2021 Volume 88 Issue 2 Pages 247-258
The interdisciplinarity of educational research has drawn more attention with the rise of a sense of its identity crisis. In response to this identity crisis, some educational researchers have sought to realize collaboration with other researchers. However, the interdisciplinarity of educational research requires educational researchers to provide more distinct explanations about the performative role they can provide to our society. In order to obtain a performative view of educational research, this paper focuses on R. J. Bernstein's engaged fallibilistic pluralism, which is proposed to explain the role of philosophy in democratic society. It enables us to see philosophy as one of the practices which holds responsibility and functional power for democratic society by inheriting the legitimacy of American classical pragmatism.
Bernstein rejects the ideology of logical positivism and annalistic philosophy, which despise pragmatism and consider themselves the sole discipline of correct philosophy. These schools, brought to America by refugee philosophers in the 1930s and 1940s, were proud of their strict analytic approach and their uninterest in public problems. Because of the rejection of this ideology, engaged fallibilistic pluralism requires philosophers to possess democratic ēthos and a practical role.
The democratic ēthos in engaged fallibilistic pluralism is oriented toward listening to others without denying or suppressing the otherness of the other. This democratic ēthos consists of the following 6 themes: 1. anti-foundationalism, 2. fallibilism, 3. nurture of the critical community of inquirers, 4. pluralism and contingency, 5. the agent's perspective and the continuity of theory and practice, and 6. democracy as a way of life. Although these themes reflect the orientation of major pragmatists, Bernstein relies considerably on Dewey. When we rethink these themes through Bernstein's interpretation of Dewey, we find that the first five themes are regulative principles for the sixth. In democracy as a way of life as seen by Dewey, democracy is maintained by the human freedom which is realized in a widening spiral of action and intelligence. Engaged fallibilistic pluralism represents the intelligence of philosophers engaged in the creation of democracy. And in this widening spiral, philosophers' action is performed as the criticism of criticisms, which is the practical role of philosophers.
The above discussion of engaged fallibilistic pluralism is connected to educational research by being reconstructed by Dewey's view of philosophy as a general theory of education. Educational research is a component of the widening spiral, and at the same time has a unique perspective that reflexively criticizes the movement as a process of cultivating intelligence. As a result, this paper concludes that educational research can and should undertake the democratic ēthos and a practical role in engaged fallibilistic pluralism as its responsibility and functional power. This performative view enables us to see the generation of educational research in controversies on educational problems with other researchers and creates the performative role of enhancing democratic ēthos.
