Turtles All the Way Down: Academic Writing as Formalism

At least in the United States, the presentation of scholarship is highly formulaic. The emblematic product of this professional domain—the academic journal article—is less a lump of clay waiting to be moulded than a set of fired jars waiting to be filled. Not only are the jars unyielding to the touch, but even their number and order are fixed. There are five of them, which need to be filled in precise order: research question, literature review, methodology, results and conclusions. Don't stir. Repeat. In this paper I explore the form and function of this formulaic medium. I trace its roots to a series of earlier formalisms that dominate American schooling. First comes the five-paragraph essay, a form that is chillingly familiar to anyone who has attended an American high school. This model continues to hold sway in college. Then in graduate school comes the five-chapter doctoral dissertation. Same jars, same order. By the time the doctoral student becomes a professor, the pattern is fixed. The Rule of Five is thoroughly fixed in muscle memory, and the scholar is on track to produce a string of articles that follow from it. The formula is useful for all of the actors involved, making it easy to write acceptable academic papers, to skim and evaluate these papers, and to build a credible CV and a high citation journal. The only thing it's not good for is transmitting meaningful academic insights.     

Education, Learning and Understanding: the process and the product

ABSTRACT Recent educational theorising about the nature of teaching, learning and assessment has made much of a distinction between processes and products and of so-called process models of education und curriculum. Following on from reflections on the historical provenance and subsequent evolution of process talk in psychology and the philosophy of mind it is argued in this article that such talk can only import serious conceptual confusion and ambiguity into our attempts to understand clearly and adequately the business of human learning. In the light of this it would be altogether better for us to expunge the language of process from the discourse of education.     

Critical Realism and Empirical Research Methods in Education

In the light of recent writings of Richard Pring, and in relation to the application of empirical research methods in education, this paper offers a corrective to a neo-realist viewpoint and develops a critical realist perspective. The argument is made that the deployment of empirical research methods needs to be underpinned by a meta-theory embracing epistemological and ontological elements; that this meta-theory does not commit one to the view that absolute knowledge of the social world is possible; and that critical realism is the most appropriate meta-theory to underpin the use of empirical research methods. Further to this, unhelpful dualisms between quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and between structure and agency, are discussed in relation to neo-realist and critical realist perspectives.