The moral foundations of educational research : knowledge, inquiry, and values

Bibliographic Information

The moral foundations of educational research : knowledge, inquiry, and values

edited by Pat Sikes, Jon Nixon and Wilfred Carr

Open University Press, 2003

  • : pbk

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Includes bibliographical references and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

"This is a book for everyone doing educational research. It is not simply a routineprovocation directed at positivists by a group of researchers advocating qualitativemethods. The book makes a valuable contribution to the literature on the ethicsof educational research by offering something more than opposition to the narrowutilitarian research agenda." British Journal of Educational StudiesThe Moral Foundations of Educational Research considers what is distinctive about educational research in comparison with other research in the social sciences. As the contributors all agree that education is always an essentially moral enterprise, discussion about methodology starts, not with the widely endorsed claim that educational research should be 'useful' and 'relevant', but with the attempt to justify and elaborate that claim with reference to its moral foundations. Determining the nature of 'usefulness' and 'relevance' is not simply a matter of focussing on impact and influence but involves a radical re-conceptualisation of the moral and educational significance of what is deemed to be 'useful' and 'relevant'. There is no argument with this emphasis on the generation of 'useful' and 'relevant' knowledge, but it is suggested that educational research requires a fuller and more rounded understanding that takes account of the moral values of those who conduct it. Educational research is grounded, epistemologically, in the moral foundations of educational practice. It is the epistemological and moral purposes underlying the 'usefulness' and 'relevance' of educational research that matter.

Table of Contents

Introduction Educational research and its histories Towards a social history of educational research Living research thoughts on educational research as moral practice The virtues and vices of an educational researcher Against objectivism the reality of the social fiction Research as thoughtful practice On goodness and utility in educational research Method and morality practical politics and the science of human affairs Index.

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