Educational Explanations. Christopher Winch

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Educational Explanations - Christopher Winch


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but also to those that are themselves the subject of investigation.

      We are now in a position to see more clearly how the correspondence view that lies behind the relativism and/or idealism that seems to inform so much EER gives rises to such misconceptions. The starting point is ‘realist’ enough:

      p is true iff p corresponds to reality (e.g. a state of affairs).

      It is then noticed that, from the point of view of different observers, different states of affairs, events, processes, facts have different degrees of importance. Let us suppose that a teacher is taking a class. Various non-participants are observing: an educational researcher, a teacher colleague, an inspector, a parent. Thus the lesson will appear different from the point of view of the class teacher, another teacher, an inspector, a child in the class or a visiting parent. They may each provide different and, to some degree, incompatible accounts of the lesson. Thus the class teacher might say that she met her very demanding lesson objectives, the observing teacher that the lesson was too ambitious, the inspector that there was not enough pace in the lesson, the child that the lesson went too slowly and the parent that what was taught was pitched at too low a level for the ability of the children. Not all these propositions can be jointly true yet they are all held sincerely by each of the parties involved and different criteria may be invoked by each observer to justify his/her claim. It is very tempting to say that each observer makes a judgement that corresponds to a different reality.

      UNDERSTANDING, PERSPECTIVALISM AND REALISM

      It is also necessary to say something about critical realism, a doctrine that is currently influential in social and educational research (Bhaskar 1975). Critical realism holds that it is the task of educational researchers to investigate reality, that there are potentially different perspectives on that reality and that causal processes operate within that reality, which it is the task of researchers to uncover. The argument of this book, however, is that we cannot investigate reality directly in terms of adopting a correspondence account of truth, although we will endeavour to frame our criteria for truth claims in such a way as we can make the best possible attempt that we can to capture what is real. We have problems with perspectivalism which will be discussed in the next section. Finally, in Chapter 4 and beyond we will cast doubt on the claim that underlying processes are always to be subsumed under a narrow form of causal explanation.


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