Paradigm Wars Research Articles

From the Editorial Board: Using Quantitative Methods to Answer Critical Questions

From the Editorial Board:Using Quantitative Methods to Answer Critical Questions Caitlin E. Kearney On September 12, 2019, during a debate among Democratic presidential hopefuls, Kamala Harris cited a study on teacher-student race matching. If a Black child has one Black teacher by the end of third grade, the study found, they are 13% more likely to go to college; if that child has two Black teachers before the end of third grade, they are 32% more likely to attend college (Gershenson et al, 2018). Harris cited these statistics to highlight the need for investment in Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and their teacher training programs. In an instant, an academic study of Black teachers reached an audience of millions and, in doing so, Harris proved the power of quantitative methods in shaping a policy debate. One measure of the impact of academic research, although imperfect, is the salience of findings in policy debates. In riding the wave of the evidence-based policy movement, rigorous quantitative studies are often prioritized over qualitative studies. In practice, qualitative and quantitative methodologies often work together in a given subfield. Decades of qualitative literature on the impacts of Black teachers—and damages of an overwhelmingly white teaching force on student-level outcomes, particularly for Black children—provided the theoretical framework for Gershenson and colleagues (e.g., Foster, 1990; Irvine, 1989; Kelly, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 2016; Steele, 1997; Tyson, 2003). Yet the conciseness and seeming finality of statistical findings present in quantitative studies often make the findings stick; policymakers are more convinced by compelling numbers than narrative explanations (Branscomb, 2004). Leveraging data from the Tennessee Student/Teacher Achievement Ratio (STAR) class size experiment and state administrative data from North Carolina, Gershenson and colleagues (2018) employed quasi-experimental economic methods to suggest a causal link between exposure to Black teachers and educational attainment for Black students. Their conclusion was striking. The vestiges of the methodological paradigm wars are still very much with us. The goal of this piece is not to resurrect the tiresome battle between quantitative and qualitative methods, but rather to examine the use of quantitative methods to answer critical policy relevant questions. Quantitative Methods and Education Policy Education research investigates a variety of overlapping issues such as teaching and learning, and the political, economic, organizational, and social contexts in which they occur. Coleman (1976) posits that all education research is inherently policy relevant. Others define education policy research more narrowly, arguing that it must analyze policies by defining specific problems, interrogating alternatives, confronting tradeoffs, and utilizing evidence to make a recommendation (e.g., Bardach, 2012). Over the last several decades, there have been growing calls for education research [End Page 195] to be both policy relevant and empirically rigorous (Institute of Education Sciences (IES), 2013; Shavelson & Towne, 2002). Most policy briefs from federal agencies cite quantitative research, and many name particular quantitative methods as the "gold standard" (IES, 2003). Quantitative education researchers have heavily borrowed from economics over the last several decades. Economic analytical frameworks such as the education production function, which draws on human capital theory, predominate in education policy debates. Similarly, numerous quantitative methodologies within education policy research derive from quasi-experimental designs developed by econometricians. Mounting pressure for organizations to be held accountable for their role in societal inequities undergirds much of the aggressive promotion for rigorous research. Landmark legislation, such as the No Child Left Behind Act (2002) and the Education Sciences Reform Act (2002), explicitly endorse scientific research as paths to address intractable social problems. The full history of quantitative methods, however, must be told. There is more to the story than more rigorous methodology; the history of quantitative methods is inextricably intertwined with our nation's past and present culture of white supremacy and cisheteropatriarchy. Early usage of quantitative methods, such as intelligence quotient (IQ) tests and The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994), constructed and reinforced systems of oppression. The rise of quantitative methods in education is often characterized as a shift toward objectivity and the onset of trustworthy research; however, embracing such methodologies comes with a host of hidden ideological assumptions rendered invisible by claims of neutrality (Davidson, 2018). Others have gone even further...

Aspects of the Korea History through the Prism of Bulgarian Archives from the Cold War Period

This paper gives an example how national history even of a country that stays thousands of kilometers away could be researched from a certain foreign archives. The profound research of the Bulgarian archival documents reviles many different aspects of the contemporary Korean history. The core of all Bulgarian arrives related to the Korean Peninsula are from the most dramatic and turbulent part of the Korean history, the time when the country has been divided into two parts and two Korean states has been established which eventual reunification had become a hostage of the confrontation between the two main Superpowers during the Cold War period. The shift of the relations was also in the context of the general shift of the whole paradigm of the Cold war in the East Asian region at the beginning of the 70s related with the new stage of the relations between China and USA. This as well as the era of a so called “Peaceful coexistence” promoted by the Soviet bloc as well as the era of Détente in the East-West international relations helped the improvement of the relations between Bulgaria and North Korea during 70s. This study would go back to the main point of that paper that the profound research of different Bulgarian archives from the Cold war period gives a very good opportunity to shed a light on many aspects of the Contemporary history, some of which has its consequences and impact on the current political, socio-economic and military processes on the Korean peninsula and the profound knowledge about them could help us not only to understand better the logic of these processes but also to try to predict and foresight, to some extend their future development.

Typhonic Voices

Abstract This article argues that Lucan references Hesiod’s Typhonomachy in the voice of Erictho (Luc. 6.685-694). The intertext is significant in two respects. It casts Erictho as a nonpartisan proponent of Gigantomachy and cosmic war itself, a portrayal that informs aspects of her character as a theomachos and vates. Likewise, it presents an innovative use of Hesiod’s Theogony: instead of a poem of peace, Lucan adapts it as a paradigm of civil war.

Go Figure: Feminist Sociological Analysis of Diverse Jewish Households

Recent scholarly articles and popular op-eds assert that male scholars employing demography dominate Jewish family studies, and that scholarly analysis of marriage and fertility reflects controlling male scrutiny. This paper presents a very different factual intellectual history of female scholars’ pioneering and ongoing contributions to Jewish family studies since the 1980s, including the study of fertility and marriage patterns along with a broad range of household types. It demonstrates female scholars’ explicitly feminist approach to family research and shows that contrasting scholarly views of the sequelae of intermarriage have not been particularly divided by gender. We argue that the intellectual fissure is not about feminism per se, but rather about epistemology: current criticisms of quantitative research on the Jewish family draw heavily on feminist standpoint theory, while many scholars of the Jewish family operate with the alternative tradition of feminist empiricism. The paper concludes by addressing the so-called “paradigm wars,” arguing that comprehensive and useful discussions about the interests of Jewish women require both quantitative and qualitative methods of inquiry. Finally, it recommends that social scientists studying Jewish populations utilize the term “households,” which functions more inclusively than the term “families.”

A situated philosophical perspective would make some of the paradigm wars in qualitative evidence synthesis redundant: A commentary on Bergdahl's critique of the meta-aggregative approach.

A situated philosophical perspective would make some of the paradigm wars in qualitative evidence synthesis redundant: A commentary on Bergdahl's critique of the meta-aggregative approach.

Informační a psychologické operace jako výzva pro bezpečnost a obranu

The article focuses on information and psychological operations as a challenge for the security and defence establishments of NATO member states. A conceptualisation of the terms 'information operations' and 'psychological operations' is discussed in the contexts of reshaping the war-and-peace dichotomy, and of resilience and deterrence. It is suggested that these terms suffer from a normative approach to the paradigm of war and peace, and to the use of non-military means. This may lead to the greater vulnerability of security and defence systems in confrontation with an adversary. Also, special attention is paid to the vulnerabilities of security and armed forces, being overlooked in concepts of resilience.

Paradigm Wars Revisited: A Cartography of Graduate Research in the Field of Education (1980–2010)

Education entails conflicting perspectives about its subject matter. In the late 1980s, the conflict developed into a war between interpretive and causal paradigms. Did the confrontation result in a balance between these warring sides? We use text analysis to identify research trends in 137,024 dissertation abstracts from 1980 to 2010 and relate these to students’ academic employment outcomes. Topics associated with the interpretive approach rose in popularity, while the outcomes-oriented paradigm declined. Academic employment remained stably associated with topics in the interpretive approach, but their effect is moderated by the prestige of the students’ institutions. The relation between topic popularity and employability provides insight into field change and how the benefits of cultural shifts fall along the lines of institutional power.

Conflicts Within the Discipline of Nursing: Is There a Looming Paradigm War?

This paper presents a view of the current sources of potential conflicts in the academic discipline of nursing. It suggests that these conflicts could lead, in the Kuhnian sense, to a paradigm war. The differing paradigms underlying the education and traditions of the PhD prepared nurse scientist/researcher/scholar and the DNP prepared nurse practitioner are a challenge for the discipline. DNP programs are swelling and faculty are needed to teach in these programs, and their position with regard to the usual rank and tenure structures of academe are not yet clear. Concern arises when the tenured PhD nurse scientist faculty numbers drop as the DNP faculty numbers increase. The body of nursing science is threatened as fewer students enter PhD programs and faculty retire. The DNP faculty paradigm does not provide for the rigor and preparation need to carry forward the disciplinary scientific knowledge mission. Rather than a fruitless war between the two paradigms, ways are suggested to fully embrace the differences as important to nursing, and to increase the number of PhD prepared nurse scientists.

Disaster cosmologies in comparative perspective: Islam, climate change and the 2010 floods in Pakistan's Southern Punjab

AbstractAs humanity enters a new era of climate‐induced unpredictability, research into the role of religion in shaping perceptions of, and responses to disaster will become increasingly important. This is particularly true of South Asia, which contains dense populations certain to be adversely affected by climate change. This contribution explores the way religion shapes and mediates responses to disaster in Pakistan. Where previous work in this field has focused on extremists and militants, mine considers currents of lived Islam that take explicit stances on questions of natural resource development. Drawing upon extensive primary data, I identify two distinct disaster cosmologies permeating state and society. First, I consider the official Islam of experts and policymakers, whose approach to development is derived from, but arguably surpasses the modernism of British and American colonial and Cold War paradigms in its dogmatic, faith‐based belief in the imperative of mastering and exploiting nature. The second is an altogether contrasting formation embedded in a political protest movement representing a marginalized constituency, the Siraiki speaking population of Southern Punjab, which mobilized flood affectees in the aftermath of the 2010 floods around issues of social and environmental justice.

How to use mixed-methods and triangulation designs: An introduction to history education research

As in many other social science disciplines, mixed methods and triangulation are gaining importance in history education research. Nevertheless, in this discipline there is also a prevailing lack of theoretical and methodological reflection about method integration. With this article, we wish to stimulate the methodological debate regarding this issue within the community of history education researchers and to strengthen the research profile of the discipline. We start by presenting lines of discussion regarding adequate research methods for the investigation of different types of social phenomena. Thereafter, we show how the 'paradigm wars' in social research were mitigated by the development of integrative concepts such as triangulation and mixed methods. Then we focus on current developments in history education research in German-speaking countries. Finally, we give a brief overview on international research into history teachers' beliefs, thereby addressing specific challenges for the application of triangulation or mixed methods in our discipline.

The Counterterrorism War Paradigm versus International Humanitarian Law: The Legal Contradictions and Global Consequences of the US “War on Terror”

Since 2001, we have witnessed the development of a counterterrorism war paradigm built to advance claims about the post-9/11 scope and discretion of US executive power and to articulate specific interpretations of national security interests and strategic objectives in the “war on terror.” What makes this a paradigm rather than merely a conglomeration of evolving policies is the cohesiveness and mutual reinforcement of its underlying rationales about the rights of the US government to prosecute a territorially unbounded war against an evolving cast of enemies. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concept of a juridical field, the article focuses on how officials who constructed a legal framework for this paradigm, rather than disregarding international law wholesale, have engaged in interpretations and crafted rationales to evade some international humanitarian law (IHL) rules and norms while rejecting the underlying logic or applicability of others. This article traces the counterterrorism war paradigm’s development and explains how it now competes with and threatens to supersede the customary law principles enshrined in IHL.

'Paradigm Wars' Revisited: New Eyes on Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Globalization

'Paradigm Wars' Revisited: New Eyes on Indigenous Peoples' Resistance to Globalization

Война как наказание: исторические основания и современное состояние

The article considers punishment as a source of legitimization of war. The author traces the history of punitive paradigm of war, notes the moment when it was replaced by the legalist paradigm and considers the reactualization of the idea of punishment as a just basis of war. In order to deal with these issues, the author considers the formation of the punitive doctrine of war in the writings of Christian authors of the III–IV centuries. He analyzes the logic of justifying the war that appeared in the thoughts of Ambrose of Milan and Augustine Aurelius. Both theologians indicated the necessity to punish sin as a key cause of war. Next, the process of secularization of the doctrine of just war in Modern times is considered. During this period, the legalist paradigm of war had been developed. The right of states to protect their sovereignty and territorial integrity became most relevant just cause of war. Then, the author notes appeal to the idea of protection of human rights as a basis for justifying war, typical for the modern just war theory. Also, the revival of interest to the idea of punishment is considered and the possible reasons for the reactualization of the punitive paradigm in the turn of the XX–XXI centuries are examined.

The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, Justice and the Politics of Life by Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni

Reviewed by: The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, Justice and the Politics of Life by Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni Nick Mdika Tembo (bio) The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, Justice and the Politics of Life Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni Berghahn Books, 2016, 186 pp. ISBN 978-1785331183, $150 hardcover, $24.95 paperback. Using decolonial philosopher Nelson Maldonaldo-Torres's conception of the "third humanist revolution," and the fundamental principles of decolonial humanism and pluriversalism, Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni's The Decolonial Mandela: Peace, Justice and the Politics of Life proposes the "Mandela phenomenon" as an Afrocentric episteme that could help reposition Africa in the world. The author avers that since time immemorial blacks have been pushed by the consequences of imperial reason—imperialism, colonialism, apartheid, neocolonialism and underdevelopment (xv)—to inhabit what Frantz Fanon calls the "zone of non-being." Imperial reasoning is a constitutive part of what Ramón Grosfoguel once described as the myth of modernity, a self-generated and insulated Eurocentric modernity, "which develops on its own without depending on any one else on earth" (89). Grosfoguel reinforces his argument by stating that imperial reasoning is solipsistic in nature: Without solipsism, there can be no myth of a subject with universal rationality that confirms itself as such. We see here the beginning of the ego-politics of knowledge [. . .], which is nothing less than a secularization of the Christian cosmology of the theo-politics of knowledge. In the ego-politics of knowledge, the subject of enunciation is erased, hidden, camouflaged by what Santiago Castro-Gómez has called zero-point philosophy. (89) Understood from a critical decolonial perspective, the myth of modernity is the nerve center of Cartesian logic, an ego-politics of knowledge in which the nonwhite/black seems to have, according to Ndlovu-Gatsheni, "endured the consequences of being a racialized and dehumanized subject as well as being written out of the human ocumene and being reduced to dispensability" (12). [End Page 426] From its emergence, decolonial humanism quickly registered on the radar of critical theorizations of Blackness, Africanness, and Black solidarities, and Ndlovu-Gatsheni's monograph is only the latest in a long list of Afrocentric "initiatives and ideological/intellectual/political creations [such] as Garveyism, Ethiopianism, Négritude, African Personality, Conscienscism, Pan-Africanism, African Socialism, and Black Consciousness Movement (BCM), right up to the revived African Renaissance, [that] were produced within the context and course of African decolonial humanist struggle" (13–14). This critical thinking is from the Global South in general and Africa in particular, led by thinkers whose societies have experienced what Enrique Dussel calls "the underside of modernity." Ndlovu-Gatsheni's narrative is in harmony with decolonial perspectives in several respects. Central in The Decolonial Mandela is what Catherine Walsh calls decoloniality's ability "to make visible, open up, and advance radically distinct perspectives and positionalities that displace Western rationality as the only framework and possibility of existence, analysis, and thought" (17). Ndlovu-Gatsheni advances radically distinct perspectives and positionalities through his proposition of an analytical standpoint and coordinates that can galvanize an African decolonial body of thought, called the "Mandela phenomenon," which, in essence, is a "new reading of Mandela's political life and legacy informed by a critical decolonial ethics of liberation" (xvi). In Ndlovu-Gatsheni's view, this critical decolonial ethics of liberation, privileges [the] paradigm of peace, humanism, and racial harmony as opposed to the imperial/colonial/apartheid paradigm of war and racial hatred. At the core of critical decolonial ethics of liberation is the unmasking of an imperial/colonial/ apartheid system that was driven by the logic of racial profiling, and the classification and hierarchization of human beings. It resulted in the denial of the humanity of black people and enabled enslavement, conquest, colonization, dispossession, exploitation, and notions of impossibility of co-presence of human races. (xvi) Ndlovu-Gatsheni asserts that the "Mandela phenomenon" is "an authentically African invention and achievement that emerged and crystallised in the course of the anti-imperial, anti-colonial, anti-apartheid and anti-global coloniality struggles" (2; emphasis added). I revisit this assertion shortly. My point for now is to show that the author regards Mandela as an exceptional personality fit for scholarly discourse, and that therefore his book...

Balance Problems: Neoliberalism and New Music in the American University and Ensemble

Between 2013 and 2015, the ensemble yMusic collaborated with graduate student composers in a residency at Duke University. This article positions the residency as a result of the transformation of the university and the new-music ensemble from a technocratic Cold War paradigm to their contemporary status under the market- and branding-oriented logics of neoliberalism. The works written for yMusic by the Duke composers were deeply informed by the ensemble's musical brand, including its idiosyncratic instrumentation, preexisting repertory, collaborative ethos, and relationship to popular music. In accounting for the impact of these institutional developments on the production of musical works, this article argues that the economic and ideological practices of neoliberalism have discernible aesthetic consequences for American new music. Given the key role of the ensemble and the university in the contemporary music landscape, the issues raised by my ethnographic and historical analysis have significant implications for new music in the twenty-first century, and for the way composers work in the United States and beyond.

Academic spin doctoring: The incommensurability debate as a scholarly war fantasy

This commentary to Shaw and Nowicki (2018) proposes that academic paradigms are ‘dialogical’ discourses that both compete and collaborate in order to sustain their identities. They are all based on different underlying assumptions and are carried by different symbols, tropes and narratives. Each version of the truth cultivates an identity that principally depends upon it not being its alternative. As a result, each paradigm depends upon the continued existence of its opposite. In this sense, therefore, the paradigm wars were a concocted dispute over invented territories and contrived opponents. The contribution of the paper for those seeking paradigmatic peace is to emphasise that just as the war was a concocted 'simulacrum', any peace must also be designed as fantasies accomplished through language games.

Evaluation for an Open Society: Then and Now


 
 
 
 Background: Karl Popper’s views about science and political economy remain relevant to evaluation theory and practice. His Open Society opus inspired pioneering contributions to experimental evaluation and shaped the evaluation discipline. Yet, his ideas are not widely known without the evaluation community even though populist leaders are once again threatening to undermine democracy.
 
 Purpose: To define the Open Society, probe its epistemological tenets, confirm that they remain valid as the foundation of evaluation practice, identify the ways in which the operating environment for evaluation has changed and, against this background, propose a policy change agenda relevant to the contemporary evaluation discipline.
 
 Setting: The Open Society is once again being undermined. Modern authoritarianism is tightening its grip. The lure of the strong man is once again gaining traction. The dominance of an international order grounded in democracy, human rights, and the rule of law is giving way to a world in which leaders are pursuing narrow nationalist and vested interests. In this troubled context, policy making has become more complex than when evaluation emerged out of the ashes of World War II. Economic and social dysfunctions have led to extraordinary concentration of wealth and privilege. Ominous environmental threats loom. The architecture of international relations designed in the mid-1940’s has become obsolete.
 
 Research Design: To design this commentary about the prospects of the evaluation discipline, the author drew on his personal experience as evaluation academic, international development practitioner, manager of the World Bank’s Independent Evaluation Group for two consecutive five-year terms and senior independent evaluation adviser to governments and international development agencies.
 
 
 
 Intervention: As an intervention, this article adds value to evaluation theory and practice by showing why and how the Popper/Campbell mandate for evaluation needs to be upgraded to protect the public interest in a new operating environment. Specifically, Popper’s piecemeal social experimentation concept should be refined to forge links between small scale experiments and the broader fabric of society. In addition, the ambiguity regarding the relationship between the Open Society and evaluation should be lifted through a reconsideration of the democratic evaluation model.
 
 Data Collection and Analysis: The author conducted an extensive review of the literature and consulted with a wide range of evaluation thinkers to examine the extent to which Popper’s philosophy remains relevant to the evaluation discipline.
 
 Findings: Popper’s Open Society ideas aimed at avoiding the rise and perpetuation of autocracy and remain highly relevant. But the current threats to democracy call for a more ambitious and detailed remit for the evaluation occupation. Beyond the promotion of evaluation in democracy and of democracy in evaluation, evaluation for democracy should be pursued. This implies putting value, ethics, and the public interest at the very center of the evaluation occupation; breaking free of Popper’s parsimonious piecemeal social engineering concept to inform systemic social reform; bringing peace to a methodologically divided house; systematic mixing of evaluation methods and models; and the promotion of evaluation independence through professionalization.
 
 
 
 
 
 Keywords: democracy; experimentation; falsification; paradigm wars; piecemeal social engineering.
 
 
 
 

Instrumentalizing the recent past? The new Cold War narrative in Russian public space after 2014

ABSTRACTThere has been much debate about whether the US and Russia are locked in a new Cold War, but much less attention as to how the term is used in Russian political discourse. Through a close analysis of public statements, I analyze how the Cold War narrative has been used in the Russian public space since 2014, and assess how the “resuscitation” of the Cold War paradigm has been used by Moscow’s political elites, in order to discuss its impact on foreign policy. I document a distinct shift in Russian policymakers’ use of the term in 2016 and trace this shift to domestic political considerations.

The paradigm of war in the 20th century

This article analyzes the evolution of the concept of war in the 20th century from different views. The analysis explores the aspects that have characterized war and the different perceptions it has aroused in the last century, as the changes in these perceptions have, in turn, generated an alteration in the instrumental use of the war conflict. Ultimately, the study seeks to analyze the extent to which war is an instrument of change in societies to the beginning of the 21st century, especially in the fields of psychological perception, state forms, the structure of societies, and international relationships.

How Policy Fields Are Born: The Rise of Democratic Security in Argentina

AbstractThis essay maps the transformation of security from a symbol of authoritarian government under the Cold War paradigm of National Security into a public good and a policy field acknowledged as legitimate and democratic by politicians and policy experts. Using present-day Argentina as an example, we show how security ideas gain dominance across the political spectrum, displacing and subordinating democratic politics conceived in terms of rights. As institutions increasingly accept security measures and pre-emptive risk management, a securitising discourse – despite its claims to advocate for the ‘citizen’ – trumps governance and the rule of law. Appealing to citizens’ concerns and rights, the new forms of securitisation may yet undermine democratic life.