ABSTRACT
Applying labels to the arguments of other people is not uncommon in academic discussions. These may be labels that are already in use or they may be new. In this chapter I want to consider an example of the coining of a new label: ‘methodological purism’. This term was applied in a recent dispute about racism among teachers in English schools. I participated in this dispute, and was accused of methodological purism in the course of it, along with others (see Troyna 1993; Gillborn and Drew 1993; Gillborn 1995:ch. 3; Troyna 1995). The dispute arose in the context of a series of mainly qualitative studies of the education of ethnic minority children in England, which claimed to be able to document school process in a way that larger-scale quantitative studies could not, and which reported systematic teacher racism at both organisational and classroom levels. 1 However, a qualitative study by Peter Foster, a doctoral student of mine, ran counter to this trend, claiming that there was not widespread racism on the part of teachers in the school he studied (Foster 1989 and 1990a). And the predominant response to his book was to criticise him for overlooking what the critics saw as clear evidence of teacher racism (Blair 1993; Connolly 1992; Gillborn and Drew 1992). But Foster went on to challenge the findings of many of the other studies in the field, arguing that the evidence which they supplied for their conclusions was inadequate (Foster 1990b, 1991, 1992, 1993a, 1993b, 1993c). The response to his criticisms was to dismiss them as based on a fallacious approach (Wright 1991; Connolly 1992; Gillborn and Drew 1992; Gillborn 1995). Following this, a colleague and I entered the debate by questioning some of the claims made for qualitative research in this area, and addressing the criticisms which had been directed at Foster (Hammersley 1992b; Gomm 1993 and 1995; Hammersley 1993; Hammersley and Gomm 1993); and it was at this point that the accusation of methodological purism arose. 2 In this chapter, without claiming neutrality, I want to try to step back a little from this dispute in order to examine its character and implications. I will begin by looking at the term ‘methodological purism’ itself. 3
