Nevertheless, what unites scientific inquiry is the primacy of empirical test of conjectures and formal hypotheses using well-codified observation methods and rigorous designs, and subjecting findings to peer review. It is very unlikely that any one study would possess all of these qualities. They include seeking conceptual (theoretical) understanding, posing empirically testable and refutable hypotheses, designing studies that test and can rule out competing counterhypotheses, using observational methods linked to theory that enable other scientists to verify their accuracy, and recognizing the importance of both independent replication and generalization. Principles that guide the scientific enterprise. At a general level, the sciences share a great deal in common, a set of what might be called epistemological or fundamental In short, we hold that there are both commonalities and differences across the sciences. In contrast, some early modern philosophers (the logical positivists) attempted to achieve unity across the sciences by reducing them all to physics, a program that ran into insuperable technical difficulties (Trant, 1991).
He described science as having four aims: universalism, the quest for general laws organization, the quest to organize and conceptualize a set of related facts or observations skepticism, the norm of questioning and looking for counter explanations and communalism, the quest to develop a community that shares a set of norms or principles for doing science. Merton (1973), for example, saw commonality among the sciences. These are daunting questions that philosophers, historians, and scientists have debated for several centuries (see Newton-Smith for a current assessment). Up to this point, however, we have not addressed the questions “What constitutes scientific research?” and “Is scientific research on education different from scientific research in the social, life, and physical sciences?” We do so in this chapter. Consequently, we believe that such research would be worthwhile to pursue to build further knowledge about education, and about education policy and practice. In Chapter 2 we present evidence that scientific research in education accumulates just as it does in the physical, life, and social sciences. Guiding Principles for Scientific Inquiry
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