Knowing What We Know : Children , Teachers , Researchers

grams of vouchers, school choice, charter schools, reduced class size, rapid routes to certification, and bilingual education are all topics to which research is relevant. Yet in decisions about these matters educational research has been relatively invisible, and the voices of educational researchers largely muted. The second clause of the theme, how we know it, alludes to the ambiguous epistemological status of educational research. The question of whether or not educational research even qualifies as science is often voiced. Consider, for example, Ellen Lagemann’s (2000) choice of the evocative term “an elusive science” as the title for her 2000 history of the field. Unfortunately, the methodological alliances and schisms within AERA, as well as the arguments and attacks perpetrated by AERA members on each other, do little to shore up the case for educational research as a rigorous undertaking constrained by principles of scholarly inquiry. Some educational researchers evidently believe that the choice of a research method represents commitment to a certain kind of truth and the concomitant rejection of other kinds of truth. Many seem to think, furthermore, that ways of doing research can be judged on their own, without reference to the questions they are being deployed to answer. Who of us has not had the following conversation with a doctoral student?