Chapter 36
On the Role of Philosophical Work
in Research in Teacher Education
David Bridges, Alis Oancea and Janet Orchard
36.1 Introduction
We work, as many scholars and international research associations do, including the
American Educational Research Association and the European Educational
Research Association, with an inclusive definition of research which we share with
the editors of this International Companion. In 1969 two philosophers, Richard
Peters and John White,first defined research in this way, as‘systematic and sus-
tained inquiry’(Peters and White 1969 ). This is better known today in its slightly
expanded form, attributable to Lawrence Stenhouse ( 1975 ), as‘systematic and
sustained inquiry made public’.
On this view educational research is not limited to empirical inquiry, still less a
particular form of empirical inquiry which may be put forward as a‘gold standard’.
There is an important role for empirical evidence in teacher education: to help
understand how things are and what has been; to fathom the consequences of
different educational practices and interventions in the past. However, such evi-
dence never provides asufficientbasis for policy formation. History, discourse
analysis and deconstruction, socio-cultural theory, feminist sociology,
psycho-analytic theory, all have a part to play too—and so does philosophy, for
teacher education, at the level of policy, practice, or research, is‘based’in, or given
direction by, values, whether it concerns its aims, aspirations, goals or, more
D. Bridges (&)
University of East Anglia, England, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Oancea
University of Oxford, England, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
J. Orchard
University of Bristol, England, UK
e-mail: [email protected]
©Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2017
M.A. Peters et al. (eds.),A Companion to Research in Teacher Education,
DOI 10.1007/978-981-10-4075-7_36
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