Evaluation of Research for Usable Knowledge in Behavioral Disorders: Ignoring the Irrelevant, Considering the Germane.

The role, function, and applicability of research in special education and behavioral disorders has recently generated some contentious discussion. As part of a larger educational research heritage whose historic foundation can be traced from the work of Galton and Cattell through Thorndike and Binet via the statistical procedures developed by Fisher, special education has been drawn into debate about the merits of this tradition and its origins in logical positivism and empiricism (see Phillips, 1983). In essence, the merits of the quantitative tradition have been challenged in terms of the knowledge they produce. These debates have a profound impact on the selection and implementation of interventions with children and youths with emotional or behavioral disorders (E/BD). The Unresolved Knowledge Problem In spite of decades of debate, the problem of what knowledge is, how it is uncovered, and how it is used remains problematic. The socalled paradigm wars have failed to resolve key issues in research and practice, including the literature on behavioral disorders, where the quantitative/qualitative divide is easily identified. Proponents of qualitative approaches (i.e., naturalistic inquiry) continue to assert their relevance for special education despite significant drawbacks this world-view offers for generating worthwhile knowledge about the impact of interventions for children in schools. Naturalistic Knowledge In contrast to quantitative (i.e., positivist) approaches for generating knowledge, qualitative research generally seeks to describe contextualized phenomena, thereby constructing knowledge through the perceptions of the context's participants. To this end, qualitative approaches are characterized by designating the data source as the natural setting, using detailed description, emphasizing process over outcome, and relying on inductive rather than deductive analysis. The intent of the research outcome is an understanding of participant meaning structures related to the context under study. Particularistic meaning is a central concern (Bogdan & Biklen, 1982). Deeply rooted in the traditions of ethnography and sociology, qualitative researchers conduct research that they see as emphasizing understanding, explaining the particular; they concern themselves with addressing complex phenomena in specific and nongeneralizable settings. The characteristics of this approach to knowledge generation may well provide some insight into specific, contextually limited, and isolated classroom practices, but they cannot secure high levels of probability for successful and generalizable interventions for children and youths with E/BD. That is, naturalistic approaches offer little help (if any at all) in determining what works for most children in the widest variety of educational settings in the most efficient way. On the other hand, other rigorously analytical and quantitative approaches do indeed provide such widespread applicability. Positivist Knowledge The positivist research tradition, assuming a real and objective world beyond the self, seeks to understand phenomena through observation, which provides objective factual knowledge that is then used to establish law-like relations. Quantitative methods generally developed from this tradition hold "that all nature can be pieced together, like a giant tinker-toy, out of small units of fact, each of which can be separately verified" (Bronowski, 1965, p. 35). While acknowledging the subjectivity of what they choose to study, proponents of the Scientific Method, the embodiment of positivist thought, emphasize experimentation, comparison, and prediction. Their work is situated in an "objective, systematic, testable process for obtaining knowledge about our world" (Moore, 1973, p. 5). The aims of the positivist tradition are almost always accomplished through research. By research we mean the specific intent of a researcher, based in scientific curiosity, to contribute to theory by advancing knowledge around a given phenomenon for greater understanding, applicability, and generalization. …