“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” Mahatma Gandhi
Identities are powerful. They affect us like when we are the pebble who is thrown to an ocean of knowledge. It affects and changes us while we sink into it, while we affect the whole body of knowledge by creating small growing circles on the water as well. As a beginner educational researcher, which is defined as “the hardest science of all" by Labaree (2003), I aim what Schubert (1982) underlined: utilizing humanistic vision of personal meaning and be capable of using scholarly heritage logically by determining how to use this educational researcher identity into teaching, research and service areas of professional and private life by collaborating with my other titles, such as being a teacher, a sister to an older brother who have cerebral palsy, and whose home country needs a radical social change in the manner of its’ diverse citizens that have differences, such as people of colors, race, ethnicity, disabilities, and gender. To critique this social change, we need to investigate the foundations of our knowledge, their importance in educational research, and find the roots and connections between them. Personally, I have challenged myself to have an inductive way of thinking of my ultimate dream, which is to see and serve for the radical change in daily lives of Turkish people with disabilities while increasing social awareness in Turkish society regarding this matter. I also want to reflect on materials and discussions that we had in this class in another geography by using telescope that is conceptualized in the US perspective to see Turkish educational research. I raised two points, namely, personal accumulation, development and gratification of knowledge of ethical perspective, and having expertise to impact to and serve for social change regarding importance and usage of diverse foundations of educational research.
The Code of Ethics of the American Education Research Association (AERA, 2011) requires “a personal commitment to a lifelong effort to act ethically; to encourage ethical behavior by students, supervisors, supervisees, employers, employees, and colleagues; and to consult with others as needed concerning ethical problems. This sentence covers the definition of educational researcher’s identity and has a lasting impact on researchers to imply this identity to different areas of life. There was an internationally recognized devastating ethical failure about plagiarism in 2007 caused by Turkish researchers (Clarke, 2007) which is ended with not only withdrawn of articles from systems (ArXiv, 2007), but also identity of ‘Turkish researcher’ is inwardly dishonored. This though break was not acknowledged enough by researchers in Turkey, because plagiarism and ethics of researching still struggles from not only this problem but also related other ethical ones, such as misusing of expertise, and employment decisions. This upsetting consequence of Turkish researchers’ unethical actions lead me to think what can I do to fix this. I thought of interdisciplinary input of Marshall (1992) to ethical considerations from anthropology to educational research. According to her (1992), there are three main principles emerge in ethical consideration in anthropology, namely the principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice from a solid basis for assessing ethical conduct. One monumental concept is highlighted in my mind: Honesty. I decided to provoke critical thinking of my students who will be pre-service special education teachers about honesty as a tie for these three concepts to apply in their teaching and learning environments. These values are not just important for anthropology, but also are shared interdisciplinary, especially in social sciences, which are regulating social life of human in different perspectives. Furthermore, when I dig into the reason of these unethical occurrences, it is clearly noticeable that we, as researchers, are not taking historical perspective of educational research into consideration enough in Turkey. As Eisenmann (2005) articulates in her study of integrating disciplinary perspectives, we need to consider diverse lenses of different disciplines into education, such as historical perspective to see future clearer. Either from centuries or decades, we need to recognize input of understanding historical perspective’s plausibility and multiple causality historical events into our research, teaching and services in our professional lives in order to prevent reoccurrences of unethical events.
My personal accumulation, development and gratification of knowledge of ethical perspective are consistent with my changeable interdisciplinary world-view. My understanding of the reason and/or matter of educational research that is distinctive by the nature and relationship of education field and it’s stand point in life (Labaree,1998), is consistent with Kaestle’s (1993) definition, which is educational research’s standpoint is to make practice of education more efficient. This possible efficacy is developed under diverse disciplines understanding of ethical principles that are built upon each other (Ham, 1999) tightly. As it is said previously, I consider other disciplines’ input into education as a vital part of expertise based on ethical considerations. This will create a community of pre-service teachers and researchers including me who criticizes the existence of problems and present their discomfort towards larger society in the light of ethical procedures and gratification of their knowledge that is scaffolded by various perspectives from diverse areas. Reciprocity of this environment not only will allow me to grow my diverse identities’ collaboration to each other, but also will be a spanner for “awful reputation” of education (Kaestle, 1993) in Turkey.
Second essential point is that, Kaestle (1993) says that public believes importance of education. However, teaching’s ambiguousness and mutant nature based on current political, economical, and technological needs of human-being raise some important questions. How to create a learning environment, which is lifelong and usable in society? Does education practice has power to make a radical change in societies for its people? Where does educational research stand in it? There is a lack of understanding in educational expertise in Turkey. As alumna from one of the best educational faculty in Turkey, I have never been exposed to think further and reflect on educational foundations collaborating with other disciplines. Also, it is not a common activity for educational researchers and scholars to raise their voices against discomfort of status quo and unethical activity in the field, and hidden mobbing of politics in educational faculties. This misleads academics to mislead pre-service teachers whose chance of misleading further generation would increase and chance for radical social change decreases by this chain. When I approach with questioning this dilemma, one well known but hardly understood name came to my mind: John Dewey. Dewey’s (1937) passion on democratic education system has variety of answers to our dilemma in Turkey. According to him (1937), to have voluntary choice, cooperation and mutual free consultation to experts is a demand for a healthy social order in society. Since we know that we cannot expertize in various numbers of areas, we can modify Dewey’s thoughts by mastering in educational research in a specific area with consulting to different experts from different areas to revise our knowledge constantly to meet the needs and standards of current progress of science, technology, politics, economics and their implications to societies (Dewey, 1938). When we dig into between lines of his thoughts, the importance of a collaborative research culture (Paul, & Marfo, 2001), and understanding each others’ context, raising voices according to relational epistemology (Thayer-Bacon, 1997), acknowledging efforts for understanding curriculum as a political text (Pinar & Bower, 1992) and lastly necessity of an ecological perspective for cultural phenomenon (Schubert, 1982) hit the surface as fundamental needs for educational revision of Dewey’s thoughts. When we modify ourselves as researchers, our teaching philosophies add more building blocks to our expertise area to serve current needs of society with a mutual respect, tolerance, and honest cooperation (Dewey, 1938). Furthermore, it will be easier to form a culture for a healthy and lasting relationship between research and practice (Ladson-Billings, 1995), and ultimately for a radical social change.
Kastle (1993) and Labaree (2003) raises a complementary opinion about relationship between educational researchers and teachers as practitioners, which is researchers need to revise teacher worldview to a more analytical, intellectual, universal, and theoretical bases, even though funds and demands are often not enough. The light of diverse disciplines such as epistemology, anthropology, history, pedagogy, sociology, etc. structures all presented ideas to establish effects of having diverse foundations not only for a personal and professional growth as a beginner educational researcher, but also for widening my horizons to contribute a small share to a social change in Turkey. Having foundations of diverse areas not only pushes education to go further of just transferring knowledge, but also using it affectively by seeing life in different lenses.
Finally I am aware discussing all of Turkish current educational system problems are out of this reflection’s depth. However, I am confident to say that I carry my primitive urge for personal satisfaction of ‘complete’ knowledge by having diverse foundations’ wide effects in my scholar identity to have a more stabile basement of teaching, research, and service philosophy, which I believe eventually affect my students’ critical thinking and actions, who will affect future generations’. Tyack, & Tobin (1994) underlines that schools change reforms by using its’ cultural constructions as an engine for common public good. By acknowledging power of having multiple foundations in educational research and using them effectively to impact others, we have our contribution for social change. Then, we will have more hope for Turkey based on Gandhi’s quote.
References ArXiv, (2007). 65 admin withdrawals [Web news]. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/new/withdrawals.aug.07.html
Clarke, M. (2007, September 6). Plagiarism at arXiv, and Nature journals’ policies [Web log Comment]. Retrieved from http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/09/plagiarism_at_arxiv_and_nature.html
Identities are powerful. They affect us like when we are the pebble who is thrown to an ocean of knowledge. It affects and changes us while we sink into it, while we affect the whole body of knowledge by creating small growing circles on the water as well. As a beginner educational researcher, which is defined as “the hardest science of all" by Labaree (2003), I aim what Schubert (1982) underlined: utilizing humanistic vision of personal meaning and be capable of using scholarly heritage logically by determining how to use this educational researcher identity into teaching, research and service areas of professional and private life by collaborating with my other titles, such as being a teacher, a sister to an older brother who have cerebral palsy, and whose home country needs a radical social change in the manner of its’ diverse citizens that have differences, such as people of colors, race, ethnicity, disabilities, and gender. To critique this social change, we need to investigate the foundations of our knowledge, their importance in educational research, and find the roots and connections between them. Personally, I have challenged myself to have an inductive way of thinking of my ultimate dream, which is to see and serve for the radical change in daily lives of Turkish people with disabilities while increasing social awareness in Turkish society regarding this matter. I also want to reflect on materials and discussions that we had in this class in another geography by using telescope that is conceptualized in the US perspective to see Turkish educational research. I raised two points, namely, personal accumulation, development and gratification of knowledge of ethical perspective, and having expertise to impact to and serve for social change regarding importance and usage of diverse foundations of educational research.
The Code of Ethics of the American Education Research Association (AERA, 2011) requires “a personal commitment to a lifelong effort to act ethically; to encourage ethical behavior by students, supervisors, supervisees, employers, employees, and colleagues; and to consult with others as needed concerning ethical problems. This sentence covers the definition of educational researcher’s identity and has a lasting impact on researchers to imply this identity to different areas of life. There was an internationally recognized devastating ethical failure about plagiarism in 2007 caused by Turkish researchers (Clarke, 2007) which is ended with not only withdrawn of articles from systems (ArXiv, 2007), but also identity of ‘Turkish researcher’ is inwardly dishonored. This though break was not acknowledged enough by researchers in Turkey, because plagiarism and ethics of researching still struggles from not only this problem but also related other ethical ones, such as misusing of expertise, and employment decisions. This upsetting consequence of Turkish researchers’ unethical actions lead me to think what can I do to fix this. I thought of interdisciplinary input of Marshall (1992) to ethical considerations from anthropology to educational research. According to her (1992), there are three main principles emerge in ethical consideration in anthropology, namely the principles of respect for persons, beneficence, and justice from a solid basis for assessing ethical conduct. One monumental concept is highlighted in my mind: Honesty. I decided to provoke critical thinking of my students who will be pre-service special education teachers about honesty as a tie for these three concepts to apply in their teaching and learning environments. These values are not just important for anthropology, but also are shared interdisciplinary, especially in social sciences, which are regulating social life of human in different perspectives. Furthermore, when I dig into the reason of these unethical occurrences, it is clearly noticeable that we, as researchers, are not taking historical perspective of educational research into consideration enough in Turkey. As Eisenmann (2005) articulates in her study of integrating disciplinary perspectives, we need to consider diverse lenses of different disciplines into education, such as historical perspective to see future clearer. Either from centuries or decades, we need to recognize input of understanding historical perspective’s plausibility and multiple causality historical events into our research, teaching and services in our professional lives in order to prevent reoccurrences of unethical events.
My personal accumulation, development and gratification of knowledge of ethical perspective are consistent with my changeable interdisciplinary world-view. My understanding of the reason and/or matter of educational research that is distinctive by the nature and relationship of education field and it’s stand point in life (Labaree,1998), is consistent with Kaestle’s (1993) definition, which is educational research’s standpoint is to make practice of education more efficient. This possible efficacy is developed under diverse disciplines understanding of ethical principles that are built upon each other (Ham, 1999) tightly. As it is said previously, I consider other disciplines’ input into education as a vital part of expertise based on ethical considerations. This will create a community of pre-service teachers and researchers including me who criticizes the existence of problems and present their discomfort towards larger society in the light of ethical procedures and gratification of their knowledge that is scaffolded by various perspectives from diverse areas. Reciprocity of this environment not only will allow me to grow my diverse identities’ collaboration to each other, but also will be a spanner for “awful reputation” of education (Kaestle, 1993) in Turkey.
Second essential point is that, Kaestle (1993) says that public believes importance of education. However, teaching’s ambiguousness and mutant nature based on current political, economical, and technological needs of human-being raise some important questions. How to create a learning environment, which is lifelong and usable in society? Does education practice has power to make a radical change in societies for its people? Where does educational research stand in it? There is a lack of understanding in educational expertise in Turkey. As alumna from one of the best educational faculty in Turkey, I have never been exposed to think further and reflect on educational foundations collaborating with other disciplines. Also, it is not a common activity for educational researchers and scholars to raise their voices against discomfort of status quo and unethical activity in the field, and hidden mobbing of politics in educational faculties. This misleads academics to mislead pre-service teachers whose chance of misleading further generation would increase and chance for radical social change decreases by this chain. When I approach with questioning this dilemma, one well known but hardly understood name came to my mind: John Dewey. Dewey’s (1937) passion on democratic education system has variety of answers to our dilemma in Turkey. According to him (1937), to have voluntary choice, cooperation and mutual free consultation to experts is a demand for a healthy social order in society. Since we know that we cannot expertize in various numbers of areas, we can modify Dewey’s thoughts by mastering in educational research in a specific area with consulting to different experts from different areas to revise our knowledge constantly to meet the needs and standards of current progress of science, technology, politics, economics and their implications to societies (Dewey, 1938). When we dig into between lines of his thoughts, the importance of a collaborative research culture (Paul, & Marfo, 2001), and understanding each others’ context, raising voices according to relational epistemology (Thayer-Bacon, 1997), acknowledging efforts for understanding curriculum as a political text (Pinar & Bower, 1992) and lastly necessity of an ecological perspective for cultural phenomenon (Schubert, 1982) hit the surface as fundamental needs for educational revision of Dewey’s thoughts. When we modify ourselves as researchers, our teaching philosophies add more building blocks to our expertise area to serve current needs of society with a mutual respect, tolerance, and honest cooperation (Dewey, 1938). Furthermore, it will be easier to form a culture for a healthy and lasting relationship between research and practice (Ladson-Billings, 1995), and ultimately for a radical social change.
Kastle (1993) and Labaree (2003) raises a complementary opinion about relationship between educational researchers and teachers as practitioners, which is researchers need to revise teacher worldview to a more analytical, intellectual, universal, and theoretical bases, even though funds and demands are often not enough. The light of diverse disciplines such as epistemology, anthropology, history, pedagogy, sociology, etc. structures all presented ideas to establish effects of having diverse foundations not only for a personal and professional growth as a beginner educational researcher, but also for widening my horizons to contribute a small share to a social change in Turkey. Having foundations of diverse areas not only pushes education to go further of just transferring knowledge, but also using it affectively by seeing life in different lenses.
Finally I am aware discussing all of Turkish current educational system problems are out of this reflection’s depth. However, I am confident to say that I carry my primitive urge for personal satisfaction of ‘complete’ knowledge by having diverse foundations’ wide effects in my scholar identity to have a more stabile basement of teaching, research, and service philosophy, which I believe eventually affect my students’ critical thinking and actions, who will affect future generations’. Tyack, & Tobin (1994) underlines that schools change reforms by using its’ cultural constructions as an engine for common public good. By acknowledging power of having multiple foundations in educational research and using them effectively to impact others, we have our contribution for social change. Then, we will have more hope for Turkey based on Gandhi’s quote.
References ArXiv, (2007). 65 admin withdrawals [Web news]. Retrieved from http://arxiv.org/new/withdrawals.aug.07.html
Clarke, M. (2007, September 6). Plagiarism at arXiv, and Nature journals’ policies [Web log Comment]. Retrieved from http://blogs.nature.com/nautilus/2007/09/plagiarism_at_arxiv_and_nature.html