Truth and truthfulness in the sociology of educational knowledge

2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Young ◽  
Johan Muller
Keyword(s):  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Sociology Of Education ◽  
Social Constructivist ◽  
Objective Knowledge ◽  
Symbolic Forms ◽  
Basil Bernstein ◽  
The Social ◽  
Concept Of Truth ◽  
Constructivist Approaches

The aim of this article is to reflect on and explore questions of truth and objectivity in the sociology of educational knowledge. It begins by reviewing the problems raised by the social constructivist approaches to knowledge associated with the `new sociology of education' of the I970s. It suggests that they have significant parallels with the pragmatist ideas of James and Dewey that Durkheim analysed so perceptively in his lectures on pragmatism. The article then considers Basil Bernstein$quoteright$s development of Durkheim$quoteright$s ideas.We argue that despite his highly original conceptual advances Bernstein seems to accept, at least implicitly, that the natural sciences remain the only model for objective knowledge. This leads us to a discussion of Ernest Cassirer$quoteright$s idea of symbolic forms as a more adequate basis for the sociology of knowledge. In the conclusion, the article suggests how an approach to knowledge in educational studies that draws on Cassirer$quoteright$s idea of$space$quoteleftsymbolic objectivity' can come to terms with the tension between the concept of truth and a commitment to `being truthful' that was left unresolved, even unaddressed, by the $space$quoteleftnew' sociology of education of the I970s.

A Science of Mars or of Venus?

Philosophy ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 62 (241) ◽  
pp. 293-306 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary Tiles
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Educational Institutions ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
Objective Knowledge ◽  
Human Knowledge ◽  
Superior Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status

For as long as there has been anything worthy of the name of science, there have been those who have criticized its claim to superior knowledge. With the birth and prodigious growth of modern science, the corresponding growthof critical opinion led, in the eighteenth century, to a divorce of the sciences from the humanities around which our educational institutions, and our universities in particular, have been built. It is this divorce which renders problematic the status of the social or human sciences. For the extent to which Man can be an object of scientific knowledge will be questioned by those insisting on an opposition between human knowledge and values as embodied in the humanities, and the dehumanized objective knowledge proclaimed within the natural sciences.

Epistemology

2021 ◽  
pp. 97-101
Author(s):  
Gianfranco Pellegrino
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Objective Knowledge ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
The Social ◽  
General Field ◽  
The Creation

This chapter illustrates epistemology, which is the discipline devoted to the study of knowledge and justified belief. Epistemology concerns issues of the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular fields of inquiry. Assuming that knowledge is distinguished from mere opinion for its being true — a common assumption in epistemology — truth is also connected to epistemology. In the social sciences, epistemology is a source for methodological criteria employed in research, as well as for guidance on ontological issues — such as the existence of theoretical entities and the relationships between the social and the natural world. The chapter then looks at the divide between scholars who understand social sciences as positive, objective disciplines, according to the model of natural sciences, and scholars who understand social sciences as less precise, more humanistic disciplines, with a looser standard of objectivity. This divide refers in its turn to an even broader topic, namely the discussion about when and whether objective knowledge can be obtained in the social sciences, and on the very meaning of ‘objectivity’ and ‘knowledge’. This topic belongs to the general field of epistemology.

scholarly journals Experimental practices and objectivity in the social sciences: re-embedding construct validity in the internal–external validity distinction

Synthese ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Jiménez-Buedo ◽  
Federica Russo
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Construct Validity ◽  
External Validity ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Objective Knowledge ◽  
Biomedical Sciences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Experimental Validity ◽  
Internal And External Validity

AbstractThe experimental revolution in the social sciences is one of the most significant methodological shifts undergone by the field since the ‘quantitative revolution’ in the nineteenth century. One of the often valued features of social science experimentation is precisely the fact that there are (alleged) clear methodological rules regarding hypothesis testing that come from the methods of the natural sciences and from the methodology of RCTs in the biomedical sciences, and that allow for the adjudication among contentious causal claims. We examine critically this claim and argue that some current understandings of the practices that surround social science experimentation overestimate the degree to which experiments can actually fulfil this role as “objective” adjudicators, by neglecting the importance of shared background knowledge or assumptions and of consensus regarding the validity of the constructs involved in an experiment. We take issue with the way the distinction between internal and external validity is often used to comment on the inferential import of experiments, used both among practitioners and among philosophers of science. We describe the ways in which the more common (dichotomous) use of the internal/external distinction differs from Cook and Campbell’s original methodological project, in which construct validity and the four-fold validity typology were all important in assessing the inferential import of experiments. We argue that the current uses of the labels internal and external, as applied to experimental validity, help to encroach a simplistic view on the inferential import of experiments that, in turn, misrepresents their capacity to provide objective knowledge about the causal relations between variables.

Инфраструктурные перегрузки как дисбаланс городской среды// Journal of Technical and Natural Sciences 5(14), 2019/ RELF Group & OEAPS Inc.(Open European Academy of Public Sciences); Chief Editor Vitaly Yakovlev- Berlin, Germany. 26.09.2019: OEAPS Inc., 2019. - PP. 37-43.

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Татьяна Андреевна Водчиц
Keyword(s):  
Urban Environment ◽  
Chief Editor ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Social Infrastructure ◽  
European Academy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Global Problems ◽  
The City

В предложенной статье поднята на рассмотрение общераспространённая проблематика напряженного состояния социальной инфраструктуры города на примере Москвы. Также берется к рассмотрению тот факт, что растущая инфраструктура – одна из глобальных проблем мегаполиса. Выявлены основные причины формирования дисбаланса городской среды. Предложен ряд способов возможного решения данной задачи.In the proposed article, the widespread problems of the tense state of the social infrastructure of the city are raised for consideration. Also taken into consideration is the fact that the growing infrastructure is one of the global problems of the metropolis. The main causes of the imbalance of the urban environment are revealed. A number of possible solutions to this problem are proposed.

Defending the Difference

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
True Nature ◽  
Natural Entities ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Methodological Difference ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The One

Dreyfus argues that there is a basic methodological difference between the natural sciences and the social sciences, a difference that derives from the different goals and practices of each. He goes on to argue that being a realist about natural entities is compatible with pluralism or, as he calls it, “plural realism.” If intelligibility is always grounded in our practices, Dreyfus points out, then there is no point of view from which one can ask about or provide an answer to the one true nature of ultimate reality. But that is consistent with believing that the natural sciences can still reveal the way the world is independent of our theories and practices.

The Anthropological Lens

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Morton
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Social Accountability ◽  
Political Organization ◽  
Local People ◽  
South Sudanese ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Encounters ◽  
Anthropological Literature ◽  
Insight Into

Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard (1902-1973) is widely considered the most influential British anthropologist of the twentieth century, known to generations of students for his seminal works on South Sudanese ethnography Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic Among the Azande (OUP 1937) and The Nuer (OUP 1940). In these works, now classics in the anthropological literature, Evans-Pritchard broke new ground on questions of rationality, social accountability, kinship, social and political organization, and religion, as well as influentially moving the discipline in Britain away from the natural sciences and towards history. Yet despite much discussion about his theoretical contributions to anthropology, no study has yet explored his fieldwork in detail in order to get a better understanding of its historical contexts, local circumstances or the social encounters out of which it emerged. This book then is just such an exploration, of Evans-Pritchard the fieldworker through the lens of his fieldwork photography. Through an engagement with his photographic archive, and by thinking with it alongside his written ethnographies and other unpublished evidence, the book offers a new insight into the way in which Evans-Pritchard’s theoretical contributions to the discipline were shaped by his fieldwork and the numerous local people in Africa with whom he collaborated. By writing history through field photographs we move back towards the fieldwork experiences, exploring the vivid traces, lived realities and local presences at the heart of the social encounter that formed the basis of Evans-Pritchard’s anthropology.

scholarly journals Quantification and classification in education: What is at stake?

2021 ◽  
pp. 147821032110320
Author(s):  
Ann Christin Eklund Nilsen ◽  
Ove Skarpenes
Keyword(s):  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Central Place ◽  
Social Phenomenon ◽  
Ian Hacking ◽  
The Public ◽  
Statistical Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Bureaucracy ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Different Levels

Histories of statistics and quantification have demonstrated that systems of statistical knowledge participate in the construction of the objects that are measured. However, the pace, purpose, and scope of quantification in state bureaucracy have expanded greatly over the past decades, fuelled by (neoliberal) societal trends that have given the social phenomenon of quantification a central place in political discussions and in the public sphere. This is particularly the case in the field of education. In this article, we ask what is at stake in state bureaucracy, professional practice, and individual pupils as quantification increasingly permeates the education field. We call for a theoretical renewal in order to understand quantification as a social phenomenon in education. We propose a sociology-of-knowledge approach to the phenomenon, drawing on different theoretical traditions in the sociology of knowledge in France (Alain Desrosières and Laurent Thévenot), England (Barry Barnes and Donald MacKenzie), and Canada (Ian Hacking), and argue that the ongoing quantification practice at different levels of the education system can be understood as cultural processes of self-fulfilling prophecies.

Guide to Africa Bibliography

2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
pp. xxix-xxx
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Development Studies ◽  
Environmental Sciences ◽  
African Government ◽  
The Social ◽  
To Receive ◽  
Cover Material

This bibliography records publications on Africa of interest to students of Africa, principally in the social and environmental sciences, development studies, humanities and arts. Some items from the medical, biological and natural sciences are included. The criterion used is potential relevance to a reader from a social sciences/arts background. The whole continent and associated islands are covered, with selective coverage of the diaspora. This volume aims to cover material published in 2019 together with items from earlier years not previously listed. The editor is always very glad to hear of any items omitted so that they may be included in future volumes. He would be particularly pleased to receive notification of new periodicals, print or online. African government publications and works of creative literature are not normally listed.

scholarly journals Dialogues between social and natural sciences: contribution to the debate on socio-environmental conflicts

2015 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 2335-2348 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruno Milanez
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Impact ◽  
Environmental Issues ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Environmental Conflicts ◽  
Environmental Impact Assessments ◽  
The Social ◽  
Mining Projects ◽  
Negative Impacts ◽  
Strong Candidate ◽  
Social Environmental

ABSTRACT In this article, I argue that attempting to solve real problems is a possible approach to bring social and natural sciences together, and suggest that - as Environmental Impact Assessment necessarily brings together social and environmental issues - this debate is a strong candidate for such a task. The argument is based on a general discussion about the possibilities and limitations of Environmental Impact Assessments, the social-environmental impacts of mining activities and three case studies. The analysis of the cases indicates possibilities and limitations of the dialogue between scientists from various areas - and of the collaboration with social movements and affected communities - in avoiding negative impacts of mining projects and, eventually, increasing their sustainability.

Assessing Contemporary Crises: Aligning Safety Science and Security Studies

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bibi van den Berg ◽  
Ruth Prins ◽  
Sanneke Kuipers
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Everyday Life ◽  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Security Studies ◽  
Nation States ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World ◽  
Safety Science ◽  
Key Topics

Security and safety are key topics of concern in the globalized and interconnected world. While the terms “safety” and “security” are often used interchangeably in everyday life, in academia, security is mostly studied in the social sciences, while safety is predominantly studied in the natural sciences, engineering, and medicine. However, developments and incidents that negatively affect society increasingly contain both safety and security aspects. Therefore, an integrated perspective on security and safety is beneficial. Such a perspective studies hazardous and harmful events and phenomena in the full breadth of their complexity—including the cause of the event, the target that is harmed, and whether the harm is direct or indirect. This leads to a richer understanding of the nature of incidents and the effects they may have on individuals, collectives, societies, nation-states, and the world at large.

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