ABSTRACT
In the early years of the twenty-first century, federal grant-funding agencies under George W. Bush defined education research so that empirically randomized controlled trials were the standard by which research was evaluated for government support. Qualitative studies received little attention, and the use of systematic theory to guide research was not valued. Such a position on what constitutes acceptable research often not only expresses conservative political attitudes but-in the case of theory-constitutes a formal acknowledgement of the long-standing avoidance by many in the US of theory as impractical. Data collection of any sort without theoretical guidance is what Foucault called “blind empiricism” (1977) and C. Wright Mills (1959) labeled “abstracted empiricism.” Such research yields data, but very little social explanation.
