Rather than a fixed set of rules and objective standards that are impossible to develop and apply in any case, this combined approach would presently a consciously subjective view of education in specific instances, with certain knowingly constructed variable examined and described particularly in their relationships to each other as elements of social phenomena. That is, the subjective nature of education itself is more open to examination by modes of inquiry that are aware of their own subjectivity, as the standards of objectivity that are held as paramount in traditional science are simply inapplicable and wholly inadequate to an examination of education.
Conclusion
Natural and real experiments depend upon the existence of a rigid framework of previously agreed upon realities and truths, for which further casual relationships can be inferred. Not only does the lack of theoretical agreement in the study of education preclude the use of these experimental methodologies due to the non-existence of these realities and truths but the act of education itself is so highly subjective that it will...
Other research philosophies are necessary to lead to any effective understanding of education and the factors that influence it.
References
Mjoset, L. The contexualist Approach to
Social Science Methodology. In Byrne (2009) (Ed) the SAGE Handbook of Case-Based Methods. London: Sage.
Hacking, I (1983) Representing and intervening: Introductory topics in the
philosophy of natural science. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press
Hacking, I. (2000). The
social construction of what? Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press.
Shadish, Cook, and Cambell. 2002. Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Generalized Causal Inference. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company.
