Merging the War Between Interpretivism and Empiricism? Rethinking Critical Inquiry Approaches to Teaching Comparative Education

• In Event: Teaching Comparative and International Education (CIE): Pedagogical Aspects of CIE and CIE Guiding Pedagogies

Abstract

This session aims to clarify and compare three most dominant theoretical perspectives and approaches to teaching comparative education, as well as to distinguish how critical inquiry play the role in combing and merging advantages of both empiricism and interpretivism in guiding comparative education research, learning and pedagogy in contemporary situations.
Overview of the presentation
Inquiry approaches to teaching comparative education refer broadly to the theoretical perspectives and research methodologies guiding the pedagogy and learning of comparative education. The variety of approaches are in alignment with various ontology and epistemology of learning in the field of international and comparative education, explaining profound beliefs, values, rationale and methods that teachers adopt to decide what contents are selected to teach comparative education, what theoretical perspectives the teachers choose to guide their teaching, and through what approaches the teachers teach the course in order to enhance students’ learning in international and comparative education. Empiricism, interpretivism and critical realism are the most dominant inquiry approaches discussed by contemporary scholars and adopted by teachers for the pedagogy of the course as well as for the understanding of students’ learning in international and comparative.
Empiricism holds the belief that knowledge can be perceived by sensory experiences, and that through positivist social research methods such as observation and experiment, generalizable and replicable laws and regulations can be discovered, based on which reliable predictions can be made to inform policy and practice. Interpretivism interprets and constructs the reality realm with emphasis on the relative, context dependent and subjectivist nature of reality, digging internally into the meanings and symbolisms underlying the externally measurable surface of reality with the mediating role of language, perceptions, practices, and interactions of groups or individuals. Critical realism draws the advantages of both approaches whilst avoiding the extreme deterministic stands of them, and articulates a more sophisticated and dialectic realist ontology, leading to more holistic and laminated perspective for understanding the nested education system and the nature of learning and teaching in various contexts.
Scholarly or scientific significance
This session is highly significant both theoretically and practically in that it helps further deepens understanding of the three theoretical perspectives and philosophical rationales underpinning the pedagogue, learning of comparative education, and research of them, it also contributes to guiding the practice of teaching comparative education and doing research in the field of teaching comparative education.
Structure of the session
This session mainly incorporate five parts, first, introduction of theories of empiricism, interpretivism, and critical realism; second, introduction of empiricist approach, interpretivist approach, and critical realist approaches to teaching comparative education; third, analyzing specific methods adopted by each approach and their application in teaching comparative education; fourth, analyzing the common features and specialties, advantages and disadvantages of each approach in the context of teaching and learning comparative education; fifth, reflection on appropriateness of critical realist approach and its application in teaching comparative education in today’s postmodern cultural contexts.

Authors

• Wenfan Yan, University of Massachusetts - Boston

• Yumei Han, Southwest University