Educational research as science?
pp. 145-153
in: Alan , E. Paul Hart, Michael A. Peters (eds), A companion to research in education, Berlin, Springer, 2014Abstract
What makes educational research scientific? And should we be worried whether it is? This chapter approaches these questions from a philosophical perspective, while also introducing some relevant work from twentieth-century philosophy of science. It discusses scientific method, confirmation, the distinction between theory and observation, the aim of science, and the relative merits of qualitative and quantitative approaches.