Educational Research - the Ethics and Aesthetics of Statistics

6 n = 1: The Science and Art of the Single Case in Educational Research 91
Naturalistic generalisations develop within a person as a result of experience. They form
from the tacit knowledge of how things are, why they are, how people feel about them, and
how these things are likely to be later or in other places with which this person is familiar.
They seldom take the form of predictions but lead regularly to expectations. They guide
action. (Stake, 1980, p. 69, my italics)
In short, then what we have so far is a picture of the way in which the single
case serves to extend, enrich and inform personal experience and understanding,
much of this at a tacit level. This is a very grounded, concrete understanding packed
with detailed description and personal accounts of what it is like to be there “where
the action is”. It is in this sense perhaps the kind of understanding that Aristotle
identifies as phronesis or “practical wisdom”. Being thus grounded it positions the
actor to anticipate (if not confidently to predict) what might happen if..., what to
look out for, even if this always comes with the ultimate requirement to test out
such anticipation in the particular circumstances of their own setting. Can any form
of educational research really offer more than this to the practitioner, or even the
policy-maker?
Fourth, what is clearly acknowledged here (cf. the reference to the Piagetian
notion of assimilation above) is that neither practitioner nor policy-maker is an educationally
empty vessel. Both come to any research report with a huge load of mental
and emotional baggage drawn from past experience (personal and professional),
past reading or encounters with research and past reflection. Further, as Stake has
reminded us, much of this is buried in their tacit understanding of the world. Any
contribution that research makes to their understanding will only be a small part
of the total, and its significance will be hugely influenced by what is already there
and by their current felt needs. Thus any research results (randomised controlled
experiments included) will be interpreted by the reader in ways which reflect their
pre-existing understanding and preoccupations.
Even in factual terms every research report is open to multiple, more or less reasonable,
interpretations and usually is interpreted in different ways by different people. It is not
necessary to go to Derridean extremes about the “dissemination” of meaning to recognise
that there is a sense in which readers construct the meaning of any research report and may
do so in diverse ways. (Hammersley, 2002, p. 46)
This is another way of reminding ourselves that receiving research (of any kind)
is a kind of learning and is subject to all that we know about the individual’s construction
of that learning. We need perhaps not so much a theory of generalisability
as a theory of learning – which might be informed by Elliott and Lukes’ suggestion
that “The policy-maker’s grasp of actualities is not so much enhanced by the
straightforward application of general principles as by judgements that are tutored
by the comparative study of cases” (Elliott & Lukes, 2009, p. 89; Bridges & Watts,
2009). Hence – and importantly if we care about practitioners and policy-makers
taking our research seriously – “If the readers of our reports are the persons who
populate our houses, schools, governments and industries; and if we are to help
them understand social problems and social programs, we must perceive and communicate
in a way that accommodates to their present understandings” (Stake, 1980,
pp. 64–65).