Commentary on chapter 4[2]

The central thesis of this chapter is that all doctoral programs in education should be built around research. Thus, the goal of every doctoral program in education should be "to produce students who are able and willing to think like a researcher." Of importance in this chapter is the conception of research not only as a way of thinking and as a body of knowledge, but as an activity: "Research is what researchers do, including the methods, procedures, and techniques they use to design and conduct their studies. Researchers ask questions, formulate hypotheses, test hypotheses, manipulate treatment conditions, make observations and measurements, analyze data, and write reports." This view of placing research and the training for it as the central pillar of doctoral training in education is shared by most, but not all, authors of the chapters included in this volume. The basic assumption is that learning to become a researcher develops such qualities as scepticism, learning to live with uncertainties, learning to integrate observations and pieces of evidence, learning to formulate questions and give them priority over tentative answers, and learning to think in disciplined ways. They learn to engage in "disciplined inquiry," and perhaps most importantly learn to look for generalizable relations and patterns, rather than ad hoc local answers. But does this approach take into consideration that not all those engaged in graduate studies in education are likely to end up as academic researchers? Many are more likely to become leading administrators, curriculum and material designers, supervisors and school principals. Is the training for research going to serve them well or are other programs going to be more useful to them? Does one size fit all equally well? Professor Anderson's answer to such questions is a strong, "Yes." He endorses the view that skills-based doctoral programs for working educators (teachers and administrators) should be downgraded to masters' programs, "something like a Master of Business Administration." By making this suggestion, Professor Anderson, in fact, downgrades the status of more applied scholarship in education to lesser status.