Research in Education

Abstract

Human knowledge as it exists today broadly consists of facts and theories. New facts, new concepts and new ways of doing things increase their quantum with passage of time. This knowledge enables us to understand, comprehend, explain, control, predict or cope with a given situation. The knowledge obtained from the less reliable or completely unreliable sources is based on assumptions, beliefs and untested generalizations. Such generalizations are usually accepted on faith, tradition or authority and no effort is made to verify their validity. In contrast reliable knowledge is based on objective verification of generalizations. The acquisition and expansion of knowledge is not an automatic and self perpetuating process. On the contrary, it requires constant and planned effort by intelligent and highly trained people. The present level of knowledge is an outcome of the various methods adopted by man over a period of several centuries. From the earlier times, man has been curious about anything that he could not understand. Slowly and gradually he developed the scientific method of thinking and he investigated his problems which today are producing astonishing results. Scientific method of enquiry is an orderly system of searching for truth which is based on conclusions upon factual evidence, and by using reasoning as a means of showing relationship between ideas has given better and more accurate answers to many problems not only in physical and biological sciences but also in behavioural and social sciences. By attempting to apply this method of inquiry to behavioural and social sciences the fields of psychology, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology and education has become recognized as sciences. The term science therefore is now thought of as a method or attitude rather than a field of subject matter. It is described as a method of inquiry that permits man to examine the phenomenon of interest to him.