Learning the languages of research: Transcending illiteracy and indifference.

Abstract

Abstract Although approaches to research other than experimentation and quasi-experimentation have recently become more prevalent in psychology, resistance to these approaches continues. Outright condemnation may have diminished, but equally powerful forms of resistance - illiteracy and indifference - remain. The nature and consequences of these forms of resistance are explored, particularly with respect to undergraduate education. I suggest we need to realize more fully how learning both traditional and alternative approaches informs our understanding of other, and we need to encourage growth of what Collini (1993) refers to as the intellectual equivalent of bilingualism, a capacity to exercise language of both kinds of approaches and to engage in a mutually intelligible exchange of views. In 1963, four years after delivering Rede Lecture at Cambridge, C. P. Snow responded to controversy sparked by his description of gulf between what he termed (i.e., literary intellectuals and natural scientists). In this response, he acknowledged that his views were shaped by his being an Englishman, and that in United States cultural divide between humanists and natural scientists was not nearly as sharp. As evidence, he cited a body of intellectual opinion from persons in a variety of fields, including social history, sociology, demography, political science, economics, and psychology - in others words, social sciences. And of budding existence of this third culture, he said, When it comes, some of difficulties of communication will at last be softened: for such a culture has, just to do its job, to be on speaking terms with scientific one (p. 71, italics added). Although Snow is well known for his writings on cultures of research and scholarly work, his view that social sciences can (perhaps, must) speak language of both humanities and natural sciences is not new, particularly with respect to psychology. As convincingly demonstrated by Danziger (1979), Wilhelm Wundt maintained that psychology consisted of two complementary halves, each of which was connected to a particular set of methods: physiological or individual psychology that was most often best investigated through experimental methods, and social or ethnopsychology that could only be investigated through nonexperimental methods. Wundt's views were, of course, not widely shared by many of his contemporaries, and certainly not by many of his successors. During much of 20th century, psychology was based primarily on a positivist philosophy of science, defined almost exclusively as a natural science, and focused on use of experimental method. It is only within latter years of this century that an accelerating questioning of usefulness of this near-- exclusive definition has occurred, concomitant with a serious search for methods other than experimentation. Ironically, however, even in present age of methodological pluralism, there is a deep gulf (perhaps somewhat akin to divide that separated Snow's two cultures) between those in field of psychology who can speak languages of both experimental (including quasi-experimental) methods and alternative methods, and those who speak only languages of former. In this article, I want to address question of receptivity and resistance to incorporating alternative methods in psychology by focusing on what I believe are two powerful forms of resistance - illiteracy and indifference. Before describing these forms of resistance and their consequences, I consider briefly question of naming. What Words are We to Use? Recent discussions of expansion of methods available for psychological research are increasingly framed within quantitative-qualitative binary. As Rogers (2001) persuasively argues, however, use of term qualitative is problematic on at least two grounds. …