ABSTRACT
We have claimed, in this book, that the fundamental criterion for the evaluation of empirical educational research is that it should aim at coherent closure. There are at least two directions from which we may be challenged on this claim. Firstly, a number of authors within what may (very) loosely be referred to as the postmodern school selfconsciously seek to avoid closure in producing their own texts. These are intended to reveal the deconstruction of what are only apparently closed texts produced by others. Well, we see value in such writing, too, just as we see value in modernist epistemological debates between, say, constructivists and realists. We occasionally engage in it ourselves. Such work is important in the generation of critical dialogue on and within the research activity. Suffice it to say, perhaps, that if there were no texts that aspired to closure, the postmoderns would have very little to do.
