The absence of epistemic peerhood in Education Sciences: notes on methodological impacts

Abstract

Epistemic peerhood reflects concerns about the impact that errors can have on humanity. Underlying it is the questioning of what happens when people with similar levels of training, understanding, and access to data come to different conclusions (Frances, 2010; Gelfert, 2011; Kelly, 2005), which holds the suggestion of error or at least incomplete theory construction. However, what concerns emerge in scenarios where agents who are not epistemic peers nevertheless make similar conclusions? Or different conclusions? Is there, in any of these situations, error or suspected error? Will the situations require any rapprochement, compromise, or consensus? This questioning is relevant in Education Sciences, because this essay suggests, that this scientific area is not subject to epistemic peerhood, since its agents do not assume similar values, interests and knowledge and they act from different contexts It proposes to analyze the consequences of epistemic peerhood absence on educational research, which is relevant because Education Sciences must question about what knowledge is and how it can be achieved. It approaches the constructs of education and Education Sciences under the lens of Complexity Theory (Silva, 2019, 2020), draws on epistemological perspectives that welcome the diversity and power of agents (Feyerabend, 1991, 2010; Harding, 1992, 2004, 2015; Longino, 1990), and mobilizes very preliminary data from an ongoing study on the epistemology of the Education Sciences, to suggest that the absence of epistemic peerhood has methodological consequences leading to (a) dispensation of mimicry of scientific methods, (b) insufficiency of modest positions (attitudes of revisiting knowledge must be added), (c) the need for the uncovering of non-linear elements, (d) the impossibility of epistemic superiority at the outset, (e) praxical rather than epistemic peerhood, and (f) intersubjective assertiveness - and these become characteristics of the epistemic status of the Education Sciences.