Chapter 9: The Calling Forth of Practitioner–Researchers to Education

The stories in this collection describe the experiential impact innovative doctoral programs in the field of education have had on burgeoning researchers. The locales, methodologies, program philosophies, required assignments, etc., vary among the students. The authors of these book chapters were students pursuing professional doctorates and the instructors in their professional doctoral programs. In all cases, the authors were individuals trying to learn about their specific educational setting in a way that was rigorous and in a way that would be helpful and potentially transferable to others. A common theme, however, is that educational institutions at all levels are complex, dynamic entities, and to conduct research in them belies any positivistic, objective positions and claims. To attempt to capture many or all of the various contingencies or variables within schools would be futile, producing dubious results and conclusions. Educational researchers, indeed, conduct research in conditions that many scientists find “intolerable” as Berliner states. Some strict researchers from the postpositivistic paradigm may consider the narratives in this book closely akin to fictions rather than recounts of research experiences. However, as Berliner (2002) elucidates, researchers in education often mistake the “methods of science with the goals of science” (p. 18). Berliner’s admiration for Richard Feynman’s (1999) definition of “science” as “the belief in the ignorance of authority” (p. 187) stands germane in light of the chapters in this book. Stance of objectivity and non-bias are absent from the experiences of these students; however, what is quite apparent is the willingness to risk being ignorant of taken-for-granted and commonsensical places, arrangements, and expertise.