Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

CHAPTER 13
Sandra Harding
FRANCES HELYAR
As should be obvious by examining the biographies of its leading theorists and practitioners for
over a hundred years, the discourse of educational psychology is white, male, and European. This
does not mean that in all that time, no one outside of the dominant discourse has had anything
to say, but only that those voices have not been heard. Instead, ed psych has developed into
one of the most monocultural and positivistic of all the sciences. The study of human beings
in school has been reduced to a narrow range of questions within a closely guarded discipline.
Differences have become deficiencies. Knowledges arising from indigenous cultures, women,
working classes, homosexuals, nonwhites, and the Southern Hemisphere, among others, have
not been permitted to impact research agendas. The research questions that are pursued tend to
value particular ways of knowing while other epistemologies are marginalized and labeled as folk
wisdom. The implications for marginalized groups is that their members become, by definition,
“abnormal” and are then shut out of opportunities and privileges accorded to those who fit the
definition of “normal.” Knowledges that are valued are called “the truth”; those determined to
be lacking value are “false.” It does not have to be this way, however. Since World War II and
more frequently since the 1970s, theorists have begun to identify the constructed nature of what is
considered objective and rational in science, and the constructed nature of science itself. They are
redefining “good” research methods and coming up with a new paradigm that allows previously
silenced voices to be heard. They acknowledge the importance of complexity in arriving at an
epistemology of ed psych that is useful and applicable to a broader range of populations than was
previously possible under the old paradigm.
Sandra Harding is at the forefront of this redefinition of science. Harding is a professor of Social
Sciences and Comparative Education at UCLA, and the director of the UCLA Center for the
Study of Women. She received her PhD in philosophy from New York University, and specializes
in feminist and postcolonial theory, epistemology, research methodology, and philosophy of
science. Her work, in particular the book Is Science Multicultural? Postcolonialisms, Feminisms
and Epistemologies (1998) offers a valuable example of a way to dismantle the assumptions
and conventions of positivist science, a process that can be applied, by extension, to educational
psychology. She examines the alterations in scientific method brought about by social change