Is the National Research Council Committee’s Report on Scientific Research in Education Scientific? On Trusting the Manifesto

Abstract

The National Research Council Committee’s report, in part a response to congressional legislation, pursues an outline for the foundations of an education science necessary for policy making. This article focuses on these foundations and argues that they have little to do with science and its relation to policy may not be as fruitful as the committee believes. The so-called bedrocks of science are based on, at best, weak premises and an unrigorous understanding of the sociology, history, and philosophy of science. There is a nostalgia for a simple and ordered universe of science that never was. The resulting models of science embody a technological sublime that weaves together the procedures of administration and engineering with utopian visions and discourses of progress ordered by the expansion of its expertise. Finally, although the resulting framework was to relieve educational research of its “awful” reputation, the report may reinstitute and reinstantiate those very practices.