Syllabus

DCI 791: Interdisciplinary Research Seminar:

The Nature of Disciplined Inquiry in Education.

Fall 2002

Instructor: David C. Berliner
Office: Payne Building, Room 214-C
Office hours: One hour before class and by appointment.
Phone: 480-965-3921.
A better way to communicate is by email: Berliner@asu.edu

I am teaching this course for the second time and I have found it to be an odd course. I am going to try to give you a feel for research, though this is not a research design course. We will be concerned about methodology, but this is not a statistics course. We will address the different ways we acquire knowledge, but this is not a philosophy of science course. We will look at what journalism, the humanities and the arts offer us as ways of thinking about research and obtaining reliable knowledge. Although this is probably, at its root, a social science course, what science is in the social realm is a topic that will also be part of our discussion. The goal of this course is to make you familiar with alternative ways to warrant your statements.

In my view, professionals in any field should be distinguished from dilettantes and amateurs by the persuasiveness of their warrants, their claims, about the area in which they are professionals. Cosmetologists and teachers ought to be able to tell you more, and more valid things about hair care and learning than would a tailor or a pilot. Professional knowledge is about warrant, and we will worry about warrant in this class.

It seems to me that the goal of the "educated person" is to promote among lay people and professionals alike, the desire to engage in something a bit unnatural in both the history of humankind and in contemporary societies. That is, educated people want to promote engagement in what Dewey called reflective thought. Dewey saw reflective thought as a broader notion than just scientific thinking, but reflective thought was inclusive of scientific thinking. At other times Dewey called this kind of thinking "competent inquiry," while others have called it "disciplined inquiry," and still others use the term "reliable knowledge."

To promote this kind of thinking and inquiry, particularly for professionals in some area, is not to deny the importance in human life of "knowledge" derived from religion. Nor need we deny the "knowledge" that is not easily expressed in verbal forms, and almost impossible to communicate in quantitative forms, derived from playwrights, painters, musicians and athletes.

Our focus in this class will be an exploration of the meaning of professional or warranted knowledge in education, and the relationship of that form of knowledge to various styles of inquiry.

Three texts will be used in the course:

1. Phillips, D. C. & Burbules, N. C. (2000), Postpositivism and educational research. Lanham, MD: Roman and Littlefield;
2. National Research Council (2002). Scientific research in education. Committee on scientific principles for education research. Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education, R. J. Shavelson & L. Towne, Eds. Washington DC: National Academy Press. You can read this online or download it for yourself at: http://books.nap.edu/books/0309082919/html/index.html
3. Jaeger, R. M. (Ed.)(1997). Complementary Methods (2^nd ed.). Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

Additional readings include:

• Your instructor's response and Fred Erickson's response to the NRC report, available at: http://courses.ed.asu.edu/berliner/readings/berlinerresponse.rtf and http://courses.ed.asu.edu/berliner/readings/ericksonresponse.rtf.

• The Texas Educational Miracle by Walt Haney. To obtain the Haney piece go to: http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v8n41/.

• A chapter on Practitioner Research by Kenneth Zeichner and Susan Noffke from the recently published Handbook of Research on Teaching (4^th edition, V. Richardson, ed.). To obtain the Zeichner and Noffke piece go to http://courses.ed.asu.edu/berliner/protected/readings.htm

• A chapter by Fred Erickson on qualitative inquiry, available at http://courses.ed.asu.edu/berliner/protected/readings.htm

• The original article by Richard Mayer and the response to it by Tom Barone about the term science and scientific inquiry, available at http://courses.ed.asu.edu/berliner/protected/mayeraera.pdf and http://courses.ed.asu.edu/berliner/protected/baroneaera.pdf

• The paper on Caring by Nell Noddings, available at http://courses.ed.asu.edu/berliner/protected/readings.htm

Assignments/ Class schedule

• August 26 - Introduction to course and each other, and to the instructors’ biases. 9/2 is labor day—no class.
• Assignments for 9/9 and 9/16 - Read all of Phillips and Burbules, and all of the NRC report. We will also pick discussion leaders for the classes, and for the NRC report.
• September 2 - No class
• September 9 - Discussion of Phillips and Burbules.
• September 16 – Discussion of Phillips and Bubules and the NRC report, including the relations to the Leave No Child behind Act of 2001. The Berliner and Ericson responses to the NRC report will also be discussed. For next time read Section 1 in Jaeger by Shulman. During this class we will pick some students to answer study questions at end of Section1 in Jaeger. We will pick students each week to lead us the following week in answering the study questions.
• September 23 – Discussion of Section 1 by Shulman, and answering the study questions. For next time read Section Two in Jaeger, by Barone and Eisner. Read also the interchange between Richard Mayer and Barone in the ER. During this class we will make assignments of 2-4 persons to special methods teams to look at Feminist research perspectives, Critical research perspectives, Gay and Lesbian Research perspectives, and so forth. We will also have a presentation by your instructor on "Knowledge is power: Research on teaching and what it provides."
• September 30 —Discussion of Section 2. Discussions also on Mayer’s and Barone’s interchange in the ER. For next time read Section 3 and 4 by Kaestle and Greene. Also read the Nodding’s paper on Caring as well.
• October 7 — Discussion of sections 3 and 4 and the Noddings paper. Read for next time Section 5 by Walcott.
• October 14 — DCB in Germany. Guest lecture by Professor Barone. Discussion of ethnographic research and the Wollcott piece. Read for next time Section 6 by Stake.
• October 21 - Discussion of Section 6 by Stake. Read for next time the article on Action research by Zeichner and Noffke.
• October 28 — Discussion of action research by Zeichner and Noffke.
• November 4 — Catch up stuff from previous weeks and instructor presentation on Warrant and the press. For Nov 18th read Section 8 by Porter and we’ll hold a discussion on why you better be quantitatively sophisticated, using the Texas miracle by Walt Haney as an example.
• November 11 — holiday
• November 18 — Discussion of Section 8 by Porter on quantitative/ experimental methods. Read for next time Section 9 by Glass and the Amrein and Berliner EPAA article.
• November 25 — DCB in London. Discussion of Section 9 on time series led by Dr. Audrey Amrein, guest lecturer, using recent data on high stakes tests. Read for next time Section 7 by Jaeger.
• December 2 — DCB at Wested. Discussion of Section 7 on survey research led by Guest lecturer.
• December 9 — last class—presentation by individuals or teams on what is special about feminist, critical or other research methods.

Assessment: For those who do special projects on methods that are outside-the mainstream, a final report on those methods, (that is, a term paper) will be the term project used for assessment. For others, a paper approaching any research topic of your choice, from multiple perspectives, will be your term project. You should describe how the research topic that interests you can be explored from each of a number of perspectives, noting how the questions and the data will differ as these perspectives on the research problem are taken.

Grading: Show me you’ve mastered the idea that different methods suggest different questions, suggest different data sources, and have different criteria for implying warrant.