The Main Premise of TSVOTEP

Professors of education yawn for a different reason. They are trapped in our current model by the fifth element — the social science improvement paradigm, which is the topic of chapter 8. Here is the short version:

During the late 1970s and early 1980s I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My professors often explained that they were engaged in an experiment aimed at “professionalizing” education. They said they were taking a social scientific approach to building the knowledge base I could apply, when I became a principal. They were hoping improvements in educational practice would follow from their social science experiments on educational theories, methods, and materials.

Cochran-Smith (2002) calls this the “research as foundation” metaphor:

It is assumed first that there is a body of knowledge based on cutting-edge empirical research in various academic disciplines that is relevant to teaching, learning, and schooling, and second, that when teachers know and act on this knowledge, schooling is more effective.

I call the same idea the social science improvement paradigm. It is a “paradigm” because this approach to improving education corresponds to Kuhn’s description of how scientific paradigms work. The social science improvement paradigm frames: (1) our assumptions about improving education, (2) our questions about how to do it, and (3) the methods we use to answer those questions (Calhoun, 2002).

When I challenge this paradigm with professor colleagues, they counter with three questions:

1. How can we improve teaching and learning, if not by applying what is effective?
2. Isn’t it hypocritical to reject the social science improvement paradigm; when you, yourself, have been influenced by research findings and use them in your own life?
3. Are you saying teachers and principals should not apply research findings to practice?

Their belief in the social science paradigm prevents them from seeing the philosophical point that newspaper reporters regard as a necessary precondition for improving education. That is what paradigms do. They frame questions, ideas and topics in a way that makes certain ones visible and accessible, and others invisible and inaccessible.

The main premise of TSVOTEP is visible to lay people who see the importance of the philosophical question, “What does it mean to be educated?” It seems lay people frame educational improvement in a philosophical paradigm, but those with “PhD” after their name do not. The irony is obvious.

Over the last thirty years professors of education have taught that education improves through the application of research-based “best practices.” I am grateful to the University of Wisconsin professors who framed this idea as an experimental possibility, not a conclusion. I hope they appreciate my chapter 8 explanation of why the experiment failed.

One final point. Many professors of education believe we can’t agree on what it means to be educated because we live in a society in which everyone has his/her own definition. Democratic governance, the thinking goes, provides the platform for the debates that inevitably result in multiple operational definitions. And to many of them, this is the best possible situation because we can never agree on one definition.

I believe the opposite is closer to the truth — nobody has a definition of what it means to be educated. We assume politicians define what it means to be educated, and social science points the way to achieving it, but neither is true.

This blog is asking readers to respond to these ideas. Especially teachers, principals, and parents should post. They have the most intimate experiences with young people; and, unlike policymakers, senior administrators, and professors of education, they have not been socialized into the social science paradigm.

By the way, the answer to my colleagues’ three questions is always the same:

Research findings deepen understanding; but improving education always requires the other five virtues, too (imagination, strong character, courage, humility and generosity).

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