on pragmatism

Epistemology’ refers to what we believe about how we come to know and understand the world. Educational researchers have invariably presented a dichotomy of positivist and interpretive / anti positivist epistemology (a very clear account is provided in Cohen et al, 2007). However this is not the only way of understanding epistemology. Rather an epistemological influence on action research has been that of pragmatism. Pragmatism has its intellectual roots in the work of USA philosophers and polymaths Pierce (1920), James (1904) and Dewey (1930) and has been reinterpreted more recently in the philosophical work of Rorty (1982). At its most basic a pragmatic approach is one which takes a practical orientation to a problem and finds a solution that works for a particular context; pragmatism generates solutions which are ‘fit for purpose’ and these solutions will be generated in ‘pragmatic ways’. Early pragmatists saw practice and theory as entwined: theory emerged from practice and could then be applied back to practice to create ‘intelligent practice’. This is sometimes referred to as an abductive approach, neither induction nor deduction, but a constant process of generating and testing hypotheses. The coming together of theory and practice is captured in the much cited aphorism among action researchers that ‘there is nothing as practical as a good theory’.

References

Dewey, J. (1930) The quest for certainty: A study of the relation of knowledge and action, London: George Allen & Unwin.

James, W. (1904) What is Pragmatism (1904), from series of eight lectures dedicated to the memory of John Stuart Mill, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, from William James, Writings 1902-1920, The Library of America; Filiquarian Publishing, LLC.

Peirce, C.S. (1992) The Essential Peirce (two volumes edited by the Peirce edition project), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992–1999.

Rorty, R. (1982) Consequences of pragmatism, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Cohen, L., Manion, L. and K. Morrison (2007) Research methods in education, Oxon: Routledge.