709LectureNotes

Sex vs. Gender

– Trinity = Race / Class / Gender
Others as well, but these are the big ones. We evoke them as a litany in social science

– All 3, triple oppression (de la Luz Reyes)

– Intersectionality (bell hooks, Patricia Hill Collins)
– can’t detangle the separate effects of race/class/gender, e.g., on school experiences
– we treat it as a separable unit, we need to explore the intersections. The spaces that cross, where meanings are constructed.

– Distinguish Between Sex and Gender

- sex: is the visible attributes acquired at birth. I.e., the physical characteristics associated with being male or female. It is the biological traits and distinctions, more in terms of reproduction (organs & so forth)

- gender: think of it more in terms of how we have treated IDENTITY, in broader-
social-processual terms. It extends beyond physiology, to include learned cultural behaviors and understandings. E.g., the social meanings we attribute to sex, like arbitrarily picking blue for boys and pink for girls, and treating boys rougher. Gender is what we negotiate and construct and perform – like our masculinity or femininity, or sexuality, or sexual identity.

- Sex is biological; gender is cultural and social, – the patterns of behavior in which we are socialized and socialize others with respect to male and female roles (e.g., clothing and activities)

Sexism and Patriarchy

– Differential patterns of socialization and treatment which females get in schools puts them in positions very similar to other minority groups. Sexism is the ideological cousin to racism, namely one sex is superior to another – patriarchy.

– Some general patterns with respect to schooling and gender:
a) limited number of female role models in reading texts (the nurse but not the doctor)
b) contribution of women often ignored in history textbooks (women’s history mistreated as not part of “real” history)
c) administratively, the teaching force is feminized and administrators higher in the hierarchy tend still to be men.
d) sex of students often used as an organization tool for structuring activities in classroom, which may lead to unnecessary and differential treatment. Like–girls do the “traditional” chores like cleaning and straightening the room, while the boys do the physical chores like carrying books.
e) teaching techniques that are competition-based vs. collaboration-based
f) male students tend to receive more attention, praise and time, but also more harsh reprimands and discipline.
g) sexist language (debilitating). E.g. fireman, policeman, mailman, mankind, manpower, etc . . .
h) female students get higher grades and do better in language-related courses
like literature. Males in math and science. –hierarchy of knowledge. In general, this reproduction is the continuation of patriarchal society and sexual domination. Some theoretical points to think about in class here, and in your teaching praxis are: social / sexual division of labor (types of work expected), politics of the body (childbirth, abortion, symbolic capital of attractiveness), politics of sexual object choice (heterosexual “sexuality” pressure on homosexual students.

Theories of Race

– Omi & Winant discuss, if we discard euphemisms, that the contemporary United States has 5 color-based racial categories: black, white, brown, yellow, and red. (FOLK THEORY)

– Drawing from Michael Goldfield (1991, p.14), three main social scientific approaches to the study of race can be identified; biological determinism, psycho-cultural, and socio-economic.

Biological theories

– Biological theories of physical variations in the human species have been created to “naturalize” racial superiority, inferiority and hierarchy. Race, and its ideology of racism about those physical variations, arise principally from two related historical processes: “taking land from and destroying indigenous peoples and enslaving Africans to work that land” (Loewen, 1995, p. 136). The images, characterizations, components, and classifications of race rationalized the conditions of genocide and enslavement.

– However this is not to say that before the term race was crystallized, that peoples had not been enslaved. We know that both before and during the African slave trade, many Irish, for example, worked on English plantations as bonded indentured white servants. But in the late 17th century with growing demands for labor, (a demand no longer met by indigenous populations dying off from wars, slaughter and “Old World” diseases, nor from poor whites), Englishmen institutionalized African slavery. In the era (revolutionary period) when ideals such as democracy, human rights, equality and justice were towering political thought, and whites increasingly viewed the enslavement of other whites illegitimate, the pro-slavery forces rationalized their brutality by centering on physical differences as a “natural inferiority,” thus making non-whites justly suitable for enslavement as property. This slavery was much different from earlier slaveries started by Europeans in the 15th century because through the idea system of racism, where one “race” rationalized their enslavement of another, the children of slaves (as in the case of African Americans) could never achieve freedom.

– Here onward, oppression and the ideology of racial inferiority became intrinsically linked, and had both survived and thrived into the 18th and 19th centuries. For example, throughout most of the 19th century, at least a third of North Carolinians were African Americans, and the overwhelming majority were enslaved. By the 20th century, although slavery as an institution was gone, the idea of race remained. This points to the notion that race persists as an idea, despite its challenge and continual reshaping. In the present, even though the biological theories of race have largely been discredited, they had greatly determined much of the cultural practices and institutional policies of the United States throughout the better half of this century (a legacy that lives on today). A broad eugenics movement, which considered people of non-white races to be biologically inferior to whites, fortified political agendas and governmental practices from legal discourse, to scientific racism, to population control, to anti-immigrant laws, to school segregation.

Psychocultural approach
– The second main social scientific approach to the study of race, more popular today, is the psychocultural approach. Under this approach, race prejudice is viewed as a set of attitudes. Ethnocentrism, through the inclination to categorize people, is the tendency to evaluate others with one’s own racial group as the norm. This form of prejudice, according to Bennet & LeCompte (1990, p. 203) results in two forms of behavior: stereotyping and the establishment of social distance.

– Stereotyping is the depiction of people based on preconceived notions and limited information, and leads to affective attitudes. That is, an uncritical mental picture held in common by members of one particular group, that represents a standardized and oversimplified judgement and opinion about members of another group. These create caricatures based on exaggerated beliefs about the characteristics of that group. Social distance is self-explanatory.

– The actual term “racism” is most closely and popularly associated with this approach to the study of race. It is used to describe behavior and attitudes based on the ethnocentric belief that one race (primarily whites) is superior to others (Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and members of other ethnic minority groups). Of primary concern is the impact of patterns of racism and prejudice on the experiences of racial minorities. Under this approach, racial bias is customarily understood in terms of individual acts. Drawing from Scheurich and Young (1997), two categories of racism typically defined as operating on the individual level are overt and covert racism. Overt racism is “a public, conscious, and intended act by a person or persons from one race with the intent of doing damage to a person or persons from another race chiefly because of the race of the second person or persons” (p. 5). They believe that though verbalizations of overt racism are constitutionally protected, there is a general social consensus that it is socially unacceptable. The second type is covert racism, and the only difference is that covert racism is not fully or sometimes emphatically expressed in public. A covert racist does not publicly announce his or her intentions, instead keeps them hidden, and though may act in a racist fashion, he or she readily offers a socially-accepted reason for the behavior or act. (ETIQUETTE OF RACE IN SOUTH)

– Both types of racism, overt and covert, are seen as individual, and lend themselves to the phenomenon that “if a person answers ‘no’ to the question of whether she or he is racist, the respondent typically means that she or he does not, as an individual, engage in conscious, intended racism or that she or he is not, as an individual, consciously racist” (Scheurich and Young, 1997, p. 5). (Scheurich and Young cite institutional racism, that which exists when institutions have standardized procedures that injure members of one or more race disproportionately to the members of the dominant race; societal racism, which functions similarly but on a larger and broader societal scale; and civilizational racism, which is at the broadest level of civilizational assumptions about the nature of our world and experience in it.)

Socio-economic approach
– The socio-economic approach challenges the psychocultural view “which, while giving a certain independent weight to cultural and psychological features, argues that they are neither primary, nor completely autonomous” (p. 115). Instead, the socio-economic approach asserts race and racial oppression to be deeply affixed to changing economic and social conditions.

– The founding of the United States was a fabric interwoven by several rationales, carried over centuries. With military and cultural threats, and biological warfare through the introduction and dissemination of diseases, the killing of indigenous peoples and taking of Native American and Mexican land was rationalized by a “white” formulation and definition of private property. These were interlaced with unexamined notions of white racial superiority, a manifest destiny, and disparaging archetypical images of “primitivism” and “backwardness.” However, at base were the shifting social and economic conditions, particularly the economic demands and conventions of dominant classes. As a rule, by far the vast quantities of wealth appropriated in the Americas were the extraordinary amounts of fertile land. Land whose productivity demanded in turn extraordinary amounts of labor. Indeed, when Christopher Columbus and other “explorers” and “conquistadores” first introduced the practice of taking land and wealth from indigenous peoples, then exploiting their labor to their near-extinction, then elaborating a transatlantic slave trade to meet subsequent requirements for labor, they had newly created a racial underclass and the economic arrangement that patterns race relations.

– In the newly-formed United States, the color line was unmistakable. Slavery was pivotal to the evolvement of the early economy. So much so that it was central and pervasive throughout all aspects of the Anglo-American colonies. However, this was not so until the creation of a “white” racial identity (whiteness). As already mentioned, slavery in Anglo-America was previously not exclusively racial. Alongside Africans were Irish, British, and other European indentured servants. But as M. Goldfield asserts, to maintain and increase their wealth “British colonialists, American capitalists, merchants, and plantation owners not only needed laborers, they needed to control them” (p. 117). Citing Theodore Allen, he believes there is an argument that a social buffer was needed to sustain control of the colonial laboring population. Particularly since many rebellions, sometimes interracial, were increasing. The color line was drawn with the creation of a “white” racial identity, serving as a “white” social buffer.

two insights
– In the present, J. Perea (1997, p.3) argues that there are two insights that help us understand the history and status of race in the United States. The first is the theory of “Interest-Convergence” by Derrick Bell. Simply put, this theory states that the interest in achieving racial equality by African Americans, and by extension other racial minorities, will only be accommodated when it converges with the interests of whites. This is to say, that the treatment of people of color improves only with the interest of the white majority.

– The second insight is correlated with the first. This one argues that a major motivation to promote equal treatment of racial minorities through the proposal and enactment of Civil Rights was the American embarrassment at the mistreatment of its minorities, and the Soviet advertisement of those mistreatments, during the Cold War. In the absence of cold-war competition, the moral imperative of whites to promote racial equality is gone. These may partially explain the broad deterioration of concern for racial equality, and give us a framework by which to better interpret many events taking place at the end of this century, such as the increasing judicial attacks on Affirmative Action, and English-only movements.

Social Transmission Theories

CONSENSUS THEORY -- POSITIVISM
– Social science frameworks during the 20th century have been dominated by a functionalist/structuralist perspective. Also known as functionalist systems theories, this most historically influential body of theories is based on an organic analogy that argues that societies possess basic functions analogous to biological living organisms. Each part of the system has a function, to when all work together, it ensures the basic survival of the whole organism. It has been a scientific methodological trend in research that seeks to reveal the structure of objects. It uses methods of research borrowed from math, physics and the biological sciences in general to inquire about the state of objects, their relationships, and learn their intrinsic timeless properties.
– Durkheim is the classic sociologist credited for pioneering this approach. He argued that it was vital that societies are allowed to carry out their inherent functions such as reproduction, cultural transmission, distribution of authority and the like, so as to survive. He propagated that the educational system had come to replace prior institutions like the church and families as the principal social institution that transmits culture. He wrote that this was an example where if one institution doesn’t fulfil its function, that soon another one will take over its role, and ultimately maintain the equilibrium of the whole society.
– Functionalism has sought then to identify and describe social functions and operations, and map the different relationships between the functions in that system. It has sought to answer how a basic survival need is being served, and believes that role differentiation and social solidarity are the two primary requirements of social life. Schools are believed to serve a latent or not very readily visible function of producing students who will share the basic cultural, political and economic norms of that society.
– Looking for the functions of society led to closer focus on social structures themselves. This variant of the functionalist perspective has been called structural functionalism. Keeping in with functionalism’s biological analogy, it seeks out to not just understand the functions, but the particular bodily organs themselves that must cooperate with other bodily organs to stay healthy. The schooling theme was believed to had disappeared from the work of early functionalists, but had reemerged in later theorists. Probably the most well known version of structural functionalism is the work of Talcott Parsons in the U.S..
– Central to this body of research has been the belief that homeostasis or equilibrium is the most natural, desirable and healthy state of systems, like that of living organisms. Conflict is an illness which the system seeks to avoid and resolve immediately, and any change can only take place in gradual increments.
– the Educational system is one such structure under this view which must fulfil its function of transmission to the next generation in order to maintain the healthy overall society. Functionalists and structural functionalists have researched the ways that schools reinforce the existing cultural, political, and social status quo. They have mostly concentrated on defining purposes of schooling in the name of intellectual acquisitions, political integration, preparation of students for the work force, and promoting a sense of social responsibility and morality.

CONFLICT THEORY
– Influenced mostly by the theories of Marx and Simmel, another stream of literature known as conflict theory believes that the functionalist emphasis on social maintenance is inadequate to truly understand the energetic activities of social systems. It draws its theory from the contradictions of capitalism, particularly the economic determinism and patterns of property ownership between labor and capital. The underlying thought is that the unequal distribution of wealth and goods in society is the unequivocal source of conflict.
– Schools are linked to this distribution in society, and are viewed as arenas where the social conflict takes place and gets played out. Schooling as a social practice is viewed to be utilized and supported by powerful sectors of society that wish to maintain their social dominance. In this view, particular attention is given to the various conflicts between the poor and rich classes, and the powerless workers and powerful capitalists.
– The same general systems and structural analysis of functionalism is used, but change/conflict is argued to be the natural and inherent state of the system (not social equilibrium).
– Max Weber was in agreement with the Marxist privilege of conflict, but rejected the notion that the contradictions of labor and capital lead to social breakdown. Where in a Marxist perspective, class is an interactional function of one’s relation with the modes of production, the Weberian perspective views class as a positional function of one’s relation with their income, profession, and educational attainment. He argued that power then refers more to the legitimization of authority under these systems. His classic theory is known as a model of Bureaucracy. This is to say that though he believed that group struggle was an inherent feature of social life, the conflicts related to class aren’t necessarily the only ones central as a whole. The emphasis is on the role of the state as the mediator of group conflict, rather than the expression of the interests of a dominant class (Morrow & Torres). Educational sociologists have taken his theory of society and applied it to schools. The argument is that schools are a prototypical kind of social organization, similar to hospitals, prisons, and factories. Along these lines, schools are viewed to be formal and multi leveled bureaucracies, unlike industrial corporations, created and organized by professionals.

ECONOMIC, SOCIAL, AND CULTURAL REPRODUCTION

– Theories of Economic, Social, and Cultural Reproduction build on TRANSMISSION theories such as CONSENSUS and FUNCTIONAL - STRUCTURALISM, but take a critical MARXIST perspective, meaning it is CLASS based. They were the first critical challenges to the notion of meritocracy (social and economic power is, and will in the future, be held by those selected on the basis of measurable merit).

Marx: primary divisions:
1) proletariat or labor: own no part of the place they work, tasks controlled by supervisors, must sell their labor. They produce surplus labor that results in profits for the ruling class.
2) capitalists: own the means of production, do not sell their own labor, purchase the labor of others.
3) petty bourgeoisie: own their means of production, do not sell their own labor, yet do not purchase the labor of others.
Capitalism built on inequality, necessity of continuing proletariat (i.e. reproduction). This is an industrial model; many have critiqued and adapted Marxism to more contemporary globalized economic patterns. One of these that we'll deal with later is the growing importance of knowledge (as in, "knowledge workers" like computer scientists) in today's economic rhetoric.

In general, theories of economic, social, and cultural reproduction are concerned with processes through which existing social structures maintain and reproduce themselves. Students are shaped by their experiences in schools to internalize or accept a class position that leads to the reproduction of existing power relationships and social and economic structures.

– Distinguish between social structure and cultural:
Social Structure: refers to those durable structures in social life. Social difference and discrimination along the lines of race, class, gender, sexuality, age, etc. Also refers to body of institutions (church, school, state, etc.) and the power relations solidified in them. Social power works through systems. Social structure refers to power, privilege, and status (see D & L ch. 5).
Cultural: refers to meaning, symbols, shared among a group of humans. Includes material {palpable, material existence) and symbolic culture. Refers to interpretation and meaning.

– Economic and Social Reproduction both refer specifically to the reproduction of class structures.

– Economic Reproduction: Bowles and Gintis: Correspondence Principle:
What is learned in schools corresponds to what is needed in the work place: not only in terms of knowledge, but also types of personal demeanor, modes of self presentation, self image, and social class identifications. Schools in industrial capitalist societies reproduce a stratified work force whose members accept their class position and who learn appropriate work discipline (punctuality, submissiveness, manual dexterity, etc.). The role of the state is to maintain conditions conducive to profit for the ruling class while widely distributing the social returns from capitalism, including to the working class -- this creates a tension between the goals of accumulation / profit and goals of equity / equalization.
The educational system provides a legitimizing function for the state and the capitalist system: the rhetoric of meritocracy makes students believe anyone can succeed, if only they try hard enough. Schools defuse class antagonisms by getting students to believe that the position they attain is the best they can achieve. Meritocracy individualizes failure, and the work schools do to favor one group is "invisible," cloaked by the provision of education for ALL and by test and teacher bias.

– Social Reproduction: According to Althusser, schools are ideological state apparatuses or state institutions that pass on ideologies. Schools prepare students to assume their place in the class structure.
Two concepts are central to his writing: ideology and the subject.
– Ideology: a system of values and beliefs which provide the concepts, images, and ideas by which people interpret their world and shape their behavior toward other people. It is accepted as the natural and common-sense explanation of the way the world operates. Ideologies often act to reinforce the power of dominant groups in society.
-- Subject: the individual. {Althusser uses this word to avoid the assumption of free will implied by the term "individual.")
-- in this view, schools train students in particular ideologies that favor the reproduction of current class relations (because the ruling class is in control and prefers it that way). Schools are not “innocent” sites of cultural transmission, or places for the inculcation of consensual values {as transmission theorists argued). Nor are they meritocratic springboards for upward mobility. Rather they perpetuate social inequalities. Schools respond to the capitalist need for an underclass and a ruling class.

Cultural Reproduction: refers to the reproduction of class cultures, knowledge, and power relationships.
– Bourdieu coined the concept “Cultural Capital”: which refers to the ways of talking and acting, moving, dressing, socializing, tastes, likes and dislikes, competencies, and forms of knowledge that distinguish one group from another. It's the language, knowledge, and patterns of interaction which are arbitrarily sanctioned as “proper” and valued. For Bourdieu, it's not just class, but the status markers or culture of class that matters. Bourdieu conducted ethnographic work among the Kabyle of Algeria and in French schools. He argued that in rural Algeria, shame and honor measured the family's symbolic capital, which were key to their control over labor resources in the community. Symbolic contests of honor carried out face to face were thus key to the reproduction of the domination of one man over another, one family over another. Honor was the cultural capital in that setting {occurs not only in schools). However, in more urban settings with larger populations, a highly differentiated and bureaucratized class structure evidenced a more impersonal means of cultural reproduction. There, schools performed the complex work of distributing and validating the symbolic capital, in the form of knowledge, styles, etc.
– Cultural capital refers to a kind of symbolic credit which one acquires through learning to embody and enact signs of social standing. This credit consists of a series of competencies and character traits, such as “taste” and “intelligence”. Thus, the children of middle and upper class appear to be successful in school because of their natural intelligence, whereas in reality they succeed because they already practice the "ways of knowing" that are valued in school settings. (Ways of turn-taking, answering questions, wondering aloud, dress, etc.) In other words, only those particular tastes and skills possessed by elite classes are recognized as signs of “intelligence” by schools. Schools employ elaborate testing procedures, qualifying requirements, etc. to maintain a neutral stance; never mind that the tests are "normed" around classed ways of speaking / thinking. Schools' relative autonomy allows them to serve capital's sorting demands under the guise of independence and neutrality, to conceal the social functions they perform and so perform them more effectively. Cultural capital is relational and situational; its meaning is derived from context.
– Symbolic violence occurs when non-elite kids are taught not to value their culture. (not actual violence, but damaging nonetheless)

– Reproduction theory dealt exclusively with class advantage, which did not adequately account for other systems of privilege such as race and gender. Obviously, neither economic, social, nor cultural reproduction leaves much room for the student subject to negotiate or challenge the imposition of ideology or of power. Anyone who has worked with a group of kids or teen-agers knows very well they don't simply accept the meanings of the world you offer them. In the ‘80s, theorists developed cultural production theory to take better account of agency or will. We'll discuss that later as we go on.

Interpretive & Social Transformation Theories

INTERPRETIVE THEORY
– interpretive theory: this view sees the world as made up of purposeful actors that construct, interpret and share their constructions of reality. Schools, under this perspective, are sites where meanings are constructed through social interaction. Researchers working through this paradigm have departed from the classical objectivist quantitative research methods used in Educational sociology, to descriptive qualitative research methods relying heavily on participant/observation in micro-settings. This approach, propelled by phenomenologists and symbolic interactionists, allowed for a refreshing look at classroom interaction and curriculum. The roots of the “new sociology of education” are connected intricately with this methodological approach.
– Qualitative researchers work from an interpretive view of the nature of reality. That is to say, they share a view that reality is not given, but constructed (Berger and Luckman). Humans are actively engaging in the process of constructing culture through their daily interactions (Bennet and LeCompte). Cultural meanings are constructed across many social settings, and because people hold a variety of different perceptions, this interpretive view is based upon a flexible rather than a fixed ontology.
– Smith and Heshusius mark this alternative ontology or view of reality as a historical challenge to “scientific positivism.”
– Offered first by Dilthey, this approach believes it is impossible for there to exist an objective reality separate from people. Instead, understanding comes through interpretation, there exist many truths and multiple realities, and human expression is context-based.
– This interpretive view actually has various names attached. It may be known as the naturalistic paradigm (Lincoln & Guba), case-study methodology, the ethnographic paradigm, ethnography, anthropological methods, constructivism, qualitative research, qualitative methods descriptive data-collection or field research.
– The role of values is inherent in this view.
– The goals of qualitative research are many and multiple. On a simplistic level, it may be no more than to study real-world situations using descriptive rather than experimental methods of inquiry. Unlike de-contextualized quantitative measures which often serve no more than “knowledge for knowledge’s sake,” the goals of qualitative research serve to contextualize inquiries and inform action, enhance decision-making, and apply knowledge to solve human and societal problems (Patton). At a basic level, there is a belief that those who have lived their experiences know more about it than others.
– Though not exclusively, qualitative research has had the closest association with the field of anthropology. Classical anthropologists like Malinowski have been credited with establishing many of its standards of fieldwork. He recommended the bodily praxis of direct observation as a means to intensify cultural understanding. The more recent work of Geertz has also helped gained scientific legitimacy for ethnographers. First is his well known analogy (built from Weber’s analogy) that man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he himself has spun. Therefore, a socio-cultural understanding cannot be an experimental science in search of law as in physics, but rather an interpretive one in search of meaning.

CRITICAL THEORY / RESEARCH
– The underlying themes of this are social responsibility and linking research with activism. The overriding concerns are with social justice and equity issues. “Research, for most critical investigators, either must help us understand the sources of inequity (and the social processes that sustain it) or must go beyond that to serve as an agent for remedial change by helping to empower members of an oppressed group (usually as a consequence of being participants in the study).” (142)
Critical researchers argue that there is no such thing as objectivity. “They simply believe that all research is value bound and see it as appropriate that they make their subjectivity (personal values about the question and commitments about their role as researchers) explicit and public, for both participants and readers.” (143)
Rethinking Critical Theory and Qualitative Research. Joe L Kincheloe and Peter L. McLaren. From: The Handbook of Qualitative Research, Eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994):
– “We are defining a criticalist as a researcher or theorist who attempts to use her or his work as a form of social or cultural criticism and who accepts certain basic assumptions.
– That all thought is fundamentally mediated by power relations that are social and historically constituted;
– That facts can never be isolated from the domain of values or removed from some form of ideological inscriptions;
– That the relationship between concept and object and between signifier and signified is never stable or fixed and is often mediated by the social relations of capitalist production and consumption;
– That language is central to the formation of subjectivity (conscious and unconscious awareness);
– That certain groups in any society are privileged over others and, although the reasons for this privileging may vary widely, the oppression that characterizes contemporary societies is most frequently reproduced when subordinates accept their social status as natural, necessary, or inevitable;
– That oppression has many faces and that focusing on only one at a the expense of others (e.g., class oppression versus racism) often elides the interconnection among them; and finally
– That mainstream research practices are generally, although most often unwittingly, implicated in the reproduction of systems of class, race, and gender oppression.”
“Critical research can be best understood in the context of the empowerment of individuals. Inquiry that aspires to the name critical must be connected to an attempt to confront the injustice of a particular society or sphere within the society. Research thus becomes a transformative endeavor unembarrassed by the label ‘political and unafraid to consummate a relationship with an emancipatory consciousness. Whereas traditional researchers cling to the guard rail of neutrality, critical researchers frequently announce their partisanship in the struggle for a better world. Traditional researchers see their task as the description, interpretation, or reanimation of a slice of reality, whereas critical researchers often regard their work as a first step toward forms of political action that can redress the injustices found
in the field site or constructed in the very act of research itself. Horkheimer ( 1972) put it succinctly when he argued that critical theory and research are never satisfied with merely increasing knowledge.” (pp. 139-140)

Knowledge, Culture, Power and Epistemological Racism:
A number of scholars, frequently those of color, argue that the epistemologies that all people use to comprehend the world are culturally laden. However, these works often are marginalized in the academy as non-Western ways of knowing are dismissed as superstition or as inherently subjective. The cultural groundedness of epistemology is an issue that has not been adequately addressed.

For example, Stanfield writes about the ethnocentric basis of knowledge production in the social sciences. His argument is that:
– social research instruments and theories are created by humans, and thus they are necessarily developed within certain cultural frames of reference, and effected by the cultural backgrounds of the researchers.
– As human constructs, theories and frames of vision are tied to particular cultural worldviews.

People from all different cultures have developed bodies of knowledge in order to make sense of, and best function, in the world. Yet certain approaches to knowing, as well as particular knowledge bases, historically have been deemed objective, and elevated above all others. This is due significantly to the exercise of power and privilege.
– Stanfield writes that “knowledge becomes the official way of interpreting realities through the ability of a privileged subset of the population to exert its will on others through its control of such major institutions and resources as the media, legislation, and compulsory schooling.”
– Knowledge is thus linked to power, as those with power get to decide which theories will prevail, and in essence, what constitutes knowledge.
– Knowledge is also linked to culture, as the dominant (read white) culture controls the bulk of the material resources in this society, and hence wields the most power.
– Not all people ‘know’ in the same way” and that cognitive styles are influenced by cultural experiences, priorities, and differing ideas about what is relevant.
– Furthermore, “dominant racial group members and subordinate racial group members do not think and interpret realities in the same way because of their divergent structural positions, histories, and cultures.”

PRODUCTION THEORY:
– resistance, consciousness, transformation, ideology.

– Builds on interpretive theories, especially phenomenological sociology that emphasized social construction of knowledge (critiques positivism), but adds analysis of symbolic and material power structures (limits within which social
construction occurs).

– Influenced also by Frankfurt School, Gramsci's concept of consciousness, and Freire.

– Ground their work in a moral, political imperative to the project of human liberation and equality. Trying to understand how reproduction could be both contested and accelerated through actions by the same people in the same
educational institutions.

– Example: Paul Willis. Lads, construct themselves in opposition to "Earholes," (having a laf , girls, and teacher authority. Masculine {value manual labor, fighting ability), sexist (built on sexual use of girls, but `saving’ virgins for
marriage) and racist (virulent racial superiority discourse, "Paki-bashing"). Importance of a counterculture among students, how through their own activity and ideological development they reproduce themselves as a working
class. The mechanism is their opposition to authority, their refusal to submit to the imperatives of a curriculum that encourages social mobility through acquisition of credentials. Truancy, counterculture, and disruption of the
intended reproductive outcomes of the curriculum and pedagogy of schools yield an ironic effect: the `lads' disqualify themselves from the opportunity (?) to enter middle class jobs.
– Willis: "Social agents are not passive bearers of ideology, but active appropriators who reproduce existing structures only through struggle contestation and a partial penetration of those structures."

– Similar example: black kids are accused of "acting white" when they succeed in school. If a black youth culture of resistance to school is elaborated, then some black kids disqualify themselves from the school credential necessary
for their own social mobility.
– Another: Girls often search for an alternative source of self-esteem, finding sexuality (and sexual displays) and/or motherhood as an alternative. Many either drop-out and marry or get pregnant and are forced by various factors
(health, institutional, time, monetary) to drop out. The ideology of romance works effectively on girls (see Holland and Eisenhart}.

– Foley: Cautionary tale. Speech patterns and culture generally are not PERMANENT; they are fluid and change over time, and can be used strategically. "Cultural groups in modern complex societies have no stable, essential cultural identities which are transmitted unproblematically from generation to generation. There are only `discursive skirmishes' between ethnic, gender, and class identity groups in the ceaseless production of shifting cultural images."
– Indians construct oppositional cultural identities through their expressive cultural forms. Silence is not simple enactment of language pattern and speech style (quiet in the white man's presence). They use it strategically to
avoid work. Don't psychologize it to `self esteem.' But silent rebellion can have its price (drop-outs).

– Cultural and social production theory instituted long period of studying counterculture and youth culture in US and Britain. Emphasize RESISTANCE, COUNTER-CULTURES, AGENCY within STRUCTURES, RACE & CLASS & GENDER IDENTITIES (and how they interact). Not all studies are of ultimate reproduction of the system, although they do emphasize the limits of the power structures that people live within.

ORIGINS OF SCHOOLING IN THE U.S.

– 17th and 18th Century: Colonial Period
– 2 unique aspects of colonial condition affected history of schooling:
– village clusters rejected by colonists:
A deviation from classic European farming patterns. European farmers clustered their houses in villages, and then traveled out to till their plots. So originally colonial plots were distributed in the same way, each person receiving small strips. Colonialists rejected the pattern, acquiring land in consolidated plots. Therefore they built their houses on their plots, instead of village clusters.
– school calendar altered to fit agricultural necessity:
Any kind of instruction at all at that time, and subsequently, was accommodated to fit agricultural patterns. Mostly it meant schools during the winter, to not interfere with farming.
– these two things meant, there was no village common, where a central school would normally be, and no set schedule because of farming. Eventually schools moved out onto the countryside, but it took a while.

– Distinction between Education and Schooling:
– Education as the content and process of cultural transfer
- family - apprenticeship - local community - Church - economy
According to Bernard Bailyn, the forms of education by the 1st generation of colonists was a direct inheritance from the medieval past. The primary agent in the transfer of culture was family, not any formal instruction. So to study the character of the family in 16th and 17th century England is vital in understanding education in Colonial America, basically a patriarchal kinship. Also, this meant that the colonists were not Americans yet, but English.
Later, families extended vocational training in the form of apprenticeship. Mostly parents to children, etc... Further, where the family left off, the local community took over. The Church played an important role also in transmitting English culture across generations (mostly through religious training).
Further, economic hardships on the Colonists forced extended families to break up into smaller units. So the economy was seen as a contributing factor since this is the origin of the notion of educational achievement with economic success.
– Schooling as formal instruction
Before the Common School, there was a hodgepodge of different institutions and arrangements. These included church-supported schools, those organized by towns, tuition schools set up by traveling schoolmasters, schools run by “benevolent” societies for the poor, boarding schools for the “well-to-do,” “dame” schools for society girls and private tutoring. For the most part, the unsystematic approach to schooling resulted in sheer inequities. Native Americans, African Americans, and poor Whites (both girls and boys) who didn’t belong to well-funded churches were excluded from schools. This was also either by law or custom, e.g. many states had formal laws on their books that made it a crime to teach a slave to read.

– Schools cropped up as soon as a significant number of families lived within a few miles of each other:
– one-room community schools was dominant form of elementary instruction
– colleges and academies for “advanced” learning
Towards the end of the colonial period, many other types of people had arrived in New England. Thus, to ensure that English culture dominate and pass on successfully to future generations, the "state" (i.e. government) and elite had shifted the cultural burden away from family onto formal schools. In other words, schools were formed specifically for the purpose of cultural transmission. Rich English - Americans, behind the guise of neutral and disinterested philanthropy, gave large land endowments and money grants to form the first large schools. This was most common in New England, by rich folk who considered themselves “cultural leaders.” There were also many religious sects who formed their own large academies and colleges.
In redefining education as cultural transmission, B.B. was able to argue that schools were responsible for disseminating American Nationalism. That schools created the consciousness of nationhood.

– Early 19th Century: Tension and Polarization between Social Control and Local Autonomy.

– Social Systems of township / state / national vs. family / local / individual
Restructuring, growth, and societal shifts caused a lot of anxiety. Not just with schools, but with other things, this caused a tension and polarization between Social Control and Local Autonomy.

– educational institutions inter-related with synchronic developments of overall U.S.:
– industrialism – urbanization – capitalism – formation of the working class
– production mentalities – bureaucratic entrenchment – increased “democratic” participation
This phase meant the expansion of the changing role of the “State” (i.e. government), and schools were actually formed alongside other governmental institutions like insane asylums and prisons. Educational institutions and the like in the mid and late 19th century, according to the M.B.K., were intended to alleviate the perceived salient social problems of the time (from the elite perspective, mostly). Schools were somehow supposed to eliminate poverty and crime, deal with the anxiety of increased diversity, alleviate poor work habits, decrease anxiety of “downward mobility,” and keep youth off the streets and integrate them into Industry.

– four separate models of schooling in competition with each other:
– paternalistic volunteerism – corporate volunteerism
– democratic localism – incipient bureaucracy
Four separate models in competition with each other, eventual triumph of the incipient bureaucracy model of organization.
First, paternalistic volunteerism is described as a charitable form of education given by one economic class to another. It was a school for the poor masked as "free" education, but did not do much more than perpetuate the class system. Next, Corporate volunteerism was the model that lend itself to the least amount of supervision by government authorities, since each school would be allowed to function as its own "closed" corporation.
Thirdly, democratic localism was described as whole school districts functioning as independent units. Arguably, this was suppose to give more autonomy and control to the respective communities, but in fact showed to have given unconditional control to small oligarchies.
Lastly, Incipient bureaucracy, it seems, had become the response to ever-expanding conditions and very specific problems (which is the model that was adopted). Bureaucratization was the form in which the “State” could establish its control and authority. Rationalizations were made using analogies to the new industries increasing productions in the name of “progress.” Comparatively, large numbers of people had to be “managed” and “coordinated.” Tasks had to be “distributed” and responsibilities “delegated.” Efficiency and steady production were goals of the model. A clear, undisputable, and vertical line of hierarchy was structured that centralized power and decision making and very importantly could offer supervision at all the levels of "production". The board of education would function on the State level and superintendents on the local levels.

– rise of Common Schools:
Establishment in 1820's and 1830's.
– control, organization, and bureaucracy along state lines – common curriculum
– grades 1 - 8 – tax-supported – inclusion of girls – Horace Mann
– Horace Mann is most associated with Common Schools, considered “the Father.” He was Superintendent of Schools for Massachusetts (1837-48) and Secretary of Massachusetts’ first State Board of Education, and founder of first Normalization schools. Idea did not originate with Horace Mann, 1789 article in The Massachusetts Magazine titled “Essay on the Importance of Studying the English Language Grammatically,” and argued for an expanded common school curriculum, beyond the Latin School. Basically the idea came about during the American Revolution, but didn’t catch on until roughly 75 years later.
– by the 1850's it had taken hold in the Northeastern and Midwestern states, with most states in these regions establishing free elementary public schools, and some high schools.
– not until the 2nd half of the 19th century did these schools come about here in the South, and in the West and Southwest.
– also, not until the end of the Civil War, here, and the U.S. invasion and acquisition of the Southwest territories did schools open up for African Americans, Native Americans, and Mexican Americans. But these schools were segregated and substandard.

– Late 19th Century / Early 20th Century: Social Harmony / Progressive Education Movement
– New Urban Industrial Order
– Shift in societal patterns, increased heterogeneity, broadened role and burden on schools
-several things were going on: the growth of big business, urbanization, and big cities versus agrarianism and rurality, unequal distribution of wealth with sharper class divisions, rise in political corruption, and continuing denial of political and economic rights of women and racial minorities (despite the end of slavery), and the influx of immigrants.
– Pedagogy:
– Universal Education – environmental conditioning – Compulsory Americanization
– morality and intelligence – John Dewey
-Lawrence A. Cremin describes the movement of Progressive Education.
-Joseph Mayer Rice's published papers on U.S. schools, “sad story of the state of affairs that schools unknowingly found themselves.” Namely that of a narrow view of education, a short-sighted and outdated philosophy, and under hostage by the political machinery.
-Rice finishes his papers with a battle cry to action to the decadent condition of schools and prominent men of the field at the time came forward as proponents of new exciting ideas such as Universal Education .
-Concerns for keeping the Social Harmony are born out of shifts in societal patterns and education is seen ideally as a process that should divorce itself from politics. This transformation had revamped and again broadened the role and burden of schools from only a transmitter of culture to that which now becomes the major influence in a student's life dictating one's position and role in the overall society.
-The effect of environmental conditioning is now key to pedagogical approaches to the existing problems of the time. No longer was Evolution perceived as a neutral unarbitrary force affecting the nature of society, but as a force that could be channeled and intentionally guided to serve the social ends.
-The social ends of course were guided by a few major factors. Namely a migration pattern from the rural country to the urban cities. Attracted by the new industrialism, people left the poverty of their farms to embrace the big city. This created problems on both ends. Country scholars and practitioners began to incorporate new techniques and ideas to their curriculum in hopes of rescuing the great country heritage of rural America and keep people in the country. In the city, the "immigrant problem" created an added dimension of heterogeneity that necessitated different interventions. These interventions were often distorted by the belief that the process of education is strictly apolitical.
-As ideas such as Universal Education became popularized, the notion of sharing knowledge had also become riskful. Like Mann who argued that since knowledge is power, a knowledgeable person has the capacity to do evil as well as good. Thus any schooling must unrelentlessly instil values into students, thus Character schooling. Social Harmony was argued to be the fundamental goal of Education and training was to be moral and self-discipline a primary ambition.
-Dared by their present conditions, convinced of the need to transcend, school teachers stepped forward to face the challenge. Whole large learning centers were set up and we are left with a legacy of Compulsory Americanization. Schools took a stronger hold to the process of assimilation in the name of the(ir) social good. Cultural integration, forced in many cases, was seen as progress.
-In reference to class and intelligence, S.A. Gelb describes for us a shift in professional and popular terminology from the 18th and 19th centuries to the 20th. In the prior centuries to ours, the term "morality" was used to describe cognitive processes and determinants of the whole spectrum of human behavior. As dominant society was concerned with what was seen as social instability, they had equated it to moral deficiency. With respect to education, this led to the belief that religious and moral training could somehow reverse what were seen as defects. Further, the theory of Evolution allowed for the upper class to rationalize the social order of the time, since it allowed for the belief that people are predetermined completely by hereditary and so are responsible for their own positions in society.
-people should bear their own responsibility for their poverty. This blame the victim ideology, rationalized through social Darwinism and the theory of natural selection, meant that no longer hard work was the determinant of own's social class but actually their biological traits. For example, Chicanos were classified as hereditarily and intellectually handicapped. Since I.Q. testing was inherently culturally biased, they did not test well and were categorized as mentally deficient. They were forced to enroll into slower learner classes, vocational education classes, and those for the mentally retarded.
-John Dewey: most associated with this period, due mostly to his writings and teachings. He was a philosopher, psychologist, educator, and activist. Taught at the Universities of Chicago, Michigan and Minnesota. Founded the first Teacher Union in New York city, and the New School for Social Research. Most of what he’s known for is the intersection of Democracy with Schooling.

A Struggle for Educational Equality, 1950-1980
In the 1950s, America’s public schools teemed with the promise of a new postwar generation of students, over half of whom would graduate and go on to college. This program shows how impressive gains masked profound inequalities: seventeen states had segregated schools; 1 percent of all Ph.D.s went to women; and “separate but equal” was still the law of the land. Interviews with Linda Brown Thompson and other equal rights pioneers bring to life the issues that prompted such milestones as Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954), the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Title IX, and the Americans with Disabilities Act.

1954
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. The Supreme Court unanimously agrees that segregated schools are "inherently unequal" and must be abolished.

1957
A federal court orders integration of Little Rock, Arkansas public schools. Governor Orval Faubus sends his National Guard to physically prevent nine African American students from enrolling at all-white Central High School. Reluctantly, President Eisenhower sends federal troops to enforce the court order not because he supports desegregation, but because he can't let a state governor use military power to defy the U.S. federal government.

Late 1950s
A stunning event occurred that triggered a massive round of educational reform. On October 4, 1957, the Soviet Union placed the world’s first space satellite in a low orbit of earth. Politicians, government officials, and mass media outlets in the United States assessed “Sputnik” “as a major humiliation for the country, proclaimed it a dangerous threat to the nation’s security”, and gave rise to fear that the nation had fallen behind the Soviet Union in technological development. To remedy the situation, government officials called for (among other changes) improved public education. Sputnik both ignited a space race with the USSR and impelled the United States to improve its education in general and its science education in particular.

1960s
The United States had a racially segregated system of schools. This was despite the 1954 Brown vs. Board Supreme Court ruling. By the late 1970s segregated schooling in the United States was eliminated.

1965
Congress passes the Elementary and Secondary Education School Act, providing aid to secondary and primary schools and helping educate poor children.

1968
African American parents and white teachers clash in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville area of New York City, over the issue of community control of the schools. Teachers go on strike, and the community organizes freedom schools while the public schools are closed. Same year, Congress passes the Bilingual Education Act, providing the first funding to encourage schools to incorporate native-language education in their curriculum

1974
Milliken v. Bradley. A Supreme Court made up of Richard Nixon's appointees rules that schools may not be desegregated across school districts. This effectively legally segregates students of color in inner-city districts from white students in wealthier white suburban districts.

Late 1970s
The so-called "taxpayers' revolt" leads to the passage of Proposition 13 in California, and copy-cat measures like Proposition 2-1/2 in Massachusetts. These propositions freeze property taxes, which are a major source of funding for public schools. As a result, in twenty years California drops from first in the nation in per-student spending in 1978 to number 43 in 1998.

The Bottom Line in Education, 1980-Present
In 1983, the Reagan Administration’s report, “A Nation at Risk,” shattered public confidence in America’s school system and sparked a new wave of education reform. This program explores the impact of the “free market” experiments that ensued, from vouchers and charter schools to privatization—all with the goal of meeting tough new academic standards. Today, the debate rages on: do these diverse strategies challenge the Founding Fathers’ notions of a common school, or are they the only recourse in a complex society?

1983
The National Commission on Excellence in Education report “A Nation at Risk” concludes that America’s educational system is so poor that America’s competive future is threatenend, prompting a wave of reforms in schools and teacher education.

1994
Proposition 187 passes in California, making it illegal for children of undocumented immigrants to attend public school. Federal courts hold Proposition 187 unconstitutional, but anti-immigrant feeling spreads across the country.

1996
Leading the way backwards again, California passes Proposition 209, which outlaws affirmative action in public employment, public contracting and public education. Other states jump on the bandwagon with their own initiatives and right wing elements hope to pass similar legislation on a federal level.

1998
California again! This time a multi-millionaire named Ron Unz manages to put a measure on the June 1998 ballot outlawing bilingual education in California.

2000s
During the Clinton administration, the GOALS 2000: Educate America Act became law. The intent was to bolster reform (Goals, 2000, 2011). The reauthorization of the
SCHOOL REFORM: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE 25 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was specifically intended to support achievement of Goals 2000 by providing additional funding for primary and secondary education; improvement of standards, instructional and professional development, and more accountability (Improving America's Schools Act, 1994, 2011).

2001
The United States entered its current era of education accountability/reform with the institution of the No Child Left Behind law. *Update: The Every Student Succeeds Act has replaced No Child Left Behind.

WHY STUDY EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH?

Philosophy of Education Research!!!

1. What are the purposes / goals of educational research?

2. What kinds of things can we find out by reading research?
– Other research out there (references), reviews of available research.
– New terms (i.e., that can be useful in database searches).
– New questions to ask about a phenomenon.
– Methods for doing or replicating a study.
– Recommendations for practice & prescriptions for action.
– How notions are defined or operationalized (education example).

3. Are some forms of research better or more trustworthy than others? What types of preliminary questions might you ask?
– Where is the research presented (i.e., refereed journal?)?
– How much information do you have about the methods (i.e., media polls)?
– Who put out/funded the research (partisan or conflict of interest)?
– How representative is the sample?
– Why did the researchers do the study?
– Can the study be replicated?
– Given what you already know, do the findings seem reasonable?

4. Should educators and educational scholars be encouraged to use research? How? Why?

Philosophical Underpinnings of Research

Different approaches to research are undergirded by different philosophical assumptions and positions. How one chooses to investigate particular phenomenon and/or the world around them is necessarily impacted by their fundamental philosophical assumptions about the world. Particularly important are epistemological assumptions (how we come to know something) and ontological assumptions (what is the nature of the world - is it orderly, lawful, and predictable or open and indeterminate?

The basic goals of research are to produce both new knowledge and greater understanding. There are a variety of ways of knowing that we typically utilize that are not “research” based. Different approaches to social research have been developed out of the weaknesses of these non research based alternatives, which include: tenacity, authority, tradition, common sense, media myths, and personal
experience.

Tenacity involves thinking something is true, for whatever reason, and holding to it tenaciously - sort of like a gut-level belief or instinct. The biggest drawback to this approach is its individual nature. I may believe the Loch Ness monster exists and regardless of whatever anyone else thinks, hold to this belief and block out any counter evidence.

Authority as a method of knowing means we believe those with power. While more communal than tenacity, it is still up to the whims, machinations and desires of those with power to determine what is true, again, regardless of evidence to the contrary (in fact, those with power will typically try to suppress any contradictory evidence). For example, for a long time the idea that the sun revolves around the earth was upheld by authority, and Galileo’s proclamations to the contrary were seen as heretical. This is common in education as lots of people believe things simply because they were told to them by a teacher.

Tradition is a special type of authority, involving the weight of past practices. That we do things a certain way because “they always have been done that way” is a common idea in educational practice.

Common Sense is simply ordinary reasoning, usually based on prejudices and biases, and not any specific evidence. For example, it is common sense that murder rates are higher in countries that do not have the death penalty, even though the evidence may not show this to be the case.

Media Myths is also a form of authority, we believe something because that is what is in newspapers or on TV. Berliner and Biddle’s book The Manufactured Crisis in Education counters many of the media perpetuated myths about how are schools are failing. Also, the selectivity of news reporting contributes to constructing a certain image of our society (i.e., vilify or villanize certain countries, making crime central, etc.).

Personal Experience is a method of knowing in which because something has happened to us, we generalize it to others at all times and in all places. Problems with personal experience as a guide to knowing include over-generalization, selective observation, and premature closure to thinking.

In reaction to the weaknesses of these non research based, or non-scientific, methods of knowing, scholars sought to find a better way of investigating the world in which knowledge was not left to the whims or desires of individuals, and rather was based in empirical investigation of the world.

Epistemology:
The project of trying to find a more reliable way of investigating the world is tied up with epistemology. Simply, epistemology deals with the nature of knowledge, that is, how we come to know things and know we know them.

Why is epistemology an important category for educators and educational scholars?
– They need to make decisions about the status of the material they teach. Is it true?
– They need to evaluate the knowledge from educational research.
– They need to assess whether certain forms of knowledge should be privileged, i.e., only open to advanced students.

Traditionally, knowledge has been defined as justified true belief. The difficulty with this notion is in the question of the process of justification, or simply, what counts as a justified and true belief? Historically, the issue of “truth” has been important. Traditional philosophers have sought foundations for truth. A foundation would be something which is indubitable, upon which we could build a system of
other beliefs. For Descartes, the foundation was I think, therefore, I am.

Foundationalism versus Naturalism
A foundational approach to knowledge presumes there are a set of self-evident truths on which we can build our knowledge about the world. The quest in this case is justified true belief. The goal of research would then be to uncover these foundations or truths. (Objective)

On the contrary, a naturalist approach focuses instead on a historical account of how knowledge claims develop. (Subjective) Noddings writes that “the shift from justification to a historical or generative account directs our attention away from knowledge claims themselves to knowers. We now want to ask how knowers have arrived at their claims to knowledge. We examine a history of conjecture, test, challenge, revision, and acceptance as we consider the strength of the claim. The line between epistemology and psychology becomes blurred, and we, can no longer study knowledge without studying the knower.” (106)

Epistemological Concerns of Researchers
For the most part, scientists have given up the quest for absolute truth. Instead, they argue that absolute knowledge of the real world is impossible. Moreover, may claim that all knowledge is socially constructed. Nonetheless, they have sought grounds on which assess whether some knowledge claims are better than others. In so doing, they have offered a variety of criteria. These are important criteria when thinking about research and whether or not it is useful and valid.

Replicability - Other observers/experimenters should come to the same conclusion in investigations.

Falsifiablity - We can never have completely justified true belief. The best we can have is knowledge that is not refuted. Karl Popper is credited with the idea that “we can never establish the absolute certainty of scientific statements, but we can show that some are false.” (105) Thus he claims that all scientific claims must be stated in such a way that it is clear what type of evidence could falsify them.

Correspondence - Traditional epistemologists have suggested that true claims correspond to what we find in the real world, namely, the facts. For example, it is raining would be true if in fact it is raining.

Coherence - Claims are true if they cohere with a body of others which have been firmly established.

Social Science Research:
As suggested earlier, the need to ground knowledge in something other than personal whim and desire has resulted in the development of different approaches to research. Two overarching traditions of research have developed out of this need to more “scientifically” examine social phenomenon - quantitative research and qualitative research.

Quantitative Research:
In light of the success of the natural sciences around the turn of the last century, social scientists began investigating the idea of whether or not they should borrow from the methodologies of the physical sciences (especially physics, which involved natural laws) in order to study the social and human world. Utilizing these methodologies became particularly attractive since it was believed at the time that the physical world was being mastered intellectually to a much greater extent than the social world. Those who argued for applying scientific methods to social research are often labeled positivists, and included such people as Comte, Mill and Durkheim. The positivists drew primarily from the empiricist tradition of Locke, Newton and others.

In terms of research, “positivism defines social science as an organized method for combining deductive logic with precise empirical observations of individual behavior in order to discover and confirm a set of probabilistic causal laws that can be used to predict general patterns of human activity” (Neuman, Social Research Methods, 45).

Fundamental assumptions of positivistic research include:
– The purpose of research is to learn about how the world operates so that we can both predict and control phenomenon. The orientation is instrumental, that is, knowledge is used as an instrument to satisfy human desires and to control the physical and social world.
– Like the physical world, the social world contains existing regularities (laws) which can be discovered as social reality is pattered and ordered.
– Human activities and events can be explained with reference to causal laws. Human behavior is caused, for the most part, by external forces and the idea of free will is pretty much a fiction.
– Positivism is deductive. Thus, a researcher begins with a general, higher level, abstract law or theory and tries to deduce more specific generalization. The path is from the abstract to the concrete.
– Positivists argue that scientific knowledge is shared, that all who follow the same methods will come to the same conclusion (intersubjectivity).
– Social research must be value-free and objective. It can occur independent of social and cultural forces. The researchers claim they can free themselves of prejudices, biases, and values.

Three basic ideas undergird positivistic research, out of which quantitative research methods emerge. These are that the researcher can adopt an external position that does not effect the research (the independently existing reality); that social investigation is value neutral; and that social investigation, as science, can serve in the project of social engineering to improve society. Social science knowledge
would thereby help in mastering the social world. This type of research has three key features:
– it is theory-driven (i.e., you have a theory and test it),
– proceeds by hypothesis testing, and
– aims for generalizability.

Qualitative Research:
Soon after the idea of using scientific methods to study social phenomenon became popular, a counter-movement arose with significantly different fundamental assumptions and orientations toward research. Among the proponents of this alternative approach were Dilthey and Weber. Dilthey argued that while the physical studies dealt with inanimate objects existing outside of humans, social science did not. Here, the subject of investigation and the object of investigation were both humans, and thus subjectivity, emotions, bias and values all come into play. His basic point was that it was impossible to separate out what existed in the social world from what we “thought.” The qualitative paradigm in research grows more out of an idealist tradition, where the emphasis is more on interpretive understanding (hermeneutics) than control or prediction. Human experience, according to qualitative researchers, is context-dependent, there is no neutral, value-free way of examining the world. Thus everything we know is somewhat mind-dependent, and filtered through our lenses first. Unlike positivists, interpretivists suggest that there is no external or independent reality that exists apart from the shaping or creating efforts of the mind.

In terms of research, “the interpretive approach is the systematic analysis of socially meaningful action through the direct detailed observation of people in natural settings in order to arrive at understandings and interpretations of how people create and maintain their social world” (Neuman, Social Research Methods, 50).

Fundamental assumptions of interpretive research include:
– The purpose of research is to understand social life and to get a better sense of how people make meaning in their lives. Rather than prediction or control, interpretive researchers want to understand how individuals experience the world around them.
– The social world is not something out there to be discovered but is created by the purposeful actions of human beings who interact in social settings. For the most part, the social world is what people perceive it to be.
– While human behavior is often patterned and regular, it is not because of pre-existing social laws but because of evolving social conventions that individuals create. It makes no sense to start from abstract generalization to try and understand human behavior.
– Theory for interpretive researchers is inductive and grounded in the particular details of observed social life. Qualitative researchers attempt to offer a rich and thick description (emic) of the social world.
– There is no external test of validity (i.e., hypothesis testing). Rather, a theory is true if it makes sense to the people involved and helps them to better make meaning in their lives.

One of the key ideas behind qualitative research is that what is investigated can not be separated from the process of investigation, as there is no external world out there to be codified, predicted and controlled. This is because how we view the world, as well as our knowledge of it, are necessarily impacted by our interests, values, previous experiences, biases, and prejudices. Interpretivists argue that what we think is objective is that way because we have decided that it is that way-intersubjective agreement.

Consider the difference between quantitative and qualitative approaches in the following questions.
1. What is the relationship between the investigator and that which is investigated?
2. What is the relationship between facts and values in the process of investigation?
3. What is the goal of the research (better picture vs. prediction and control)?

Reading Research Critically

Critical Research:
The underlying themes of this type of research is social responsibility and linking research with activism. The overriding concerns are with social justice and equity issues. “Research, for most critical investigators, either must help us understand the sources of inequity (and the social processes that sustain it) or must go beyond that to serve as an agent for remedial change by helping to empower members of an oppressed group (usually as a consequence of being participants in the study).” (142)
Critical researchers argue that there is no such thing as objectivity. “They simply believe that all research is value bound and see it as appropriate that they make their subjectivity (personal values about the question and commitments about their role as researchers) explicit and public, for both participants and readers.” (143)
Rethinking Critical Theory and Qualitative Research. Joe L Kincheloe and Peter L. McLaren. From: The Handbook of Qualitative Research, Eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 1994):
– “We are defining a criticalist as a researcher or theorist who attempts to use her or his work as a form of social or cultural criticism and who accepts certain basic assumptions.
– That all thought is fundamentally mediated by power relations that are social and historically constituted;
– That facts can never be isolated from the domain of values or removed from some form of ideological inscriptions;
– That the relationship between concept and object and between signifier and signified is never stable or fixed and is often mediated by the social relations of capitalist production and consumption;
– That language is central to the formation of subjectivity (conscious and unconscious awareness);
– That certain groups in any society are privileged over others and, although the reasons for this privileging may vary widely, the oppression that characterizes contemporary societies is most frequently reproduced when subordinates accept their social status as natural, necessary, or inevitable;
– That oppression has many faces and that focusing on only one at a the expense of others (e.g., class oppression versus racism) often elides the interconnection among them; and finally
– That mainstream research practices are generally, although most often unwittingly, implicated in the reproduction of systems of class, race, and gender oppression.”
“Critical research can be best understood in the context of the empowerment of individuals. Inquiry that aspires to the name critical must be connected to an attempt to confront the injustice of a particular society or sphere within the society. Research thus becomes a transformative endeavor unembarrassed by the label ‘political and unafraid to consummate a relationship with an emancipatory consciousness. Whereas traditional researchers cling to the guard rail of neutrality, critical researchers frequently announce their partisanship in the struggle for a better world. Traditional researchers see their task as the description, interpretation, or reanimation of a slice of reality, whereas critical researchers often regard their work as a first step toward forms of political action that can redress the injustices found
in the field site or constructed in the very act of research itself. Horkheimer ( 1972) put it succinctly when he argued that critical theory and research are never satisfied with merely increasing knowledge.” (pp. 139-140)

Epistemological Racism:
To argue that many scholars and educators practice a form of epistemological racism is to suggest that they fail to acknowledge that knowledge is socially constructed, and moreover, constructed in such a manner that favors some groups over others. Three interrelated points are useful in developing this argument.
1. Epistemologies are grounded in experience, and therefore they are grounded in culture, since there is no experience outside of culture.
2. The bulk of the modern era has been an extended process of global domination by the white race both physically, in terms of imperial aggression, and ideologically, in the entrenchment of Eurocentric ideas in schools and society. In the course of this history of domination, white, Western epistemology has also become dominant. More importantly, this long history results in a universalizing form of amnesia, where the dominant ways of a group “become so deeply embedded that they typically are seen as ‘natural’ or appropriate norms rather than as historically evolved social constructions.” (look at major social figures and school curriculums to see this dominance)
3. Third, Western epistemology is positioned as superior by virtue of something outside of it, namely that it transcends cultural particularities. Yet in reality, this positioning is related to historical domination, to selective interpretation of superiority, and to universalizing amnesia.

Is Science Universal?
Exploring the question of whether science is multicultural, Harding offers several arguments which challenge the universality of Western approaches to epistemology most systematically developed in the natural sciences. She shows both that
– modern science has borrowed much from non-European cultures, often without acknowledgment, and that there are other knowledge traditions that also work, that is, they reasonably account for natural and social phenomena.
– More significantly, she cites evidence that the perceived universality of Western science is the result of European expansion and aggression, and is not due to “an epistemological cause of valid claims, to be located ‘inside science’.” Among the evidence she cites to support this claim is that fact that the traditional problems counted as scientific were ones that supported European expansion: e.g. – improvement of travel; mining of resources; identification of economically useful minerals, plants, and animals from around the world; development of encampments to separate colonizers from the indigenous; capitalizing on the labor of indigenous peoples, etc.
The consequences for non-Europeans (disease, depletion of natural resources, destruction of communities) have rarely been considered. Nor has the fact that the benefits of Western science have been “distributed disproportionately to already overadvantaged groups in Europe and elsewhere, and the cost disproportionately to everyone else.”

Alternative Epistemologies and Education Practice:
While they are rarely discussed, incorporated, or even considered in mainstream educational discourse, there are a number of thoughtfully developed and comprehensive alternative epistemological approaches worthy of attention.
The point of looking at these is largely so that dominant cultural members can understand our own cultural worldviews and biases, and the deleterious impact these can have on others. It is also to allow the variety of epistemological approaches to be mutually informing, and to integrate them into educational practice in such a manner that it contributes to the empowerment of traditionally
marginalized populations. Failure to take alternative epistemologies seriously is to systematically privilege white, Western ways of knowing above all others, which is racist.

African American Epistemology: Perhaps the most well developed example of an alternative approach to epistemology is that constructed by African American feminists, such as Patricia Hill Collins and Beverly Gordon. In Black Feminist Thought, Collins critiques positivistic, Eurocentric epistemology for its abstractness and because it denies the importance of community, experience, ethics and values to knowing.
While she does not suggest all dimensions of Western epistemology are inherently problematic for oppressed populations, she does argue that alternative approaches may be more useful in both capturing the unique knowledge of African Americans and in creating “knowledge that fosters resistance” to oppression and domination.
Delpit maintains that African Americans have good reasons to be skeptical of traditional epistemological approaches used in educational research, as they have had considerably negative consequences, for example, showing people of color to be “genetically inferior, culturally deprived, and verbally deficient.”
The foundation for black feminist epistemology is that “it takes the actual experiences of the African-American community as the starting point.” From there, Collins outlines four dimensions:
– Concrete experience as a criterion for meaning. In describing the importance of concrete experience, Collins distinguishes between knowledge and wisdom, suggesting that while scientific and text-based knowings are useful, the ultimate guide for survival in African American communities is wisdom, or knowledge gained from concrete experiences. Often this wisdom is passed on through oral stories and narratives, forms which are typically not highly valued in schools.
– Use of dialogue in assessing knowledge claims. In contrast to Western epistemology which calls for distance, objectivity, and separation, “for Black women new knowledge claims are rarely worked out in isolation from other individuals and are usually developed through dialogues with other members of the community.”
– An ethic of caring. Black feminist epistemology is grounded in an ethic of caring which is premised on the belief that “personal expressiveness, emotions, and empathy are central to the knowledge validation process.” An ethic of caring, combined with the importance of dialogue, is characteristic of the traditional call-and-response mode of discourse in black churches where the intonation and inflection of voices matter, and where speakers ideas are appraised as part of the listeners responses.
– An ethic of personal accountability. The character, value, and ethics of individual knowers are integral to the assessment and evaluation of knowledge claims they make.

Native American Epistemology: Similar to black feminist thought, many Native American tribes cultivate alternative epistemologies for understanding the world. Often these are rooted in:
– connectedness between individuals and the world around them,
– non-linear concepts of time,
– oral traditions, and
– integrated and anti-hierarchical relations among spheres of knowledge.
Where Western epistemology values compartmentalization and categorization of knowledge claims, the “core of the native worldview” is the “‘Wheel’ or ‘Circle of Life’ - an organic rather than synthesizing or synthetic view holding that all things are equally and indispensably interrelated.”
Vine Deloria argues that the key distinction between Western epistemology and native worldviews “lies in the premise accepted by Indians and rejected by scientists: the world in which we live is alive.” Thus it is problematic from a native perspective to draw firm lines between science and spirituality. Moreover, the value of detached objectivity is questioned, as “Indians know that human beings must participate in events, not isolate themselves from occurrences in the physical world.”