Comments on Bulterman-Bos: What Should Education Research Do, and How Should It Do It?

In this article, three theoretical perspectives are used to extend Bulterman-Bos’s (2008) argument regarding a clinical approach to education research. First, three intellectual virtues identified by Aristotle— episteme, techne, and phronesis—are related to the requirements of the “pure” education researcher, the skilled practitioner, and the clinical researcher, respectively. Second, Churchman’s typology of inquiry systems—based on whether the primary source of evidence is logic, observation, representation, dialectic, or values—is offered as a way of conceptualizing different kinds of inquiry in education. Third, recognizing that much practitioner knowledge is tacit, Nonaka and Takeuchi’s model of knowledge conversion is suggested as a tool with which knowledge gained through different methods of inquiry might be brought into productive dialogue.