The Lure of Statistics for Educational Researchers

Abstract

See, stats, and : https : / / www . researchgate . net / publication / 226205657 The Researchers Chapter DOI : 10 . 1007 / 978 - 90 - 481 - 9873 - 3_2 CITATIONS 6 READS 38 1 : Some : A : The David Stanford 58 , 279 SEE All . The . All - text and , letting . Abstract . In this essay David Labaree explores the historical and sociological elements that have made educational researchers dependent on statistics . He shows that educational research as a domain , with its focus on a radically soft and thoroughly applied form of knowledge and with its low academic standing , fits the pattern in which weak professions have been most likely to adopt quantification . One problem with educational researchers ' seduction by the quantitative turn is that it deflects attention away from many of the most important issues in the field , which are not easily reduced to standardized quanta . Another is that by adopting this rationalized , quantified , abstracted , statist , and reductionist vision of education , educational policymakers risk imposing reforms that will destroy the local practical knowledge that makes the ecology of the classroom function effectively . Quantification , Labaree suggests , may be useful for the professional interests of educational researchers , but it can be devastating for school and society . Philosophy is written in this grand book , the universe , which stands continually open to our gaze , but the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed . It is written in the language of mathematics , and its characters are triangles , circles , and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it ; without these , one wanders about in a dark labyrinth . — Galileo