This short monograph builds on and expands arguments made in Chapters 9 & 10 of the author`s book, Conflicting Paradigms in Adult Literacy Education: In Quest of a U.S. Democratic Politics of Literacy. 2004 Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
https://www.erlbaum.com/shop/tek9.asp?pg=products&specific=0-8058-4624-7

Postpositivist Scientific Philosophy: Mediating Convergences
George Demetrion
October 2004
gdemetrion@msn.com

Chapter One Introduction: A Postpositivist Option

Abstract

Insights from Dewey, Popper, and Rescher suggest a broad-based postpositivist philosophy mediating critical space between positivism and constructivism based upon the quest for truth as a regulative ideal within a fallibilistic scientific epistemology. A critical issue in adult literacy education illustrates the viability of postpositivist research design as applicable especially to the social sciences. The object here is less to draw out the subtle distinctions and potential points of conflict between Dewey, Popper, and Rescher, than to highlight some of the ways in which the collective impact of their work contributes toward the shaping of a postpositivist temper.

When a man desires ardently to know the truth, his first effort will be to imagine what the truth can be. He cannot prosecute his pursuit long without finding that imagination unbridled is sure to carry him off track. Yet, nevertheless, it remains true that there is, after all, nothing but imagination that can ever supply him an inkling of truth (Peirce, 1955, p. 43).

If scientific knowledge enables us to estimate more accurately the worth of things as signs, we can afford to exchange a loss of theoretical certitude for a gain in practical judgment. For if we can judge events for indications of other events, we can prepare in all cases for the coming of what is anticipated. In some cases, we can forestall a happening; desiring one event to happen rather than another, we can intentionally set about institution of those changes which our best knowledge tells us to be connected with that which we are after (Dewey, 1929/1988, p. 170).

The quest for a scientific grounding for social science research has been a pervasive theme of 20^th century scholarship. While the search for an exacting methodology has marked the century`s efforts in the positivist mode, critical approaches based on other forms of constructing knowledge have also been perennial (Polkinghorne, 1983). This is certainly the case in educational research as reflected in the current Bush administration focus on "scientific (or "evidence") based educational research" with its penchant for experimental design, consequently, random sampling, as the "gold standard" in the "hierarchy of methods" (Comings, Beder, Bingman, Reder, and Smith, 2003, p. 5). On the scale laid out in Establishing an Evidence-Based Adult Education System, quasi-experimental research comes next. Case study analysis is viewed as the least desirable methodology as it typically "employ(s) only a treatment group and assume(s) that differences among participants are not important or are obvious, since the sample is usually small" (p. 5). Consequently, there is little basis to establish generalized findings that apply from one given situation to another.