Lather wrote this article in an attempt to understand the US government push for “evidence-based” scientific research in education. In this move, “the reductionisms of positivism, empiricism, and objectivism are assumed” (p. 16).
The author sees the return to the mandate of scientific research to be a reaction to the growth of alternative research methods and their use by women and political and cultural minorities.
Lather explains that this is not the first time that scientific method as a solitary research path has been critiqued. She admits that she believed that there was a chance for policy to be shaped by non-traditional research.
Addressing this restricting connection between government policy and scientific research , Cochran-Smith (2002) wrote that in order to be financially supported “educational research must be evaluated “using experimental or quasi-experimental designs… with a preference for random-assignment experiments (Cochran-Smith , 2002, as cited in Lather, 2004, p. 18).
Lather reminds us that “The shift to qualitative methods in the 1970s was related to the difficulties of measuring what is educationally significant and th limits of causal models given the preponderance of interaction effects” (p. 20).
Which organizations are running after research money?
Which studies are encouraged and for what purposes?
Who pays for research grants and why?
Lather calls for educational researchers to refrain from following the natural sciences. She encourages researchers to ask complex questions, those that do not have single dimensional answers and in doing so, to “foster understanding, reflection, and action instead of a narrow translation of research into practice” (p. 23).
Lather sets out to disrupt the dominance of the white, male, academic voice in the production of educational knowledge.
Lather argues that although non-traditional research cannot be judged on “objectivity and systematicity” (p. 24), it is no less capable of valid knowledge production.
Lather optimistically remarks that “A rich production of counter-narratives is alive and kicking” (p. 26).
I believe I am part of this movement, making an effort to make other, more diverse voices heard in the production of educational knowledge.
Lather explains “… there is virtually no agreement … as to what constitutes science except, increasingly, the view that science is, like all human endeavor, a cultural practice and practice of culture” (p. 28).
Lather, P. (2004). This IS your father’s paradigm: Government intrusion and the case of qualitative research in education. Qualitative Inquiry,10(1), 15-34. doi:10:10.1177/1077800403256154