Méthodes de recherche pour l'éducation by Jean-Marie Van der MarenReview by: Marta AnadonCanadian Journal of Education / Revue canadienne de l'éducation, Vol. 22, No. 1 (Winter,1997), pp. 103-105Published by: Canadian Society for the Study of EducationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1585818 .

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BOOK REVIEWS / RECENSIONS BOOK REVIEWS / RECENSIONS

with the professional commitment to improvement. In addition, as I read the book, I find it too comprehensive in the range of positions covered and too brief in the analysis of both the supporting arguments for those positions and also the significance of the positions for professional practice. I would want a text which would engage students more with the arguments for positions covered, even at the expense of being less exhaustive in the range of positions reviewed. Finally, I would feel quite uncomfortable using a text in which the lead author's contribu- tion to the field is so repeatedly affirmed. I would much prefer a book which appears more balanced or in which such judgments are made by someone other than the one being judged.

Nevertheless, as a reference book, the volume will be useful. For many graduate students, as for others, it will provide exactly the type of survey their purposes demand. For the reference list alone, readers should all be thankful. For the contextualizing of those references in the story of an important and develop- ing field of study, many will be even more grateful.

Methodes de recherche pour l'education

Par Jean-Marie Van der Maren

Montreal: Les Presses de l'Universite de Montreal/De Boeck Universite, 1995. Collection Education et Formation. 506 pages. ISBN 2-7606-1634-7

RECENSE PAR MARTA ANADON, UNIVERSITE DU QUEBEC A CHICOUTIMI

Trois options guident la reflexion de Methodes de recherche pour l'education. La premiere est celle de se limiter aux methodes pertinentes a la recherche pour l'education, c'est-a-dire a celles qui permettent de fonder et d'actualiser les theories pedagogiques et l'agir professionnel des acteurs educatifs. La deuxieme limite la reflexion methodologique a un niveau instrumental et non pas epistemo- logique. Par la troisieme option, l'auteur s'engage a mettre en lumiere les abus dans l'utilisation des methodes car ce qui, a premiere vue, semble un choix rationnel et logique est, en general, un choix plein d'hesitations, d'incertitudes et de tentatives plus ou moins heureuses dans l'utilisation de methodes de re- cherche. C'est cette derniere option qui donne a la reflexion un caractere critique et polemique.

Van der Maren divise son ouvrage en quatre parties disposees en 20 chapitres. Sous la rubrique "epistemologie" ont ete regroupees les questions relatives au

statut des sciences de l'education, sa specificite, les rapports que l'education entretient avec les disciplines contributives ainsi que les reflexions autour de la

with the professional commitment to improvement. In addition, as I read the book, I find it too comprehensive in the range of positions covered and too brief in the analysis of both the supporting arguments for those positions and also the significance of the positions for professional practice. I would want a text which would engage students more with the arguments for positions covered, even at the expense of being less exhaustive in the range of positions reviewed. Finally, I would feel quite uncomfortable using a text in which the lead author's contribu- tion to the field is so repeatedly affirmed. I would much prefer a book which appears more balanced or in which such judgments are made by someone other than the one being judged.

Nevertheless, as a reference book, the volume will be useful. For many graduate students, as for others, it will provide exactly the type of survey their purposes demand. For the reference list alone, readers should all be thankful. For the contextualizing of those references in the story of an important and develop- ing field of study, many will be even more grateful.

Methodes de recherche pour l'education

Par Jean-Marie Van der Maren

Montreal: Les Presses de l'Universite de Montreal/De Boeck Universite, 1995. Collection Education et Formation. 506 pages. ISBN 2-7606-1634-7

RECENSE PAR MARTA ANADON, UNIVERSITE DU QUEBEC A CHICOUTIMI

Trois options guident la reflexion de Methodes de recherche pour l'education. La premiere est celle de se limiter aux methodes pertinentes a la recherche pour l'education, c'est-a-dire a celles qui permettent de fonder et d'actualiser les theories pedagogiques et l'agir professionnel des acteurs educatifs. La deuxieme limite la reflexion methodologique a un niveau instrumental et non pas epistemo- logique. Par la troisieme option, l'auteur s'engage a mettre en lumiere les abus dans l'utilisation des methodes car ce qui, a premiere vue, semble un choix rationnel et logique est, en general, un choix plein d'hesitations, d'incertitudes et de tentatives plus ou moins heureuses dans l'utilisation de methodes de re- cherche. C'est cette derniere option qui donne a la reflexion un caractere critique et polemique.

Van der Maren divise son ouvrage en quatre parties disposees en 20 chapitres. Sous la rubrique "epistemologie" ont ete regroupees les questions relatives au

statut des sciences de l'education, sa specificite, les rapports que l'education entretient avec les disciplines contributives ainsi que les reflexions autour de la

103 103

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BOOK REVIEWS / RECENSIONS

construction de l'objet scientifique des sciences de l'education, des finalites de la recherche et des theories que cette derniere produit. Deux chapitres completent cette partie: le premier examine la dichotomie quantitatif/qualitatif et les para- doxes que chaque approche comporte; le deuxieme aborde les criteres de la rigueur methodologique.

On retrouve dans la deuxieme partie, appelee "methodologie," sept chapitres. Les trois premiers mettent en lumiere les strategies methodologiques des recher- ches speculative, appliquee et nomothetique. II est interessant de noter que le chapitre accorde a la recherche speculative ou theorique constitue un apport interessant et nouveau a la reflexion methodologique en education. Quatre autres chapitres completent cette partie et concernent les plans de recherche, les diffe- rents prejuges et erreurs qui les traversent, les fonctions de la simulation et de la modelisation ainsi qu'une reflexion sur l'ecriture de la recherche.

Trois chapitres composent la troisieme partie, qui presente les "techniques de constitution des donnees" classifiees selon une typologie elaboree par l'auteur, qui distingue les donnees invoquees, suscitees et provoquees. Ainsi sont passees en revue les diff6rentes techniques de cueillette de donnees.

La quatrieme et demiere partie du volume regroupe en cinq chapitres les diff6rentes "phases d'une recherche inductive" ou exploratoire.

Attardons-nous un peu sur la premiere partie, qui s'intitule "epistemologie." Je me permettrai un commentaire. L'auteur nous presente son questionnement autour du statut ambigu des sciences de l'education. Tout au long de cette reflexion Jean-Marie Van der Maren tente avec vigueur de delimiter la specificite de l'objet d'etude de l'education en critiquant les apports des disciplines contri- butives telles la psychologie et la sociologie. Mais, n'y a-t-il pas un danger de decoupage et de cloisonnement disciplinaire? L'histoire des sciences est traversee par des grandes remises en question des principes de simplification qui s'appli- quent sur des phenomenes par disjonction et reduction. L'etude des problemes humains et sociaux ne peut pas se satisfaire, il me semble, du cloisonnement disciplinaire car toute tentative de comprendre l'humain necessite une collabo- ration entre diverses disciplines. Seulement par l'interf6condation du travail interdisciplinaire on peut arriver a une comprehension de l'objet d'etude de Fl'ducation. Le paradigme de la simplification et de la disjonction est insuffisant, il faut un "paradigme de la complexite," pour paraphraser Edgar Morin.

Au troisieme chapitre l'auteur abandonne la question de la constitution de l'education comme discipline et se centre sur la recherche en education en mettant l'accent sur la pratique concrete pour en faire la critique de son fonc- tionnement tel que vise par l'ouvrage.

Le livre de Jean-Marie Van der Maren est nouveau et polemique. Nouveau, car il elargit la reflexion autour des methodes de recherche en education. Pole- mique, car l'auteur provoque le lecteur et le mene a un questionnement profond sur ses propres pratiques de recherche. Toutes les questions et interrogations qu'il propose sont autant des jalons de nouvelles reflexions.

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BOOK REVIEWS / RECENSIONS BOOK REVIEWS / RECENSIONS

Jean-Marie Van der Maren a magistralement fait le point des methodes de recherche pour l'education. L'ouvrage est digne d'eloge par le questionnement qu'il souleve. II revient a chaque lecteur, a chaque chercheur d'apporter sa propre contribution sur cette vaste reflexion. A lire et a reflechir . . .

Discourse and Power in Educational Organizations

Edited by David Corson

Toronto: OISE Press, 1995. xviii+348 pages. ISBN 0-7744-0426-4 (pbk.)

REVIEWED BY KEITH WALKER, UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN

David Corson has assembled an interdisciplinary group of authors to contribute their own warrants to his claim that "social realities cannot be identified in abstraction from the discourses in which they are embedded" (p. xi). The stated aim of the book is "to show the relevance of the 'discursive turn' to one area of educational studies: educational administration -which is a field of inquiry that is ripe for reform and redirection" (p. xi). The evenly gender-distributed list of authors write from six countries: Australia (10), the United States (7), Canada (2), the United Kingdom (1), New Zealand (1), and Austria (1). Many authors were obvious choices for contributors because of the respect attributed to their earlier works. Some of them have included recent research, whereas others have recapitulated some of their former writings.

The risk of presenting a hodgepodge of unconnected papers was, I think, great. However, the editor has made the connections, cast the papers within a larger frame, and legitimated each contribution. To do this, Corson divided the book into two sections: the discourses of administration and supervision, and the discourses of policy and curriculum. The lead chapters for each section, written by the editor, contain excellent introductions to the connections among power, language, and ideologies. The unity of the book is enhanced by a single reference list and adequate subject and author indexes.

In his introduction to the first section of book, Corson locates language as power within the condition of our times (postmodernity), identifies the structural constraints that bind us (with what he calls "crap detection"), and then points to the necessity of an emancipating critical realism. Two chapters, by Shakeshaft and Perry and by Wodak, highlight gendered discourses, contrast the language of power with the language of empowerment, and typify various discursive styles of leadership. Corson reviews several studies of "principal and teacher talk" by Gronn and Hargreaves to demonstrate that educational administration scholars

Jean-Marie Van der Maren a magistralement fait le point des methodes de recherche pour l'education. L'ouvrage est digne d'eloge par le questionnement qu'il souleve. II revient a chaque lecteur, a chaque chercheur d'apporter sa propre contribution sur cette vaste reflexion. A lire et a reflechir . . .

Discourse and Power in Educational Organizations

Edited by David Corson

Toronto: OISE Press, 1995. xviii+348 pages. ISBN 0-7744-0426-4 (pbk.)

REVIEWED BY KEITH WALKER, UNIVERSITY OF SASKATCHEWAN

David Corson has assembled an interdisciplinary group of authors to contribute their own warrants to his claim that "social realities cannot be identified in abstraction from the discourses in which they are embedded" (p. xi). The stated aim of the book is "to show the relevance of the 'discursive turn' to one area of educational studies: educational administration -which is a field of inquiry that is ripe for reform and redirection" (p. xi). The evenly gender-distributed list of authors write from six countries: Australia (10), the United States (7), Canada (2), the United Kingdom (1), New Zealand (1), and Austria (1). Many authors were obvious choices for contributors because of the respect attributed to their earlier works. Some of them have included recent research, whereas others have recapitulated some of their former writings.

The risk of presenting a hodgepodge of unconnected papers was, I think, great. However, the editor has made the connections, cast the papers within a larger frame, and legitimated each contribution. To do this, Corson divided the book into two sections: the discourses of administration and supervision, and the discourses of policy and curriculum. The lead chapters for each section, written by the editor, contain excellent introductions to the connections among power, language, and ideologies. The unity of the book is enhanced by a single reference list and adequate subject and author indexes.

In his introduction to the first section of book, Corson locates language as power within the condition of our times (postmodernity), identifies the structural constraints that bind us (with what he calls "crap detection"), and then points to the necessity of an emancipating critical realism. Two chapters, by Shakeshaft and Perry and by Wodak, highlight gendered discourses, contrast the language of power with the language of empowerment, and typify various discursive styles of leadership. Corson reviews several studies of "principal and teacher talk" by Gronn and Hargreaves to demonstrate that educational administration scholars

105 105

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