Abstract

This paper evaluated a Richard Pring’s book titiled “Philosophy of Education: Aims, Theory, Common Sense and Research”, specifically part three of the book. In this review, we found that the book is valuable for anybody interested in education, especially professionals, practitioners, and researchers. Throught out the book, the author advocates his ideas consistently regarding educational theory, goals, and the effects on both the nature and conduct of educational research. From our evaluation, we obtained that the folowing points are good qualities of the book: Pring clarifies his point of argument by using illustrative examples and support it with adequate and pertinent empirical evidence. He also indicates the implications of each philosophical argument for research and practice. In addition, he thoroughly shows the critics of educational research as many times as he can. Finally, the author introduces a novel approach to the ethics of educational research. Despite these positive traits, the book has certain shortcomings such as use of difficult language, needless repetition of ideas in different chapters, failure to indicate ways in which the tarnished reputation of educational research might be improved and the qauntitatuve- qualitative paridgms can work together. However, our overall evaluation finds the book as an excellent work on educational research and related issues that deserves praise and keenly recommend it to readers to be benefited from its outweighed strengths than the limitations.In addition, we suggest concerned individuals in education to review the whole chapters of the book to come up with better insights and comprehensive lessons essential to practitioners and the academic discourse.

Key words: Evidence, knowledge, virtues, research.