Critical Rationalism and Situational Logic: An Effective Approach to Methodology of Educational Research

Education, as one of the most important institutions in terms of cultivating human character and building civilizations, has a significant role in shaping man’s cultural life-world. The importance of this institution becomes more apparent when we consider the plain fact that modern societies contain more cultural elements than any other society in the whole history of mankind since the emergence of the first homosapiens. Culture (in the broadest sense of the term) has the largest share in their architecture. At the same time, the institution of education is itself a man-made construct and as such while it is capable of exerting causal influence (by means of collective intentionality of its creators/users) upon people, it undergoes changes through interactions with human agents. Since the future developments of this institution depends, to a large extent, on the cognitive abilities of these agents and the efficacy of their methods, whatever epistemological/methodological model which could assist in improving the functions of this institution and realizing its positive potentials is bound to be welcome. The main argument of the present paper is that a m which is informed by the epistemology of critical rationalism and the methodology of  situational logic could provide social actors with an effective approach towards making desirable improvement in the institution of education. As a result of applying this approach, I would argue, detection of novel and positive potentials of the institution of education would more readily become possible and therefore it would become much easier for the social actors to improve the efficiency of this institution. Moreover, this approach would assist them to recognize the defective aspects of this institution in a more effective fashion and thus be better prepared to prevent their undesired consequences. In what follows, after a brief introduction of the two notions of ‘critical rationalism’ and ‘situational logic’ I shall try to explain some of the applications of an approach which combine these two notions in the service of improving the efficacy of the institution of education.