ABSTRACT
At this point, it might be expected that we show in detail how to do philosophical research in education, drawing on the schools of thought covered in Chapter 1, so that you can choose that which best fits your questions and perspective. But part of what we want to do here is to show why presenting approaches or schools of thought as a menu of options, as is found in many research methods handbooks, is problematic. As we will see, there is an assumption in many introductory handbooks that educational research will be empirical, and that this is distinguished from theoretical or philosophical research. The overview of philosophical ‘schools of thought’ in Chapter 2 shows that they are not distinct from the empirical, but rather are responses to it, and accounts of what it is.
