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Abstract
Debates in science seem to depend on referential language-games, but in other senses they do not. Language works in more complex ways, even in work that purports to be purely scientific. This article investigates the scope and limitations of language-games in educational history and theory. The study addresses concepts and pictures as examples of how language can work in theoretical, philosophical and historiographical interpretation. Attention is drawn to the legacy of Wittgensteinian insights, which highlights the “pictorial form”; thus the article deals with the problems that occur when our “picturing” of reality is forgotten, which led to the particular turn educational research has taken nowadays. This forgetting distracts the attention from the kind of research that is required to do justice to the educational field. From his stance, it is argued that though some kind of correspondence theory will always be part of the objectivity to which educational research aspires, there is no need to limit such a theory to a naive form of it. Instead, a broadened notion of correspondence theory can be offered where the various levels and language-games that are involved can be taken into account.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 M. Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. S. Smith (New York: Pantheon, 1972).
2 We too will use more often than not “truth” and “true” in this article to indicate Wittgenstein’s meaning of particular “states of affairs”.
3 S. Van Petegem, W. Beyers, M. Vansteenkiste and B. Soenens, “On the Association between Adolescent Autonomy and Psychosocial Functioning: Examining Decisional Independence from a Self-Determination Theory Perspective,” Developmental Psychology 48 (2012): 76–88.
4 The following is a summary of the different steps in the analysis of the data. An integrated measure was developed to assess both aspects of adolescent autonomy. Participants first completed a variation of the family decision making scale (FDMS; Dornbusch et al., 1985), where they answered the question “Who decides [horizontal ellipsis]” on the following 5-point scale: 1 (My parents alone), 2 (My parents, after talking to me), 3 (My parents and I together), 4 (I, after talking to my parents), and 5 (I alone). The scale consisted of 20 issues that typically came from five social domains (Smetana et al., 2004; Smetana and Daddis, 2002), that is, the personal domain (e.g. what clothes to wear), the friendship domain (e.g. whether you can hang out with friends your parents do not like), the prudential domain (e.g. whether you smoke cigarettes or not), the conventional domain (e.g. how you talk to your parents), and the moral domain (e.g. whether you can hit others). In a next step, they measured the motives for independent decision-making. The questionnaire comprised 18 items, derived from the Self-Regulation Questionnaire (SRQ; Ryan and Connell, 1989). Formulation of the items was based on versions from related domains and reflected identified motives (e.g. “because this is personally important to me”), introjected motives (e.g. “because I would feel bad if I didn’t”), and external motives (e.g. “because I am forced by others”). Respondents indicated their agreement on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (completely untrue) to 5 (completely true). A similar procedure was used to assess the motives for dependent decision. Participants completed two scales tapping into their subjective well-being. The global self-worth subscale of the Self-Perception Profile for Adolescents (SPPA; Harter, 1988); next, they measured depressive symptoms, using a six-item version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D; Radloff, 1977). Concerning problem behaviour participants completed a shortened version of the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT; Saunders, Aasland, Babor, Delafuente and Grant, 1993) to indicate the level of alcohol abuse; the Deviant Behavior Scale (DBS; Weinmann, 1992) was used to assess rule-breaking behaviour. Finally, they measured the quality of intimate functioning in the relationship with one’s best friend or romantic partner, using a shortened version of the Intimate Friendship Scale (IFS; Sharabany, 1994). For further details (including the publications Van Petegem et al. refer to) see Van Petegem et al., “On the Association between Adolescent Autonomy and Psychosocial Functioning”.
5 They report that, in the final model, the predictor variables explained 24% of the variance in well-being, 43% of the variance in problem behaviour, and 23% of the variance in intimacy (see Van Petegem et al., “On the Association between Adolescent Autonomy and Psychosocial Functioning,” 83).
6 Van Petegem et al., “On the Association between Adolescent Autonomy and Psychosocial Functioning,” 85. For references to publications that are part of the quotation see the article by S. Van Petegem et al. They are included here to do justice to the study that is discussed.
7 G. Bosmans, C. Braet, W. Beyers, K. Van Leeuwena and L. Van Vlierberghe, “Parents’ Power Assertive Discipline and Internalizing Problems in Adolescents: The Role of Attachment,” Parenting: Science and Practice 11 (2011): 34–55.
8 Ibid., 37.
9 Ibid., 39.
10 Power assertive discipline was assessed using the Ghent Parental Behaviour Scale. Two punishment scales of the GPBS are combined: harsh punishment (for example slapping one’s child) and disciplining (for example taking away something fun or not letting him/her watch TV). For “internalizing problems” the Youth Self-Report questionnaire is administered (internalising problems syndrome scales withdrawn/depressed, somatic complaints, and anxious/depressed subscales); for “attachment” a short version of the Inventory of Parent and Peer Attachment IPPA) was used (attachment was conceptualised as the quality of the relationship with mother and father; three subscales: “trust”, “communication” – for example “I tell my mother about my problems and troubles”, and “alienation” – for example “My mother doesn’t understand what I am going through these days”). For further details see Bosmans et al., “Parents’ power assertive discipline and internalizing problems in adolescents.”
11 Bosmans et al., “Parents’ power assertive discipline and internalizing problems in adolescents,” 48.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., 50.
14 Ibid, 50.
15 There is a further development, i.e. post-positivism, which too embraces ontological realism, the possibility and desirability of objective truth, and the use of experimental methodology. In this amended version of positivism it is held that reality can only be known imperfectly and probabilistically (taking into account among other things that theories, background, knowledge and values of the researcher can influence what is observed). For post-positivists human knowledge is based not on unchallengeable, rock-solid foundations, but rather upon human conjectures that are justified by a set of warrants which can be modified or withdrawn in the light of further investigations. Though this stance deals successfully with a number of criticisms of various versions of positivism, it remains a meta-theoretical position that cannot do justice to what according to many is at the heart of social sciences, i.e. the interpretation of human experience and the particularly human reality that is addressed here (including what is offered for example in disciplines such as history, philosophy, etc.)
16 There is also another tendency: educational science mimics sciences more in particular psychology to lift its scientific prestige.
17 L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, trans. D. F. Pears and B. F. McGuinness (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1921) (originally published in German 1921; first English edition with a translation 1922; the text we use is a revision of the 1961 translation).
18 L. Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations/Philosophische Untersuchungen, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1953).
19 References to Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and to the Philosophical Investigations are given by numbers (which refer to one or more sentences numbered by the author himself). In the case of the Philosophical Investigations these are preceded by #.
20 First of all the Tractatus addresses referential meaning (“what is the case”). It seeks “clarity” in limiting the propositional form to “what can be said” meaningfully. It does not embrace the shift to “meaning as use” characteristic of the later work, which may lack face validity for educational researchers of the dominant paradigm or even engender reproaches of relativism.
21 Both examples use concepts, are judgements of a particular situation and invoke therefore a particular normative stance.
22 See also 3.262 “What signs fail to express, their application shows. What signs slur over, their application says clearly.” We are grateful to Jean Paul Van Bendegem who has drawn our attention to this.
23 For a discussion of the former see K. Coessens and J. P. Van Bendegem, “Expectations of what Scientific Research could (not) do,” in Educational Research: Why “What Works” Doesn’t Work, ed. P. Smeyers and M. Depaepe (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 109–25. For a discussion of the latter see P. Winch, The Idea of a Social Science (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), 55–57.
24 It goes without saying that the intelligibility that is sought will not be exclusively in terms of causality or may even not be about causality at all.
25 An interesting case is the so-called Higgs boson particle, the existence of which scientists now believe they have found evidence of.
26 Incidentally, the concept “perspective” may suggest that one can take a distance from what one observes and/or that one can decide to take only a particular perspective. Both of these tendencies should be resisted: the first is clearly impossible; the second can only momentarily be the case in view of a particular purpose. It is rather that one always finds oneself in one or other perspective which foregrounds itself.
27 Of course, it may never be completely or totally possible to diverge oneself from one or other kind of correspondence theory of truth. Once one accepts, however, that there is theoretical knowledge one needs to realise that more is at stake which can no longer be captured by a correspondence theory of truth, and from this it follows that more and different kinds of “what it makes sense to say” have to be “admitted”. Such broadening can build on a thin conception of meaning (may even always necessarily build at least partly on this, for example on referential meaning, a language-game that one can hardly avoid to play), but offers richer perspectives which are, we believe, no less rational.
28 Peter Winch, The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1958).
29 L. Wittgenstein, On Certainty/Über Gewissheit, ed. G. E. M. Anscombe and G. H. Von Wright, trans. D. Paul and G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), # 559.