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Comment: Culture, Rigor, and Science in Educational Research

University of California, Los Angeles, Graduate School of Education and Information Studies, 1002 Moore Hall, Box 951521, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1521; ferickson{at}gseis.ucla.eduHe is also the Director of Research at the Corinne A. Seeds University Elementary School at UCLA. His research interests include issues of equity in urban education, the study of learning in social interaction, video-based analysis of oral discourse, and contemporary ethnographic research methods, including digital multimedia documentation of teaching practice

Kris Gutierrez, Professor

University of California, Los Angeles, Urban Schooling, Curriculum, Teaching, Leadership, and Policy Studies, 1026 Moore Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1521; krisgu{at}ucla.edu. Her research interests focus on understanding the relationship between language, culture, and human development and include the study of the social and cognitive consequences of literacy, practices, and policies in urban schools. Her work also examines the effects of current educational reforms, including new language policies on poor and working-class students—particularly those who are English Language Learners

In this article the authors argue that both the Feuer, Towne, and Shavelson article and the larger National Research Council (NRC) report on which it is based must be understood in the context of current federal discourse that focuses narrowly on experimentally derived causal explanations of educational program effectiveness. Although the authors concur with much of the Feuer et al. article and the NRC report, they are concerned that the NRC committee, by accepting uncritically its charge to define the scientific in educational research, produced a statement that risks being read as endorsing both the possibility and the desirability of taking an evidence-based social engineering approach to educational improvement nationwide. Finally, the authors review the consequences of not challenging the layperson’s "white coat" notion of science and replacing it with a more complicated and realistic view of what actual scientists do and the varied and complex methods and perspectives they employ in their inquiry.

Educational Researcher, Vol. 31, No. 8, 21-24 (2002)
DOI: 10.3102/0013189X031008021


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