590007 SE Epistemologies and educational research (2023W)

For several centuries, science was built on describing ways in which truth, or at least true or objective knowledge, could be found. While this ideal is still pursued by numerous sciences, especially the quantitative-empirical ones, critical-alternative reflections have emerged which do not propagate new ways to objectivity but question the ideal of objectivity itself. This is the field of modern epistemology.
In the seminar, after having dealt with four classical epistemologies, we learn about the most important of these alternatives, and doctoral students try to relate them to their own dissertations where possible. Among other things, we reconstruct how Karl Marx tied knowledge to social status, how John Dewey thought of traditional knowledge from political domination, how Ludwik Fleck traced knowledge production to thought collectives, how Clifford Geertz determined culture as the starting point of knowledge, how Michel Foucault deconstructed the power and illusion of science, how feminism critiqued the masculine characteristics and one-sidedness of science, and how post-colonialism brought the scientific legacy of colonialism into the discussion of knowledge and power.