教育科学的追求: 教育研究工作者的百年朝圣之旅

In Pursuit of the Science of Education:A Retrospection of a Century-long Pilgrimage of Educational Researchers

2000年以来,无论在中国抑或美国,教育界对教育学的科学基础及教育研究的效能均提出热烈的讨论以至争议。本文尝试把有关讨论与争议置于“比较—历史”视域加以检视,透过对英美两个教育体系历史发展经验的梳理,勾勒自十九世纪末英美两国的教育学者在奠定教育学的学科地位、建构教育科学的基础以及确立教育研究的效能等方面所作的努力。在横跨一个多世纪的学术历程中,英美学者曾对多种教育议题进行深入的探究,提出不同的理念、理论和范式,亦参与了种种学理争议以至范式战争。通过对有关议题及相关讨论的叙事整理,本文对英美学者这一百年“朝圣之旅”综合出一个概念—分析的框架,以期协助我国教育研究工作者对自身的学科有进一步的理解。

Educational researchers in both the United States and China's Mainland have been engaging in heated disputes among themselves on the legitimacy of the scientific foundation of educational studies and the efficacy of educational research since the turn of the century.In this paper,these disputes and discourses will be examined in a comparative-historical perspective.The trajectories of the development of educational studies in two educational systems will be selected and examined as typical cases.They are those of the United States and United Kingdom.The paper will examine efforts invested by generations of scholars in the two countries since the end of the ninetieth century in laying the foundations of the discipline of educational studies,in constructing the legitimate bases of the science of education,and in building the social creditability of the research enterprise of educational studies.Along this pilgrimage of reaching the status of a full-fledged academic discipline,scholars in these two countries have labored themselves in researching a variety of issues,in formulating different concepts,theories and paradigms,and in participating in heated intellectual debates or even paradigm wars.This paper attempts,in conclusion,to synthesize from the narration of these century-long discourses a conceptual-analytical framework,which may hopefully help our fellow researchers in China in apprehending the subject-matter of our own discipline.