Epistemology, Ethics and Educational Research

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between the epistemological considerations that drive educational research – the ‘epistemic’ project of the pursuit of truth or at least better understanding – and ethical considerations which function both as a constraint and in some cases as a goal. It is this last claim – that educational research should be primarily driven by, for example, a concern for social justice – that is at the centre of the discussion. The paper argues that the analysis of a situation or structure as unjust as well as any proposals for the rendering of this situation as more just are both dependant on getting clear about the facts of the case and the likely consequences of doing this rather than that. The epistemic project has to be present alongside any pursuit of justice. Social justice appears however in a different way, as a procedural principle governing the conduct of research, illustrated in, among other sources, MacDonald’s model of ‘democratic evaluation’. The paper argues that a concern to hear the voices of the excluded and the marginalised through educational research is not just an ethical requirement: it is an epistemic requirement if we are to understand things properly. The paper then turns to a different set of relations between ethical and epistemological considerations in research, relations rooted in the literature on the ethics of belief ie to the set of ethical obligations that bear on what we should believe or not, that require us to give careful attention to evidence, to be honest in how we represent evidence and draw conclusions from it – obligations not just to be rational and honest but to express, to make public, what research compels us to believe to be the case, even if it is uncomfortable to do so.