Social Science and Educational Reform: The Political Uses of Social Research

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick M. Wirt ◽  
Douglas E. Mitchell
1981 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 353-380 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Bulmer

ABSTRACTGovernmental commissions are an established part of the British and American systems of government. To what extent are they a means by which social science can have an impact upon policy-making? To what extent do they use empirical research methods to gather evidence which influences the commissions' deliberations? What factors hinder the effective use of social science research by governmental commissions? Drawing on case studies of British Royal Commissions and Departmental Committees, and American Presidential Commissions, this article suggests that the potential effectiveness of social science is reduced by the political context in which commissions work, their preferred modes of taking evidence, the way in which commissions are staffed, and the internal dynamics of their workings.


2020 ◽  
Vol 176 ◽  
pp. 05001
Author(s):  
Konstantin Olkhovikov ◽  
Svetlana Olkhovikova ◽  
Lyudmila Zhuravleva ◽  
Nisha Kant Ojha ◽  
Zarubina Elena ◽  
...  

Global warm-up makes the political agenda on highest levels. However, the science should make itself publicly heard, and not in the part of fundamental studies of nature only, but in the part of social science and social research of administrative tools as well. We offer three circles of quest that attract numerous scholars in the science of management and administration touching the context of complementing new ecological imperatives in running the rural territories: (1) the relevance of new environmental mentality to practical principles of existing rural administrations, (2) the communication challenges, opportunities, and risks in introducing new qualitative criteria into existing social technologies, which dominate modern rural administration patterns, (3) the importance of alternative in technological development of modern rural territories with a high agrarian overload, including the managing of alternative energy introduction, and trial of unprecedented technological schemes.


2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-80
Author(s):  
Sari Hanafi

This study investigates the preachers and their Friday sermons in Lebanon, raising the following questions: What are the profiles of preachers in Lebanon and their academic qualifications? What are the topics evoked in their sermons? In instances where they diagnosis and analyze the political and the social, what kind of arguments are used to persuade their audiences? What kind of contact do they have with the social sciences? It draws on forty-two semi-structured interviews with preachers and content analysis of 210 preachers’ Friday sermons, all conducted between 2012 and 2015 among Sunni and Shia mosques. Drawing from Max Weber’s typology, the analysis of Friday sermons shows that most of the preachers represent both the saint and the traditional, but rarely the scholar. While they are dealing extensively with political and social phenomena, rarely do they have knowledge of social science


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 101-119
Author(s):  
Emily Hauptmann

ArgumentMost social scientists today think of data sharing as an ethical imperative essential to making social science more transparent, verifiable, and replicable. But what moved the architects of some of the U.S.’s first university-based social scientific research institutions, the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research (ISR), and its spin-off, the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR), to share their data? Relying primarily on archived records, unpublished personal papers, and oral histories, I show that Angus Campbell, Warren Miller, Philip Converse, and others understood sharing data not as an ethical imperative intrinsic to social science but as a useful means to the diverse ends of financial stability, scholarly and institutional autonomy, and epistemological reproduction. I conclude that data sharing must be evaluated not only on the basis of the scientific ideals its supporters affirm, but also on the professional objectives it serves.


1983 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 13-13
Author(s):  
Avery Leiserson

This essay addresses the problem of teachers and students who have reached the point of trying to find a common ground for perceiving (seeing) politics. This may occur almost any time during any social science course, but it cannot be assumed to happen automatically the first day of class in government, citizenship, or public affairs. Hopefully, the signal is some variant of the question: “What do we mean by politics, or the political aspect of human affairs?” A parade of definitions — taking controversial positions on public policy issues; running for elective office; who gets what, when and how; and manipulating people—is not a mutually-satisfying answer if it produces the Queen of Hearts’ attitude in students that the word politics means what they choose it to mean and nothing more.


1970 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-456
Author(s):  
A. P. M. Coxon ◽  
Patrick Doreian ◽  
Robin Oakley ◽  
Ian B. Stephen ◽  
Bryan R. Wilson ◽  
...  

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nicholson

The Economic and Social Research Council recently published a Report commissioned from a committee chaired by Professor Edwards, a psychiatrist, so that the Council, and the social science community in general, might know what was good and bad in British social sciences, and where the promising future research opportunities lie over the next decade. Boldly called ‘Horizons and Opportunities in the Social Sciences’, the Report condensed the wisdom of social scientists, both British and foreign, and concludes with a broadly but not uncritically favourable picture of the British scene.


1934 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-427 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Knight
Keyword(s):  

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