Uncloaking Epistemologies through Methodology

Abstract

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1989), “education” has several meanings. One is “the systematic instruction, schooling or training given to the young in preparation for the work of life … the whole course of scholastic instruction.” Another is “the process of ‘bringing up’ … with reference to social station, kind of manners, and habits acquired, calling, or employment” (n.p.). Taken together, these definitions have a formal sensibility about them, focusing alternately on the human and social capital that one acquires, likely through schooling, for some strategic end. The emphasis on the cognitive transmission and accumulation of knowledge, the training of children in the social norms and beliefs of the society providing schooling, and the presentation of what one has learned in the formal school setting have been the primary foci of educational research from the center. Not surprisingly, research studies of education have centered on teaching and learning in the school setting, buttressing assumptions that “education” is tantamount to “schooling.” Over the past century, much educational research has concentrated on how schools as institutions have functioned over time, how most children learn in the classroom, how teachers learn their craft, and the like. Determining what is “normal” and developing ways to replicate studies and effective programs have correspondingly served as the purposes for conducting educational research from the center.