The Place of Theory in Educational Research

I n every modern society, the education' of its citizens, young and old, is a major concern. In some developing countries, the educational activities of the government consume as much as a third of the national budget. In the· United States today, it is estimated that educational activities require at least a hundred billion dollars a year. Most educational aCtivities in this country and elsewhere are like otber forms of social and economic activity in society in that only a slight effort is made to study the character of the activities and to understand them as intellectual, economic, or social processes. It is true that there has been a longer tradition, even if a fragile one, of studying the character of education, but I think all members of this Association are very much aware that educational research is a minor activity compared with education as a whole. All of us probably feel on occasion that there is little hope that educational research, given the small national effort devoted to it, will have any real impact on education as a whole. Such pessimistic thoughts are not historically, I think, supported by the evidence, especially when we look at the evidence outside of education as well as inside. By looking outside education I digress for a moment to examine some instances of the im~ pact of science on society. All of the characteristic features of electronic communication and rapid transpor-