methodology, the first volume of “Experimental Studies on the Nature of Species” was an extension of the Clementsian research program. Clausen, Keck, and Hiesey's monograph was the mature discussion of transplant experimentation that Clements had very tentatively initiated during the first decades of the twentieth century. The bond that linked the members of the Carnegie Institution research group to experimental taxonomists in general was one of shared methodology rather than common theoretical orientation. While Clements' evolutionary views were eventually repudiated, his enthusiasm for innovative experimental methods was shared by later workers.The development of experimental taxonomy faced significant problems. During the period 1920–1950 this area of botanical research remained a hybrid discipline. The aims and scope of experimental taxonomy were never articulated in a completely unified manner. Consequently, even among experimental taxonomists, there were disagreements over the relation of their research to other botanical endeavors. Even though experimental taxonomy had close ties with general taxonomy, a number of experimental taxonomists questioned the “taxonomic” nature of their research55. Even to the extent that this hybrid discipline could be identified as a branch of taxonomy, problems arose. Taxonomists, as we have seen, were justifiably skeptical of what appeared to be a rapid influx of untested methods and ideas. Experimental taxonomists were not merely incorporating well-accepted methods from ecology and cytogenetics; during the period 1920–1950 the fields from which experimental taxonomists borrowed were themselves undergoing major theoretical and methodological changes. Despite problems and conflicts, experimental taxonomists did contribute improvements to classification. Furthermore, they made significant contributions to plant ecology and evolutionary genetics.The development of experimental taxonomy indicates that twentieth-century botanists were not necessarily isolated in naturalist and experimentalist camps. The joint session of taxonomists, cytologists, and geneticists at the 1926 International Congress of Plant Sciences indicates communication among specialists fairly early in the century. The papers and commentaries presented during this session do not reveal the hostility and intolerance that supposedly characterized encounters between experimentalists and naturalists. Nor do they suggest incompatible conceptual worlds separating geneticists and taxonomists.Discussions between taxonomists and other specialists were not limited to a single international congress. Particularly during the 1930s discussions among specialists appear to have been fairly widespread. Groups such as the Biosystematists and the Society for the Study of Systematics in Relation to General Biology served as forums for discussion among biologists from a variety of disciplines. The naturalist-experimentalist dichotomy tends to obscure the broad research interests of a number of prominent twentieth-century botanists. Most of the experimental taxonomists cannot be characterized adequately as either naturalists or experimentalists. Traditionally trained taxonomists such as Hall, Keck, and Turrill throughout their careers participated in both experimental and herbarium research. And a number of specialists in fields other than taxonomy took an active interest in taxonomic problems, not necessarily limited to experimental aspects. For example, Anderson suggested a number of innovations to make herbarium collections more amenable to statistical analysis.This historical study of experimental taxonomy indicates a different relationship between experimentalism and taxonomy than that portrayed by the naturalist-versus-experimentalist dichotomy. F. E. Clements originated experimental taxonomy as a revolt against descriptive botany. In retrospect, this revolution was not vigorously waged and was not successfully completed. Experimental taxonomy was never an entirely experimental approach to botanical research. Even the most ardent advocates of experimentalism relied heavily on methods inherited from traditional taxonomy. Moderate exponents of experimental taxonomy stressed the compatibility of experimental methods, field observation, and herbarium techniques. Attempts to fuse cytogenetics, ecology, and taxonomy during the period 1920–1950 resulted in an impressive body of research. However, this fusion constituted neither a repudiation of descriptive botany nor a complete revision of taxonomic theory of practice. (shrink)

The book reconstructs the history of Western ethics. The approach chosen focuses the endless dialectic of moral codes, or different kinds of ethos, moral doctrines that are preached in order to bring about a reform of existing ethos, and ethical theories that have taken shape in the context of controversies about the ethos and moral doctrines as means of justifying or reforming moral doctrines. Such dialectic is what is meant here by the phrase ‘moral traditions’, taken as a name for (...) threads of moral discourse, made in turn of other interwoven threads, including transmission of shared codes, appeals to reform of prevailing custom, rational argument about the justification of some precept on the basis of some shared general teaching or principle, and rational argument about the ultimate basis for principles and justification of authoritative teaching. That is, the approach adopted to the reading of ethical texts depends on a firm belief in the fact that philosophers hardly created any ethical doctrine out of nothing. The main point this book tries to highlight is how different philosophical theories emerged and followed each other as a result of attempts at accounting for what was going on in the world of moral traditions. Changes were propelled by controversies between different schools, and highly abstract arguments were the unintended effects of moves made by controversialists forced to transform (and occasionally to turn upside down) their own doctrines in order to face the challenge posed by other arguments. This is the reason why the book examines not only texts that already enjoy pride of place in the history of philosophy (Aristotle, Kant, Hegel), but also other texts usually treated in the histories of religions (the Bible, the Talmud, the Quran), and others considered to be much less philosophical (Plutarchus, Pufendorf). -/- 1. Plato and a response to ethical scepticism. Two different traditions of morality in VI-V century Greece are described. The birth of philosophical questioning of traditional morality and temporal and spatial variation of custom is described within the context of the v century crisis, the demise of traditional aristocratic and tyrannical rule and the birth of democracy. Two conflicting answers to the challenge are reconstructed, namely conventionalist or immoralist theories formulated by the Sophists and the eudemonist and intellectualist Socratic theory. Plato’s own reformulation of Socrates answer to the Sophists is reconstructed. His psychological views, his classification of the four cardinal virtues and his political theory are described as parts of a unitary system, culminating in an extremely realist moral ontology identifying the idea of the good with the essence of the (moral and extra-moral) world itself. -/- 2. Aristotle and the invention of practical philosophy. Aristotle’s invention of practical philosophy as a field separated from first philosophy is shown to be an implication of his break with Plato moral ultra-realism. Aristotle’s agenda in his moral works is arguably dependent on a polemical intention, namely dismantling Socratic intellectualism. The semi-inductive or virtuously circular method of practical philosophy is illustrated, starting with the received opinions of the better and wiser individuals and trying dialectically to sift what is left of mistake and inconsistence in such opinions, finally trying to correct mistakes and make the overall practical science more consistent. The chapter illustrates then the relationship of individual ethics, or ‘monastics’, with the art and the science of the pater familias, or ‘economics’, and the science of the ruler and citizen, or politics. The nature of virtues, or better, excellences of character, is discussed, highlighting the basic role of hexis, or ‘disposition’. Prudence, or better practical wisdom, is the focus of the chapter. Its relationship with bouleusis or deliberation is examined, and its autonomous status vis-à-vis theoretical knowledge is stressed. -/- 3. Diogenes and philosophy as a way of life. The chapter provides an overview of Hellenistic ethics, which almost amounts to Hellenistic schools of philosophy, in so far as ‘philosophy’ became in these centuries primarily the name for a way of life. The typical character of the Cynical movement is highlighted, that of a school of life, not a school aimed at providing any kind of intellectual training was to be provided. -/- 4. Epicurus and ethics as self-care. The peculiar character of the Epicurean school is described, a combination of a science of well-being aiming, more than at pleasure as in the popular view, at reduction of useless suffering, of unnecessary needs, and at a balanced selection of pleasures of the best and most durable kind. -/- 5. Epictetus and ethics as therapy of the passions. The various phases of Stoicism are described, and the shifting place given to ethics in the Stoic system of idea, culminating in the paradoxical view of ethics, its impossibility in principle notwithstanding, as the only truly significant and necessary part of philosophy. Cicero is treated, showing how his own synthesis of various Hellenistic trends is as a truly philosophical enterprise, deserving serious consideration after one or two centuries when he was confined to the role of literate. Epictetus is chosen as the best example of what the Stoic tradition could yield, an art of living based on sophisticated introspection, in turn aimed at making a kind of cognitive therapy possible, dismantling obnoxious passions at their root by systematically correcting false representations. -/- 6. Philo and the reconciliation of Torah and Platonism. A reconstruction of basic ideas from a few books of the Hebrew Bible is provided, starting with the Prophetic tradition and the focus on God’s mercy as the source of motivation and standard for human behaviour. Then a comparative analysis is undertaken of a parallel tradition, namely the three codifications of the Torā (Law or, better, Instruction), highlighting how a core of moral ideas may be recognized as a basis and preamble of codification of civil law, cultural practice, and regulation of ritual purity. The importance of Leviticus is stressed as the turning point when emphasis mercy, typical of the Prophetic tradition, is combined with the legal tradition, yielding the change in sensibility of the Second Temple time. Philo of Alexandria is described as one of the three leading figures – together with Rabbi Hillel and Rabbi Yeshua – at the apex the emergence of the mentioned new sensibility, gradually including mercy as an essential part of justice and establishing the starting point of both the Rabbinic and the Christian tradition. This consists precisely in the precept of one’s neighbour’s love or of the golden rule, two eventually identical precepts whose meaning is arguably more sober and sensible than the long-lasting Christian tradition deriving from John and Augustine has made us believe and no novelty vis-à-vis so-called Ancient-Testament teachings. -/- 7. Augustine and Christianity as Neo-Platonism. The first section examines the moral doctrines of so-called 'ethical Treaties' from the Talmud, a group of treaties, among which the best known is Pirqé Avot, that were left out of the six "orders" of the canon as they did not fit in any of the six groups of issues ritual or legal on which the division was based. According to Maimonides, their peculiar theme is provided by the Deòt, 'opinions', i.e., mental dispositions, that is, the translation of the Greek term hexeis and Arab akhlak (in turn providing in this language the name for ethics as such). The three topics I reconstruct are: i) the notion of Torah: The Torah is understood as the world order itself, or as the ‘Wisdom’ that existed even before creation and was ‘the tool by which the world was built’; however, the Torah is an earthly and human entity, as it was "received" by humans, and from that very moment belongs to them; ii) the relationship between love of God and love of neighbour; the treaties require us to study and practice the Torah ‘for its own sake’, that is, require us to act out of love, not out of fear or hope of reward; iii) the idea of sanctification of daily life: having disappeared with the destruction of the Temple the possibility of any conflict between liturgical service and everyday life, the latter is assumed to be in itself divine service: to give food to the poor has the same value as sacrifices in the Temple, and as an implication, the insistence become recurrent on the goodness of created things in themselves along with a polemic against ascetic currents. The conclusions drawn are: i) the moral teachings of the Talmud and those of Yeshua are, rather than similar, virtually identical; one may safely say that the precept of love and the golden rule are central ones for all Talmudic rabbis, that mercy plays an indispensable role alongside with justice, and the latter is not a different thing from one’s neighbour’s love; ii) a peculiarity of Talmud rabbis facing Yeshua is the idea of study as worship, and knowledge as a source of justice; but this is an idea of Judaism after the Temple's destruction that cannot be attributed to the Pharisees of Yeshua’s time; iii) the relation of study and practice in the Talmud parallels that between faith and deeds in Paul's epistles, that is, respectively faith or learning are a necessary and sufficient condition to be recognized as righteous , but deeds are the inevitable effect of either faith or learning. The sayings ascribed to Yeshua are examined first, yielding the conclusion that a close equivalent may be found for every saying in Talmudic literature and yet the whole is ascribed to one rabbi, with rather consistent stress on God’s mercy and unconditional forgiving as the mark of true imitation of God. Thus, Yeshua’s teaching is pure Judaism. The third section describes briefly the galaxy of Gnostic currents and Manichaeism, trying to sketch the profile of moral teachings resulting from an encounter of Asian spiritual traditions, Hellenistic lore and sparks of teachings from apocalyptic Jewish currents. The last section summarizes the turbulent history of several encounters between Christian currents and Hellenistic philosophical schools. The first one was with late Cynicism. Recent, rather controversial, literature discovered the jargon and a few topics from the Stoic-Cynical popular philosophy in a few books from the New Testament itself. This, far from proving that Rabbi Yeshua had been influenced by cynic preachers, is a proof of the necessity felt by Christian preachers to translate the original ‘Christian’ teaching into a Greek lexicon deeply impregnated with cynic terminology. The second was with Platonism, yielding the mild and temperate moral teaching of Clemens of Alexandria, teaching the sanctity of nature and the human body, the joy of moderate fruition of ‘natural’ kinds of pleasures, and the beauty of the marital life – in short, the opposite of the standard picture of Medieval Christianity. Ambrose of Milan brings about a different kind of synthesis, namely with Middle Platonism, where Stoic themes prevail. The most shocking case is Augustine, where an early Manichean education is overcome in a former phase by a synthesis of Plotinian Neo-Platonism and Christian preaching, yielding a sustained polemic with the Manicheans and rather optimistic views on life and Creation, the body and sexuality, and Hebrew-Judaic tradition not far from Clemens of Alexandria. In a later phase, occasioned by controversy on the opposite front, with such Christian currents as the Pelagians and Donatists, Augustine comes back to heavily anti-Judaic and world-denying ascetic attitudes where is earlier Manichean upbringing seems to emerge again. The tragedy of medieval Christianity will be the later Augustine’s overwhelming influence. A final section is dedicated to the monastic tradition where a curious mixture of world-denying asceticism with an astonishingly penetrating ‘science’ of introspection emerges. -/- 8. Al Farabi and the reconciliation of Islam and Platonism. The Qurān and the qadit, that is, collections of sayings ascribed to the prophet Muhammad contain a wealth of precepts and catalogues of virtues mirroring moral contents from the Jewish and the Christian traditions, among them the basic notion of imitation of the Deity, where mercy is assumed to be its basic trait. An important tradition within Islam, namely Sufism, stressed to the utmost degree the role of mercy, turning Islam into a mystic doctrine centred on retreat from the world, abandonment to God’s will, and a peaceful and fraternal attitude to our fellow-beings. A secular literary tradition originating in the Sassanid Empire, the literature of advice to the Prince had for a time a widespread influence in the newly constituted Arabic-Islamic commonwealth. In a later phase, the legacy of Hellenic philosophy made its way into the intellectual elite of the Islamic world. The first important legacy was Platonic, and the Republic became the main text for Islamic Platonism. Al-Farabi wrote an enjoyable remake of the Platonic Republic, arguing that the citizen’s virtues were the basis on which the political building needs to rest. The secular lawgiver is enlightened by the light of reason in his everyday practice of governance, but room is made for the Prophet as the voice of revealed truth that confirms and completes the rational truth that philosophy may afford. In a second phase also Aristotelian and Stoic influence were assimilated. Miskawayh’s treatise was the masterwork at the time Arabic philosophy reached its Zenith. It is a treatment of the soul’s diseases and their remedies, combining the Aristotelian doctrine of the golden mean with the Stoic doctrine of the passions and elements of Galenic medicine. Towards the eleventh-twelve centuries a war raged among theologians and philosophers, finally won by the former with disappearance of philosophy as such. The newly established mainstream, yet, was no kind of intolerant fanaticism. It drew from the work of mystic theologian Al-Ghazālī, the best heir of Sufism, teaching a tolerant and peaceful attitude to our fellow-beings and a passive attitude to destiny as an expression of the Divine will. -/- 9. Moshe ben Maimon and the reconciliation of Torah and Aristotelian ethics. The encounter between the Talmudic tradition and Hellenic philosophy had taken place a first time in Alexandria at the time of Philo but the two traditions had parted way again. In fact, the kind of Platonic Judaism founded by Philo survived only within Christianity, in the fourth Gospel and then in writings by Clemens of Alexandria. The Talmudic literature had absorbed just less striking traits from the Hellenic Philosophy, namely an idea of ethics as care of the self and a role for the education of character as propaedeutic to theoretical knowledge. In the Arabic-Islamic world, a second round started when Jewish authors writing in Arabic undertook the task to prove the full compatibility of the tradition deriving from Torah and Platonic philosophy. The culmination of this attempt is provided by Moshe ben Maimon who tried to use Aristotelian ethics as a language into which the teaching from the Pirké Avot could be translated. -/- 10. Thomas Aquinas and the reconciliation of Christian morality and Aristotelian ethics. In the first section the fresh start is described of philosophical ethics in Latin Europe at the turn of the Millennium. In a first phase, Anselm and Peter Abelard built on a Platonic and Augustinian legacy. In this phase. remarkable innovations are introduced, including Abelard’s claim of the obliging character of erring consciousness. In a second phase, the rediscovery of Nicomachean Ethics thanks to Latin translation of Arabic versions gives birth to a new wave of ethical studies, recovering the very idea of Aristotelian practical philosophy, with the potential implication of full legitimization of natural morality, i.e. ethics without Revelation. Aquinas’s ethics is a theological ethics out of which it would be vain to try to extract a self-contained philosophical ethics. His treatment of topics in philosophical ethics, yet, does not boil down to repetition of Aristotelian arguments but is rather a creative reshaping of such arguments. For example, he introduces also in the practical philosophy a first principle parallel to the principle of non-contradiction; and he also carries out a synthesis of Aristotelianism, Stoicism, and neo-Platonism. Even though it is essentially moral theology, Aquinas’s doctrine - unlike Augustine – grants full citizenship to "natural" morality, firstly by rejecting the claim that the corruption of human nature due to the original sin is so radical as to leave "pure nature" incapable of moral goodness. The doctrine is presented in a more sophisticated formulation in a few of the Quaestiones, such as De Malo and De Veritate, in the Summa contra Gentes and in the commentaries to Aristotle than in the famous Summa Theologica, but the latter work includes the only or the largest exposition of some decisive part of the theory. Thus, the Summa Theologica should be read for what it is more than criticized for not being what it was not meant to be. It was not meant to be the brilliant synthesis of all that Reason he had been able to produce with what Revelation had added about which the Neo-Thomists used to dream, but rather a manual for the training of preachers and confessors, where theoretical claims are not too demanding and a few serious tensions are left. Besides a jump between the Prima Secundae and the Secunda Secundae, being the former an essay in virtue theory and the latter a handbook for confessors, the most serious tension is perhaps the one between the ethics of right reason presented in most of Ia-IIae and the eudemonistic ethics developed in quaestiones 1-5 of the same part; the alternative ethical theory which also may be found in Augustine, the Stoic view of a cosmic reason eventually coincident with the moral law, was believed by Anselm (followed by John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham) to be incompatible with eudemonism. It is questionable whether Thomas could reduce the tension proving that it is just an apparent tension, in so far as the right reason and bliss derived from knowledge of God tend to coincide, but this is just a conjecture. Thomas’s ethics is a virtue ethic, not a law-based one, and moral judgment focuses on the virtues, particularly charity, not on the commandments and even less on absolute prohibitions; Thomas, however, would not have considered a drastic alternative between law and the virtues such as the one which has been advanced in late twentieth-century philosophy to be justified. Nonetheless, when it discusses ‘special’ virtues, it ceases to be an ethics of virtue and becomes a disappointing and often contradictory discussion of legal and illegal acts. Such a discussion takes most of the time ‘reasonable’ middle positions on controversial issues but not the alternative approach that Aristotelianism would have made possible; even when some occasional Aristotelian claim shows up, such as money’s barrenness as a reason against usury, this seems to be made by an author who apparently ignores the Aristotelian Thomas of the Prima Secundae. It is an ethic of human autonomy which recognizes the binding character of the individual conscience and, potentially, even a duty to disobey unjust laws. It is true that what Thomas writes in his discussion of death penalty and persecution of heretics is simply disgusting, and yet we should blame Thomas the man, not Thomist ethical theory. Finally, Thomas’s ethics is not ethical ‘absolutism’, as both traditionalist Catholic theologians and secularist enemies of dogmatic morality tend to believe. It is instead an ethic of prudential judgment. Exceptions to this approach – or better results of logical fallacies – are such claims as the absolute character of negative precepts and of the existence of "intrinsically evil acts", claims that simply cease to make sense in the light of Thomas’s own distinction between human act and natural act, carrying consequences Thomas did not live long enough to draw or was not consistent enough to dare to draw. -/- 11. Francisco de Vitoria and casuistry. The first topic illustrated is the discussion about the notion of pura natura, namely the human condition after the original sin and before divine revelation. The core notion was already there in Aquinas but was later developed by Caietanus (Thomas de Vio) with a number of interesting implications: firstly a view of human nature as such much more positive than Augustine’s and his followers’ view, including both Calvinists and Jansenists; secondly, the implication that the philosopher’s morality, as opposed to the Christian’s morality, is a quite respectable kind of morality; thirdly, that theocracy and prosecution of the unfaithful lacked justification, with more far-fetching consequences than Aquinas himself had dared to draw. The second topic is casuistry, a new name for a comparatively older way of thinking, which was already there in late Stoicism and Cicero as well as in the Talmudic literature. This is an approach aimed at yielding probable enough solutions for doubtful cases even in absence of completely safe staring points. The genre developed from medieval reference books for confessors and became by the sixteenth-century a sophisticated tool-box for dealing with various fields of applied ethics. Francisco Vitoria, the main authority of Baroque Scholasticism, was a controversial figure, among the proponents of the new discipline of casuistry and a consistent proponent of more separation between the religious and the civil authority, stricter limits to the legitimacy of war, innate rights of non-Christian nations in the New World based on the notion of pura natura, providing a standard of ‘natural’ goodness, previous to revelation, on which the Indian nations were judged to live in a naturally good condition, provided with the institutions of family, justice, and religion had accordingly a right to full respect by Christian sovereigns. Bartolomé de Las Casas, arguing along similar lines, was the leader of a historical battle in defence of the rights of the Indios. -/- 12. Michel de Montaigne and the art of living. A short description of one of the Renaissance Phyrronism, one of the classical philosophies revived in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Montaigne combines the sceptical epistemology with an understanding of ethics – indeed of philosophy as a whole – in terms of an art of living inspired by two basic ideas, sagesse, that is, practical wisdom as the only kind of rationality available after theology, science, and tradition have declared bankrupt, and an aesthetic ideal of self-transformation through the art of writing and introspection. -/- 13. Pierre Nicole and neo-Augustinianism. The chapter illustrates first the vicissitudes of Augustinianism newly born after the late medieval triumph of Thomist Aristotelianism in the alternative Protestant and Catholic versions processed by the Calvinists and the Jansenists. Then it illustrates the doctrines of Pierre Nicole, Blaise Pascal’s best disciple, on the impossibility of introspection, on the ubiquity of self-deception, on the incurably evil character of the passion of love, and on the two moralities, the one of the man of the world, the morality of honesty which is indispensable for granting peace and order but devoid of any true value for eternal salvation, since the same external behaviour may be prompted by opposite motivations, and the morality of charity, the only true one but also useless to society. The third topic is Pierre Malebranche’s view of self-deception as a ubiquitous phenomenon accounting for human action and responsibility and his reformulated theory of self-love, no less ubiquitous than for Nicole and yet not as incurably evil, given the distinction between morally indifferent and even necessary amour de soi and vicious amour proper, a distinction on which the whole of Rousseau’s moral and political theory rests. -/- 14. Samuel von Pufendorf and the new science of morality. The chapter is dedicated to the discovery of the idea of a ‘new moral science’. Hugo Grotius is discussed first highlighting the real character of his project, much closer to the Thomist idea of a natural law accessible to non-corrupted human reason when human beings are living in a state of pura natura. Then Hobbes’s combination of scepticism, voluntarism, and conventionalism is described and both the continuity with Grotius’s new science, in the search for non-revealed rational morality, and the break with him, in the adoption of voluntarism and refusal of an intellectualist view of natural law, are illustrated. Pufendorf’s work is illustrated as a synthesis of the two previous attempts and the – up to Schneewind underestimated – paradigmatic example of the new science of morality. -/- 15. Richard Cumberland and consequentialist voluntarism. The chapter gives an overview of eighteenth-century Anglican ethics, noticing how the Cambridge tradition gave special weight to natural theology as opposed to positive or revealed theology – and how two Cambridge fellows, John Gay and Thomas Brown, elaborated on Cumberland’s (and Malebranche’s, as well as Leibniz’s) strategy for finding a third way between intellectualist view and voluntarist view of the laws of nature. The result of their elaboration was a kind of a rational-choice account of the origins of natural laws, where a law-giver God chooses among a number possible sets of laws on a maximizing criterion, and God’s maximandum is happiness for his creatures. The chapter notices also how such a solution aimed at solving at once the problem of evil and that of the foundation of moral obligation by proving how God’s choice was justified as far as it was the one minimising the amount of suffering in the world. 16. Richard Price and intuitionism. The chapter describes first the doctrines of the Cambridge Platonists, an example of hyper-rationalist reaction to Calvinism. Secondly it describes the sophisticated and universally ignored – from Sidgwick to Anscombe –version of what was later labelled ‘ethical intuitionism’ – showing how it escapes familiar objections and misrepresentations of intuitionism – from Mill to Rawls – in grounding its argument on transcendental arguments while carefully avoiding recourse to introspection and psychological evidence, which has been taken as a too easy target by critics of intuitionism. Thirdly, the chapter discusses Whewell’s ‘philosophy of morality’, as opposed to ‘systematic morality’, not unlike Kant’s distinction between a pure and an empirical moral philosophy. Whewell worked out a systematization of traditional normative ethics as a first step before its rational justification; he believed that the point in the philosophy of morality is justifying a few rational truths about the structure of morality such as to rule hedonism, eudemonism, and consequentialism; yet a system of positive morality cannot be derived solely from such rational truths but requires consideration of the ongoing dialectics between idea and fact in historically given moralities. Whewell’s intuitionism turns out closer to Kantian ethics than commentators have made us believe until now, and quite different from what Sidgwick meant by intuitionism. -/- 17. Adam Smith and the morality of role-switch. The chapter describes first, Hutcheson’s attempt at basing the ‘new science’ of natural law on different bedrock than Pufendorf and the English Platonists, namely a moral sense, a faculty whose existence is assumed to be proved on an empirical basis. The second step is a reconstruction of Hume’s rejoinder in terms of a new science of man including morality on an ‘experimental’ basis, that is, a ‘Newtonian’ hypothetical-deductive approach, distinguished from Hutcheson’s allegedly uncritical descriptive approach to human nature. The third step is a reconstruction of Adam Smith theory of morality understood as emerging from a spontaneous interplay of exchanges of situations (the most basic meaning of the word ‘sympathy’ as construed by this author). -/- 18. Jeremy Bentham and utilitarianism. The bulk of the chapter is dedicated to the doctrines of Jeremy Bentham. The Enlightenment spirit that suggested the idea of a new morality, free from religion, is illustrated. The notion of utility is illustrated as well as the subsequent formulations of the principle of utility. The idea of felicific calculus is discussed, showing how its inner difficulties prompted several reformulations of the principle of utility in order to avoid undesirable implications of proposed formulations. The role of the thesis of spontaneous convergence between interest and duty is discussed, showing how it left numberless questions open, and the distinction between the virtues of prudence, justice and beneficence is described as a way out of the deadlocks of classical utilitarianism. After Bentham, Mill’s reformed utilitarianism is reconstructed, showing how it is a kind of mixed system – as closer to common sense as it gives up Bentham’s claims to consistency and simplicity – resulting as unintended consequences from the controversies in which Mill was too keen to engage. The hidden agenda of the controversy between Utilitarianism and Intuitionism, going beyond the image of the battle between Prejudice and Reason, is described, showing how both competing philosophical outlooks turn out to be more research programs than self-contained doctrinal bodies, and such programs appear to be implemented, and indeed radically transformed while in progress thanks to their enemies no less than to their supporters. -/- 19. Immanuel Kant, practical reason and judgment. The chapter argues that Kant took from Moses Mendelssohn the idea of a distinction between geometry of morals and a practical ethic. He was drastically misunderstood by his followers precisely on this point. He had learned from the sceptics and the Jansenists the lesson that men are prompted to act by deceptive ends, and he was aware that human actions are also empirical phenomena, where laws like the laws of Nature may be detected. His practical ethics made room for judgment as a holistic procedure for assessing the saliency of relevant moral qualities in one given situation; this procedure yields the same results as the geometry of morals does for abstract cases but does so immediately and without balancing conflicting duties with each other, since what makes for the salient quality of a situation is perceived from the very beginning. Kant's practical philosophy is richer than the received image, making room for an ‘empirical moral philosophy’ or moral anthropology including treatment of commerce, needs, value and price, happiness and well-being; the overall social theory and philosophy of history is less different from Adam Smith's than the received image makes believe; the paradox of happiness is central to Kant's philosophy; a distinction between happiness and well-being is clearly drawn; the distinction plays a basic role in establishing a link between the economic and the moral life. -/- 20. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel and the critique of abstract universalism. The chapter describes first the Romantic movement and the implications some of its concerns, rescuing passions, community, tradition, the individual as the bearer of a unique destiny, and the longing for organic unity between the individual, mankind and nature. Hegel’s contribution is discussed then, highlighting how, on the one hand, he shared a number of these concerns and on the other he had more rationalist leanings. The notion of morality is the pivotal point of the reconstruction, highlighting how Hegel construes this notion as a key to his own diagnosis of the malaise of modernity – the separation of individual and Gemeinschaft – and how his attack on Kant turns around this very idea. -/- 21. Friedrich Nietzsche against Christianity and the Enlightenment. The chapter illustrates first the idea of deconstruction of the back-world of values. Nietzsche claims to be legitimate heir of the French moralists, Leibniz, Kant and Hegel, in so far as he allegedly carries out to its deepest implications their discovery of what lies behind traditional naïve belief in the existence of an objective realm of values just waiting for description by the philosopher. The two exemplars form which genealogy draws inspiration are the classical philologist’s historical reconstructions of lost meanings and the chemist’s decomposition of elements. Then the genealogy of the notions of good and evil carried out in the first dissertation of Genealogy of morals is illustrated with its paradoxical conclusion that will to power is in fact the only ‘genuine’ kind of goodness. The third point illustrated is the dialectic of ascetism and self-realization with its ambiguous outcome. The suggested interpretation of such outcome is that Nietzsche’s normative ethics is a kind of virtue ethics taking an aesthetic ideal as a normative standard -/- 22. George Edward Moore and ideal utilitarianism. The chapter discusses the ideas of common sense and common-sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences to reach, also in ethics, the same kind of “mature” knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of a naïve positivist starting-point, Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus, Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a “new” morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Then it reconstructs the background of ideas, concerns and intentions out of which Moore’s early essays, the preliminary version, and then the final version of Principia Ethica originated. I stress the role of religious concerns, as well as that of the Idealist legacy. I argue that PE is more a patchwork of rather diverging contributions than a unitary work, not to say the paradigm of a new school in Ethics. I add a comparison with Rashdall’s almost contemporary ethical work, suggesting that the latter defends the same general claims in a different way, one that manages to pave decisive objections in a more plausible way. I end by suggesting that the emergence of Analytic Ethics was a more ambiguous phenomenon than the received view would make us believe, and that the wheat (or some other gluten-free grain) of this tradition, that is, what logic can do for philosophy, should be separated from the chaff, that is, the confused and mutually incompatible legacies of Utilitarianism and Idealism. -/- 23. Edmund Husserl and the a-priori of action. The chapter illustrates first the idea of phenomenology and the Husserl’s project of a phenomenological ethic as illustrated in his 1908-1914 lectures. The key idea is dismissing psychology and trying to ground a new science of the a priori of action, within which a more restricted field of inquiry will be the science of right actions. Then the chapter illustrates the criticism of modern moral philosophy carried out in the 1920 lectures, where the main target is naturalism, understood in the Kantian meaning of primacy of common sense. The third point illustrate is Adolph Reinach’s theory of social acts as a key the grounding of norms, a view that basically sketches the very ideas ‘discovered’ later by Clarence I. Lewis, John Searle, Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. A final section is dedicated to Nicolai Hartman, who always refused to define himself a phenomenologist and yet developed a more articulated and detailed theory of ‘values’ – with surprising affinities with George E. Moore - than philosophers such as Max Scheler who claimed to Husserl’s legitimate heirs. -/- 24. Bertrand Russell and non-cognitivism. The chapter reconstructs first the discussion after Moore. The naturalistic-fallacy argument was widely accepted but twisted to prove instead that the intuitive character of the definition of ‘good’, its non-cognitive meaning, in a first phase identified with ‘emotive’ meaning. Alfred Julius Ayer is indicated as a typical proponent of such non-cognitivist meta-ethics. More detailed discussion is dedicated to Bertrand Russell’s ethics, a more nuanced and sophisticated doctrine, arguing that non-cognitivism does not condemn morality to arbitrariness and that the project of a rational normative ethics is still possible, heading finally to the justification of a kind of non-hedonist utilitarianism. Stevenson’s theory, another moderate version of emotivism is discussed at some length, showing how the author comes close to the discovery of the role of a pragmatic dimension of language as a basis for ethical argument. Last of all, the discussion from the Forties about Hume’s law is described, mentioning Karl Popper’s argument and Richard Hare’s early non-cognitivist but non-emotivist doctrine named prescriptivism. -/- 25. Elizabeth Anscombe and the revival of virtue ethics. The chapter discusses the three theses defended by Anscombe in 'Modern Moral Philosophy'. I argue that: a) her answer to the question "why should I be moral?" requires a solution of the problem of theodicy, and ignores any attempts to save the moral point of view without recourse to divine retribution; b) her notion of divine law is an odd one more neo-Augustinian than Biblical or Scholastic; c) her image of Kantian ethics and intuitionism is the impoverished image manufactured by consequentialist opponents for polemical purposes and that she seems strangely accept it; d) the difficulty of identifying the "relevant descriptions" of acts is not an argument in favour of an ethics of virtue and against consequentialism or Kantian ethics, and indeed the role of judgment in the latter is a response to the difficulties raised by the case of judgment concerning future action. A short look at further developments in the neo-naturalist current is given trough a reconstruction of Philippa Foot’s and Peter Geach’s critiques to the naturalist-fallacy argument and Alasdair MacIntyre’s grand reconstruction of the origins and allegedly unavoidable failure of the Enlightenment project of an autonomous ethic. -/- 26. Richard Hare and neo-Utilitarianism. The chapter addresses the issue of the complex process of self-transformation Utilitarianism underwent after Sidgwick’s and Moore’s fatal criticism and the unexpected Phoenix-like process of rebirth of a doctrine definitely refuted. A glimpse at this uproarious process is given through two examples. The first is Roy Harrod Wittgensteinian transformation of Utilitarianism in pure normative ethics depurated from hedonism as well as from whatsoever theory of the good. This results in preference utilitarianism combined with a ‘Kantian’ version of rule utilitarianism. The second is Richard Hare’s two-level preference utilitarianism where act utilitarianism plays the function of eventual rational justification of moral judgments and rule-utilitarianism that of action-guiding practical device. -/- 27. Hans-Georg Gadamer and rehabilitation of practical philosophy. The post-war rediscovery of ethics by many German thinkers and its culmination in the Sixties in the movement named ‘Rehabilitation of practical philosophy’ is described. Among the actors of such rehabilitation there were a few of Heidegger’s most brilliant disciples, and Hans-Georg Gadamer is chosen as a paradigmatic example. His reading of Aristotle’s lesson I reconstructed, starting with Heidegger’s lesson but then subtly subverting its outcome thanks to the recovery of the central role of the notion of phronesis. -/- 28. Karl-Otto Apel and the revival of Kantian ethics. Parallel to the neo-Aristotelian trend, there was in the Rehabilitation of practical philosophy a Kantian current. This started, instead than the rehabilitation of prudence, with the discovery of the pragmatic dimension of language carried out by Charles Peirce and the Oxford linguistic philosophy. On this basis, Karl-Otto Apel singled out as the decisive proponent of the linguistic and Kantian turn in German-speaking ethics, worked out the performative-contradiction argument while claiming that this was able to provide a new rational and universal basis for normative ethics. An examination of his argument is some detail is offered, followed by a more cursory reconstruction of Jürgen Habermas’s elaboration on Apel’s theory. -/- 29. John Rawls and public ethics as applied ethics. Rawls’s distinction between a “political” and a “metaphysical” approach to one central part of ethical theory, namely the theory of justice, is interpreted as a formulation of the same basic idea at the root of both the principles approach and neo-casuistry, both discussed in the following chapter, namely that it is possible to reach an agreement concerning positive moral judgments even though the discussion is still open – and in Rawls’ view never will be close – on the basic criteria for judgment. -/- 30. Beauchamp and Childress and bioethics as applied ethics. The chapter presents the revolution of applied ethics while stressing its methodological novelty, exemplified primarily by Beauchamp and Childress principles approach and then by Jonsen and Toulmin’s new casuistry. -/- . (shrink)

This book examines the dominant discourses in higher education. From the moment academics enter higher education, they are met with binaries such as teaching vs. research, quantitative vs. qualitative research, and constructivists vs. positivists. When embarking upon a teaching career in a university there are further binaries that immediately present themselves, with deep vs. surface learning probably being the most pervasive. Kinchin and Gravett contend that this presents a distorted view and contributes to the disconnect between the (...) aims and observable practice of higher education. Rather than celebrating difference, dominant discourses tend to seek similarities in an attempt to simplify and manage the environment, in what the authors perceive as a less than scholarly mode. In order to break down the barriers between 'structuralist' or 'traditional' academics and those who are more familiar with poststructuralist, critical perspectives, the authors explore the overlaps between these perspectives to offer a richer and more inclusive interrogation of the dominant discourses that pervade higher education. Offering methodological approaches to explore these perspectives, the authors bring together academics working in different parts of the university and examine the concept of a 'rich cartography', exploring how this can offer meaning within higher education research and practice. (shrink)

El artículo tiene por objeto analizar la construcción del conocimiento mapuche según el discurso de kimches. Sostenemos que en la educación familiar existe un proceso de construcción de conocimientos propios como un sistema de saberes y contenidos educativos para la formación de personas. La metodología empleada es la investigación educativa. Los resultados parciales muestran una descripción acerca de la lógica de los conocimientos educativos propios, para contextualizar la enseñanza y el aprendizaje de las ciencias en el medio escolar, (...) desde la educación intercultural en contexto mapuche. The aim of this article is to analyze the construction of Mapuche knowledge based on the kimches speech. We argue that within family education, there exists a process of constructing their own knowledge, as a system of knowledge and educational contents for forming individuals. The research methodology applied corresponds to education research. Preliminary results describe the logic of individual educational knowledge from intercultural education in the Mapuche context, so as to contextualize the teaching and learning of Science in schools. (shrink)

(2011). Educational Research and Inquiry: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches. Edited by D. Hartas. British Journal of Educational Studies: Vol. 59, Research capacity building, pp. 350-351.

PurposeThe purpose is to study Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations theory in a real‐life context, where it is exposed to the full range of complexities of people residing in a specific area and to briefly describe basically non‐work information needs and sources selected to access it.Design/methodology/approachThe relationships between personality and communication behaviour, socio‐economic characteristics and internet adoption, based on Rogers' theory are investigated.FindingsResults from 150 households suggest younger people and individuals with more formal education have increased information needs and are more (...) familiar with computer and internet usage. A positive association between educational level and innovation adoption, and between the latter and attitude toward science and change, is indicated.Research limitations/implicationsResearch is limited to Xanthi's Old Town. The quantitative methodology utilised does not allow for in‐depth analysis of information behaviour and internet adoption patterns. Measures to assess personality and communication behaviour variables developed need to be further validated. Finally, the research does not examine other variables and the distinction between voluntary and mandatory adoption.Practical implicationsResults suggest benefits of information technology should be advertised through earlier adopters.Originality/valueResearch shows level of internet exposure and practically explores technology usage levels in relation to socio‐economic, personality and communication behaviour variables. The sample offers a detailed examination of internet usage and information needs of individuals residing in a specific area. (shrink)

Resumen. La educación en valores conservacionistas representa una vía para promover cambios permanentesde actitudes, formación de conciencia y sensibilidad hacia los problemas socioambientales, por lo que serequiere la cooperación y participación de las universidades para lograr la internalización de valores en lascomunidades. El presente estudio tiene como objetivo proponer un modelo de gestión ambiental basado envalores conservacionistas que contribuya a la integración de la Universidad Nacional Experimental delTáchira [UNET] con la comunidad Río Chiquito, Parroquia La Petrolea, Municipio Junín, (...) Estado Táchira,Venezuela. Metodológicamente se ubicó en una investigación de campo, descriptiva, bajo la modalidad deproyecto factible, con apoyo en el paradigma cuantitativo, adoptándose el diseño no experimentaltranseccional. La población estuvo conformada por cinco informantes claves encargados del desarrollo deprogramas ambientales y 137 familias del área en estudio; como muestra se seleccionó la totalidad de losinformantes y 102 familias, a quienes se les aplicó un guión de entrevista y un cuestionario, respectivamente,validados mediante la técnica juicios de expertos y obteniéndose un coeficiente Alfa de Cronbach de 0.97indicativo de una confiabilidad muy alta. Los resultados evidencian que en la comunidad poco se practicanvalores conservacionistas, como consecuencia a la no presencia de líderes vecinales que fomenten estosvalores, además, hay una exigua participación comunitaria y universitaria en materia ambiental. Por tanto, serecomienda la elaboración del modelo de gestión ambiental basado en valores conservacionistas paracontribuir en el proceso integración universidad comunidad y así consolidar la formación de un individuo conconciencia conservacionista.Palabras claves. liderazgo vecinal, participación comunitaria, participación universitaria, modelo de gestiónambiental, valores conservacionistas.. Conservation values education represents a way to promote permanent changes in attitudes, raisingawareness and sensitivity to environmental problems, so it requires the cooperation and participation ofuniversities to achieve the internalization of values in communities. This study aims to propose a model ofenvironmental management based on conservation values that contribute to the integration of the UniversidadNacional Experimental del Táchira [UNET] – Río Chiquito, Parroquia La Petrolea, Municipio Junín, EstadoTáchira, Venezuela. Methodologically was located in a field research, descriptive, in the form of feasibleproject, supported in the quantitative paradigm, adopting the experimental design is not transactional. Thepopulation consisted of five key informants responsible for the development of environmental programs and137 families in the study area, as the entire sample was selected informants and 102 families who wereadministered an interview guide and questionnaire, respectively, validated by technical experts and trialsyielding a Cronbach alpha coefficient of 0.97 indicating a very high reliability. The results show that inpractice little community conservation values, due to the non presence of neighborhood leaders to promotethese values, in addition, there is a low participation in community and university environment. Therefore, werecommend the development of environmental management model based on conservation values to contributeto the university community integration process and consolidate the formation of a conservation-consciousindividual.Keywords. conservation values, community involvement, university involvement, leadership, neighborhood,environmental management model. (shrink)