Scientifically Based Research in Education: Epistemology and Ethics

Abstract

In this article, the author begins to trace the concept scientifically based research in federal legislation, in the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences, and in the reports of several National Research Council committees. She also discusses how this concept has produced a certain scientism that has been deployed to attempt to control the field of educational research. She points out, however, that scientifically based research treats methodology as if it can be separated from epistemology and thus forgets that different bodies of knowledge and thought make different sciences possible. Thus, science is not one thing, as those who support scientifically based research often claim. Finally, the author suggests that our task as education scholars, researchers, and policy makers in this age of accountability is to engage rather than exclude epistemologies not our own that may help us produce different knowledge and produce knowledge differently.