Redefining the Fundamental Questions

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Notes

¹ I remember my professor at Vanderbilt, Yvonna S. Lincoln, telling of how she was attacked, marginalized, and devalued because she argued for a naturalistic approach to research in the field of education. [Another term used for this approach to research is post positivist.]

² Dr. Mai Anh Tran's dissertation research among Vietnamese-American women advances theories of identity formation. Only Dr. Tran could do that particular project because of the language and cultural skills required. Religious educators need to continue to recruit diverse scholars and send them into the field, learning from them.

³ Naturalistic research owes much to feminist epistemology and its contention that knowledge comes through relationship and connectedness.

⁴ The extension of this conviction is the new category, autoethnography, in which the life and experiences of the researcher become data for analysis. For instance, Jane Tompkins' delightful narrative of her years as a student and teacher, A Life in School: What the Teacher Learned (1996: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Inc.), yields rich insights about American educational systems.

⁵ The field of congregational studies, which is closely related to religious education, must make theology more central in its work also.