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COMPETING THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE AND DISCOURSE

Doctor of Education ACU National. COMPETING THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE AND DISCOURSE. A/Professor Denis McLaughlin. WHAT IS RESEARCH ?. Basically, it is a way of “re-searching” or looking again at the world and making sense of it.

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COMPETING THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE AND DISCOURSE

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  1. Doctor of Education ACU National COMPETING THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE AND DISCOURSE A/Professor Denis McLaughlin

  2. WHAT IS RESEARCH ? • Basically, it is a way of “re-searching” or looking again at the world and making sense of it. • This involves knowledge and some understanding of “what is knowledge”. • “How do we know, what we know”

  3. WHY IS RESEARCH IMPORTANT ? • Adds knowledge about educational issues • Improves practice • Informs policy issues • Becomes a catalyst in professionals for complex thinking, informed communication and a toleration for competing paradoxes

  4. KNOWLEDGE • Educators strive for improvement. • This requires an ability: to identify problems, to address these, and search for potential solutions. • This process involves the addition of knowledge

  5. ADDING KNOWLEDGE • Addressing gaps in knowledge • Expanding knowledge to new ideas or practices • Replicating knowledge • Adding voices of individuals to society

  6. EPISTEMOLOGY • Epistemology addresses the “nature of knowledge, its possibility, scope and general basis” (Hamlyn, 1995) • “Epistemology is concerned with providing a philosophical grounding for deciding what kinds of knowledge are possible, and how we can ensure they are both adequate and legitimate” (Maynard, 1994).

  7. EPISTEMOLOGY • The concepts of knowledge and knowing are contestable. • Your choice of a research topic, its conduct and its results will be governed by your own beliefs about your understanding of knowledge and knowing. • These beliefs and understandings need to be made explicit.

  8. PARADIGMS • Thomas Kuhn (1922-96) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions • Harvard academic lectured on history of science to humanity undergrads • Concluded Newtonian science did not evolve from Aristotelian physics. • Not on same continuum; not within same spectrum. • A whole new way of seeing things • A paradigm shift; coined by Kuhn

  9. PARADIGMS - EPISTEMOLOGIES • OBJECTIVISM • CONSTRUCTIONISM • SUBJECTIVISM

  10. OBJECTIVISM • There is an objective reality • Things exist irrespective of knowers • Understandings and values objectified in those being researched. • If we go about it “the right way” we can discover objective truth.

  11. CONSTRUCTIONISM • No objective truth awaiting discovery • There is no meaning without mind • Meaning is not discovered but constructed • Truth (meaning) comes into existence in and out of our engagement with our world realities

  12. SUBJECTIVISM • Truth (meaning) does comes into existence in and out of our engagement with our world realities • There is no reality “out there” • We import meaning from…. • Meaning comes from anything but an interaction between humans and their world realities since the latter are not valid

  13. OBJECTIVISM • POSITIVISM • POST-POSITIVISM

  14. CONSTRUCTIONISM • Interpretivism • Critical theory

  15. Subjectivism • Post-structuralist • Post-modernist • Post-post-modernist

  16. PARADIGMS AND RESEARCH DESIGN EPISTEMOLOGY Theory of knowledge: “What is the relationship between thesearcher and that being researched.” Informs the theoretical perspective THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE Approach to understanding & explaining human society A context for research process Informs the methodology METHODOLOGY Rationale for the choice and orchestration of particular methods Governs choice and use of methods METHODS Data gathering & analysing techniques or procedures

  17. COMPETING THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE AND DISCOURSE OVERVIEW This is an overview only. There is a degree of oversimplification in order to conceptualise the ‘competing theories”. One can have a positivist ethnography or case study. Likewise, one could use a survey in an Interpretivism research

  18. POSITIVISM • Enlightenment, Age of Reason • Comte (1798-1857) Cours de philosphie positive • Durkheim (1858-1917) • John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

  19. POSITIVISM • Senses bases of valid knowledge • Knowledge advanced through observation and experiment • Theory is universal and not context bound • Invariant causal relationship • Theory- body of scientific knowledge waiting to be found through rigorous objective research- “scientific method” • Theory used to deduct predict-control outcomes “Elementary, my dear Watson”

  20. POST POSITIVISMPOST EMPIRICISTS • Cook and Campbell (1979) • Evers & Lakomski • Aspen & Chapman

  21. POST-POSITIVISTS • Knowledge nonfalsified hypotheses that can be regarded as probable facts or laws • Critical realism. There is a real reality but only imperfectly and probabilistically apprehendable • Aspiration to objectivity “regulatory ideal” • Special emphasis given to “guardians” of critical traditions, pre-existing knowledge and experts • Replication of findings “probably true”

  22. INTERPRETIVISM • “Life” is explained in terms of multiple interacting factors; “cause & effect” mutually interdependent; • Humans make sense of their world by construing or constructing; Impossible to have complete objectivity • Understand individual in context not pursue general laws • World composed of tangible and intangible multifaceted realities, best studied holistically • Inquiry is value laden; values influence framing conduct and focusing of research problems

  23. CRITICAL APPROACHES • Much of “life” not personally controlled, embedded in unconscious, unreflected upon social conditions • Interpretations of reality only makes sense against background of social rules, practices & beliefs- logic of situation V logic of causes • Research must involve reformulating or “resymbolising” of events/expressions –constructing not discovery or recording or transmitting • Fundamental aim is liberation and emancipation

  24. POST MODERNISM • Rejects faith in reason, rationality and belief in evolutionary progress • Challenges authority of convention and science • Examines the ideological underpinnings of convention & science • “armchair radicals” – critiques on changing ways of thinking not calling for action based on these changes.

  25. POST MODERNISM • Knowledge claims must be set within condition of contemporary world and in multiple perspectives of race, class, gender, age, sex orientation, and other group affiliations manifested in hierarchies and multiple meanings of language • Importance of different discourses, of marginalised people • Rejects meta-narratives or universals that hold true everywhere • Deconstruction of texts- agendas to expose contradictions, inconsistencies and concealed hierarchies.

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