ABSTRACT
What can the dilemma language contribute to social science inquiries, and to the clarification and formulation of schooling policy? Our argument throughout has been that research into schooling processes (as into the social process in other institutional forms) seeks to unite the ‘micro’ and the ‘macro’; that is, to penetrate the connections between the circumstances and events of daily life in schools, and the moral, social and political decisions we face as teachers, administrators, parents, scholars, citizens – individually or collectively. Such research, we have argued, is simultaneously theoretical and practical. The distinction between ‘basic’ and ‘applied’ research, therefore, dissolves. Although often the practical import of social theories is left obscure and the theoretical assumptions of practice left unstated, both have the same moral burden of contributing to the making of intelligent choices in the realities we confront.
