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Preparing Education Doctoral Students for Epistemological Diversity1

by Aaron M. Pallas

the welter of names—positivism, naturalism, postpositivism,empiricism, relativism, feminist standpoint epistemology,foundationalism, postmodernism, each with an array of sub-species—lie important questions: Is there a single, absolutetruth about educational phenomena, or are there multipletruths? (Or is the concept of truth itself so problematic as to beof no value in understanding the world?) Can we count on oursenses, or on reason, to distinguish that which is true about theworld from that which is false? Are there methods that can leadus close to understanding, or are there inherent indetermina-cies in all methods? Is knowledge of the world discovered, orconstructed? Can knowledge of the world be evaluated inde-pendent of the social and historical contexts in which it exists,or is it always contingent upon, or relative to, particular cir-cumstances?

For experienced educational researchers, this swell of episte-mologies may threaten a taken-for-granted way of understandingthe world that they initially crafted in graduate school and elabo-rated through subsequent professional experience. For novices as-piring to research careers, the array of beliefs about the nature ofwhat counts as educational knowledge can be overwhelming,particularly since many views are often at odds with novices’ epis-temologies of educational practice or of everyday life (Neumann,Pallas, & Peterson, 1999).

Epistemologies are central to the production and consump-tion of educational research. Since epistemologies undergird allphases of the research process, engaging with epistemology is in-tegral to learning the craft of research. Moreover, epistemologiesshape scholars’ abilities to apprehend and appreciate the researchof others. Such an appreciation is a prerequisite for the scholarlyconversations that signify a field’s collective learning.

At the heart of discussions about preparing educational re-searchers is a question of values: Do we want to prepare novice re-searchers for the world of educational research as it is, or do wewant to prepare them for the world as it might become? The his-tory of educational research in the U.S. is marked by long expansesof epistemological tranquility, punctuated by sharp disagreements.These disagreements typically are initiated and sustained by mar-ginalized communities; those holding a prevailing perspectiverarely feel compelled to engage with the marginalized groupsaround epistemological concerns. As a consequence, there is lit-tle mutual engagement among these groups, and it often seemsas if their members talk past one another. Within such groups,however, interactions are denser, and most individuals can findthemselves a comfortable niche. A researcher developing profes-sionally within such a group is likely to define educational re-

The diversity of epistemological perspectives in contemporary edu-

cational research poses challenges for the faculty of doctoral pro-

grams striving to prepare the next generation of educational re-

searchers. In this paper, I use Wenger’s (1998) concept of community

of practice to explore strategies for preparing doctoral students at

research universities for epistemological diversity in their develop-

ing practices of educational research. I argue that the preparation of

educational researchers in research-intensive universities largely takes

place within local communities of research practice that are smaller

than the faculty of a particular school of education, let alone a large,

heterogeneous organization such as AERA. However, because doc-

toral students engage with and are accountable to a relatively small

number of faculty and other students, they are unlikely to develop

first-hand understanding of diverse epistemological perspectives.

Drawing on the community of practice concept, I suggest a number

of practical recommendations for preparing such novice researchers

for epistemological diversity.

One of the most confusing developments in educational re-search over the past quarter-century has been the proliferation ofepistemologies—beliefs about what counts as knowledge in thefield of education, what is evidence of a claim, and what countsas a warrant for that evidence. Although the discussion of vari-ous epistemological perspectives in educational research often ishighly abstract, and viewed as the prerogative of philosophers atsome distance from the real world of educational research prac-tice, the consequences of this diversity are quite real. Beliefsabout what counts as knowledge are a central determinant aboutwhat a field knows about its subject matter. The variability insuch beliefs can lead to small and large gaps in what variousmembers of the educational research community hold to be trueabout educational phenomena. These discontinuities are partlyat the root of the widespread perception that the community ofeducational researchers has failed to amass a cumulative body ofknowledge about how schools and schooling work (National Re-search Council, 1999; Ravitch, 1998; Viadero, 1999). Few claimsabout educational research are as damning, or as damaging to theenterprise.

Experienced researchers and novices alike find it hard tokeep up with the cacophony of diverse epistemologies. Behind

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tice consists of those things that individuals in a community do,drawing on community resources, to further a set of shared goals.For example, the practice of the community of math teachers atKennedy High School, an inner-city high school, consists notonly of how they teach mathematics to their students, but alsohow they make it through the day, commiserating about thestate-mandated learning objectives and tests that drive their les-son plans. Understood in this way, the common divide in edu-cation between research and practice (or, for that matter, theoryand practice) melts away. Educational research is one of the prac-tices in which a community of educational researchers engages.

I begin by setting out a few key ideas in Wenger’s conceptualframework, including reification, participation, and constellation.I then describe the ecology of epistemologies for educational re-search in terms of relations among communities of practice. Next,I turn to some of the problematics that flow from this configu-ration. I conclude by discussing a number of program designs forpreparing doctoral students in research-intensive schools of edu-cation to confront epistemological diversity.

Communities of Practice

Building on his earlier work with Jean Lave (Lave & Wenger,1991), Etienne Wenger has constructed a provocative frameworkfor the analysis of learning in social contexts. At the center of thisframework is the concept of a community of practice, a socialgroup engaged in the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise.Practices are ways of negotiating meaning through social action.

In Wenger’s view, meaning arises from two complementaryprocesses, participation and reification. Participation consists ofthe shared experiences and negotiations that result from socialinteraction among members within a purposive community.Participation is thus inherently local,2 as shared experiences andnegotiation processes will differ from one setting to the next, re-gardless of their interconnections. Consider, for example, thecase of the math teachers at Kennedy High in the inner city andtheir peers at the Truman Academy in the suburbs. Even thoughall of the members are high school math teachers, the shared ex-periences of the math teachers at Kennedy High are likely to dif-fer from the shared experiences of the math teachers at the Tru-man Academy. For example, the Kennedy math teachers, unlikethe Truman math teachers, might have a history of treating prob-ability and statistics as topics appropriate for an applied mathe-matics course for the non-college bound. And over time, the sub-jects of probability and statistics might come to hold a specialmeaning to which the Truman teachers have no access and inwhich they have no interest, as statistics is taught as an AdvancedPlacement course at Truman. The meaning of probability andstatistics in the context of the applied math course, a local event,partly defines the Kennedy math teachers’ experiences of being amath teacher. We can assume that the Truman teachers havetheir own shared histories that give meaning to being a mathteacher.

In contrast, reification is the process by which communities ofpractice produce concrete representations of practice, such astools, symbols, rules, and documents (and even concepts andtheories). A lesson plan, for example, is a reification of the prac-tice of teaching. It probably includes some representation of the

search within the epistemological boundaries that the commu-nity represents.

I envision a different future. If educational researchers cannotunderstand and engage with one another, both within and acrossat least some educational research communities, the enterprise isdoomed to failure. Thus, to prevent a recurring pattern of episte-mological single-mindedness, educational researchers will need toengage with multiple epistemological perspectives to the pointthat members of different communities of educational researchpractice can understand one another, despite, or perhaps through,their differences. Preparing novice educational researchers forsuch epistemological diversity is one of the most important thingsthat the faculties of research universities can do.

Unfortunately, the literature provides little guidance on howto prepare doctoral students for epistemological diversity. In fact,there is scarcely a literature on the preparation of education re-searchers, and hence there is little research support for the mostcommon features of research-intensive doctoral study. This is notto say, of course, that there is a shortage of writings about researchmethods and methodology, some of them quite prescriptive.

Most education doctoral programs in research universities arebased on a developmental model of professional socialization,which sees doctoral students as coming to learn appropriate skillsand values as they move through a set of developmental stages(Simpson, 1979). This model relies on a number of questionableassumptions. First, it views students as relatively passive partici-pants in the socialization process. Second, the model assumesthat students’ personal and social origins, and hence their per-sonal epistemologies, are largely irrelevant to research prepara-tion—a particularly dangerous assumption in view of the chang-ing composition of today’s graduate students (Neumann &Peterson, 1997; Neumann et al., 1999). Third, it does not makeproblematic whose skills and values are internalized through thesocialization process.

Etienne Wenger’s (1998) concept of community of practice,which sidesteps some of these difficulties, may be a more fruitfulfoundation for exploring strategies for preparing educational re-searchers for epistemological diversity in their developing prac-tices of educational research. This concept ascribes agency to new-comers, and sees generational encounters between newcomersand oldtimers as opportunities for community learning and thedevelopment of changed practices. Moreover, Wenger (1998) ex-plicitly recognizes that individuals may be members of severalcommunities of practice simultaneously, and discusses the processof brokering, in which individuals, even novices, can introduceelements of the practices of one community into the practices ofanother. This is a particularly important way to think about theincorporation of the epistemologies and practices of traditionallysubordinated groups (e.g., racial/ethnic minorities, women, andperhaps even education practitioners) into the educational re-search community (Neumann et al., 1999).

Although the words “community” and “practice” evoke com-mon images, Wenger has particular definitions of these terms,giving the phrase “community of practice” a specialized mean-ing. A practice, for example, need not be framed as the work andskills of a particular individual (i.e., a practitioner), which is whatthe common term “teaching practice” connotes. Rather, a prac-

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activities in which teachers engage, and some examples of con-ditions or problems that a teacher might encounter in practice.

There is much to be learned from participation that eludesreification, but the converse is also true. Wenger makes the casethat much of learning can be explained in the intertwining of reification and participation. Participation and reificationare complementary processes in that each has the capacity to re-pair the ambiguity of meaning the other can engender. Al-though a novice teacher’s math education textbooks and prac-titioner publications (the codified reifications of practice in herfield) might not provide a definitive interpretation of a stu-dent’s ambiguous statement, the teacher may know that a moreexperienced colleague down the hall has special expertise inmaking sense of errors in students’ mathematical thinking. Thesenior teacher’s expertise becomes available to the novicethrough professional conversation, a form of participation. Inthis way, participation can result in social learning that couldnot be produced solely byreification alone. Conversely,part of being a math teacher,whether at Kennedy High orTruman Academy, is learningthe National Council of Teach-ers of Mathematics (NCTM)standards, which codify, andthereby reify, what it means to be a math teacher in a waythat a Kennedy planning meet-ing, or other social interactionsamong the Kennedy mathteachers, cannot.

Although there are no de-finitive litmus tests for judgingwhether a particular social col-lectivity should be considered a community of practice,Wenger does offer some guidelines. If a community of practiceinvolves mutual engagement, a negotiated enterprise, and arepertoire of resources and practices, then we should expectmembers of a community of practice to (a) interact more inten-sively with, and know more about, others in the community thanthose outside the community; (b) hold their actions accountable(and be willing for others in the community to hold them ac-countable) more to the community’s joint enterprise than to someother enterprise; (c) be more able to evaluate the actions of othermembers of the community than the actions of those outside thecommunity; and (d) draw on locally-produced resources and ar-tifacts to negotiate meaning more so than resources and artifactsthat are imported from outside the group.

By these criteria, the Kennedy math teachers and their coun-terparts at the Truman Academy are not members of the samecommunity of practice. In fact, each group may comprise a dis-tinct community of practice (we cannot be sure without moredata). And yet high school math teachers across the countryclearly share some attributes. They share some commonalities ofpurpose, reflected in the fact that most belong to the NCTM.They also share a common identity. These attributes, as well asothers I do not mention, imply that the two groups of teachers,

though distinct, are related. Wenger uses the term constellation todescribe a grouping of discrete communities of practice that arerelated by some form of continuity in meaning—whether pur-pose, membership, identity, artifacts, history, or environment—across these communities. The population of U.S. high schoolmath teachers thus represents a constellation of local communi-ties of practice that share some, but by no means all, practices.

This paper is not, of course, about math teachers; the exam-ples here are simply heuristics. But the discussion thus far doesprovide some purchase for describing the ecology of educationalresearch as a practice. Although we often refer to the communityof educational researchers, such a large, amorphous communitycannot be construed as a community of practice. Nor can AERAas a membership organization be defined comfortably as a com-munity of practice, due to the many discontinuities (in mutualengagement, joint purpose, and shared repertoire of resourcesand practices) that exist within it. But there surely are some con-

tinuities across the communi-ties that serve to constituteAERA, so it may be profitableto view AERA instead as a con-stellation of communities ofpractice.

The same logic is true of the research-intensive graduateschools of education that pre-pare educational researchers. Itmay be surprising that it is dif-ficult to characterize the fac-ulty of a particular school ofeducation as a community ofthe practice of educational re-search. The faculty of a particu-lar graduate school of educa-

tion do share a common institutional environment, have a sharedhistory (a budget crisis, an innovative teacher education program,an oppressive Provost), interact with one another around teachingand program issues, and share a commitment to sustain and nour-ish the school. But all of this points to the faculty of that schoolsharing membership in a community of the practice of being a pro-fessor at a particular school, rather than membership in a commu-nity of the practice of educational research. For example, my col-leagues in the Department of Health and Behavior Studies atTeachers College and I share a common set of College statutes thatgovern how the College operates, and I serve on various standingand ad hoc committees with them. We have pleasant conversa-tions at faculty meetings and College events, and if a student inone of the Health and Behavior Studies programs is having somedifficulty in a class I teach, I might go talk to the student’s advisor.But I don’t read the research the Health and Behavior Studies fac-ulty carry out, and they don’t read mine. Moreover, I don’t feelcomfortable evaluating their competence in understanding, say,the determinants of saturated fat intake among poor urban chil-dren. I suspect they would acknowledge similar discomfort inevaluating my competency as a sociologist of education. This kindof discomfort at least partially explains why promotion and tenuredecisions at many colleges and universities rest heavily on the judg-

It may be surprising that

it is difficult to characterize

the faculty of a particular

school of education as a

community of the practice

of educational research.

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ments of external reviewers of a candidate’s scholarly competen-cies and accomplishments, rather than solely on the judgments ofhis or her institutional colleagues. It’s an implicit admission thatindividual faculty are members of communities of the practice ofeducational research that transcend institutional boundaries andthat the schools of education in which they work are constellationsof such communities.

I wish to argue that the preparation of educational researcherslargely takes place within local communities of research prac-tice.3 To make this point, let us consider a common model ofdoctoral education in the research university. In this model,doctoral students aspiring to research careers take a sequence ofresearch methods and statistics courses, supplemented by be-ginning and advanced courses in their areas of specialization.Along the way, they may engage in a research project, whetheralone or as part of a team, under the supervision of a facultymember in their area of study (broadly conceived). All this isprefatory to proposing and conducting doctoral dissertation re-search, in some cases entirely on their own, and in others as partof a larger enterprise.

A critical part of my argument is that this model implies thatdoctoral students in research universities engage with and are ac-countable to a relatively small number of faculty and other stu-dents. At best, this social collectivity might be described as a com-munity of research practice, based on a common purpose (e.g.,understanding how junior high school students make sense ofmathematical functions), mutual engagement (e.g., weekly meet-ings of a research group), and a shared repertoire of resources andpractices (e.g., developing a coding scheme for the analysis ofvideotapes of classroom processes). At worst, it is an arbitrary mixof individuals with little to tie them together. But since the modelof learning within a community of practice is idealized in muchdiscourse about research preparation (see, e.g., Schoenfeld, 1999),I focus on it.

Novices who are learning educational research through par-ticipation in a particular local community are destined to nego-tiate the meaning of what counts as knowledge through inter-actions with others in the same community, as well as throughexposure to reifications (e.g., books and articles), which areoften interpreted in local terms. If there is a connection betweencommunity and epistemology, then a local community of re-search practice is not likely to reflect within itself a deep under-standing of multiple epistemological perspectives. The more anewcomer is drawn toward the center of such a community, theless likely he/she is to develop a more variegated understandingof the epistemologies of educational research. This is largely be-cause being drawn to a community’s center is at odds with thepossibility of being drawn into other communities whose prac-tices are defined in different epistemological terms. A novicewho, over time, deepens his or her understandings of educa-tional research practice in the terms of a particular epistemologyin a particular community—as we usually expect doctoral stu-dents to do—is unlikely to develop a first-hand feel for diverseepistemological framings of educational research. The commonapproach that has evolved over the past quarter-century—thebroad survey course on research methods near the beginning ofdoctoral study—is a “weak treatment” relative to intense par-

ticipation in a local community of practice (see, e.g., Pallas,Neumann, & Peterson, 1996).

Some Practical Recommendations

In light of all this, how might research-intensive graduate schoolsof education organize themselves to best prepare novice re-searchers to deal with the epistemological diversity in educationalresearch? We are not yet at a point where research can be a reli-able guide. Rather, the recommendations that follow are highlyspeculative, but at least informed by the community of practiceconcept. Preparing novices to encounter epistemological diversityas consumers of research might involve assisting them in the ex-ploration of their own personal epistemologies in some depth,and developing tools that enable them to contrast and connecttheir epistemologies with those of other individuals—whether ed-ucational researchers, policymakers or practitioners—they mightencounter. Preparing novices to encounter epistemological diver-sity as producers of research is more challenging, and might involveassisting novices in using contrasting epistemologies in the con-duct of their own research. Many of the recommendations thatfollow are equally appropriate to both approaches.

Education school faculty involved in the preparation of doctoralstudents should strive to elevate the discussion and consideration ofepistemology by both faculty and students in their schools of educa-tion. At present, there is far too little serious attention paid to ex-ploring the complexities of engaging with multiple epistemolo-gies of research, either as a consumer or as a practitioner ofresearch. And, when various epistemologies are discussed, it isoften in the context of research methods courses, and hence de-coupled from the actual practices of researchers.

Make the discussion of epistemology the responsibility of the en-tire faculty. Epistemology should not be the exclusive province ofthe sparse communities of philosophers and research methods in-structors. We should not find discussions of epistemology onlyin qualitative research methods classes. All faculty pursuing edu-cational research should strive to expose their personal episte-mologies of research to the doctoral students with whom they en-gage. If a graduate school of education is a constellation of localcommunities of practice with distinctive epistemologies, then itis important for students to be aware of all of these communitiesand epistemologies. This heightened awareness can facilitate thelearning that ensues from the brokering of practices across localcommunities of practice within an education school.

It is as important for such discussions to occur in “substantive”courses as in courses formally designated as research methodscourses. Of course, this requires that such faculty be self-reflectiveand willing to discuss some deeply held and often tacit beliefs.This requires courage, openness, and a spirit of inquiry, all ofwhich are desirable traits for educational researchers, whether be-ginners or otherwise.

Link discussions of epistemology to the practice of educational re-search. This is particularly important for doctoral students des-tined for careers as educational researchers. In introductory re-search courses, the typical site for considering the epistemologiesof educational research, discussions of epistemology usually aredecoupled from the practice of educational research. It is throughlegitimate peripheral participation in a community of researchpractice that students have the opportunity to connect episte-

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mologies to what researchers actually do. But even those studentswith research assistantships often don’t engage with their super-vising faculty around issues of epistemology, particularly if theyjoin a research project after it has commenced. The technical fea-tures of the work (interviewing, observing, coding, etc.) takeprecedence, especially when there are meaningful deadlines tomeet, as so often is the case. Faculty should purposefully createtime and space to discuss the relationship between epistemologyand the technical practices of the project. In other words, theymight explain what they do in terms of the logic or the syntax ofthe research practices to which they subscribe, thereby facilitat-ing discussions of what does and does not count as knowledgeand as evidence.

Place discussions of epistemology in historical context. A criticalelement of membership in a community of research practice isthe development of a shared set of experiences and practices. Anhistorical perspective on epistemology can enable novice educa-tional researchers to share the meanings of particular episte-mologies that have been constructed by more senior members ofthe research community. The danger in discussing epistemologyas ahistorical is that novices may not understand how episte-mological perspectives in a field (or in the study of a particularsubject) have evolved over time, sometimes in relation to, or evenin opposition to, one another. This is as important for aspiringconsumers of educational research as for students who will be ac-tively engaged in research careers.

A shared understanding of a community’s epistemologicalchange or epistemological development is one of the definingfeatures of a community of research practice and can also definea constellation of such communities. It is important for novicesto come to understand the development of particular episte-mologies. The prevailing epistemologies of the study of a partic-ular subject (say, literacy) are the culmination of historical shiftsin epistemologies that have guided the study of that subject.Thus to understand deeply the epistemologies of reading re-search today, it is helpful to understand prior forms.

By way of example, one might argue that postmodernism, abroad umbrella for many epistemologies, emerged in response tomodernist epistemologies. This evolution required a deep un-derstanding of modernism, as one must have such knowledge todevelop a coherent way of knowing defined in opposition to it.Yet today, quite a few beginning scholars embrace postmodernperspectives without fully understanding what they claim to berejecting.4

Design social spaces in which epistemological experimentation issafe and encouraged. Members of a community of educational re-search practice have a shared history that contributes to sharedunderstanding of what counts as knowledge of a particular edu-cational phenomenon. Newcomers to such communities oftenhave not worked out epistemological beliefs in the context of theactual practice of educational research. Thus, novices are likelyto appear confused, inconsistent, or simply unknowledgeable tofull members of a particular community of educational researchpractice.

Members of communities of educational research practicecan respond to these appearances of confusion in a number ofways. For example, the members of such a community mightuse the appearance of confusion as a rationale for excluding or

dismissing a novice from the community, or ignoring him orher in daily interaction (Wenger, 1998). Were this to happen,novices would not feel safe in voicing their developing under-standings of epistemology, and would be likely to withdrawfrom participation, that is, if they weren’t dismissed first. Andthis withdrawal ultimately would bar membership in a partic-ular community.

In contrast, the members of a community of educational re-search practice might agree to grant newcomers a modicum of le-gitimacy, in spite of their undeveloped or incomplete grasp of epis-temological issues. In such a context, newcomers are placed on atrajectory leading towards full membership in the community (re-gardless of whether or not they eventually become full members.)The legitimacy afforded to such newcomers gives them license toexplore epistemological concerns without fear of rejection.

Acknowledge the inevitability of a group of doctoral students whowill not be deeply engaged in thinking about epistemological perspec-tives. In an era when “all children can learn” is a mantra chantedby educators across the country to ward off unseen evil spirits, itmay seem like heresy to accept the premise that not all doctoralstudents will be willing to learn deeply about epistemological is-sues. But graduate schools of education have finite time and re-sources to devote to preparing doctoral students, and it maymake sense to invest more heavily in the cultivation of deep epis-temological understanding in those students destined for re-search careers than those who are not.

This is not to say that all students who care deeply about ed-ucational policy and practice are unwilling to be reflective aboutepistemological concerns. But there may be a group of studentswhose professional goals in education are so instrumental andheartfelt that they do not wish to extend their efforts beyondthem. I would support pushing all students to think about epis-temological issues in the early phases of doctoral study, but theremay come a time when the different future trajectories of stu-dents might warrant differential investment. Epistemological di-versity poses greater challenges to doctoral students embarkingupon careers of educational research than to those who are morelikely to consume than produce educational research.

Caveats

My aim in this paper has been to generate renewed attention tothe problem of preparing beginning education researchers toachieve competence in a world of shifting and expanding episte-mologies of education research. My specific suggestions couldyield unanticipated consequences, several of which I note below.

The slippery slope. Once the door is opened to the goal of hav-ing students engage deeply with multiple epistemological per-spectives, the questions of how many epistemologies, which ones,and whose take on increased importance. Given ever-expandingvariations on epistemological stances, how many perspectivesshould students encounter? Two? Five? Thirteen? Here, the slip-pery slope consists of the acceleration toward treating more andmore perspectives seriously, with no consensual criteria for end-ing the slide. Beyond the issue of quantity, the issue of whichepistemologies and whose get privileged in doctoral programs isa matter of politics and power. Ellen Lagemann’s (1989, 1997,2000) historical studies of educational research in the U.S. demon-

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strate the complexity of such considerations in ways that go be-yond the scope of this essay.

The “big bang” theory. It would be easy to look at the currentsystem of preparing educational researchers in graduate schooland conclude, “Oh, what fools these educational researchers be!They have devised a process of graduate education that removesopportunities for overt engagement with multiple epistemologi-cal perspectives. They train their future members in insular com-munities, and thus their members are forever caught in the websof meaning that a particular community spins.” This hardly seemslike the desired outcome. But, borrowing a page from HowardBecker’s (1998) bag of analytic tricks, we can attempt to visual-ize the social machinery that produced this outcome. Doing sosuggests that the outcome of limited engagement around episte-mological concerns, whether serendipitous or planned, may ac-tually serve a very important function in maintaining a research-intensive graduate school of education and keeping it strong. Itis conceivable that, since epistemologies are often deeply personaland meaningful, exposing the diverse and potentially conflictingepistemologies held by different faculty members in a researchuniversity to public view could lead to outright conflict. Facultymight come to understand that they question one another’sthinking and learning about educational phenomena. Such be-liefs are usually submerged, but surfacing them could create a“big bang” within a graduate school of education. Exposing suchcontroversy may, in the long run, be useful; but it requires thecultivation of respectful openness to disagreement, which maynot come easily.

Dissociative scholarly identities. The psychological literature de-scribes cases of individuals with two or more distinct identitiesor personality states, each of which has a distinctive way of relat-ing to and thinking about the environment and the self. A mildversion of dissociative identity could result from sustained en-gagement with two or more divergent epistemologies. Episte-mologies do, after all, involve particular ways of thinking aboutthe environment and the self. Attempting to reconcile conflict-ing views could thwart the development of a coherent identity,and make it difficult for a novice researcher to participate as amember of any community of research practice. Alternatively,compartmentalizing and segregating disparate epistemologiescould create unresolved tensions that might lead to other psy-chological or emotional problems.

Recommendations and caveats are no substitute for systematicresearch on how doctoral students learn to become educationalresearchers. In the long run, the field will benefit from adoptinga critical, reflexive stance toward doctoral research preparation,and interrogating the rationales for current practices.

NOTES1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the annual meeting

of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, LA,April 2000. This work has been supported by the Spencer Foundation.My thanks to Nell Duke, Ken Frank, and Matt Prentice for sharingtheir ideas with me, and to Devon Brenner, Anna Neumann, NoraSabelli, Lauren Young, and anonymous reviewers for commenting onearlier drafts of this paper.

2 Although local is typically defined in terms of physical distance,here I use the term to refer to social distance. New technologies of

communication (e.g., e-mail, the Internet) have made it easy for indi-viduals at great physical distance from one another to engage in socialinteraction.

3 I focus here on doctoral study as a context for the learning of ed-ucational research, but I believe that the ongoing learning of more ex-perienced researchers also takes place within local communities ofpractice.

4 I am grateful to my colleagues David Labaree and Cleo Cherryholmesfor making this point.

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AUTHOR

AARON M. PALLAS is a professor of Sociology and Education atTeachers College, Columbia University, Box 3, 525 W. 120th St., NewYork, NY, 10027; amp155@columbia.edu. His research interests in-clude educational stratification and the social organization of schools.

Manuscript received November 28, 2000Revision received February 23, 2001

Accepted March 6, 2001

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