Education as a hermeneutical science and its Implications for curriculum research and practice

Abstract

The problems faced by educationists researching into the school situation - the behaviour of children. the teachers, the problems of learning and teaching and the design of curriculum that is maximally effective and so forth is enormous. Basic to all these efforts is the understanding of human behavior and how to change it, if possible and change it economically and speedily. Many research paradigms have been brought into service - ranging from the strictly scientific behavioristic , neo- behavioristic, the experimental . cognitive approaches stimulated by computer models and the somewhat less rigorous methods of game simulations, action research, case-studies, anthropological ethnographic investigations and so forth. All these research methodologies claim to be scientific though in varying but related senses and contrast with the methodologies available in the study of art, literature and so forth. The social sciences are not scientistic like the physical sciences nor appreciative like poetics, art Criticism, literary and historical studies. They have their own peculiarities which I think has not been brought out clearly by the bulk of methodologies that have been forged for the study of man. When we move from the angle of the vigorous methodologies of the physical sciences to the study of man (or child) we condemn him to a machine; when we move from the appreciative disciplines of the arts, they seem to lack the scientific temper. I shall suggest in this paper a more universal concept of science - the hermeneutic science which allows the study of man as man in a nonexperimental manner without ceasing to be however scientific at the same time. Karl R. Popper who has very vigorously championed for the case of scientistics in the modem world and who has articulated his views through numerous publications, is critical even of recent developments in hermeneutics. He postulates a World 3 in addition to World 1 and World 2, where the World 1 consists of the physical elements, World 2 the psychological elements and World 3 the Wor1d of ideas, arguments, plans, theories and so forth. He claims that the activity of understanding consists essentially operating with the third-wor1d objects and is essentially done by problem solving maneuvers. He gives the following schema as a general way of understanding what scientistic approach is: Schema A: Pl ----> TT----> EE----> P 20 This is an evolutionary model of scientific thinking and its development. First of all P1 is the problem that we start an investigation with and TT is the'Tentative theory, - the imaginary,conjectural hypothetic solution that is proposed.EE (Error Elimination) consists of a severe critical examination of our tentative theories with the use of data, documents, statistical analysiS, testing varying altematives and so forth . And as a result of such crtical reflections, we have a new understanding of the problem i.e.P 2 and the cycle repeats now. The important point in Popper's view of what science is , emerges in the emphasize he gives to the notion of refutation or criticism. A Conjecture must allow for refutation for it to be a scientific kind of conjecture. In this view understanding a certain issue is akin to solving a problem and it is simultaneously evolutionary for having solved a problem, there energes now another problem possibly more complex and deeper than the initial. Thus scientistic understanding grows like a tree, developing many branches, subbranches and so forth in an endless manner.(Popper 1972, PP.153-190).