EDUCATIONAL RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE: CONFRONTING THE POSTMODERN CHALLENGE
Badania pedagogiczne a praktyka edukacyjna: podjęcie wyzwania postmodernizmu

Summary/Abstract: The purpose of this paper is offer a philosophical response to the challenge to educational research posed by postmodernism. It argues that what we learn from postmodernism is that educational research has unconsciously accepted the modern, but flawed, assumption that educational research can only contribute to the emancipatory ideals of modernity by constructing itself as a species of modern social science. It draws on Aristotle’s account of ‘praxis’ and Gadamer’s critique of the social sciences to reconstruct educational research as a postmodern continuation of the premodern science of practical philosophy. The paper then goes on to argue that it is only by displaying a willingness to reflectively expose and critically revise the preconceptions of modernity that constitute their existing self-understanding, that educational researchers will begin to appreciate why educational research will only be able to realize its emancipatory aspirations when it is reconstructed as a non-methodological species of the Aristotelian science of practical philosophy.

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