Education and Science, Explaining and Understanding

Educational research, throughout the developed world but especially in the English-speaking countries, seems increasingly determined by adopting or perhaps simply imitating the methods of the natural sciences. One example is the current enthusiasm for randomised controlled trials (RCTs) which are often considered the 'gold standard' in medical research. Another example is the expectation, so far largely unfulfilled, that neuroscience will tell us all we need to know about how people learn and how they can come to learn better, that is more quickly and effectively. Sometimes it seems that educational research is simply in the grip of a new rhetoric, whose shibboleths are 'rigour' and 'robustness'. The assumption thus grows that proper research is essentially empirical. In the face of these tendencies it is important to re-emphasise the meanings of 'education'. The familiar distinction between erklaren (scientific explanation) and verstehen (humane understanding of a less technical kind) is helpful to us here. The two perspectives are not mutually exclusive. But this framework is useful in reminding us that questions about the development and education often lead us towards philosophical problems about sense and meaning rather than towards quasi-scientific, empirical investigations.